This is a no brainer.

Intel donating 25cts for every time you click on this page.

There are links to Global Giving, Save the Children and of course Kiva!

Giving as a way of life, monetarily or time wise, is a growing movement. Technology and social media is helping this really transform the process of philanthropy. It’s creating social innovation and driving potential long terms changes in how society can work.

Perhaps even sending a signal to the tax and welfare system. Maybe we don’t need big government. Maybe something new will come from all of this.

I always remember this day and this event. Mainly because it screwed up my plans to cross China and get the Trans Siberian railway home after 20 months backpacking. As it was my girfriend and I were in Sust the last village before the Khunjerab Pass that links Pakistan with China and is the highest order crossing the world. It was a glorious spot with the towering Karakorams in the distance. Anyway the plan was set until we met this English bloke walking down the road to us. He’d just crossed over the border which had been shut and told us what had happened.

Remember this was BG (before google!) and before email even. News came via GPO Poste Restante and the travellers grapevine. So that was the end of that idea. It’s actually the closest I’ve ever been to China which is still on my list on places to visit.

But a lot has changed since that fateful day in Tiananmen Square and yet much has remained the same. The Chinese authorities began their media clampdown many months ago by suspending YouTube and more recently by blocking Twitter (what a compliment!) and Bing (Crosby??). As well as the usual quiet word in the ear of any one thinking about protesting or even acknowledging the anniversary.

So fear still rules. But fear of what exactly? Many Chinese are pretty happy with the way their economy has grown and how the modern world has been welcomed in. Sure not everyone has benefitted but there is a certain pride within the nation that much has been accomplished in recent times. Times like this are a real test for an authoritarian society. Dissent cannot be tolerated at any level.

But truth is a slippery ball and when one looks across to Hong Kong, where over 100,00 people gathered to mark the occasion, one can see that the attempt to censor and punish any kind of inquiry or examination is really a waste of time. People know.

China is a unique country with a long history and strong culture. Change comes slowly but hopefully those in charge will come to see the futility of repressing protest completely and censoring mass media. One thing though is for sure:

Tank Man is an enduring image of the 20th Century and no amount of propaganda or control can ever change that.

It’s been nearly 9 months since the $ started to show signs of meltdown fever. Except the meltdown was the rush to buy $ as a hedge against collapsing markets and disappearing credit lines.

In the last few months we have seen markets bottom and even recover some poise, aided and abetted by the action of nearly last resort, quantitative easing. There was nothing left in the toolbox really.

So far so good in some respects. The S+P has rallied 37% off its lows…….mind you its lows were 57% down from the highs and the index still stands 42% off the highs of the last few years. Not that the numbers really matter. The main news is that markets are functioning…still.

And the $ balloon has finally burst with QE signaling a chance to sell the $ without worrying what the equity markets were doing. The Kiwi$ has rallied 32% from its March low even outpacing the hammered Pound, up 21% from its low of $1.35.

Markets can do very strange things. Even whilst the $ was rallying to extreme highs against all currencies, no one really wanted to own it. Now people really really don’t want to own it.

This is all very well but this type of volatility is impossible to manage. How can any investment manager talk about average returns of 10% a year when markets are moving at this rate. How can any business hedge currency risk when currencies are moving like this.

The bigger problem for the US is trying to stop the snowball effect that may happen if markets really decide to dump the $. The noises coming from China may be regarded as monetary brinksmanship but with Russia, looking very wolflike these days, nibbling in behind, it’s becoming a more serious issue.

There’s a lot of politics involved in this but the positioning is clear: the US is weak not just economically but militarily. The exhausting foray into Iraq has stretched the US war machine as well as seriously impacting on its reputation. Historically the ability to create coin or currency was usually backed up by military power. One of the first actions by invading nations was to replace the local currency with its own.

This makes currency both a political and economic issue. So whilst there is unlikely to be any immediate change in the $ role as global reserve currency, there is no doubt that the dance of change is underway.

The short term problem for China is its huge ownership of US bonds and other paper. So they wouldn’t be happy with a complete collapse right now but it seems like less money will be staying in $ and more will be finding a new home whilst they work out how a new global currency system might operate.

But with GM falling apart and US unemployment rising to severe levels, concerns over the health of the $ will only continue to mount.

So the Tamil Tigers are no more and yet another ethnic conflict comes to a miserable end. How many killed for this? Has it made any difference? It may take some time for that question to be answered. Like many ethnic conflicts, this one seems to have gone on for a long time making one wonder what exactly it was all about.

My parents actually lived in Sri Lanka for a short time just before the civil war broke out. I spent the Xmas holidays on 1980/1 visiting them and enjoying the gorgeous beaches of the south west and the green hinterland. When I heard that civil war had broken out it didn’t really resonate with me. As a 14 year old, the Sinhalese and Tamils I had met just seemed like people. Also growing up with the conflict in Northern Ireland never far from the news, it seemed par for the course.

People, even of the same colour and country, could still engage in war. Both sides of my family have been on the wrong end of the ethnic vacuum cleaner so maybe I was just inured to it.But these days I am very tuned into any mention of ethincity and references to improving the hygiene of ones home country.

Whilst pondering the end of the latest carnage I was floored by the story of a Catholic man who was beaten to death by a group of Rangers football supporters in a small town in Northern Ireland. It was after Rangers had triumphed by winning the Scottish soccer leage competiton that a bunch of Rangers fans, Protestants, decided to pay a visit to the Catholic part of town and basically murder someone. Which they did.

So it continues. It’s a bit 20th century though.

Nowhere is immune from this.

What about that gorgeous Kingdom of Happiness, Bhutan. Apparently a wonderful place to visit and a very progressive society. In fact about 5 years ago I included Bhutan in a paper on E-government. It was quite advanced for a small mountainous country. No mention in the Wikipedia entry of ethnic cleansing.

Yet in the last 15 Years nearly 15-20% of the population has been cleansed and evicted from the country. What the..???

They certainly kept that quiet. 120,000 Bhutanese have been transformed into refugees living in 7 camps in Nepal. Some have found their way here to Christchurch to start a new life.

It feels like an ongoing epidemic……it’s hard to know when it will stop. Our identity is so important to us, yet at the same time it allows the tyranny of the majority an easy way to express any kind of anger or frustration. As Amartya Sen writes in “Identity and Violence“,

“..a major source of potential conflict in the contemporary world is the presumption that people can be uniquely categorized based on religion or culture”.

Indeed but it’s our willingness to succumb to group behaviour and peer pressure that allows atrocities like ethnic cleansing and genocide to happy. How can we move away from the “clash of civilizations” and to an appreciation of the person?

Actually I don’t know if we can. It seems so ingrained in our nature. Of course we can all educate our children and imbue them with values that include compassion, kindness and care.

I wonder how technology will help? I have a feeling that will play a bigger part than we realise. Maybe when all the teenagers around the world are connected through the semantic web……who knows?