Senator Kerry who is up for re-election to his Senate seat in Massachusetts and still faces a primary fight from a Democratic challenger, Ed O’Reilly, is also getting attacked by a Republican 527 PAC, Citizens United.
India Celebrates Olympic Gold
India may be a growing superpower but when it comes to the Olympics, India lags behind countries such as Kenya and Jamaica in Olympic medals. Through the Athens Olympics, India ranked 52nd in the culmulative medal count, just behind Indonesia. India has won Olympic Gold before in men’s field hockey at the Moscow Olympics but this is the first individual Gold medal in the country’s history and it set off celebrations across India.
Abhinav Bindra, 25, became the first Indian to win an individual Olympic gold medal, beating Chinese and Finnish competitors Monday in a nail-biting finish during the 10-meter air rifle competition. Bindra, a bespectacled M.B.A. from the north Indian city of Chandigarh, had shown promise as a teenage shooter but failed to win a medal in Athens, and hopes were not high before he competed in Beijing.
Until Bindra’s win, India’s population of more than a billion seemed to be collectively shrugging at all the Olympic carryings-on generated by China, its neighbor and emerging global-market superpower.
More from the New York Times.
The urban affairs organization, City Mayors through its website is launching a new service that all residents of 34 cities world-wide to rate their mayor. Fifteen mayors in the United States and Canada can be rated. Fourteen mayors in Europe plus two in Latin American and three in the Asia-Pacific region can be rated.
City Mayors introduces Mayor Monitor (MM), which allows residents and non-residents to rate the performance of mayors and highlight their ‘best’ and ‘worst’ decisions. Mayor Monitor uses the widely understood one-to-ten rating system, where ‘1′ signifies an extremely poor performance and ‘10′ ‘an outstanding one.
Over time, Mayor Monitor will provide a valuable track record of mayors’ successes and failures as well as their popularity among residents and a wider public. The results will be published on the City Mayors website and updated monthly.
In order to eliminate multiple, fraudulent and/or organised rating by political foes and friends of mayors, all submissions are processed manually and, if deemed questionable, cross-checked.
Links to the cities are below the fold. The rating process is simple and will take no more than a few minutes, if that. (more…)
I am not even quite sure what to make of this latest salvo from the McCain campaign. The ad has its own website, Join the Obama Fan Club, which is a fundraising link. The spot is 60 seconds. I am not quite sure if the ad will run on television or is just Internet only. I’m guessing and hoping that it is the latter because to be frank, the ad is awfully silly.
Next he’ll have us speaking Quechua, Ayamara or Arawak, but Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez today called for renaming Latin America. As of today, it is “América India” or Indian America. He went on to say:
“América India estamos incluyendo a lo negro africano y a lo blanco europeo porque nosotros no somos excluyentes”.
In Indian America we are including the African black and the white European because we are not exclusive.
Perhaps not exclusive but how about deranged?
The above video is from Venezuelan television and thus in Spanish. If one in English is released, I will add it. In yesterday’s referendum in Bolivia, both Bolivian President Evo Morales and Vice President Álvaro García Linera survived the recall vote by winning with wide margins. Final results will not be available until next week but Morales seems to earned at least 58% of the vote and perhaps as much as 62%.
But beneath the total tally is the regional tally. Morales won the Andean plateau overwhelmingly winning the provinces of Ororu, Potosi, and La Paz with over 80% of the vote. He carried Cochabamba as well though by a narrower marging. The rebellion that Morales faces is in the lowland provinces of Beni, Tarija, Pando, Chuquisaca and Santa Cruz. There Morales didn’t fare so well. Only in Chuquisaca did he win 40% of the vote or more.
In yesterday’s recall referendum, eight of the nine governor’s were up for a vote. Five won, three lost. The five who won are all stauchly anti-Morales. The three who lost included one anti-Morales governor and two who weren’t allies but weren’t anti-Morales either. In effect, yesterday’s referendum leaves Bolivia no different than it was before, hopelessly polarized.
From the Los Angeles Times:
Both sides in Bolivia’s bitter political standoff came out of a weekend recall referendum Monday with reason to declare victory. The big loser appeared to be national unity.
President Evo Morales won a renewed mandate for his socialist vision, garnering more than 60% of the vote, according to preliminary results that won’t be official for a week or so.
But his chief antagonists in the rebellious, resource-rich crescent of lowland states known as the “half moon” also savored their triumph. All four opposition governors in the region easily survived the plebiscite in an explicit endorsement of their march toward regional autonomy — a move that Morales decries as a treasonous splitting of the nation.
The president’s electoral might was heavily concentrated in the four heavily indigenous western and central highland states, long his base, which he swept handily. But a majority of voters in each of Bolivia’s other five states apparently voted for Morales’ expulsion from office, according to one exit poll.
It’s the tenth in the country’s history, only one Gold, also with weight-lifting (female) in the Sydney Games so this is a big deal.
Colombia ha alacanzado su primera medalla en los juegos olímpicos de Beijing con el Pesista Valluno Diego Salazar quien escoltó al deportista Chino y superó más de 15 atletas de diferentes países participantes. Felicitaciones a Diego Salazar.
It is chilling to read today’s news from Georgia and even more chilling to read the reaction in Western capitals. Russia has tanks headed for Tbilisi, we got Bush, Cheney, Brown, Merkel saying that’s unacceptable in one form or another and yet Russian tanks continue to roll. Words did not stop Russian tanks from rolling over Tallin, Riga and Vilnus in 1940, words did not stop Russian tanks from rolling over Budapest in 1956, words did not stop Russian tanks from rolling over Praha in 1968. And words won’t stop Russian tanks from rolling over Tbilisi in 2008. The question is what do we do now? What can we do? I’d start by sending the US Fleet into the Black Sea.
The time for “grave concern” was last week.
Living in San Francisco as I do, one runs into GAP employees all the time. I even had a roommate who worked at GAP long ago. In 2006, I got into an argument at a friend’s Christmas party with another guest who worked in the GAP’s global marketing department. It began innocently enough, he telling me he worked at GAP, me telling him that I was a former Wall Street retail anaylst. I tend to treat anyone I meet a source of information and so I did press him on more on GAP’s struggles. He was obiliging enough without giving away the store either but at one point and I don’t remember what exactly he said that led me to interject that GAP, Banana Republic and Old Navy are simply lost it if that’s the case. I went on a mini-tirade: you’re overstored, your same-store-sales are in rapid fire decline at Old Navy, tepid at best at GAP and probably slightly positive at Banana but you’ve got H&M taking women’s clothing away from you and if you don’t watch out Zara will take you both down. Your merchandising is just so frankly boring and bland that it’s blah. At that point it became a tit for tat. We’re doing this and this and I would counter H&M has done that already and Zara has opened a store a day this and their model works better because they are always testing. And then the kicker which caused him to just smile and walk away. I said your marketing obviously sucks (hey I was at a party not on the job and had been drinking) because Zara does 0 advertising and their same store sales are growing and yours are in negative territory. You guys have lost it.
Today I am happy to report that indeed Zara, a Spanish chain based out La Coruña in northwestern Spain, has overtaken San Francisco-based GAP as the world’s largest clothier. Zara works because they have a tight relationship with suppliers and they test their lines throughout the world. Logistics and communication throughout the chain are the keys to their success. If something is hot and it starts to sell, they then order up. GAP makes an executive decision based on marketing research on fashion trends and then orders massively from its suppliers. If it doesn’t sell, GAP is stuck with massive inventory write-downs. There was a time in the early 1990s when GAP could do no wrong but beginning in 1997-1998 the chain just lost its way.
Other parts of the Zara formula is that their stores are the centre of their advertising. Sharp crisp displays and mid-tier price points. Zara also only does larger downtown stores and no suburban strip malls, that came to be the undoing of the GAP. Zara’s lines are more limited. In truth, Zara is the Banana Republic-killer. That’s what Zara has killed. H&M, the Swedish clothier, in turn has eaten into Old Navy and the mainstream GAP sales.
From the UK Guardian:
Spanish fashion chain Zara has expanded so rapidly in recent months that it has overtaken its main US rival Gap to become the world’s largest clothing retailer.
Beloved by proponents of fast-fashion, Zara has spread its reach across the globe at a time when Gap has suffered from plummeting consumer spending in the US.
Inditex, Zara’s parent company, recorded a 9% increase in sales to €2.218bn (£1.7bn) in the first quarter of its financial year. It also benefited from the strength of the euro to edge slightly ahead of Gap which saw its revenues fall by 10% and recorded sales of €2.169bn in the same period.
The difference may be tiny, but Inditex claims it is significant: for the first time the Spanish group has inched past its American rival.
The group, whose high street store Zara has led the charge, hopes to consolidate its lead over rivals later in the year as it continues to expand overseas in spite of the economic downturn.
It is three years since Inditex overtook H&M, to become the biggest clothing retailer in Europe. But the rapid growth is nothing new to a company which first started in 1963 in the bedroom of chairman Amancio Ortega’s home in Galicia, northwest Spain, making bathrobes.
The first Zara store was opened in 1975, in La Coruña in Galicia. The 1980s saw rapid expansion across Spain, followed by the opening in 1988 of the first Zara store outside Spain, in Porto, Portugal.
One soldier, his face a mask of exhaustion, cradled a Kalashnikov.
“We killed as many of them as we could,” he said. “But where are our friends?”
It was the question of the day. As Russian forces massed Sunday on two fronts, Georgians were heading south with whatever they could carry. When they met Western journalists, they all said the same thing: Where is the United States? When is NATO coming?
The sad truth is what I wrote the other night Georgia 2008 is Czechoslovakia 1938 revisited. We will not be coming, at least not the way Georgians expect and deserve. Russia is also upping the ante. Russia seems to be demanding the ouster of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. At the start of the war, Russian aims seemed limited to ousting Georgian forces from South Ossetia. That has now expanded to ousting Georgian forces from Abkhazia as well. Tomorrow will be a critical day is seeing how far Russia is willing to go with its war aims.
With Russia continuing its assault on the Republic of Georgia, here is who is coming to the aid of the small Caucusus republic.
The United States
While the United States failed to inform the Georgians as to the severity of the Russian build-up, it is likely that the US is sharing intelligence. At this point with both the President out of the country and Congress not in session, there have no requests for emergency aid to Georgia. So far, the only concrete assistance that the US has provided is that the US will transport Georgian troops stationed in Iraq back to Georgia. There are currently 2,000 Georgian troops in Iraq.
The Ukraine
The government of the Ukraine informed Russia that ships used in an attack on Russia may not be allowed back to the Russian naval base in the Ukrainian city of Sevastapol. To the extent that this is aid, it prevents Russia from using all of the forces at its disposal against now helpless Georgia.
The Baltic Republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania
The Baltics, having worked closely with Georgiain international matters have much to say on the situation. The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania Petras Vaitiekunas is currently in Georgia assessing the situation.
“Having arrived in Georgia and observing the situation on the spot, I agree with the assessments of the situation by the international community, that Russian military forces have crossed all red lines by crossing an internationally-recognized border into the sovereign territory of Georgia,” said Vaitiekunas.
The three Baltic presidents signed a joint declaration stating “we will use all means available to us as Presidents to ensure that aggression against a small country in Europe will not be passed over in silence or with meaningless statements equating the victims with the victimizers.” Clearly the Baltics have not forgotten 1940 nor fifty years of harsh Soviet rule.
Poland
Poland has close ties to Georgia and has several development projects on-going in the country. The President of the Republic of Poland Lech Kaczyński has offered the portal of the Republic of Poland’s Presidency to disseminate news from Georgia including official news releases from the Georgian government. True to form, the Russians have also cyber-attacked Georgia shutting websites and Internet traffic in Georgia. The website of the Bank of Georgia was hacked and its front page now has a picture of Adolf Hitler.
Armenia
Armenia is taking a netural position as best it can. Armenia is highly dependent on Russia for oil and natural gas. Armenia’s role in the conflict is largely limited to providing assistance to expats living in Georgia and some refugees. Borders are also porous in the Caucusus and perhaps 300,000 Armenians live in Georgia. They’re geographically dispersed, though, with the biggest chunk residiing in Javkhaz province but at least 100,000 living in and around Tbilisi, the capital of Geogia. It should be interesting to see how Armenia respond to this. For my US readership, Georgia is about the size of West Virginia.
Israel
Israel is sending humanitarian aid to Georgia as the first part of a broader aid effort to be implemented soon. The shipment, which will be flown by the Georgian national airline, consists of two respirators and seven EKG monitors. The aid is a result of cooperation between the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Archimedes Global-Madanes Group. More from IRMA
In effect, no one is really helping Georgia to the extent it needs help. French President is off to Moscow this week ostensibly to pressure the Russians into a cease-fire. His trip will be a success if that is achieved and he can get the Russians to withdraw to the status quo ante. The partition of Georgia is now a de facto one and whatever illusions Goergia harboured of recovering South Ossetia and Abkhazia are gone. For Sarkozy the visit is not without risk, he may be seen like Neville Chamberlain coming back from Munich. Let’s just hope he does not announce that “peace is at hand.” It is clearly not. We have entered an new era in international geo-politics. The Russia bear is no longer in hibernation. It’s springtime for the bear and it’s hungry.
Video Report fro Al-Jazeera on the Latest Russian Moves
News Reports & Blogs
From the New York Times an article on how Georgians feel let down by the West. It is sad really even on the blogosphere there is very little discussion of the Georgian crisis. What’s even sadder is that it is largely on conservative blogs. I may be the only liberal progressive blog covering this in the United States.