Category Archives: Politics: International

I'm sure there's a perfectly good reason for this that everyone else knows, and someone will explain it to me, but I was a little surprised by this photo which appeared in today's New York Times accompanying a very straightforward and informative article by Norimitsu Onishi entitled, Indonesian President Is Projected to Win Election, which reports on the early returns in the recent Indonesian election.

Here is the picture:

The caption states, in full,

Election officials dressed as puppet theater characters guarded the ballot box on Wednesday at a polling station in Solo, Indonesia.

The New York Times vouchsafes us no explanation in the article, or in the deadpan caption, why an election official would dress up as a puppet theater character in order to guard a ballot box. Is this an Indonesian tradition? A joke? A routine thing?

I suppose it may have some virtue I'm not aware of — there seem to have been fewer problems in Indonesia than in the average Florida election, but even so I'd like to know what's going on here.

In Solidarity With Iranians I changed my Twitter location to Tabriz and the time to +3:30 GMT.

I think this White House video of Muslim Americans Serving in the U.S. Government is a very clever and effective use of new media to advance US interests around the world. Soft power!

The Guardian sent someone to cover the annual (super-secret) Bilderberg meeting, in which the worldwide power elite are said to hang out together. Even the guest list is a secret. Most media don't even bother trying to cover it.

The result of the exercise is somewhat farcical, and a bit sad. It involves a lot of Greek police. Charlie Skelton's Bilderberg files

Those who remember Khrushchev Remembers will see this smuggled taped memoir, by a Communist leader claiming to be a sometimes closet liberal, as a Chinese version.

Secret Memoir Reveals Dissent by Chinese Leader: In a long-secret memoir to be published in English and Chinese next week, just in time for the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, the former head of the Chinese Communist Party claims that the decision to impose martial law around Beijing in May 1989 was illegal and that the party's leaders could easily have negotiated a peaceful solution to the unrest.

The posthumous appearance of Zhao's memoir, which he dictated onto audiotapes and the publisher has titled “Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang,” marks the first time since the establishment of the People's Republic of China 60 years ago that a senior Chinese leader has spoken out so directly against the party and its system.

Reaching from the grave, Zhao pillories a conservative wing of the party for missteps that led to the bloody crackdown, which began after dark on June 3, 1989, and left hundreds dead. Few in China's leadership at the time escape Zhao's criticism. He castigates Deng Xiaoping, the man credited with opening China to the West and launching its economic reforms; Li Peng, the dour premier at the time of the Tiananmen tragedy; Deng Liqun, a hard-line party theoretician; Li Xiannian, a former vice president; and even Hu Yaobang, Zhao's longtime ally, whose death April 15, 1989, touched off the student-led protests.

I'm holding out for the North Korean version, myself.