[PHOTO] Annex Streetscape

Annex Streetscape
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

This is a shot, looking eastward, of Bloor Street West in the middle of The Annex neighbourhood.

[LINK] Indonesia a BRIC economy?

Thanks to Edward Hugh for linking to this Bloomberg article arguing that Indonesia should be included among the ranks of the BRIC economies.

Indonesia’s economic growth may accelerate to 7 percent starting in 2011, providing a case for its inclusion in the so-called BRIC economies along with Brazil, Russia, India and China, Morgan Stanley said.

Political stability and buoyant domestic demand will help boost expansion in the $433 billion economy, Morgan Stanley said in a report dated June 12 that compares Indonesia with India. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is expected to win the July 8 elections, polls show.

“What this means for the investor community is that they need to look at this asset class more seriously,” Chetan Ahya, a Singapore-based economist at Morgan Stanley, said in an interview today. Political stability, improved government finances and “a natural advantage from demography and commodity resources are likely to unleash Indonesia’s growth potential,” he said.

Southeast Asia’s largest economy may grow 60 percent in the next five years to $800 billion due to a stable administration, lower capital costs and a government plan to spend as much as $34 billion to build roads, ports and power plants by 2017, Morgan Stanley said. Leaders of the nations known as BRIC will meet this week in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg.

Two analysts at Seeking Alpha disagree.

Indonesia, technically fails to meet our definition of a Continental-sized country (less than 1 million square miles spread out on numerous islands), although it has more than the requisite 100 million people. In this regard, it is similar to Japan, which is similarly contained. But its educational level and overall productivity are far below Japan's, as well as the BRIC countries.

India, Russia and Brazil together have a GDP as large as China's. Meanwhile, Indonesia's is about a third of the smallest (Brazil's). It is also on the edge, rather than center, of Asia, where three of the other countries, (China, India, Russia) meet. Geographically and economically, Indonesia is far less strategic than the others.

Another factor is that the Indonesian stock market is far less transparent than the others. It has far fewer American Depositary Receipts (ADRs), which means that both liquidity and transparency of its markets are decidedly inferior to the others.

This analysis has some issues--Indonesian waters play a crucial role in world shipping, and how strategically located is Brazil, while the whole point of the Bloomberg article seems to be that Indonesia might qualify for BRIC classification in the early 2010s.

Thoughts?

[BRIEF NOTE] Senegal and la francophonie

Over at A Fistful of Euros, Douglas Muir blogs about his recent visit to Senegal. He finds that this successful west African country is far more Francophone than recently-visited Burundi.

Gallicization seems to run deeper here than in Burundi. No, that’s not exactly right. More like: the European influences seems more assimilated. In Burundi, rich and elite Burundians can seem like wannabe Belgians, cut-and-pasting the culture of the former colonists. Elite Senegalese seem to be more comfortable integrating the different influences. It may just be that Senegal is a much less desperately-screwed-up place than Burundi, and so has less of a cultural cringe… I’m not sure.

But anyway. Another difference is that Senegal has a small but significant population of non-African francophones. In Burundi, this group numbered perhaps a few thousand — perhaps a tenth of one percent of the population. Here it’s more like a hundred thousand — Lebanese, French, Spanish, Italian, and a scattering of odds and ends like Greeks and Vietnamese. The Lebanese, in particular, occupy an important social niche: there are thirty or forty thousand of them, they’ve been here for generations, and they’re mostly merchants and traders in the larger cities. By Senegalese standards, most are rich. So while they keep fairly quiet politically, they have a disproportionate impact on Senegalese society and culture.

The French, same but more so. Some are descended from colonial-era merchants and landowners who stayed on after independence; more are recent immigrants and their children. Their numbers aren’t large, but there are enough of them to support a thriving little community. A tremendous amount of ink has been spilled on the topic of immigration from developing countries into Europe; the flow in the opposite direction has been almost entirely neglected. True, it’s much much smaller — there are a hundred Senegalese trying to reach France for every Frenchman considering a move to Senegal. But it’s not negligible, and there are countries where its impact is surprising. The non-African communities in Senegal play a significant role in the country today; if nothing else, they’re helping to keep Senegal firmly connected to la Francophonie and engaged with the wider world. Dakar is not a rich city, but it’s a surprisingly cosmopolitan one.

This isn't surprising given Senegal's long history with Europe; Senegal was the only African territory caught up in the 1848 revolution. Don't forget that the country's long-time president, Léopold Sédar Senghor, was one of the founders of la francophonie and the first African member of the Académie française.

As for the future, in his analysis of Senegal's language policy, Jacques Leclerc argues that while the French language is very deeply implanted in Senegal, the fact that the majority of the Senegalese population speaks Wolof means that the tenure of French as the dominant language of government and media will be limited in the future. The extent to which French may be limited is open to question, although the deep influence of the French language and culture that Douglas has identified suggests that it won't be too limited.

[LINK] "PETA Says No More Fly-Killing, Sends Obama a Humane Fly Catcher"

absinthe_dot_ca lets us know that, yes, PETA is run by lunatics.

PETA has a few words for President Obama: Brush, don’t kill.

After the President very publicly swatted and then killed a fly during an interview with CNBC yesterday, the outspoken animal rights group PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) said they wished Obama had served a better example.

“We support compassion for the even the smallest animals," says Bruce Friedrich, VP for Policy at PETA. “We support giving insects the benefit of the doubt."

Friedrich says PETA supports "brushing flies away rather than killing them" and was disappointed that the President had gone ahead and squashed the pesky fly.

This afternoon PETA sent a Katcha Bug, a device which traps bugs and allows their safe release back into nature to the White House.

[LINK] "France’s Tamil diaspora in denial over Prabakaran’s death"

Vaiju Naravane's long article in The Hindu exploring the Tamil community in Paris and how its members are reacting to the defeat of the LTTE.

‘Little Jaffna’ in Paris is a cluster of streets branching off from the rue du Faubourg Saint Denis in the capital’s 10th district. It stretches all the way from the Gare du Nord railway station to the metro station Chapelle on the northern fringes of Paris, in what is generally referred to as the “immigrant neighbourhood.” The area is usually tight with people, alive with commercial activity and the hum of business. It is packed with “cash and carry” stores, sari “palaces”, sweet meat vendors, restaurants, video and music shops, butchers selling goat meat, tailors, barbers, travel agents, and fresh fish-wallas.

For the last week, however, this hub of commerce has come to an eerie standstill. Peeling posters bearing the face of LTTE leader Velupillai Prahakaran’s are spattered across the walls. Not a stray cat seems to walk the byways and black drapes and flags cover closed shop fronts. The Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora in Paris, estimated to number between 60,000 and 75,000, is in mourning. There was shock and disbelief when news arrived that the LTTE supremo had been killed.

“No one believes he is dead,” Shalini, a 20-year-old medical student who came to Paris at the age of 10, told The Hindu the day Sri Lankan television announced Prabakaran’s death. “I am certain he has already left the country and will soon give us a message on how the struggle should go on. He is the only true leader of the Tamil people. We revere him, we worship him, and I am sure later today he will give us a sign that he is still alive.” Now that the LTTE has formally acknowledged his death she seems rudderless, adrift.

Other Tamils in Little Jaffna are happy that the LTTE was defeated, not least because it can no longer intimidate the community's members.

[N]ot everyone has kind words for the LTTE. “I feel terrible when I see those innocent civilians killed. What have they done to deserve this, herded into camps like cattle? Prabakaran did not know when to negotiate. He became too fond of the gun and made his people here into Mafiosi,” says Shanthamma, a Pondicherry Tamil whose parents once owned a shop in Little Jaffna. She said agents of the Tigers forced them out of their original premises in what has now become Little Jaffna. “First they came with a ridiculous offer to buy our shop. Then there were threats on the phone and through the post. Finally, we found our windows were being broken, our merchandise tampered with. We preferred to quit. How else do you think did they manage to lay their hands on this entire street [Faubourg Saint Denis] and all the streets around it? It was done with threats and coercion. We do not care for the Tigers. They did terrible things in the name of self-determination. What had the members of the Pondicherry Tamil Community done to them? Yet they forced us out in order to put up their own shops so that they could collect their so called Freedom Tax.”

Angélina Etiemble, a sociologist and researcher who has carried out extensive studies on the Sri Lankan Tamil population in Paris, told The Hindu: “The LTTE was so well organised that every individual Sri Lankan Tamil was more or less forced to pay between 536 and 839 euros per year — the rate was 2.32 euros per day, deemed to be a ‘decent’ living wage for those engaged in the cause or deprived of their livelihood by the war. Shop owners had to pay up more, between 1,678 and 2,287 euros per establishment.” Ms. Etiemble says she is not surprised by the level of loyalty to the LTTE or the almost total indoctrination of the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora. “They used their media network to the full — newspapers like the Poobalam Weekly, controlled directly by the all-powerful Tamil Coordination Committee.

[MUSIC] Laibach, "Sympathy for the Devil" (Who Killed the Kennedys Mix)

When I blogged about the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil" and the Eurythmics' "Missionary Man," I didn't include this mix, my favourite of the seven cover versions on Laibach's 1988 Sympathy for the Devil EP

"Ursula Le Guin" (Watch on YouTube)

"She's made you some kind of laughing stock
Because you dance to disco, and you don't like rock"

I like rock, don't get me wrong, but techno's at least as fun.

[LINK] "Gay festival in Shanghai teaches tolerance"

The fact that this article came from the People's Republic English newspaper China Daily and was hosted on the English-language section of Xinhua News Agency really surprised me.

The weeklong Shanghai Pride 2009, the largest gay and lesbian community event on the Chinese mainland, should be hailed as a milestone and a success, despite some unexpected official interference.

Hundreds of LGBTs (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) and some curious straight folks packed the Cotton's Xinhua Road club from 2 to 10 pm on Saturday, with a series of live events culminating in four same-sex weddings when gay marriage is still illegal in the country.

The festive crowds continued their party in the Glamour Bar on the Bund until the next day. On Sunday, the LGBT crowds celebrated their last-day party with singing, badminton and swimming contests.

For many LGBTs, it was the first time they felt like coming out of the closet in the country's largest metropolis. It was their first grand party on the Chinese mainland.

[. . .]

During the week of Shanghai Pride, local government officials intervened to cancel several film screenings and the staging of a play. This is a truly shame for Shanghai, a city which claims to be open and progressive; and, a city of immigrants that is proud of its tradition of embracing different peoples and cultures.

Shanghai has embarked on an ambitious program to develop itself as an international financial and shipping hub. It is a city that is planning to host the World Expo in May 2010 when 239 countries and international organizations will showcase their technologies and unique cultures.

Yet, if Shanghai cannot even show acceptance, understanding and tolerance for LGBTs, how can it expect it to attract and respect the diverse people coming to visit the Expo and develop in future the working environment for a global financial and shipping center.

Shanghai Pride 2009 was intended to help more LGBTs to come out of the closet. Yet government meddling clearly sent a wrong signal. It is a message denying the basic civil rights of LGBTs, who are no longer illegal in this country. It's quite disturbing to see the local authorities still adopt such a hostile attitude towards LGBTs and persist in trying to confine them to the closet in such a big city.

Um. Is this article, published in the policed daily and news agency, actually signaling that the People's Republic is starting to move towards gay-friendly policies?

[LINK] "Outcome in Mulroney-Schreiber case hazy"

Chantal Hébert, one of Canada's leading political journalists, wrote earlier this week in the Toronto Star about the profound and irresolvable uncertainties surronding the question that I'd blogged about earlier, of whether Mulroney was guilty of the accusations made against him or not.

In a court of law, Justice Jeffrey Oliphant would likely dismiss a case against Brian Mulroney at this juncture.

With the fact-finding part of the commission's work completed, Oliphant has been presented with no proof that criminal behaviour was involved in the relationship of the former prime minister and lobbyist Karlheinz Schreiber.

But the commission operates within different parameters and its purpose is not to make criminal findings. Instead, it's Oliphant's unique and rather unenviable task to pronounce on the behaviour of a former Canadian prime minister.

According to his terms of reference, Oliphant is expected to answer 17 questions in his year-end report. To do that, he will have to determine whether he finds either of Mulroney's or Schreiber's conflicting versions credible. That will not be an easy call.

The two former associates agree neither on the sum they exchanged, nor on the purpose of the payments. Neither has written evidence to back him up. Both stories have changed substantially over the years.

[. . .]

There is no evidence that Mulroney ever lobbied the Canadian government on Schreiber's behalf. But then, after his party was wiped off the map in the 1993 election, there was no one left to lobby on Parliament Hill.

[. . .]

The heads of state Mulroney says he approached as part of his mandate have all passed away. The former prime minister kept no written record of his expenses and he only reported verbally.