As John Quiggin suggests, perhaps the best starting point is Eurasian politics and news blog Registan. (As they inform us: ?Registan? means ?sandy place? in Uzbek and a number of other Turkic languages). Surfing around Registan can send you off in any number of directions.
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Category Archives: Europe and the world
Uzbekistan and the World
Ok, I’m feeling guilty. Back in November, when the ‘orange revolution’ was thriving in Ukraine, we were all over it here at Afoe. Now, with an estimated several hundred dead in Andizhan, Uzbekistan we’re strangely silent. Why, because it isn’t Europe? Well, we are a Europe centred blog, but I hope that doesn’t mean we are Eurocentric. In any event we are involved, one way or another: as Jack Straws comments, or lack of them, make only too plain. So I’m going to try and follow what is happening in Uzbekistan.
But there is another reason for my deciding to do something about the situation, and it came to me after reading a post by John Quiggin on Crooked Timber.
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Changing Perspectives On Immigration.
Views of immigration are changing. Back in the mists of time, when I first came to the conclusion that ongoing demographic changes were going to be important, the voices in favour of a reconsideration of immigration policy were few and far between. Perhaps the first and most notable of these voices was the UN population division. Now things are different, and a series of recent international conferences and reports highlighting the positive advantages of immigration as an economic motor only serve to underline the fact that discussion of this important topic is very much back on the agenda.
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Better News on Agricultural Tarrifs
For once something positive to report:
After months of deadlock, the Doha round of global trade talks has taken a big step forward, thanks largely to an abstruse but important deal over agricultural tariffs….On May 4th, negotiators from America, the European Union, Brazil, India and Australia hammered out a formula for converting specific tariffs on agricultural goods, such as 10 cents per pound in weight, into percentage (or so-called ad valorem) tariffs.Measuring all tariffs as a percentage of the goods? value is a prerequisite for further progress in talks about reducing trade barriers for agricultural goods. Under the broad outline for the farm-trade talks agreed last summer, countries pledged to divide their tariff barriers into different tiers. Higher tariffs will be cut more than lower ones. Not surprisingly, those countries that protect their farmers most wanted a conversion formula that translated specific tariffs into lower percentages, as that would imply smaller cuts down the road. In the end, the deal was based on a compromise proposal made by the European Union.
Source: The Economist
Obviously this is a dense technical issue, but the good news is that the EU has moved to break the deadlock. The slightly ironic detail is that the meeting where the agreement was ironed-out was held in Paris with the French referendum campaign as a background. Still I suppose this puts the suggestions that current EU policy is being driven exclusively by the needs of obtaining a ‘yes’ vote in some sort of context.
Also, as the Economist notes there is plenty yet to do. In the first place all the details on agriculture have still to be worked out. And then there is the tricky question of services……………
China and Protectionism
The Chinese minister of trade Bo Xilai was in Paris yesterday. Most likely this is simply a happy coincidence, but the timing couldn’t have been better. The issue of Chinese textile imports has become one of the issues in the French referendum, and minister Bo was conveniently available to make all the right gestures:
“We want to soften the shockwave that there could be from the rise in Chinese textile exports,” Bo told a news conference after talks with French trade minister Francois Loos…”It is a temporary phenomenon and this phenomenon will weaken or disappear”.
Source: Reuters
The media and the Pope
For those who are interested, the German S?ddeutsche Zeitung has an amusing photo gallery of newspapers from around the world reacting to the new pope. It’s quite telling even if you don’t understand the German comments on the side. (“N?chstes Bild” means “next picture” – click there to take the tour.)
Sales Pitch
Anti-Japanese riots continued in a number of Chinese cities. Despite a meeting of the two countries’ foreign ministers, little sign of abatement. Given that the country where the rioting is happening is a one-party socialist state with nationalist leanings, there’s bound to be official connivance at some level.
Why is selling the PRC weapons a good idea again?
Wolfowitz: The World Bank staff hate him already
For everyone interested in the Wolfowitz appointment, I strongly recommend World Bank President, a blog devoted to the issue in its title. From it, I learn that the World Bank staff is already expressing concerns that staff views should play a role in the selection of the next Bank president, and that you can e-sign a statement of concern sponsored by the European Network on Debt and Development.
This might even prove more entertaining than nominating Bono would have.
Another Question
Apparently, lifting the embargo on selling arms to China is high on the agenda for the meeting of the EU foreign ministers next week.
The reasonably senior US diplomat said he wondered what the EU would be getting if it chose to lift the embargo now. Is there more than just contracts involved? Or are the sales enough?
Along with all of the major German parties, I’m finding this a peculiar time to lift an embargo, given the law that China just passed.
The Wolfowitz Bank
Everybody ready for neo-con development politics?
President Bush said today he is nominating Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz to be the next president of the World Bank, tapping one of his administration’s most controversial figures as the U.S. choice to head the 184-nation institution.
Because, y’know, after engineering a military quagmire in Asia, Robert McNamara was such a smashing success at the World Bank…
Or will it be a Koch-Weser moment?
UPDATE: Bloomberg comes through with a bit of the agenda.
Under Wolfowitz, the Bush administration may now try to narrow the focus of the World Bank, returning the international lending institution to its roots of primarily financing large infrastructure projects and limiting the practice of handing out zero-interest loans, analysts such as Alan Meltzer, who led a 2000 congressional inquiry into the World Bank, said.
Tapped also has scuttlebutt from 17th & H; in short, Wolfowitz will be hated by the institution he is slated to run.
On Monday, I was in the audience when a reasonably senior US diplomat speculated on improvements in US-European relations. I thought to myself, well, things will get a hell of a lot better on Jan. 21, 2009.