20070430

Red blogule to Kim Seung-youn - bar vs bar at a bar

The Hanwha conglomerate owns a baseball club, but his owner Kim Seung-youn decided to use a metal bar to punish by himself four youngsters who dared fight with his son in a downtown Seoul night club.
Mr Kim came along with an impressive roster of 17 bodyguards armed with guns and knives, picking up his victims as if he were shopping at a mall. After he was done with them, he asked his sluggers to finish the job, which mercifully didn't involve any killing.
The videotape proving the razzia miraculously disappeared, but the victims and numerous witnesses are talking.
Money used to solve everything for Korea's biggest chaebols, but executive, judicial, and media powers are claiming more and more often their independence. Besides, Korean netizens are making sure nobody is untouchable, even when the law cannot prove nor do anything.

This disgraceful incident is both a blessing for Roh Moo-hyun in his crusade against the most deviant of Chaebol Allmighties*, and good news for Korean democracy : in the end the power belongs to the people.
As for the power hitter called Kim Seung-youn, his high batting average will give some fish to fry to his defense, and he may end up managing his anger in a prison's baseball team.

* not to mention his crusade against lameduckhood...

20070426

White, red and pink blogules to the World in 2020

The CER (Centre for European Reform ) and Accenture recently waged a debate about the World in 2020, partly fueled by Mark Leonard's essay "Divided world: The struggle for supremacy". The democracy vs autocracy divide sounds a little bit white vs black to me, and I may add a few other key structural changes within :
- America enjoying good demography dynamics but becoming more monolithic, more focused on itself, welcoming fewer influences from abroad. Growing old a different way.
- At the opposite of this Mainland Amerika, China is embracing its own diversity. Chinese imperialism is no more about spreading a unique monolithic model but about a much smarter pervasiveness, leveraging on all minorities instead of crushing cultural diversity (ie China intends to build the core of Koreanhood on its very soil, claims the Koguryo cultural heritage, and position the Korean peninsula as a motherland's satellite).
- What I call "Asianitude" keeps growing. Asian countries developping intra-asian relationships beyond the traditional bilateral relationships with Western countries, students and executives moving from places to places, a common ground and cultural identity, a sense of belonging to the same community at the individuals level...
- The Korean moment. Surrounded by ambitious giants (and a Japan dangerously returning to ultra nationalism and Showa-style fascism), seen as the herald of cultural diversity for other Asian nations, Korea has to cope with the collapse of North Korea. In what I call the Albania scenario, the people who used to live in a quasi sect are totally unprepared for a market economy : con men and gurus get the bulk of the values they received as a kick start in a new world.
- The turn of the millenium rise of fundamentalism (Christian in the US and Eastern Europe, Jewish in Eretz Israel and Islamist everywhere) may last if democracies keep electing leaders who put religion at the top of their not so hidden agendas (the collapse of Iraq, the rise of Iran as the regional threat, and the boost to fundamentalists across the globe were not collateral damage but the very aim of Bush's game). And while terrorists trained in Iraq blossom on new urban and suburban playgrounds, al Qaeda survivors and wannabes focus on rural Asia, Africa and South America.

20070420

Le vote futile - why French socialists shouldn't vote for Royal

Before the 2004 elections, I would advise Republicans who loved their party and who truly respected republican values not to vote for Bush. I'm not sure the GOP will recover from the 2006 fiasco on time for 2008...

I'm telling the same thing to French socialists right now : if you believe in a modern form of socialism and compassionate politics, do not vote for Segolene Royal this Sunday. France cannot afford to be ruled by the Socialist Party as it is right now, and certainly not by a candidate who proved unable to federate her own family, unable to give a clear vision, unable to rise above a swamp of demagogy.

Royal never ventured beyond areas where debate could rage. Europe ? 35-hour week ? the national debt ? Well below the radar of touchy issues and just above the minefield of personal attacks on her rivals, Sego decided to focus on the consensual issue of the budget devoted to the French President for her last week of campaigning. Pathetic.

Socialists reformers want the French PS to implode. This party died two years ago after the Referendum on Europe, and the worst thing that could happen now would be a socialist majority composed of conflicting minorities. Ruling over such a mess would be much tougher than achieving Bayrou's dream of a balanced government positioned at the center.

Reformers should not accept Sego's conservative agenda, and conservative leftists would better vote for one of the small candidates "to the left of the left". At least, Mrs Buffet believes in what she says and respects the political debate.

But both reformers and hardliners are hesitating : Le Pen could reach the second round again.

But since this man cannot be elected (unless France turns into Florida), even that would be better than electing Royal : the socialists, who did not move one inch since April 21, 2002 despite the humiliation, would then be forced to evolve and split. Let the primates go their way and the moderates pave a new one.

If Royal were to win, France would lose immediately, and the Parti Socialist not long after. The only winner would be the Royal - Hollande couple.

I hope socialists won't subscribe to this hollow program.

Unless they enjoy being dubbed Europe's stupidest left.

20070419

April 28, 2007: Impeachment Day

Being just a cheese eating surrender French citizen, there's not much I can do but spread the news. But if you happen to be a US citizen (like a big half of this site's visitors), you can and you must do something : impeach the guy who pretends to be the President of the United States of America.


A28


Make yourself known one way or another on April 28th, 2007. Make that day Judgment Day for this Stubborn Again Christian, and terminate his political career the most suitable way.
Check a28.org for events and fellow responsible citizens near you. Wake your neighbors up. Wake your Congressmen and Congresswomen up. Wake your country up. Wake up.

20070415

Red blogule to Wolfie's Personal World Bank

Annus horribilis for neocons (continued) : Paul Wolfowitz, whose World Bank is supposed to give governance lessons, abused his power to raise above the level of decency the pay of his own girlfriend. Alberto Gonzales and Karl Rove may be the next members of the crude crew to fall, the Dems only have a few months to restore America and impeach both Lord Dubya, King of the Banana Republic of the Divided States of Amerika, and his puppeteer Lobby Dick Cheney.
Anyway, History will give its verdict sooner or later, and the Bush years will be forever remembered as years of immorality and disgrace.

20070405

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