The Week - commentary on current events, politics - Column

-- After resisting an IMF bailout of Brazil, Treasury secretary Paul OO'Neill consented to one. He was right the first time. Brazil's weak currency is a function both of its own past manipulation of the real and of the risk of political instability (hard-Left candidates are leading in the presidential polls). The IMF cannot protect Brazil from its own political culture. Time quotes an unnamed Republican who defended the bailout thus: "The bank stocks are all up." Right. Taxpayers are really bailing out American banks that made questionable loans to Brazil. What Brazilians will get out of this arrangement, meanwhile, is additional debt. A bad deal all around.

-- Notwithstanding the bellowing and blustering from Beijing over TaTaiwan, personal exchanges across the Straits of Formosa are thriving, to the degree that many Taiwan men now have mainland wives. The downside to this arrangement became apparent recently, when six of these wives, visiting with relatives on the mainland, were rounded up by the Communist birth-control police, given pregnancy tests, and then, following positive test results, ordered to have abortions. A Taiwan lawyer involved in these cases blames the situation on mainland misunderstanding of Taiwan law, according to which the children of these marriages are Taiwan permanent residents, "so they won't be a burden to China." Ah, but according to mainland state dogma, Taiwan is China, remember?

-- News comes from a group of U.N.-sponsored scientists that a vast clcloud of pollution now blankets South Asia, from Afghanistan to Sri Lanka. According to the scientists' report, the "Asian Brown Cloud" could be responsible for flooding, drought, and acid rain, as well as respiratory illnesses that kill half a million people per year in India alone. This information should expose once and for all the tunnel- vision of the environmental lobby, which blames industrialized economies like America's for the planet's woes. The U.N. report notes that major causes of the Asian Brown Cloud include smoke from wood- and dung-burning stoves, cooking fires, and the burning of agricultural waste. In other words: South Asia is choking itself to death largely because it does not have the kind of high-tech, modern economy that the United States does. Modern economies also pollute, and the U.N. report cites the burning of fossil fuels. But the fact that the cloud is hovering above Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, and all the land in between -- and not over New England -- should make enviros realize that the world would be cleaner if other countries were more like America, not less.

-- Saparmurat Niyazov, president-for-life of Turkmenistan, and better knknown to readers of NR as Akbar Turkmenbashi, or Great Leader of All Turkmen, has capped, or perhaps we should only say furthered, his career by renaming the months of the year, several of them in honor of himself. Henceforth, January will be Turkmenbashi; April will be Kurbansultan Edzhe (named after his mother); and September will be Rukhnama (named after Spiritual Revival, his best-selling book of reflections). Cultural-relativist grumps will point out that the Romans named July after Julius Caesar, and August after Augustus. But as the glory of the Turkmens exceeds the deeds of Rome, so the radiance of Akbar Turkmenbashi outshines that of his precursors.