Monk

In the early 1990s, when I was a foreign correspondent looking for my next overseas posting with The Times, I sought Japan. At the time, Tokyo was an awe-inspiring economic titan, arguably the most important capital outside the United States.

Then Japanese politicians, acting with the same sublime ineptitude that our own House of Representatives displayed this week, ignored a growing banking crisis and dithered on a bailout. And so I watched from Tokyo as a mighty economy melted like an iceberg in the Caribbean.

Japan’s failure to respond urgently and decisively to its banking mess caused the country to endure a “lost decade” of economic stagnation. If America wants to avoid Japan’s decline, the House should follow the Senate’s lead and approve the bailout — immediately.

Just as in the U.S. today, most Japanese did not initially appreciate how devastating a banking crisis could be to the real economy. Banks and real estate tycoons in Japan were corrupt, profligate and unsympathetic figures, and no one wanted to help them. On corporate expense accounts, they sipped coffee with gold leaf and patronized “no-panties shabu-shabu” restaurants, which had mirrored floors and miniskirted waitresses.

In short, the businessmen involved were jerks. And, whether in Japan or the U.S., it’s challenging for politicians to frame a bailout with the slogan: Save the jerks!

-- Nicholas D. Kristof for The New York Times

You didn't think life was fair, did you?

Nicholas Kristof reflects on the ascending animal rights movement. Who would have thought that geese could be so romantic? Fortunately, chickens still don't seem better than good eats.

( kristof )

If there is no two-state solution, there will be a one-state solution — and given demographic trends, that will mean either the end of Israeli democracy or the end of the Jewish state. Zionists should be absolutely clamoring for a Palestinian state.

-- Nicholas D. Kristof for The New York Times

Better yet, of course, if a Palestinian state wouldn't be a terrorist state, but that would make life too easy, and where's the fun in that?

In any case, Kristof is not introducing a new proposition into the debate, but it has been a while since we've put something down on Israel, and Kristof is naturally looking at the prospect of a new American administration coming to the issue.

China today reminds me of Taiwan when I lived there in the late 1980s when the government was still trying to be dictatorial but just couldn’t get away with it. It was no longer scary enough.

Back then, the smartest of the Taiwan apparatchiks, like a young Harvard-educated party official named Ma Ying-jeou, glimpsed the future and began to reinvent themselves as democratic politicians. The epilogue: Mr. Ma took office this week as the newly elected president of a democratic Taiwan.

-- Nicholas D. Kristof for The New York Times

Vampire bats are remarkably well-adapted to the rain forest. They come out at night and use heat sensors to find a goat, child or other mammal, which they feed upon only after determining from its breathing that it is truly asleep.

If the prey is an animal with fur, vampire bats use special teeth to shave the skin. Then they use incisors to cut the skin almost painlessly, while the saliva prevents clotting, and they lap up the blood.

-- Nicholas D. Kristof for The New York Times

You wouldn't guess that this is about saving the rain forest, unless you are well familiar with Kristof's writing. He knows how to hook us.

If you’re a Democrat, your candidate won in Wednesday night’s presidential debate — that was obvious, and most neutral observers would recognize that. But the other candidate issued appalling distortions, and the news commentary afterward was shamefully biased.

-- Nicholas D. Kristof for The New York Times

Kristof gives us a more reflective, rather academic take on last night's debate, using studies that highlight the polarizing tendencies of our biases, in the way we receive and shape information, suggesting why rationality is not the primary basis on which politics turns. Well, duh!

( kristof )

Instead, the battle is getting bloodier. Mrs. Clinton spoke this week about the contest continuing for “the next three months” — and those would surely be a toxic three months. There’s already grumbling that Mrs. Clinton’s real strategy is to destroy Mr. Obama’s chances of winning the general election so that she can compete in 2012.

-- Nicholas D. Kristof for The New York Times

I used to discount the Republican glee over an extended campagin battle between Hillary and Obama, thinking so what! The Republicans are so disadvantages this time around, Jimmy Carter could probably win another term in the White House. However, I've been getting a better idea of the possible fallout. Kristof gives us a good overview of the potential disaster.

( Kristof )

♠
Another young person on a mission is Ariel Zylbersztejn, a 27-year-old Mexican who founded and runs a company called Cinepop, which projects movies onto inflatable screens and shows them free in public parks. Mr. Zylbersztejn realized that 90 percent of Mexicans can’t afford to go to movies, so he started his own business model: He sells sponsorships to companies to advertise to the thousands of viewers who come to watch the free entertainment.

Mr. Zylbersztejn works with microcredit agencies and social welfare groups to engage the families that come to his movies and help them start businesses or try other strategies to overcome poverty. Cinepop is only three years old, but already 250,000 people a year watch movies on his screens — and his goal is to take the model to Brazil, India, China and other countries.

-- Nicholas D. Kristof for The New York Times

Mr. Kristof was the one who introduced us to Kiva.org, which was about loaning money to budding entrepreneurs in the Third World. Now he discusses social entrepreneurs, idealistic people working through the system to bring real change to impoverished peoples. It is always a bit chastening to see that there are people who don't just gripe and wax cynically upon the world, but who actually go out to change it.

xXx

♠
Finally, we’re beginning to understand what it would take to galvanize President Bush, other leaders and the American public to respond to the genocide in Sudan: a suffering puppy with big eyes and floppy ears.

That’s the implication of a series of studies by psychologists trying to understand why people — good, conscientious people — aren’t moved by genocide or famines. Time and again, we’ve seen that the human conscience just isn’t pricked by mass suffering, while an individual child (or puppy) in distress causes our hearts to flutter.

-- Nicholas D. Kristof for The New York Times

It also could be that the idea of a few more black Africans killing each other off is not necessarily such a bad thing. So long as they are not threatening the white life.

xXx