News Briefs

Some brief comments on recent news stories:

The tragic series of self-immolations in Tibet have gotten some international attention, though not as much as they should have. There are a couple of petitions online that people can sign to encourage the world's leaders to put more pressure on China to stop its repression, one from Avaaz addressed to the leaders of the US, France, Britain, Australia, India, and the EU and the other on the White House's We the People petition site (the deadline for this is in only a day or so, but there are a number of other petitions that are worth signing here).

Unfortunately, the Russian mission to Phobos, the larger of Mars's tiny moons, seems to have suffered a glitch. If they can't fix it, the probe will remain stuck in Earth orbit rather than traveling on to Mars. This would be highly regrettable, as if this mission could fulfill its goals of exploring Phobos and sending a sample of its soil back to Earth, we could learn a lot. What's more, previous Russian missions to Mars, including the only previous attempts at missions to Phobos, have also failed (no, this isn't because of some kind of curse, conspiracy, or defensive action by intelligent Martians; it's just bad luck).

Flooding is still creating big problems in Thailand, and has hit some areas of Bangkok that I have been to in the past. As tragic as this has been for Thailand, it seems likely that Bangkok can expect more of this in the future, as it is slowly sinking while the world's oceans are rising due to global warming. The Thais haven't helped matters in the past by filling in many of the city's canals to make more roads (though there are still quite a few canals, it's no longer truly the Venice of the East, as some have called it). One might hope this year's flooding will prompt more long-term planning for Bangkok's future, as well as stronger measures to reduce carbon emissions (Thailand may not be anywhere near as bad as countries like the US, China and Australia in terms of emissions, but it no doubt could do better).

The future direction of Libya remains uncertain, and the government oppression goes on in Syria. When will the world be stirred to stronger action in the latter country? Or are the world's leaders secretly hoping the uprising will just peter out? Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has pledged to resign; let's hope he'll stick to that. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf looks set for reelection in Liberia, which is probably a good thing, though I read recently that she has some possible skeletons in her closet that make some Liberians suspicious of her, and perhaps if I investigated further I might end up agreeing with them. Still, she's done better than most other past and present African leaders, at least so far.

In the US, the results from the state and local elections look pretty good, at least from the little I've read. The "personhood" amendment in Mississippi thankfully lost, despite the state's conservatism. The anti-union referendum in Ohio lost in a landslide as well. And the Arizona state senator who pushed their absurd anti-immigrant law looks like he may have been recalled. I haven't yet checked on results from Texas, where there were a number of worthy propositions on the ballot. If they failed, I suppose I'll have to take some of the blame, as I forgot to send in the application to renew my registration in time to vote in this election. I'll certainly try to be sure not to make that mistake again. Also in the US, there's been a lot of reporting on sexual harassment allegations against Republican presidential candidate Hermann Cain. I haven't bothered to read hardly any of these stories, but as I have said in other cases, I think he should be judged on whether he crossed the line into assault or engaged in repeated, egregious harassment. One or two suggestive remarks should not be considered a big deal. Of course no one should be voting for Cain anyway, because every one of his policy positions that I've heard are terrible.

In Taiwan, the campaigning for next January's elections for president, as well as the legislative elections, are heating up. I may have more to say on this in future posts. Also, changes are being made to Taiwan's laws on sex work, due to a court ruling that held the original laws to be unconstitutional. Unfortunately, the new laws are not much of an improvement. Each county and city is supposed to set up a red light district where sex work will be legal, but nothing in the law penalizes them for failing to do so, so none of them have done it. Outside the (non-existent) legal areas, both sex workers and customers will now be fined, instead of just sex workers, but this doesn't do much to help sex workers except make it less likely that their customers will testify against them. As I will argue in detail in a future post (if I get around to writing it), they should simply legalize sex work, though it should be regulated heavily and any strong measures to protect workers' rights should be in place (as should be the case with all industries) to prevent exploitation. But so far, few politicians in Taiwan are willing to go that far (I should note that the one legislator who made a proposal along those lines was a KMT member; though I am not at all a fan of the KMT, some individual legislators do good work on some issues).