[DEBATE] : Recalculating happiness in a Himalayan kingdom

[Dominic Tweedie]

Thanks for the backup, t.

Or maybe I should say the lead. You are a leader on these
mountain-kingdom situations, and wonderfully resistant to their phoney
PR.

Now, what do you think of a situation where two women lead a revival
of parliamentary life in South Africa, support Jacob Zuma for
president, then get sidelined at the last moment in favour of a
wooden, stolid member of the revolution-royalty Sisulu family, Max
Sisulu, who is obviously there to shut down everything that they had
opened up?

The women, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge and Baleka Mbete get castigated
as childish, and as "cashing in" (in other words, as somehow having
mercenary motives), by the very same mass media that have been
lambasting Zuma all these years.

To me it looks like the empire is striking back. It looks to me that
the old club is re-forming around JZ.

Tell me I'm wrong, please, if you can.


Domza "Heavy Heart" VC





2009/5/9 t d <dlaminitm at yahoo.ca>:
> I'm with Domza on this one. The NY Times wants to report a Shangri-La story and Bhutan is it.
>
> Perhaps Gross National Happiness is a bit of an opiate for the people....and I don't mean just the Bhutanese people.
>
> While in Kathmandu in 1992 I met a man from Bhutan who mentioned that all Bhutanese women had to have shoulder length hair