Did you happen to notice this one? Just before last month's notorious purge of Bo Xilai, the populist Chinese Communist Party chief in Chongqing, World Bank President Robert Zoellick lectured the People's Republic that its economic model is "unsustainable," and it is in danger of falling into a so-called "middle-income trap" if it fails to reform. "This is not the time just for muddling through," Zoellick said at a late February Bejing conference. "It's time to get ahead of events and to adapt to major changes in the world and national economies." At the conference, the World Bank submitted a hefty report making policy recommendations—of course with special criticism for the state sector. (LAT, Feb. 27) Further details on the report are provided by the NY Times Economix blog March 5, via the Trade Reform website:

Reactions to the passing of Pope Shenouda III, leader of Egypt's Coptic Christians, reveals much about the country's ominous but still tentatively hopeful political situation. Compass Direct News, which documents persecution of Christians around the world, on March 23 noted the effluence of hate that spewed forth from Egypt's newly powerful Salafist movement:

With last month's Arab League summit in Baghdad, Iraq's leaders boasted that the country has emerged from instability and taken its place in the international community. But on the eve of the summit, a car bomb killed a police officer at a Baghdad checkpont, and while the summit was underway March 29, three rockets were fired around the capital. One broke windows at the Iranian embassy; another exploded on the edge of the heavily fortified Green Zone, where summit was being held. With the region's Sunni leaders suspicious of the Shi'ite-led Iraqi government, only 10 leaders of the 22-member league showed up for the summit. After the summit Iraq’s fugitive Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, a Sunni, left the autonomous northern Kurdish region for Qatar. The Kurdish region has meanwhile again halted oil exports, accusing the central government in Baghdad of failing to make payments to companies working there in the latest escalation in the struggle for Iraq's oil. (Reuters, April 1; The National, UAE, March 31; Fox News, Reuters, March 29; CNN, March 27)

On March 20, Peru's Nobel Laureate in literature and sometime right-wing politician Mario Vargas Llosa gave the opening address at an elite forum, "Latin America: Opportunities and Challenges," convened at the University of Lima by the Fundación Internacional para la Libertad, making proud front-page coverage in Lima's La Republica. Vargas Llosa intoned against the "temptation of populism [and] dictatorship"—as if the two are inevitable concomitants. He called for solidarity with the (right-wing) opposition in Venezuela, and hailed the presidential candidacy of Mexico's (right-wing) Josefina Vázquez Mota, who was in attendance. Taking open glee in the ill health of Hugo Chávez, he acclaimed the "light at the end of the tunnel" in Venezuela. That much is all quite predictable...

In a surprise move on March 13, agents of Peru's National Police arrested three leaders of the struggle against the controversial Conga gold mining project in the northern region of Cajamarca, while charges were announced against some 40 others. Wilfredo Saavedra Marreros, leader of Cajamarca's Environmental Defense Front, was detained in the southern city of Tacna, where he had been invited to speak by student groups. Nearly simultaneoulsy in Cajamarca, police agents arrested Lucio Díaz Chávez, former regional president of the teachers union SUTEP, and César Tafur Tacilla, secretary general of the local construction workers union. Saavedra was taken in police custody to Cajamarca, where he was freed the next morning along with Díaz and Tafur. All three are charged with obstruction of public transport in connection with last year's protest mobilization against the Conga mine, and await orders to appear before a judge. The next day, the Cajamarca branch of the Fiscalía, Peru's attorney general, released a list of 41 activists facing identical charges—including virtually all the prominent leaders of the Cajamarca protest movement.

The two most annoying icons of the rad left, WikiLeaks and Anonymous, team up to target the equally annoying Stratfor. Their joint press release of Feb. 24 headlines that Dow Chemical paid the "strategic intelligence" firm to spy on satire group Yes Men and grassroots activists seeking justice in the Bhopal disaster. The small print says they sent someone around to attend the Yes Men's public appearances. The coup wins WikiLeaks more gushing alterno-coverage, while Max Fisher in The Atlantic scoffs that WikiLeaks has fallen for Stratfor's "marketing campaign," and that nobody has taken them seriously for years. But, predictably, nobody is talking about WikiLeaks' shameful silence on charges of complicity with grave human rights abuses in Belarus, the country dubbed "Europe's last dictatorship."

How predictable. Just as the presidential horserace starts to gain velocity, so do oil prices. The Feb. 26 Reuters headline reads "Oil price rise raises specter of global recession." We are informed: "Oil rose to a 10-month high above $125 a barrel Friday, prompting responses from policymakers around the world including US President Barack Obama, watching US gasoline prices follow crude to push toward $4 a gallon in an election year." The Reuters account cites jitters over a new military conflagration in the Persian Gulf, which is certainly a factor. But some are seeing an intentional manipulation by the most reactionary sectors of the petro-oligarchy to undermine Obama...