That's the Way of the World
09 Nov Edition

What's happening in the news today outside of our little island? Let's take a spin. First, an article on what's happening to quell the French riots from the Christian Science Monitor:

CSM - Riots ebb as citizens take stand
Standing in the midnight chill outside the cultural center he's guarding, its windows boarded against rioters, Patrice Carteron chuckles.
"Nobody is going to bother me," says the European heavyweight champion in Muay Thai, a form of kickboxing. "If they come here, that's the end of the riot. No need for the police."
[...]
But Michele Lemaire, a middle-aged white woman, isn't afraid either. She's spending the night - along with a dozen companions - guarding a nearby primary school that was torched two nights earlier.

Carteron and Ms. Lemaire are two links in a growing civic chain forged in the last few days by city hall, the local mosque, and neighborhood associations, which has reclaimed Grigny's streets from rioters, and restored calm. This heavily immigrant town is typical of many of the suburbs that have been torn by violence for the past 12nights. Residents of the high rise blocks come from 72 different nations, with more than a quarter of them under age 20; unemployment in some projects reaches 40 percent among young people and half the population is Muslim, according to local residents.
[...]
"We are not there to replace the police, or to stop things beyond our control," said Mr. Eddouka, a local Muslim leader, who stepped up before the faithful just after evening prayers and asked for volunteers to stay on the streets that night.

"But we can tell people to think about what they are doing," added the soft- spoken Eddouka, a bookseller who works as a prison chaplain in his spare time.

"The cars they are burning could be our cars, and the schools they are burning are where our children learn to read and write."

This exchange on NPR also helps to put some of the rioting into perspective:

NPR - Riots Continue in Paris, Despite Emergency Efforts
Renee Montaine: You know, it might be important to clarify here, when we talk about "suburb," they're quite different, the suburbs ringing Paris and other cities where all the violence is going on, they are not suburbs in the sense that American understand.

Eleanor Beardsley: That's correct, Renee. It's sort of the opposite of the American situation. The well-off people, the rich people stayed inside the cities whereas the poorer people were relegated to the suburbs, which are really these high-rise projects, that they could be called, just blocks of high-rise apartment buildings housing a lot of first-, second- and third-generation immigrants and people who don't have the means to live inside the cities.

Montaine: And few jobs and few services there.

Beardsley: Yes of course, in these areas, the unemployment level is sometimes five times what it is in the rest of France. And fewer social services and just less support for people.

Jefferson Morley over at the WaPo has a round-up of other opinion related to the French riots:

WaPo - Europe Wonders 'Could It Happen Here?'
That's the question London's Daily Telegraph is asking its readers about the riots in France. It's the questions people all over Europe are asking themselves.

The answer varies by country, but it almost always revolves around the word "integration."

In Denmark, Radio Netherlands notes the difference between France and the Netherlands:

"French integration policy is aimed at 'cultural assimilation'. Everyone is supposed to feel French, and people are given little room in the public arena to express their religious or cultural identity. For example, public officials are now banned by law from wearing headscarves. The Netherlands, on the other hand, has a long tradition of offering more room for others to express their identity, although this tradition has been coming under pressure over the past decade."
[...]
In Germany, Spiegel Online's press survey found commentators across the political spectrum saying that Germans face comparable alienation in immigrant communities.

"We have to do everything possible for integration," says the left-wing Berliner Zeitung. "That means that we have to change. A Europe that reduces entire economic areas to begging, because it spends hundreds of millions supporting its own agriculture, has no more money left to integrate those poor farmers who have been displaced from their homelands."

Facade Friend Scratch wanted an update on Liberia's presidential election, which could vote that country's greatest footballer (aka, soccer player) into the leadership role. Here's where we are currently:

Guardian - Weah stays just ahead in Liberia shoot-out
For George Weah, it was the political equivalent of a penalty shoot-out. The former AC Milan and Chelsea striker took on former finance minister Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf at the ballot box yesterday in an effort to become Liberia's first postwar president.

With UN peacekeepers standing guard, the west African nation held its first ever presidential runoff and whoever wins will make history. Ms Johnson-Sirleaf, 66, would be Africa's first elected female leader. Mr Weah, 39, would be the world's first top footballer to become head of state. Most observers say the vote is too close to call.

[ed. note - the headline's not referring to guns, but to the penalty "shoot-out" that occurs at the end of championship soccer matches, if the game results in a draw; at this point Mrs. F's eyes are glazing over, so I'll shut up now, though I certainly could go on about the frustrating unfairness of using this method to decide games...]

Reuters - Johnson-Sirleaf leads Liberia poll, Weah says fraud
Former Finance Minister Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf took an early lead on Wednesday in Liberia's presidential runoff but her rival, millionaire soccer legend George Weah, said he had evidence of fraud.

The National Elections Commission announced that with votes from around a third of all polling stations counted after Tuesday's poll, Johnson-Sirleaf had 60.4 percent, while Weah had 39.6 percent.

But Weah said the election was "full of irregularities".

From China comes an intriguing shift in how to view GDP more holistically (something I blogged a bit about back during our honeymoon in Paris last spring):

Economist - The greening of China
AN ELABORATE points system that determines the careers of officials is often blamed for many of China's problems. In their drive to meet targets for economic growth, local mandarins squander money, ride roughshod over citizens and ravish the environment. So now China is trying to devise and embed into its assessment of officials a way of calculating a “green GDP”—which allows for environmental costs in national accounts—to help mitigate some of these excesses.

President Hu Jintao first endorsed the idea in March 2004, in a speech about the need to foster a “scientific concept of development”, a slogan intended to suggest that in pursuing growth China should pay more heed to such issues as the environment and the depletion of natural resources. Last February, the government said that ten regions, including Beijing, were carrying out a pilot project in green GDP assessment. Pan Yue, the deputy director of the State Environmental Protection Administration, said a “framework” for a green GDP accounting system could be unfolded within three to five years. This would make China the pioneer of a statistical approach that no other country has adopted—and which many economists around the world eschew as an attempt to quantify the unquantifiable.

[ed note - this article is open to non-subscribers, so give it a full read]