Mon, 5 Jan 1998

An American has just been elected president of Lithuania. He used to be a regional head of the EPA, controlling a larger budget than the whole nation of Lithuania has, so it's basically semi-retirement as far as he's concerned.

The pope says for the first time that he thinks Bulgaria and the commies were behind the 1981 assassination attempt.

You may remember a story I sent out several months before the stock market collapse in Asia which said that the Thai president had fired 5 cabinet members and was showing up at work in 5 in the morning (seriously pissing off his staff) and so on, because his lucky number is 5. Does anything that's happened since then give anyone the feeling that most of these countries are managing their economies any better? The response includes such measures as providing free funerals (Thailand), asking everyone to give their jewelry to the government (S Korea, Thailand), and of course, racism: Malaysia announced that it will expel one million foreigners, and no one's very happy about the United States either, although they're not exactly sure why, but they're sure it's our fault. I predict major ethnic conflicts over the next few years. But at least all that smug talk about the superiority of the Asian Way will be muted, although a commitment to democracy won't be enhanced in consequence.