A world elsewhere

Lest we forget, large parts of the planet have no particular interest in our problems and concerns of their own.

Jacinda Ardern and her Labor Party won a landslide victory in New Zealand.  Being Trump-trashed doesn't seem to have hurt her at all.  In fact, her handling of the pandemic is being called one reason for her success (only twenty-five people died).   She opened her election night address with what the papers call thirty seconds in "fluent Maori," the language of native New Zealanders.

It's been more than five years since the Charlie Hebdo massacre and Samuel Paty, a history teacher in a Paris suburb, apparently decided his students were ready to learn what all the violence was about.  After telling them they could leave the room if they wished, he showed them a cartoon from the magazine.  The father of a girl who was absent that day made a YouTube video claiming that Paty had insulted the prophet Muhammad and calling other parents to "collective action."  This week Paty was decapitated by an eighteen-year-old asylum seeker who lived in Normandy, who was himself killed by police.  In five years some other teacher will have to decide what to tell the kids about Samuel Paty.

If you think Japan is the land of the future with its scary robots and bullet trains, you'll be reassured (a little) to know they're still fighting to end paperwork.  The new government has taken aim at fax machines, and at the ancient practice of hand-stamping everything.  

Climate change and a bacteria that causes "olive tree leprosy" are devastating Italy's olive oil industry.

Cong Peiwu, China's ambassador to Canada, warned that country not to grant asylum to activists from Hong Kong and basically threatened to hold hostage the 300,000 Canadians who live there.  Prime Minister Justin Trudeau refused to back down, saying Canada "will stand up loudly and clearly for human rights all around the world."  Americans felt shame, but we're used to that.

Those badass Canadians have also suspended arms shipments to Turkey, which is using them against the Kurds in Syria.  More shame, as Erdogan is on Trump's "Best Buddies" list.

Saying that "an armed attack on Sweden cannot be ruled out" and citing Russian "aggression in Georgia and Ukraine," the Swedish defense minister Peter Hultqvist proposed a 40 percent increase in military spending.  For the record, the last time Sweden fought Russia was the Finnish War (1808-9).  The Russians won.

Lake Kivu in Africa's Rift Valley has a unique mixture of methane and carbon dioxide in its depths which could be a source of renewable energy for Rwanda.  It could also produce a hell of an explosion as climate change brings more rain to the region, stirring up the lake bottom.

Thousands of Cape fur seal fetuses are being discovered along the coast of Namibia and South Africa.  When food is scarce fur seals will often abort or abandon their young, but seldom on this scale.

Demonstrators in Bangkok and other cities are demanding sweeping reform of Thailand's government and monarchy.  Some of the leaders are communists.  What year is this?

In Lagos, Nigerians continue to protest police brutality and to demand the breakup of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad.  The army is about to begin its annual exercise with the sinister name Operation Crocodile Smile, and says it is ready to restore order if necessary.  Also in Nigeria, fourteen soldiers were killed in a terrorist attack on an army base in Jakana.

The wild and crazy guys of the Royal Navy ballistic missile sub HMS Vigilant broke quarantine at Kings Bay Submarine Base in Georgia and went in search of the things sailors go in search of.  More than thirty returned to the boat with covid.  Doesn't anybody get the clap anymore?