![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
- I found, from somewhere in the blogosphere, a 1982 essay by June Jordan, "Report from the Bahamas." How can solidarity and identity be established across great distances, geographic and otherwise, in a globalized world?
- This analysis by Lyman Stone of the impact of Hurricane Maria on the already dire demographics of Puerto Rico is worth reading. Population decline will be at least as sharp as in Ireland and Corsica.
- Will making Cape Breton a province separate from Nova Scotia, as suggested by independent senator Dan Christmas, do anything to stop the island's sharp decline? The Cape Breton Post reports.
- Climate change and sea level rise may effectively make mainland Nova Scotia an island, cutting the dike-protected roads on the Isthmus of Chignecto. VICE reports.
- Fiji is preparing for an influx of climate change refugees from other, lower-lying and poorer, island nations in the Pacific. Bloomberg reports.
- Some think the Green Line in Cyprus can be a suitable model for post-Brexit Northern Ireland. So depressing. European think-tank Brughel reports.
- Fiji is already starting to see an influx of migrants/refugees from lower-lying Pacific island countries. DW reports.
- The Queen making use of Cayman Islands tax shelters only makes sense. She is queen there, after all. Open Democracy reports.
- Global News notes that a Québec family has put up for sale a private island in New Brunswick, on the Bay of Fundy.
In the opinion piece "Singapore and us", one Biman Prasad notes the ways in which Fiji has fallen behind a Singapore that was once its peers. While Fiji is not as lucky as a Singapore placed in the middle of global trade routes, its ethnic conflicts definitely did hurt the island's potential.
Certain commentators in this country tend to selectively compare Fiji with Singapore. They highlight that Fiji, like Singapore, is a multi-ethnic country and they claim Fiji needs to adopt similar restrictive policies to maintain stability and achieve economic success.
On the surface, these comparisons and justifications might sound reasonable. Singapore, after all, is the third-richest country in the world, ranking behind only Qatar and Luxembourg, according to Forbes magazine 2014 top 10 richest countries in the world.
Singapore's rise to the top has been both rapid and spectacular. In the 1960s, Singapore and Fiji had a similar GDP per capita. Today Singapore is well ahead, with a GDP per capita of nearly $US55,000 ($F117,975) with Fiji's about $US4500 ($F9652). The country turned 50 just recently and it is justifiably proud of its achievements.
Some political opportunists and journalists tell us that to emulate Singapore's success, we need, among other things, a restrictive media law. This a pie in the sky theory. While there are many things that Fiji can learn from Singapore, there are some things our country does not need to emulate or adopt. This becomes clear when we look at Singapore in greater detail.
[. . .]
It was able to transform itself from a slum with a per capita income of $US500 ($F1066) in 1965 to $US55,000 ($F117,975) today. This means that if one were to divide the total value of its output with the total population, every individual in Singapore today is worth $US55,000 ($F117,975). Singapore progressed faster than many other countries at a similar level of development in 1965. It has been able to improve living standards of its people through better health, better housing, better education and employment opportunities for all its people.
The military government of Fiji continues to have problems with Australia and New Zealand, the regional powers strongly opposed to the government's origins in a coup, blind to the Melanesian/Indo-Fijian ethnic division though it claims to be.
Frank Bainimarama, the self-appointed military leader who has ruled Fiji since the December 2006 coup, yesterday issued a 24-hour order for the ambassadors of Australia and New Zealand to leave the island over travel sanctions the two countries had imposed on people linked to the military regime.
He accused the two countries of sabotaging nation-building efforts by refusing to grant visas to Fijian judges.
In retaliation, Australia and New Zealand made near simultaneous announcements earlier today that they had expelled the Fijian ambassadors to their countries.
The Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said that he aimed to continue his government’s hardline stance against Mr Bainimarama’s leadership in order to maintain stability in the South Pacific region.
“We're not about to simply allow a coup culture to spread,'' he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Mr Rudd added that Australia would not allow what has happened in Fiji to become “some sort of norm for the Pacific at large”.
[LINK] Some Friday links
Oct. 16th, 2009 10:59 am- blogTO's Rick McGinnis blogs about the disappearance of the former Bohemian district of Gerrard Village thanks to rising real estate prices.
- James Bow comments on the Louisiana judge opposed to interracial marriage. Racist, that last guy.
- Far Outliers links to a source discussing how Fijians of Melanesian background, not just Indo-Fijians, are beginning to become sailors on the world stage in larger numbers. The blog also tackles the remnants of Thessaloniki's multiculturalism.
- Language Log reports on language conflict in Taiwan and Guangdong, as locals try to reassert their languages against Putongua. In a related post, the blog wonders what exactly constitutes an ethnic group.
- Lawyers, Guns and Money's Robert Farley savages American conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer.
- Peter Rukavina links to a video tour of Toronto's Coach House Press.
- Slap Upside the Head notes that yet another group of "concerned citizens" want to forcibly exclude a GLBT-themed book from a public library.
- Towleroad reports that American gay writer Edmund White thinks that same-sex marriage is radical simply because it normalized same-sex couples.
- Window on Eurasia observes that an opening of the Turkish-Armenian frontier would transform the mental maps and national identities of Armenians and Turks alike, and also comments on Russia's emergence as a supplier of raw materials to China.
[LINK] Some Friday links
Sep. 18th, 2009 02:45 pm- Broadsides' Antonia Zerbisias writes about Castor Semenya's heartbreakingly bad treatment by the media.
- Centauri Dreams talks about laser launch technology, the amazingly detailed discovery of the extrasolar planet CoRoT-7b, and the reasons for communicating with extraterrestrial civilizations.
- Far Outliers describes how the exchange of firearms for hogs on Tahiti started a series of wars.
- Hunting Monsters reports on the latest depressing news from Fiji.
- Joe. My. God reports that a South Carolina teen whose insurance company dropped him after he tested HIV-positive has been awarded damages of $US 10 million.
- Noel Maurer examines the massive cost overruns in the private sector, concentrating on the Albertan oil sands' development.
- Normblog considers the most commonly offered reasons for discouraging Jewish assimilation and boosting the number of Jews in the world and finds them unconvincing.
- Towleroad reports on how the Ukrainian Orthodox Church--I think the autonomous one under the Patriarch of Moscow--rejoices that Elton John can't adopt Ukrainian children. We also learn how violent Iraqi homophobes are using Internet chat room to brutally murder gays in that poor country.
- Torontoist reports that the Burj Dubai isn't going to take away the CN Tower's record as the tallest free-standing building in the world. No, I don't understand how.
- The Volokh Conspiracy's Ilya Somin suggests that the strong association of American Jews with the left in the modern United States might be explained by a distaste of the Religious Right associated with conservatism.
- Window on Eurasia wonders if Turkey, home to a large Abkhaz diaspora, might be the next country to recognize Abkhazia's independence, as well as reporting on how many prominent Ukrainians want a security guarantee against Russia.
