[BRIEF NOTE] I have to read this

I briefly choked on my coffee this morning when, sittong on the subway, I read an article like this in my local edition of Metro about Ron Currie, Jr.'s new short story collection God is Dead.

Triumph of evil


The nightmarish satires of Ron Currie's God Is Dead have a scary ring of truth about them, says Michel Faber

Saturday July 28, 2007
The Guardian

God Is Dead by Ron Currie
Buy God Is Dead a the Guardian bookshop

God Is Dead
by Ron Currie
182pp, Picador, £12.99

In the first chapter of God Is Dead, God is, briefly, alive. He has taken on the form of a sick, wounded female refugee in Darfur. Apart from possessing a miraculously infinite bag of sorghum to share with her fellow sufferers, God's earthly incarnation has no divine aid to offer. In fact, "due to an implacable polytheistic bureaucracy", she is utterly powerless to influence the outcome of the Sudanese disaster and can only beg forgiveness for her impotence. Within days, God is a corpse on the battlefield.

It's a bold beginning to what is more a collection of short stories than a novel. (Four of the "chapters" were previously published as standalone pieces, and there is little continuity of character or plot.) The news of God's death triggers all sorts of bizarre upheavals in various nations, including mass looting, mass suicides and, finally, a war between the Evolutionary Psychologist Forces and the Postmodern Anthropologist Marines. Along the way, we meet a psychiatrist from the Child Adulation Prevention Agency, a conscience-stricken Colin Powell who calls George Bush a "silver-spoon master-of-the-universe motherfucker", and a talking dog.

The rather bleak premise makes me think that the above reviewer, Michel Faber, may well be right in proclaiming the collection a bit too nihilistic. Then again, Bookslut quite likes it, so "wait and see for myself" is probably the best strategy.

[BRIEF NOTE] Why boycott Beijing over Darfur?

Am I alone in finding the calls for a boycott of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics on the grounds that Chinese investments in Sudan may have some link to the ongoing genocide in Darfur strange (1, 2)?

The activists who want to punish China could make use of the partial precedent of the American-led boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics held in Moscow, but that was part of the hostile international reaction to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Note that this decision could come about only because it was the Soviet Union itself that had invaded Afghanistan, not a mere Soviet trade partner with very ambiguous ideological and other links to the Soviet Union. (The retaliatory Soviet-led boycott of the 1984 Summer Olympics held in Los Angeles seems to have been simple tit-for-tat, perhaps accompanied by gerontocratic paranoia.) A case can be made that Chinese moneys bear a certain measure of indirect responsibility for Sudan's latest traumas, yes, but it would be a fairly weak case that could also be extended to Sudan's neighbours and, indeed, to Western countries which purchase their oil from the same fungible international markets to which Sudan sells. Should the Olympics be closed down on the grounds of global culpability? One might as well have boycotted the Los Angeles Olympics because of the death squads active in the United States' Central American proxy states/satellites--if anything, the case in favour of a boycott would have been stronger because of the United States' role in training the militaries which committed those crimes in the first place.

This won't happen, of course. The Darfur activists involved might be able to sway public opinion in their countries somewhat, but they aren't going to be able to get their governments to insult a rising China that's intent on making next year's Summer Olympics a globally-televised demonstration of China's evolution into a world-class power. I just find it irritating that they've been trying to make this case, and in fairness, perhaps also a bit sad that this tactic is one of the more effective that they can come up with.

[LINK] Post-Communist Europe's problem

From Business Week, the article "Eastern Europe Might Never Catch Up":

Central and Eastern Europe states are in danger of never catching up with Western Europe, as the long term economic growth potential in the region is undermined by a widening human capital gap with the west of the continent, a report has warned.

The report -- called the European Human Capital Index -- ranked eastern EU members and candidates on their ability to develop and sustain their human capital, and was released by the Brussels-based Lisbon Council think tank on Monday (15 October).

Since the collapse of communism, economic growth in the former communist states is far above growth seen elsewhere on the continent, narrowing the difference in economic wealth between the two halves of the continent.

But researchers now fear that a continuation of this performance is unlikely, unless certain problems are urgently addressed.

"The entire study shows a closing of the gap in the last 15 years, but now it could widen again," Peer Ederer, the lead author of the study warned during the report's presentation.

"An economy does no longer only have to be efficiency-driven. If you want to be able to compete with Western Europe and Asia, you have to become an innovation-driven economy," he said later on.

In particular, the report highlights the region's shrinking population, continuous brain-drain, chronically high unemployment and inadequate investment in education and skills - especially in workers aged 45 or more -- as the main problems.

"Stop early retirement schemes, reduce unemployment, stimulate part-time employment. Keep them in the job, get them in the job, in every way possible," Dr Ederer said.

The Lisbon Council's website is here, and the report in question ("The Challenge of Central and Eastern Europe") is here.