Link Banana

Inhabitants of the Greek island of Lesbos are up in arms:

The man spearheading the case, publisher Dimitris Lambrou, claims that international dominance of the word in its sexual context violates the human rights of the islanders, and disgraces them around the world.

He says it causes daily problems to the social life of Lesbos’s inhabitants.

In case you hadn’t heard, the word “lesbian” in a gay context derives from the poet Sapphos, who was from Lesbos and lived in the seventh century BCE. She wrote openly of a sexual desire for other women.

(via Passport)

A BBC corespondent recently visited Chechnya (the site of a long-time separatist war against controlling Russia) and made an eerily familiar conclusion:

“The locals are idiots,” fumed one Muscovite as the spring sun became comfortably warm and the delay continued. He did not know that the Chechen next to him had just said the same to me about Russians.

I did not feel that the north Caucasus was about to explode again. People are exhausted and the rebels are now thought to number only a few hundred.

But the missing and the dead have relatives and Chechnya has a long tradition of blood feuds.

There are countless unemployed young men.

Moscow must persuade them and their younger brothers that they have a future. If not, joining the militants may appeal more than joining the police.

A new generation of fighters may yet challenge the Kremlin’s control over Russia’s southern edge.

(via Passport)

A fascinating idea is being implemented in Tanzania:

The $1.8m trial – to be launched this year – will counsel 3,000 men and women aged 15-30 in southern rural Tanzania over three years, paying them on condition that periodic laboratory test results prove they have not contracted sexually transmitted infections.

The proposed payments of $45 equate to a quarter of annual income for some participants.

The programme, jointly funded by the World Bank, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Population Reference Bureau and the Spanish Impact Evaluation Fund, marks an important step in the fight to tackle Aids, which claims 2m lives a year.

(via Passport)

Your disturbing statistic of the day comes care of Passport, who points out that the amount Americans spend on health care for their pets is roughly the same as the GDPs of Botswana or Bahrain.

Two interesting stories.

• It seems, based on a terribly unsure-of-itself discussion here, that there are fewer Smiths in America than there used to be.
• Popular baby names in Kenya? Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Raila Odinga, and especially Kofi Annan.

(via Mr. Sullivan and Passport, respectively)

This isn’t about stealing music or movies, but real pirates in real boats, stealing real property.

• The Economist has a chart of the number of recorded pirate attacks by geographic region. While Asia as a whole improved considerably, there were still 263 attacks in 2007.
• In a recent Op-Ed, John Burnett argued for harsher laws against pirates.
• Passport found a map (PDF) from the Operational Satellite Applications Program of the UN Institute for Training and Research that shows the location and nature of pirate attacks around Somalia.

Reuters conveys a story both troubling and — perhaps inappropriately — humorous:

Lychings in Congo as penis threat panic hits capital

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men’s penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

(via Passport)

It’s possible I went from sharing to much international news to too little… In any case, Foreign Policy’s Passport has most of the details on this intriguing/troubling story:

A shipment of ammunition, rockets, and mortar bombs en route from China to Zimbabwe has been denied passage from the South African port of Durban to the shipment’s landlocked destination. […]

Although the An Yue Jiang is expected to return to China, a South African paper, News24, reports that a second arms shipment from China is scheduled to arrive by air in order to “expedite the delivery and to circumvent the controversy around last week’s shipment by sea.” The story also claims that both orders, placed by the Zimbabwean government, were finalized just days after Zimbabwe’s elections.

Also of note: The Economist has some broader coverage of what’s been happening on the ground in Zimbabwe.

You thought it was just the United States, but now some Chinese patriots are discussing a boycott of all things French.

The latest country to face Chinese wrath is France, which Chinese netizens singled out as the worst embarrassment in terms of the torch relay over the past week (frankly, things weren’t pretty in London or San Francisco either). Citing a human rights banner at Paris city hall and a protester trying to wrench the torch from a Chinese girl in a wheelchair, grassroots sentiment is again spiraling out of control, though only in cyberspace for now. Calls for boycotts of French companies — including L’Oréal, Louis Vuitton and Givenchy — have appeared on Web sites and chatrooms.  Meanwhile, Xinhua ran a story today biting back at the French media entitled “Paris slaps its own face.”

Also about China: Channeling Sex in the City in Beijing. (via Mr. Fallows)

I’ll let Joshua Keating explain:

Uganda is being held in suspense right now as Lord’s Resistance Army commander Joseph Kony continues to delay signing a peace agreement that would bring an end to one of the world’s longest-running conflicts.

Current TV just put up an amazing short documentary on the conflict that includes an interview with a former top LRA commander who says he has no regrets about his actions

We can only hope this doesn’t result in more killings.

LAMU, Kenya — Riots erupted in Kenya on Tuesday as opposition leaders announced that they were suspending talks with the government over a stalled power sharing agreement.

According to witnesses, dozens of young men stormed into the streets of Kibera, a sprawling slum in the capital, Nairobi, lighting bonfires, ripping up railroad tracks and throwing rocks at police officers in a scene reminiscent of the violence that convulsed Kenya in the wake of the Dec. 27 election.

“No cabinet, no peace!” the protesters yelled, referring to the cabinet that has yet to be formed because of bitter divisions between the government and the opposition.

On a related note, Passport notes the increasing incidence of food riots as people all over the world struggle against record prices.

Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of Zimbabwe’s opposition and, depending on who you ask, it’s president elect penned a Op-Ed in The Guardian today. The most bruising line:

How can global leaders espouse the values of democracy, yet when they are being challenged fail to open their mouths? Why is it that a supposed “war on terror” ignores the very real terror of broken minds and mangled bodies that lie along the trail left by Mugabe?

(via Passport)

Current has a pretty interesting video about Bhutan. Though it focuses on the problems that the country faces in the wake of the recent transition from a (generally benign) monarchy into a democracy, there are some interesting tidbits, like the prevalence of penises painted on walls — which are surprisingly not graffiti.

(via Passport)

Get it? US as in “we Americans” and as in United States. Anyway… the BBC — who recently redesigned — are reporting that around the world opinions of America are less bad than they recently were. Hardly a vote of confidence — still more people think we’re bad than good — but a step in the right direction.

The average percentage of people saying that the US has a positive influence has risen to 35% from 31% a year ago, according to the survey.

Those saying the US has a negative influence fell five percentage points to 47%.

(via Passport)

I’ll leave the explanation to Foreign Policy’s Passport:

Evo Morales, Bolivia’s populist president, has signed up with a minor league soccer team in La Paz.

The 47-year-old will be a reserve player for the team Litoral, which hopes to earn a spot in Bolivia’s top professional league next year. Morales was once a standout player for a local cocoa grower’s team and as president, has been an outspoken critic of the worldwide ban against high-altitude soccer games.

While the Dalai Lama has gotten a lot of flack for urging moderation and nonviolence, another Buddhist monk embraces violence as necessary to defend the people against Sri Lanka’s rebels.

“Am I an extremist? Sometimes I am. Sometimes I am not,” Rathana said over green tea, when asked about reports from foreign human rights groups that accuse his party of hindering peace talks. “The point is that we need to end this war. And we are forced into a military solution.”

(via Passport)

It’s an interesting name, and an obvious reason. I’d like my name to stand for such a great idea.

I’ll just let the Washington Post’s Tom Ricks explain:

Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey has long had a reputation for audacity, both on the battlefield (during 32 years in the Army, he received three Purple Hearts, two Distinguished Service Crosses and two Silver Stars) and in his thinking. Here, in a briefing for a military audience last week, he predicts what lies around the bend in international relations. It made me wonder why anyone would want to be president.

His predictions strike me as mostly reasonable, which makes some of them all the more troubling.

(via Passsport)

Speaking of clichés… Kill the Cliché tracks tired words that predominate in news stories.

(via FP Passport)