Choices of darkness and lights

The following are excerpts of blogs from Postmedia News and other sources.

the foreign desk

The fight over the Port Said football narrative has

already begun, posted Thursday by Alex Hochuli Football in Egypt has often seen violent confrontation between the hard-core supporters of clubs such as al-ahly, Zamalek, Ismaily and al-masry. And historically there was often a heavy security presence.

During Hosni Mubarak’s rule, dictatorship neutered political life. This meant that football support became a channel for people’s public energies and loyalties.

So what’s different about (Wednesday’s) events? Needless to say, the number of casualties stands out even in the sad history of stadium disasters. But reactions to the riot are what is giving it its charged character, and this is due to the new socio-political situation in Egypt.

While it remains unclear where responsibility lies for this awful event, its importance cannot be overstated. For this is not simply an “accident.” Even the least accusatory interpretation — that it was a security failure — will give rise to a reaction from the Egyptian public which will not allow the event to be simply “a tragedy.”

Alex Hochuli is a writer for the Independent. Read the full post at blogs. independent. co. uk/ 2012

fixes

Innovations in Light, posted Friday by Tina Rosenberg

If you look at the market for solar lighting in Africa, you’ll be excused for thinking that you’re looking at the mobile-phone market some 15 years ago. Both are leapfrog technologies — neither land lines nor the electrical grid is going to reach much of the continent, so let’s just skip that generation of technology and move to the next one.

Like cellphones, solar lamps are getting cheaper, smaller, better. Both are life-changing, indispensable. And the market is enormous. Today, about 1.5 million people in Africa use solar lamps. That’s a huge number — but it’s less than one per cent of the potential market. ... Another large group of people have access to electricity, but need an alternative because it is too expensive and power outages are daily events.

People without electric light usually rely on kerosene, a terrible alternative. It gives poor light, produces noxious fumes and is a major hazard for burns and fires. ... The very poor typically spend 10 per cent of their income or more on kerosene; its users pay 600 times more per unit of light than people who use electric lamps. The unsolved problem for lighting Africa isn’t designing a great lamp. It’s designing a great business model. Tina Rosenberg is a journalist and author. Read the ful l

post at opinionator. blogs. nytimes. com

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Sooner or later, the Falkland islanders will be sold

out, posted Thursday by Peter Preston Political bluster comes easy; political honesty has to be ground out clause by clause. And there, for 3,000 Falklanders, is the message to cut out and keep, as British Prime Minister David Cameron pledges eternal security for the islands.

He may believe it for a few days. The next prime minister in line, and the one after that, may profess to believe it too. But it’s still rubbish and it still sells the best future for the Falklands perilously short.

Nicholas Ridley, a stalwart right-winger when he wasn’t being a Foreign Office minister, went to the islanders 33 years ago and gave them a sensible option. Britain couldn’t afford to support and defend them any longer. Too much cash, too much redundant toil. They’d get on far better if Argentina was a helpful neighbour. Geography and common sense dictated a peaceful solution: leaseback. That way the islanders lived their lives as before, but Buenos Aires took sovereignty in the long run. It was what Ridley and, by inference, even Margaret Thatcher thought best. But the 3,000 said no, the Argentine junta got its messages mixed and war ensued. There was one huge benefit: a dictatorship collapsed, Argentina gained stable democracy and there were warm promises against any further attempt at a military solution. Peter Preston is a columnist for the Guardian. Read the

full post at guardian. co. uk/ commentisfree/ 2012

Full Comment

Fixing Afghanistan was a noble project that became

a noble failure, posted Thursday by Jonathan Kay The West did not fail Afghanistan. Afghanistan failed itself. The country is an obscure, impoverished landlocked backwater with a population about equal to Canada’s. Yet the world has sent it well over $50 billion in aid over the last decade. Much of this money no doubt went to paying salaries for Western consultants, posh Land Rovers and NGO compounds. Yet Afghans themselves fell into the lure of corruption — a problem even more important than drugs, Islamic radicalism, terrorism and Pakistani meddling, because it seems to be the single biggest factor pushing ordinary Afghans into the Taliban’s arms.