International: April 2008 Archives

This is the strangest political banner ad I've ever seen. Presumably it's intended to run on World of Warcraft discussion sites or similar. Thanks to Aaron for this. Story starts with wolf.

What would Bill do? How would Bill Clinton vote in the Democratic primaries? You know, right, he's voting for Hillary. Right?

Update: Via Gruber, I should have said.

Keep clear of dubious alliances. Our Italian colleagues joined one, and took a complete shoeing. Cooperation after an election can make sense with almost any party on an issue-by-issue basis (say, the Tories, on, say, ID cards), and unlikely coalitions can work too (see Ireland). But joint lists in elections, especially with the likes of Communist Refoundation?

You can tell when a politician isn't serious about climate change, let alone social justice. They blame China for climate change; the American administration does this a lot. And China does stick out a lot of carbon.

However, what's actually happened, clearly, is that we no longer make very much in the West, and the Chinese export to us instead, so we get cheap goods made with non-unionised labour and low environmental standards, and our CO2 emissions go down as China's go up. Oh, and they lay waste to their local environment through projects like the 3 Gorges Dam (at left) more or less on our behalf.

As an eternal optimist, therefore, this cheers me up. There are apparently now around 2000 environmental NGOs in China, doing a wide range of good works. Brave people. I wish them luck.