Exploiting Young Baseball Athletes' Talents and Dreams in the Dominican Republic

This case of scouts and officials stealing bonuses from Dominican players is beyond shameful. The fact that scouts and local "buscones" were willing to pocket bonus money from poor players just trying to use their talents and their dreams to afford a better life for themselves and their families is more than bad enough. Preying on (usually poor) young men's dreams and hopes to further your own (already comparably considerable) financial well-being is disgusting.

Yet as bad as that is, I'm also really disturbed by how exploited the players clearly are, and how cowed all the young players interviewed in the article seem. It's not just that nobody knows anybody who is a victim of the scandal, even while they know of the scandal themselves; it's that nobody even seems to want to know about it. They just want to learn English, improve their hitting or pitching, and hopefully one day play major league baseball. These men and their dreams are so dependent on these apparently slimy (from the little information provided about them in the article) buscones that they don't even want to talk about the possible graft, simply because it would damage their chances at arriving at the major leagues. Of course, if these kids make it to the MLB, their paychecks will probably be more than the money skimmed off of them, but not all of them are going to make it that far; the bonuses they should be receiving would at least help them and their families out in very significant ways. Yet you have these scouts and buscones skimming and getting rich, as I said, off these young men's dreams and talents.

Clearly, this is not just a problem among a few ballclubs scouting in the Dominican, either. For all the rules and regulations in place in the U.S. in terms of drafting and hiring high school and college baseball players, there is virtually no institutional oversight in the Americas, and MLB's institutional and regulatory presence is minimal. I don't know what can be done about this - it's really going to take concerted efforts of the MLB to try to extend its authority over scouts and companies helping young baseball players in the Caribbean region. Of course, this doesn't preclude the cooperation with local scouts and officials, but there clearly has to be some kind of oversight. Otherwise, people like the unscrupulous scouts and preying buscones will have free reign, and you'll have more cases like the one emerging in the Dominican. It's just revolting, and I really hope that the scouts and buscones involved with this are prosecuted, blackballed, and totally removed from any contact with potential professional baseball players. I also equally hope that the conditions under which these young men struggle to make it improve enough that they can actually feel comfortable coming out when people prey on them and fight for their own rights without feeling like such activities would effectively prevent them from ever realizing their dream.

Hope in Colombia?

This is really more Trend's thing, but I thought I would comment briefly on the situation in Colombia. I've long had a list of countries that I thought would never get better--Haiti, Palestine, Congo, Somalia. And Colombia. The problems Colombia faces are so intractable that I thought it would take a miracle for the nation to normalize itself.

But perhaps that miracle is happening. The FARC has weakened signficantly in the last year, which I have occasionally commented upon. Although I usually support left-leaning Latin American movements, the FARC have been nothing but criminals for at least 25 years and have made any kind of real social reform in Colombia impossible. It was quite unlikely that Colombia could become a functioning nation with the FARC still active. But their decline, topped off by the rescue of Ingrid Betancourt and other prominent hostages two weeks ago, makes me feel hopeful.

Even if the FARC goes away though, the paramilitaries have to be brought to justice. My fear is that a right-wing victory in Colombia could lead to revenge killings by the paramilitaries and perhaps a purely military regime. But Colombian senator Carlos Garcia, a right-wing politician, was arrested on Friday for his ties to paramilitary groups. Garcia's case bears watching closely. If he is prosecuted for his crimes, and if the Uribe government can bring the paramilitary groups to justice, perhaps Colombia can become a functioning nation-state for the first time in several decades.

Would you care to add anything Trend?

Exxon-Mobil

I support the protests against ExxonMobil advertising at the Washington Nationals stadium. Although I give the Nationals props for their own (relatively minor) environmental actions, ExxonMobil should be fought against on all fronts for their continued backwards environmental record, unwillingness to fight or even admit to climate change, and general greenwashing while engaging in horrible practices concering the environment.

As Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network (and author of the superb book Bayou Farewell, about the decline of the bayous in Louisiana) states, ExxonMobil’s involvement in the park “burnishes the image of the worst environmental company on the planet.¨ This is true. While I'm sure the Nationals just see ExxonMobil has another advertiser, they could replace that money fairly easily.

ExxonMobil has tried for the past two years to greenwash its image, including in phone conservations with people like yours truly. But none of this erases the fact that the world's most profitable corporations continues to destroy the environment with aplomb, fight against the kind of large-scale reforms necessary to counter climate change, and even deny that climate change is taking place.

Unfair Coverage?

I can't speak for how this is being interpreted at home, but anchors on CNN International are repeating ad nauseum the idea that the news media wants Obama to win and is giving him unfair positive coverage. It's been quite clear to me ever since I got down here that a lot of the hosts on CNN International support McCain, but whatever. I do think the idea that the press is giving unfair coverage to Obama is absurd.

Is he getting more coverage? Yes. But is it because the media supports him? No. It's because the world wants to know more about him. The media is just following the story, the same way they did during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The media and the public are infatuated with personality and Obama has a lot of it. McCain simply doesn't. He's boring, he's old, and he has no message. Obama is young, inspiring, and popular around the world. This supposedly bias is not unrelated to the lack of media inquiry during the road to Iraq. There was no personality-based angle, the American public more or less didn't care, and thus the media was happy to go along. The Obama phenomenon may not make the media look favorable, but it's not for the reason right-wingers think.

On a related note, CNN International has made me realize the value of commercials. They have all the breaks the regular CNN does, but they don't run paid commercials. Instead, they promote their own shows endlessly. And they run the same public service announcements over and over again. If I hear Gwyenth Paltrow, looking VERY SERIOUS, talk about AIDS in Africa again, I'm going to shoot the TV.

Never Take A Bolivian Train

This is my advice to all of you. Bolivian trains suck.

We were trying to leave Santa Cruz for one last big adventure before we come back to the US on Thursday. We wanted to see the old Jesuit missions in eastern Bolivia, like the movie The Mission. We were told that the train was the best way to get to the coolest town, San Jose de Chiquitos.

I'd always wanted to take the train on one of my trips to the developing world, but I never had. So I was kind of excited about it.

That was a mistake.

The train was supposed to leave at 12. It was delayed first for 30 minutes. Then until 3. The train showed up and then we sat on it for an hour. It finally took off. 2 hours later we had gone about 35 miles, to the first town on the line. Then the track broke. We sat there until about 9 when I was finished. We decided to bail on the entire trip. I think the train finally took off an hour later or so. It was supposed to be a 6 1/2 hour trip. By the time we left, we were already at over 9 hours and we were, at most, 20% of the way there.

I was inspired to end the experience when we were waiting and suddenly my mind came to the great American philosopher/entertainer/chicken magnate Kenny Rogers. In perhaps his most famous dialectical opus, "The Gambler," Rogers opined

"You've got to know when to hold them
Know when to fold them
Know when to walk away
And know when to run."

I am not quite on the same level as Kenny, so I can't quite grasp the relevance of holding and folding to our situation. And I don't know if this was quite the running situation. But it sure as hell was time to walk away. And we did, returning this morning after a night in one of the worst rooms I have ever stayed in. And that's saying something given the time I was on the Thai-Burmese border and I walked into the bathroom and came face to face with a giant spider the size of my head. I'm not sure how we'll spend the last few days in Bolivia now, but I can guarantee you, it will not be on the train.

Mister Trend's Best-of-2008 (Thus Far)

As in 2006 and 2007, it’s time for my annual mid-year music review. I’m a little later than I wanted to be, but these are my picks for 2008 (up through June 30). While I originally thought this year had been so-so on releases, it turns out there have been some great ones, and this may be one of the better (yet less heralded) music years in recent memory. New albums by Beck and CSS, as well as new material by Stereolab, could make this year even better (though they could be stale, too), and I haven’t had a chance to listen to some albums that already came out (particularly Spiritualized). Still, it’s been a great year for music, and here are my top 10 thus far.

1. Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes – The most beautiful album since Joanna Newsom’s Ys. Fleet Foxes manage to mix Beach-Boys-style harmonies, folk songs, and indie rock, yet there isn’t one second on their debut that sounds like anybody else. They magically and seamlessly bring together so many influences to make their own sound, and the purity and beauty of both the instruments and voices is remarkable. It’s going to be hard for another album to top this one at the year-end review for me.

2. Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band, 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons – When Silver Mt. Zion formed out of the remnants of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the increasing addition of lyrics and shifts in dynamics of the music gave SMZ a great new dynamic, and their albums have consistently been great even while expanding. Still, the sheer force and power of this album, often delivered like a manifesto, is unrivaled in the GYBE/SMZ canon. And by the 16th and final track (the first 12 are just 70 seconds of a drone, with the album really starting on track 13) track, just when you can’t believe the album could be more powerful or violently beautiful, vocalist/guitarist Efrim and the rest of the band do something that they’d never done before: they sound hopeful. The music and lyrics across the four 13+ minute tracks are overwhelming and moving, and the sheer beauty in that hope and insistence make this hands down their best album, by far.

3. Portishead, Third - Vowing to not use any instrument that you used on your previous albums is simultaneously simple and brilliant. By doing this, Portishead somehow completely revamped their sound without losing any of their sound. Certainly, Beth Gibbons' haunting voice and lyrics are part of the equation in the continuity, but as important is the fact that Utley and Barrow have lost none of their feel for creepy, haunting, ambient sounds, even while they have successfully left "the trip-hop" sound behind.

4. Crystal Castles, Crystal Castles – It’s a hell of a year for self-titled debuts. The Crystal Castles’ debut is just outstanding, wonderful, catchy (yet with more going on than a superficial listen indicates). Some songs (“Alice Practice,” “Xxzxcuzx Me,” “Love and Caring”) are clearly blatantly influenced by Nintendo-style games, sounding like your old 8-bit Nintendo has been developed an anguished and angry voice. Yet most of the album has calm, quiet, yet disturbing pieces like “Untrust Us” and “Magic Spells,” but songs like “Alice Practice” and “Xxzxcuzx Me” sound like your old 8-bit Nintendo games being possessed by angry, tortured, female demons; lyrics rarely intelligble, but that’s not the purpose – this is a new form of mood music that simultaneously takes one back to the old video game worlds and sets up its own moody, sometimes tranquil/sometimes terrifying worlds. Crystal Castles may not last long, but at this point, it doesn’t matter; their debut is just a great album, all around.

5. The Kills, Midnight Boom – As great as the bluesy, filthy Keep On Your Mean Side and No Wow were, the Kills, like the Black Keys, were due for some changes in sound. They didn’t disappoint. They still have plenty of their fire and dirty, bluesy influences (see “U.R.A. Fever,” “Cheap and Cheerful,” and “Sour Cherry”). Still, singer M’s voice is gaining increasing range and beauty, particularly on the ballad “Black Balloon,” or album-closer “Goodnight Bad Morning,” together with the hookiness of “Last Day of Magic” or “What New York Used to Be” is top-notch.

6. The Black Keys, Attack & Release – As good as Magic Potion was, it was also clear that Akron’s best band needed a bit of a change. Bringing on Danger Mouse to produce was a surprisingly excellent shift, as were the inclusions of Marc Ribot and Tom Waits sideman (and drummer Patrick Carney's uncle) Ralph Carney. The album shows a variety and a branching out that previous (excellent) Keys albums didn’t have, and Auerbach’s playing and singing is getting increasingly nuanced and impressive. And it's hard to see there being a better rock'n'roll song than "Strange Times" this year.

7. Nicole Atkins, Neptune City - She has a great, haunting voice, the most original since Neko Case (though not like Case's voice). Her songs do a great job borrowing from doo-wop and Roy-Orbison arrangements while sounding fresh. There's plenty of variety in styles from song to song, yet Atkins is never out of her league. It's yet another remarkable (and remarkably beautiful) debut album in a year already full of them.

8. Rhys Chatham, Guitar Trio Is My Life! - Certainly, what are literally 3 hours of one chord may sound terrible, but that's the beauty of Guitar Trio. Chatham went on the road last year to record his famous Guitar Trio, an avant-garde guitar piece based on one chord that builds in volume and violence, taking on different dimensions from performance to performance. This 3-disc set does a great job of documenting just how varying the piece can be from place to place and depending on the performers (only Chatham is the constant through each performance). The set here gathers performances from Brooklyn, Chicago, Buffalo, Toronto, Cleveland, Montreal, Mineeapolis, and Milwaukee. Across those cities, the length, dimension, and sound of the piece shifts radically as each city has a different ensemble of guitars and drums playing. This is not for the faint-of-heart, but it is probably the most fascinating and challenging disc of the year.

9. Wolf Parade, At Mount Zoomer – This is the one album I still feel I need to listen to more, but it’s already an impressive work that builds greatly upon the occasionally-brilliant debut, Apologies to the Queen Mary. Wolf Parade are sounding more assured and more willing to forge their own sound (I’m not complaining, but Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock clearly had his fingers on the dials on the debut), leading to some of the best indie rock in a genre that’s fast growing stale and too inclusive to do any good.

10. Free Kitten, Inherit - Back in 1994, when I'd buy anything and everything tied to Sonic Youth, I picked up their second album. Despite loving the experimental side of Sonic Youth, it was too much, even for me; it wasn't that it was too noisy or challenging. It's just that it seemed like a giant inside joke between Kim Gordon and Pussy Galore's Julie Cafritz, as though they just decided to get in the studio, dick around a little, and put the results on an album for sale. Suffice to say, I was stunned at how good Inherit is, with Gordon and Cafritz singing over excellent noise-ambient pieces. That Inherit actually has anything remotely resembling any kind of song structure was shocking enough; that it's really really good is too much to ask for, but there it is.

Best Reissue: Dennis Wilson, Pacific Ocean Blue – One of those albums I’d heard people rave about, but always figured it was part of the Wilson-brothers hype (and don’t get me wrong – Brian’s done some great stuff, and Carl’s voice was unrivalled, but they didn’t crap gold or fart world peace or anything). However, the hype on Pacific Ocean Blues is more than justified. Dennis’s rough, vulnerable, scratchy voice conveys a level of longing, loss, sadness, and hope Brian and Carl never could match. The second disc isn’t even overkill, as the material that is available that would have been Bambu, Wilson’s follow-up album (had he not died), is far better than most odds’n’sods offerings. The Wilson cult will always revolve around Brian, but if there’s one project involving any Wilson (including Beach Boys material) that everybody should have, it’s Pacific Ocean Blue.

Best Box Set: Gas, Nah Und Fern – The four albums Wolfgang Voigt released under the moniker Gas were some of the best ambient techno albums ever. Unfortunately, they were also some of the hardest to find, and used copies were always well above $200. Fortunately, Kompakt has collected the four albums (Gas, Zauberberg, Königsforst, and Pop) into this set. Gas’s stuff is some of the most beautiful music out there, moving beyond many forms of ambient techno to include elements of classical music, jazz, glam rock, and even traditional ethnic music like polka. The results are some of the most expansive, hypnotic, and beautiful ambient pieces ever made, and this box set is a great way to finally get all the material Voigt recorded as Gas.

Pure Gas!!! Jesus!!!! 'Merica!!!!!!!

Although I have a lot of problems with the increased use of ethanol in gasoline, one of them is not some kind of weird patriotic feeling about 100% gasoline. Of course, it would be Oklahoma where this feeling is strongest. America's most urbane state, Oklahoma has given the nation such great political leaders of late as Tom Coburn, James Inhofe, and Steve Largent. And now they are leading a backlash against ethanol. Supposedly, they say the ethanol hurts their engines. But let's be honest--the real reason is that these Oklahomans and other Americans see the change in their car culture as threatening to their identity as Americans and it pisses them off.

There is an old country hit called "You're The Reason God Made Oklahoma." It is supposed to be a compliment. But I sure wouldn't want to be accused of such a horrible act.

Respecting Peasant Food

I have a long-standing love of Korean food from my year living there in the mid 90s. I have been delighted to see Korean food become increasingly accepted in the United States. It's a difficult cuisine frankly and not for everyone's taste. It hasn't caught on like Thai food has, but then again it has also stayed truer to its roots than Thai food, which increasingly only vaguely resembles the food you actually eat in Thailand. Korean food on the other hand is quite like what you eat there. The selection is more limited of course, but it is true Korean food.

So when I saw Matt Gross' article about eating his way across Seoul, I was excited. But mostly jealous. It's a pretty good article about the weirdness of Korean food and how it is slowly spreading across the U.S.

But one thing bothered me.

This kitchen was traditionalist at heart, and such conservatism was common
throughout Seoul, despite the city’s self-styled sophistication. Restaurants
advertised fusion cuisine, but simply served two different kinds of food on a
single plate. The phrase “well-being” had caught on as a trend, but it simply
meant adding green-tea powder to everything. Where were the kalbi hash and the
kimchi huevos rancheros? (Note to David Chang: Seoul needs Momofuku.)

Although kimchi huevos rancheros doesn't sound like a bad idea, I have a question for Gross. Why? Why does Korea need fusion food? Korea is a conservative country and Korean food is a conservative cuisine. There is nothing wrong with that. The glory of Korean food is its peasant earthiness. The use of cabbage, chile, onions, turnips, chicken's feet, and other peasant ingredients made Korean food what it is. There's certainly nothing wrong with improvising on Korean food. But respecting peasant food for what it is has great value as well. Do we have to globalize all food? Do we need to throw all cuisines together to come up with a one-world cuisine? I'm not trying to sound like a food protectionist here, but I fully support nationalism within food and the protection of local culinary traditions against their combination with the rest of the world.

An Apology/Regular Blogging to Resume Soon

I aplogize to our readers (all 15 of you) for having not blogged more this week. There's been plenty of things going on I've wanted to comment about, but fortunately, I got a new job this week; unfortunately, I had to start training while finishing my old job, so I was working double and just didn't have much time for writing. Fairly regular blogging from me should resume this weekend or early next week. I apologize. And if you came here because I was writing less, well, prepare to be disappointed.

Dead Baby Penguins on Brazilian Beaches Aren't So Unusual

Suffice to say, penguins aren't really native to Brazil, so last week's headlines about dead baby penguins washing up on Rio de Janeiro (the state)'s shores probably startled many (including my mother, who wanted to make sure I'd heard about this; I had). Alarming as this seems, my wife said it's actually an annual event. Every year, you have some baby penguins who overreach themselves when they start fishing and hunting, and they drown in the strong waters near their habitats. Their bodies then get caught up in the natural flow of the oceans, heading north and ending up on Rio's beaches.

Just because this is annual, though, doesn't mean there isn't cause for alarm. While I haven't seen concrete numbers in any of the reports, their numbers may be higher this year, and I think that while pollution may not be a cause (as one scientist in Brazil claims it isn't), the fact that penguins may be having to search further from "home" to get their food could be a factor, and that need to go further may be directly tied to climate change. Nonetheless, this story most certainly should not be taken simply as another "one more way climate change is wiping out animals in new ways" - baby penguins have always been susceptible to this fate. Still, that doesn't mean climate change is totally out of the picture, and if available, it would be really useful and interesting (and perhaps depressing) to see exactly how the figures have changed over the years.

Historical Memory and Nationalism

Thailand and Cambodia are presently near war over control of an obscure temple on their border. The temple, Preah Vihear, was just named a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Neither nation seems to have cared that much about the site until last week, when UNESCO made this annoucement. But ever since, both nations are ready to fight it out over its control. There are a lot of factors in this weird situation. First, although it really is in Cambodia, it is almost inaccessible from the Cambodian side while Thais can basically drive up to it. So issues of development are central here. Plus, the Thai opposition, which engineered the military coup last summer but which failed to stay in power, is using the situation to embarrass the government. They are playing on militarism and nationalism to press the need for an agressive Thailand that is the dominant power in the region.

But the only way this is possible is to use historical memory for present political advantage. This is something Americans do not understand well, which I will get to in a minute. Southeast Asia has always been an area of shifting political power, with the Thais, Khmers, Laotians, and Vietnamese at various times being the strongest people, and with China always in the background. Right now, Thailand is clearly the strongest nation. Cambodia, though they had their time 700 years ago, has traditionally been pretty weak and certainly is today. But both nations can bring up issues that happened hundreds of years ago to rally support for today. For the Cambodians, the temples remind them of when they were actually important. The Thais have long claimed the area, but the International Court of Justice ruled in favor of the Cambodians in 1962. Ever since then, Thai nationalists have used this issue to rally support. Today, they bring the region to the point of what would be an incredibly absurd war. I don't think it will happen, but the danger is there for shooting to begin, especially given that both sides have pointed weapons at each other. If the present Thai government really begins to fear that the military could take the situation over, I am afraid that they actually could resort to violence as an act of self-preservation.

What is important here is the power that historical memory has for nationalism in today's world. I am seeing the same thing in Bolivia. Today, I saw members of the Bolivian navy (the world's greatest fighting force). Why does Bolivia even have a navy, given it is landlocked? Because they claim they will soon regain the ports they lost to Chile in the 1880s. 125 years ago they lost the few ports they had. Rather then move on, they cling to this as a point of national humilation. Ever since 1978, Bolivia and Chile have not even had formal diplomatic relations, though things have improved with Evo Morales and Michelle Bachelet in power. Frankly, Bolivia has a lot more important things to be worrying about. And I don't think Chile is too scared. But again, it shows the power of historical memory. Events long past can dominate current relations. We have seen this most powerfully perhaps in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

I think this is important for Americans to understand because we essentially don't have a historical memory. Maybe a few people still gripe about the Japanese over what happened at Pearl Harbor, but most young people couldn't care less. This is a good thing, but because we don't have a very good understanding of how our nation's actions affect countries that do have a long historical memory, we don't understand why these nations don't like us. Take Iran for example. If you ask most Americans why Iran seemingly hates us, they don't know. They say it's because they are terrorists or are just crazy or (and this is the worst) because they are Muslim. Yet at the heart of this is the CIA-sponsored coup in 1952 that placed the Shah on the throne, undermined any chance for legitimate political opposition, and turned people toward more radical religion as a way to deal with the regime. Iranians remember this. Americans have never heard of it. For other nations, the past is extremely meaningful. For Americans, it is something boring we have to take at school. Because of this, we suffer from nearsighted vision over our place in the world. The sooner we understand why Thailand, Cambodia, Bolivia, and Iran act in the ways they do, the sooner we can understand our own place in the world and the problems it sometimes causes.

Would an Obama Presidency Lead to More Dialogue with Chavez?

Last week, Erwin C. at the Latin Americanist asked whether an Obama presidency would be bad for Chavez. It's actually an important question: Chavez did get elected in 1998, but really came to global prominence after Bush's administration supported (perhaps materially) the failed coup attempt against Chavez in 2002; since then, few can contest the fact that Chavez's role has grown thanks to his rhetorical and ideological role in challenging Bush and the American empire every chance he gets. But Chavez has made it clear that, while he does not like Bush, he does not dislike the U.S., either, a fact reinforced by the fact that, from 1998 to 2002, Chavez's anti-U.S.-administration (and this is a very important distinction from "anti-U.S." as an attack on American citizens - Chavez's rhetoric almost always takes on politicians in the U.S. and their policies, and not the people or our particular system of democracy) stance was much more toned down.

I've wondered privately (and not too thoroughly) if Chavez would readjust his rhetoric were Obama to win. On the one hand, it's not hard to see how things would almost have to improve, given simply that Obama never openly supported the coup attempt of 2002 against Chavez; on the other hand, Chavez's rhetoric has emphasized anti-imperialism as much as it has targeted Bush, and what Chavez perceives as the U.S.'s structural imperialism won't simply disappear just because Obama may be president. Complicating the matters are to what degree (if any) Chavez's reputation among some sectors of the world are based at least in part on his image as a leading voice of the anti-imperialism movement. If Chavez were to thaw relations with Obama, would his position among some sectors of the left and the "developing world" be threatened at least somewhat, given that that image is based so strongly on his attacks on the Bush administration?

Well, in a follow-up post at the Latin Americanist, Chavez apparently indicated that an Obama administration may not change his attitude towards the U.S. government much. Of course Chavez's claim that "The two candidates for the U.S. presidency attack us equally, they attack us defending the interests of the empire," is ridiculous. Regardless of claims of "empire," the fact that Obama has been willing to dialogue with Chavez while McCain wants to continue the Bush position would seem to be strong enough an indicator of how erroneous it is to claim Obama and McCain treat Venezuela "equally." While it's true that Obama has sharpened his rhetoric on Chavez a bit in the past few weeks, I see little reason at this point to believe it's anything more than a political ploy to appeal to the broader electorate. Even if it isn't, the differences between Obama and McCain are so substantive in foreign policy alone that there's no way that Chavez's claim that Obama and McCain are equal has any real substance. It may be different shades of gray from Chavez's ideological point of view, but I think anybody with the slightest notion of the subtleties of American politics can understand how major the differences between Obama and McCain are.

As to whether or not an Obama administration more open to dialogue would be a threat to Chavez's role as an anti-imperial leader who rails against Bush, I'm not sure. Given how much the U.S. and Venezuela still need each other for oil, as well as Chavez's slipping (though far from extinct) influence in the hemisphere, I really can't see how warming the relationship with the U.S. with an Obama administration would necessarily hurt; I think most global leaders are practical enough in their plans for their countries (Bush being an exception) that they won't think less of Chavez simply because he spent the last 6 years railing against the Bush empire but might open to an Obama administration. And if McCain were to win the election, all of the above would be rendered moot, as we'd be exposed to at least another 4 years of the same idiocy from Washington that we've put up with for the last 6 years (in terms of Venezuela). But I think ultimately that neither Obama nor Chavez would really be willing, at least at the beginning, to totally exclude any possibility of opening up or thawing of relations between Venezuela and the U.S. without some diplomatic pretext setting the two men at odds. Regardless of the outcome, the relationship between the U.S. and Venezuela will be very interesting to watch in the first year or so of the administration if Obama wins the presidency, and it will definitely be worth paying attention to the rhetoric of Obama and Chavez up to the November elections.

The Middle East, Food, and Water

This New York Times story does a great job of summing up the most important problems the world faces in the 21st century. The Middle East faces huge problems concerning population growth, food, and water. There are already far too many people living in the region. Given the lack of birth control in these Islamic nations, these numbers continue to skyrocket. The biggest problem with this is the dry and increasingly degraded environment of the region. They don't have enough water for their people to drink and they can't grow enough food for their people either. This is forcing these nations to make difficult choices, none of which are likely to have positive consequences.

Should they export their food growth to poorer countries, as Saudi Arabia is doing? Not a terrible idea on one level except that it turns these other nations into colonies and could exacerbate political instability. Plus as nations like Pakistan also continue to see their populations explode, they will need that land and water for their own people.

Should they commit themselves to growing food wherever they can? This is a short-term solution at best because the soil is bad and because they increasingly don't have the additional water it takes to grow crops in the desert.

Should these nations protect the valuable farmland they have? Yes, but it's not going to happen. Land along the Nile and other major agricultural areas is also valuable for industrial developments and human habitation. Developers and industralists have more money and power than farmers. There is no sign that nations will go down this track.

Equally, there is little sign that the kind of population control necessary to bring these problems under control will happen either.

Of any Middle Eastern nation, it is not surprising that Israel is in the best situation. Their agricultural programs are the most modern and the best for conserving resources. And although many religious Jews and some policy makers are concerned that Israeli Jews are not having children at the rate of their Arab neighbors, in the long run their limited population could provide them with the best internal stability. Unfortunately however, as these same problems spiral out of control in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and among their neighbors, they will be surrounded by nations with massive social problems, huge populations, and very little internal stability, thus making Israel's security all the more tenuous.

The Last Three Anti-Colonialist Leaders--Mandela, Mugabe, and Castro

Nelson Mandela turned 90 yesterday. In watching CNN International's constant coverage of the event (which frankly made him seem more like a grandpa than the hard-core revolutionary that he in fact is), I could only remember three living anti-colonialist leaders. Mandela, Robert Mugabe, and Fidel Castro. Perhaps there are one or two more but I can't think of them. What a three they are too! They almost perfectly represent the different trends of post-colonial leadership.

Mandela of course is the ideal. Few stayed as committed to the welfare of his people as Mandela. Perhaps this was possible because he was in prison as so many of the best leaders went on the wrong track or were killed. Maybe he learned from the mistakes of others. But not only was Mandela arguably the greatest personification of the fight for good in the world during his years in prison but he was also an excellent president of South Africa. I'm no South Africa expert and perhaps he made some mistakes. But he worked to fight poverty and perhaps most importantly, to create a bi-racial country out of an apartheid regime. After he left office, he remained active and even today at the age of 90, he occasionally speaks out against poverty or even against his old anti-colonialist ally, Robert Mugabe.

Mugabe of course represents the worst kind of leadership. Unable to give up power, he has taken Zimbabwe straight into the toilet. From what I know, up until at least 1990 or maybe even 1995, Zimbabwe was a relative success story in Africa. Poverty remained strong there for sure, but there was some reasonable racial cooperation, the country brought in a lot of tourist dollars because of its great wildlife, and Mugabe was generally seen as a pretty decent leader. Then he went off the deep end. In his mid-80s now, it is clear that he will remain in power until his death. He was never a Mandela but now he is on the level of Mobutu. Too many nations of the developing world ended up with this kind of leadership, particularly in Africa and they suffer today from it.

With Mandela playing the saint and Mugabe as the monster, let's now turn to the man in the middle, Fidel Castro. Castro seems the most typical post-colonialist leader. Like Yassir Arafat perhaps, he was a great leader for his people, but his unwillingness to think outside of his dogmatic training ultimately has held his nation back. On the other hand, the lives of average Cubans is better than many nations in Latin America and certainly far superior to how they were under his precedessor Fulgencio Batista. Even here in Bolivia, you see the signs of Cuban successes everywhere, particularly with the Cuban doctors providing medical care to the masses of Bolivian poor. Still, like Arafat and many others, Castro has stuck around way too long. Had he stepped aside in the 1980s, perhaps Cuba would be more advanced today. Certainly, the lack of human rights seems ridiculous in today's world. I know that Raul is opening things up a touch, but it's really quite a bit too late.

Ultimately, although Castro is sui generis, probably most of the post-colonial leaders would have followed somewhat similar paths had they remained in power. Of course, all too many died before their time. Patrice Lumumba, Salvador Allende, Malcolm X, Jacobo Arbenz, Martin Luther King, and Ghandi, among too many others, were assassinated. The United States (and to some extent the Soviet Union as well) eliminated leaders they didn't like. Many of the Arab nations went off into either extremism (Iran and Algeria) or dictatorship (Egypt and Libya). Outside of Castro, no anti-colonial leader was ever really given enough of a chance in the Americas to prove their meddle. Either they were killed and replaced by dictatorships or the U.S. funded their opposition and forced them to give up such as in Nicaragua.

Again, the three leaders that are left seem to really represent the fates of the developing world as a whole during the late 20th century. If there are examples I am not thinking of, please mention it in comments.

There Is No Coordinated "Lula-Calderon-Uribe Troika"

While it's an interesting idea, I don't buy this idea of a "Uribe-Lula-Calderon" troika countering Chavez at all, for several reasons. Firstly, as I've stated repeatedly, Lula has been willing to negotiate with many non-traditional (i.e. non-European, non-U.S.) partners. Simply because he has been working with Uribe on some issues (including strengthening military ties via a binational military base on the Colombia-Brazil border) does not mean he's out to undermine Chavez's influence. Indeed, while I'm just making a rough guess here based on news in Brazil over the last couple of years, Lula has cooperated with Chavez far more than Uribe, and certainly far more than with Calderon. Lula's first job is to build up Brazil's strengths in the hemisphere and the globe. If that means entering economic, political, social, or economic agreements (open or tacit) with Chavez, he'll do it; if it means entering such agreements with Uribe or Calderon instead, he'll do that too. He (and Uribe and Calderon) are working first and foremost to steer their respective countries in the directions they deem are the best, and I just really find it hard to believe there could be any "anti-Chavez" axis emerging between the three of them, explicitly or tacitly; each is going to look after the interests of his own country, and to assume some "alliance" of any sort between the three to bring down Chavez is rather far-reaching.


Secondly, I think Tannock really overstates Uribe's importance both presently and in a broader historical context. Yes, the FARC has been reduced through deaths (natural and violent) and embarrassments (accidentally turning over high-profile hostages to the Colombian army, who you mistakenly think are your own troops; using a boy that it turns out you don't even realize is no longer in your possession in hostage negotiations), and Uribe's efforts have played no small part in this. This to a large extent explains his high approval ratings (which, according to some, hit 91% in the wake of the Ingrid Betancourt rescue). However, basing your entire perspective of Uribe's popularity and historical importance based on these recent developments is premature and wrong-headed. There is still the fact that Uribe's close friends and allies are closely tied to paramilitary groups. While this does not make him immediately guilty by association, he has done virtually nothing to make a strong case that he is not to some extent tied to paramilitary groups, either; indeed, in a rather Bush-like way, he has dug in further, simultaneously denying his knowledge and/or involvement while dodging the question. Even if Uribe is never directly tied to the paramilitaries, he has done virtually nothing to combat their power, either, and this will be a lasting stain on his record, too.


But there is an even more fundamental problem with the argument that Uribe's influence is extending throughout the America's at Chavez's expense based on the recent victories over the FARC. As popular as Uribe's successes have made him in Colombia, it is radically faulty to assume that his recent successes have left the rest of South America falling under his sway and abandoning Chavez. Simply put, the ideologies and beliefs of other leaders and populations in South America don't fall in line with Uribe's ideology and locus on the political spectrum. Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Ecuador are all run by popularly-elected leftist leaders. Uribe is the only rightist leader on the entire continent, and outside of Colombia, many Latin Americans from multiple nations loathe him as much for his ideological stance as for his close ties to the United States, which they view as an anachronistic and damaging model of economic reliance on the U.S. that hearkens back to the 20th century and that these other countries are successfully leaving behind. Simply put, in some ways, Uribe is a "stain" to the rest of Latin America for his cooperation with the U.S. and right-wing positions. To presume that his recent successes have put him at the forefront of international leadership and cooperation as the lone rightist leader on a continent of leftist countries is tautological.


I think the final major problem with this article is the insistence that Calderon is part of this "troika," yet Tannock does absolutely nothing to really establish how and why Calderon is a major player in undermining Chavez's influence in the hemisphere aside from the fact that Mexico has "geostrategic" influence. Specifically, Tannock makes a Uribe-Calderon connection simply because both presidents are trying to deal with the drug trade and repress it; the fact that the two "wars on drugs" share very few similiarities and are in two completely different political, historical, and even geographic contexts seems to be of little importance to Tannock. And the assumption that Calderon and Lula are similar because they are both trying to renegotiate and strengthen their ties to Cuba is ridiculous; to reiterate what I pointed out above, Calderon, like Lula, is simply trying to do what he sees is economically and politically best for his country. To sit out negotiations and dialogues with Cuba while other hemispheric powers were improving relations with Cuba would be stupid, alienating Mexico even further. Calderon isn't doing this because of some new "troika"; he's doing it because it's the smart thing to do.

In short, I just don't buy this whole notion of a "Uribe-Calderon-Lula" troika. Lula is far more tied to Chavez than to Calderon or Uribe (without being dependent on Chavez), and there is absolutely no evidence that these three men are trying to collaboratively and collectively undermine Chavez's influence.

As a final point somewhat unrelated to the above, I also really take umbrage with Tannock's contention "that Latin America was going through one of its regular bouts of leftwing destabilization, given the rise of Bolivian President Evo Morales, Ecuador's President Rafael Correa, and their ringleader, Chavez." Firstly, leftism is not an inherently "destabilizing" force, and when leftist leaders in Latin America have witnessed "destabilization," it has been because of foreign powers' (particularly the U.S.) undue influence and open subversion of national sovereignty, be it in Guatemala in 1954, Chile in 1973, or Nicaragua in the 1980s. There's nothing naturally "destabilizing" about left-wing leadership. And the suggestion that the rise of left-wing leaders in Latin America appeared to be little more than a "bout" is totally ignorant of recent history, when country after country in South America witnessed its economy devastated by neoliberal policies instituted by rightist presidents, leading to a backlash that perfectly coincided with Bush's insistence on focusing only on Iraq and the Middle East, leaving Latin American leftists and leaders with an unprecedented ability to establish themselves and chart new, non-dependency-based economic and political courses for their countries. To suggest that the continent-wide victories of leftists in Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, and Ecuador, is a "flash in the pan" is absurd; if anything, at least right now, it would seem that it's Uribe's administration that is the outlier.

In short, Tannock is right that Chavez's influence in the hemisphere may be declining, but not for any of the reasons he then tries (very unsuccessfully) to outline.

Oh Please Let This Happen

Big buzz for McCain-Mittens! The most inspiring Republican ticket since Dole-Kemp in '96. Mitt is going to inspire the nation just like he did in his presidential candidacy! And hey, it puts Utah firmly in the Republican camp this fall!

The Election and My Dreams

Maybe it's the Bolivian elevation, which seems to cause vivid dreams, but I have been consistenly dreaming about the election lately. About a week ago, I woke up really upset because I dreamed that McCain had won. Talk about a nightmare! The last couple of nights, I have been dreaming about Obama wiping up the floor with McCain.

So I have a new campaign slogan.

Vote Obama, Give Erik Nice Dreams!

Poor Phil Gramm

In response to Sarah's question below, one of my favorite Republicans has to be Phil Gramm. Just because he is so consistently an idiot. I couldn't believe that Mr. Magoo was tapped to be McCain's chief economic advisor. It ended just about like you'd expect, with Gramm stepping down after staying lots of stupid things.

It is clear to me that Democrats want to attack me rather than debate
Senator McCain on important economic issues facing the country," Mr. Gramm said
in a statement issued by the campaign. "That kind of distraction hurts not only
Senator McCain’s ability to present concrete programs to deal with the country’s
problems, it hurts the country."

Mr. Gramm, a multimillionaire banker, has been under fire since last
week, when he dismissed concerns about the troubled economy by referring to "a
mental recession." He also said the United States had become "a nation of
whiners," a remark providing fodder for Democrats to portray Republicans as out
of touch with the concerns of ordinary Americans.

Whether it's Gramm or someone else, the McCain economic plan is going to favor the rich over the poor and will find itself completely unable to deal with the financial problems average Americans face.

And like the war in Iraq, the economy, climate change, the Patriots not winning the Super Bowl last year, and W choking on potato chips, of course it's all the Democrats fault.

Repubs vote to move impeachment forward

Check it out: Daily Kos

More fuel for the Ron Paulites, but a few others were a surprise. Chris Shays I had some faith in, though.

Who's YOUR favorite Republican?

Worthless Or Most Worthless Column In The History of Humanity

I present you Maureen Dowd's column on Obama's supposed lack of humor.

Why does she have a job again?

That damn New Yorker cover

Ok. So I guess I've got to weigh in on this New Yorker cover thang. Some comments here, here, here, here and here. And a particularly good one here. Edit* my favorite one here, h/t Summer. (and I cross-posted, as usual, from my blog)

I was walking out the door earlier to go do errands and I stopped, because NPR (which I leave on for the dog when I'm not home) had Art Spiegelman on to comment about the cover. And because he's someone I respect (and a former New Yorker cartoonist himself) I waited to listen to him before I headed up to the bank.

He said he loved the cover. He said that it was successful satire because it held a mirror up to the lies being perpetuated about the Obamas, and it shone a light on them.

I agree that this is what satire is supposed to do, as is allegory, and other such things. I tend to love satire and allegory. I do not love this New Yorker cover.

It's not that it's really that offensive to me. Maybe because I don't really have a problem with any of the things portrayed on that cover (well, maybe with Osama Bin Laden, but whatevs. Also not a huge gun fan, but, well, civil libertarian and all...). I just don't happen to see Muslim as a slur, despite understanding why Obama has to, for political reasons, continually separate himself from the perception of being a Muslim. I certainly don't see Michelle Obama with a 'fro as a bad thing.

More to the point, since people noted above have covered the offense, racism, etc. angles quite well, I think the cover fails at satire. Spiegelman said it holds up a mirror and reverses the image--but it doesn't. It's an image that, aside from the quality of the cartoon, I would expect to see on the cover of the National Review or Weekly Standard. It does nothing to subvert the stereotypes being thrown out there. It just depicts them. No mirror, straight on.

Spiegelman also said that he thought people couldn't be afraid of the reader in Kansas who might see the cover and think that it's serious. He misunderstands, again. I'm not worried about this cover converting any new people to thinking that the Obamas are terrorists, militants, Muslims, what-have-you. That stuff is already out there, and anyone who's going to believe it already does, despite lots of evidence to the contrary (and those numbers seem to hold steady at about 10-12%).

No, I just think the cover straight-up fails in its mission to be satirical. It is not funny. And it ain't because I don't have a sense of humor, people. I laugh at many, many things that the rest of the world does not find amusing. I laugh a lot. But again--there's no mirror here. There's no subversion. There's nothing but a drawing of how about 10-12% of America sees a man running for president, and his wife.

What's funny about that? Where's the irony?

Another thing said on that NPR show was the idea that irony died on September 11. We all know that ain't true. Anyone who's ever come into contact with a hipster knows better than to think irony is gone. Postmodernism may have died (but that's a big long issue that I don't want to get into right now) but irony is alive and well.

But this wasn't it. So no, I don't like the New Yorker cover. I will defend their right to run whatever stupid crap they want on their covers, just as I will defend all sorts of ugly speech (don't mean I'm going to publish your asshole comments on my blog, but if you've got your own, well, mazel tov). I'm not a regular reader, so I'm not going to be protesting or threatening to cancel my subscription.

But it was not funny. It was not witty. If this is what we've got for political satire in this country, well, I worry.

Stuck

There's nothing like being stuck in a freezing cold Bolivian town because the campesinos are blockading the roads.

On the other hand, Bolivia has been awesome. Except for the painfully slow internet connections, which is why I haven't written much.

Foreign Policy in the Americas: Obama vs. McCain

Given what the U.S. is doing to/in other regions of the world, and how well Latin America has done in the last 8 years while the U.S. was mired elsewhere, I’m not sure “fewer governments are waiting with greater expectation for the new US president than those of Latin America,” but Gott raises some interesting questions here. Certainly, a McCain presidency would do nothing to improve relations between the U.S. and Venezuela, or to take even a single step out of the disastrous and ineffectual U.S. policies towards Cuba for the last 50 years. McCain can talk all he wants about a “new policy,” but every time Venezuela, Cuba, and Latin America writ large specifically come up, he sounds exactly like Bush.

But I’m rather ambivalent of Obama’s comments and position on Latin America, too. Of course he’s right that the Iraq War has destroyed the U.S.’s standing throughout the world, including Latin America. However, his rhetoric (which is admittedly rather generic and non-specific) seems to indicate he’s of the opinion that Latin America needs the U.S. to guide hemispheric policy and help the individual Latin American nations progress. In point of fact, the last 8 years would seem to indicate the exact opposite, as I’ve discussed before. While Bush ignored Latin America (save for the 2002 effort to overthrow Chavez and the subsequent rhetorical battle against Venezuela’s president), South American flourished, as leftist presidents are guiding and have guided their countries through dramatic economic and social improvements in Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, and even Venezuela. It’s patently clear that Latin America has been doing alright for itself without any U.S. guidance.

And that’s what kind of makes me ambivalent about Obama. Certainly, it’s tough at this stage to say exactly and concretely what kind of plans or policies he has for Latin America, because he's not offered much beyond general, open-ended comments. Still, the two clearest models, Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy, the two Democratic presidents that might offer the clearest examples of what foreign policy from a Democratic president could be, are pretty poor examples (I think we can exclude Carter because his policy was based almost strictly on human rights violations in military dictatorships, which simply no longer applies in the Americas). However, drawing on vague, Kennedy-esque notions of an “alliance of the Americas” strikes me as the kind of paternalistic rhetoric common to the mid-20th century. Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress, while beneficial for some countries in various ways, was also extremely patronizing, imperial, and too closely bound to Cold War polarizations to be as effective as Kennedy’s supporters would like to have us believe. And Clinton’s insistence that Latin American countries join in his neoliberal Washington Consensus (which, let us not forget, South American leaders like Menem and Cardoso agreed to do) resulted in the Argentine economic collapse and also caused long-term negative consequences that leftist leaders in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Brazil (among others) are only now overcoming. Far from being some benign program of social and economic improvement, the Alliance for Progress and the Clinton administration’s Washington Consensus were just two in a series of presidential (Democratic and Republican) efforts where the U.S. government presumed it knew what was best for Latin America, regardless of whether the individual countries wanted that help or not. While I don’t know that Obama’s plans for Latin America will be just one more misstep in this direction, I don’t know that they won’t be, either. Indeed, neither Obama (or McCain) have what we could consider a high level of experience in terms of Latin America, and Obama’s constant referral to an “alliance of the Americas” leaves me uneasy, particularly in its vague, Kennedy-esque tone .

That said, I still think Obama’s far preferable to McCain. At the least, he has claimed to be open to holding a dialogue with leaders with whom he may or may not agree, including Castro and Chavez. Whether he actually sticks to this will be interesting to watch, but even the shift in rhetoric is a major improvement in foreign policy compared to the previous 8 years. And I feel Obama would for a number of reasons treat with major economic powers in the hemisphere (most notably Brazil and Argentina) on far more equal footing than McCain ever would.

Nonetheless, he’s done nothing to convince anybody that he would be a major departure from his predecessors in terms of dealing with Latin American nations as equal partners and allies rather than as inferior nations needing the U.S.'s guiding hand to develop, a position that's downrighth anachronistic at this point. Quite simply, Latin America no longer "needs" the U.S. in the way U.S. politicians think it does; it's been getting along just fine lately, and it's up to Obama and others, and not Latin America, to adjust to this fact. If Obama does model his foreign policy approach for the hemisphere on either the Kennedy or Clinton administration in either attitude or substance, I think he’ll be mostly ineffectual in hemispherical politics. Hopefully, this won’t be the case, but there’s no way to predict right now.

The Blood of Chihuahuas Will Be on Disney's Hands

Well, this certainly looks astoundingly awful. I caught a preview prior to Wall-E (which is, in a word, outstanding), and words cannot describe on how many levels this movie looks awful. First, there’s the aforementioned fact that it’s full of Chihuahuas. Why I would want to waste an hour and a half of my life seeing that ridiculous creature on the big screen is beyond me. I suppose it’s supposed to appeal to some universal “cuteness” factor, but (and I love dogs) the Chihuahua has all the cuteness of syphillis to me. However, if other people want to waste 10 dollars per person seeing these films (or taking their children – I’m so glad I don’t have kids right now), whatever.

And it would be fine if the stupidity stopped their, but it actually only begins to scratch the surface. What human should we have voice over for the Chihuahua? Why, George Lopez, of course! Everybody knows that Chihuahas are from Mexico, and so are George Lopez's ancestors, and Americans like George Lopez! It will work great!

And from there, the stereotyping only gets better. The basic plot appears to be that Papi (the Lopez-voiced dog) has been repeatedly jilted by Chloe, a snobby rich Chihuahua who belongs to a painfully-rich owner (drawing an obvious and uninspired example from Paris Hilton). The owner goes to Mexico to vacation, Chloe gets lost, and Papi mobilizes all his efforts and troops to find Chloe and, doubtless, win her heart over (I’ve yet to see anything about this movie beyond the trailer, but I’m willing to bet they end up together at the end, with everybody learining some valuable life lessons). Aside from the fact that the name “Papi” already seems a bit…umm…stereotypical?, Lopez either chose to or was directed to throw out any subtlty, giving Papi a blatant “Latin lothario” accent. And in case we really didn’t get the point, Papi is brown, while Chloe (voiced by Drew Barrymore) is white. So just to sum up: sterotypically macho brown dog with generic “Latin” accent named “Papi” tries to rise up from poverty to win the heart of white rich dog. Awesome plot, even more awesome racial imaging.

And of course, the long-term effects of this film could be disastrous. If people see this film in large numbers, it will almost inevitably lead to a temporary explosion in the demand for Chihuahuas. People will take their kids to the movies, everybody will want the “cute little doggy,” and they’ll run out and by them. And then they will find out that Chihuahuas, like any pet (especially dogs), require a lot of attention, are high-maintenance, and, just to mix things up, are the most human-aggressive breed of dogs. Without question, hundreds, if not thousands, of people may end up adopting Chihuahuas, thinking they’re getting the little ball of fur they saw in the movie. What may particularly alarm new Chihuahua owers whose decision derives solely from the movie is the fact that Chihuahuas (not pitbulls, as the sensationalist media would have you believe) are the most human-aggressive dog breed. When they learn that Chihuahuas in real life are nothing like the movie showed, they’ll end up in shelters and large numbers of Chihuahuas will be euthanized.

And while I don’t love the Chihuahua, I really hate when people who have no business owning pets due to lack of preparedness or understanding get pets because of some movie, only to find that the pet is nothing like the sanitized version they saw in the theater, and they end up abandoning the pets (usually dogs) to shelters to be euthanized by the hundreds or thousands, all because of some stupid movie. Certainly, "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" is setting up this probability for Chihuahuas. This pattern is not without precedent; after the live-action version of 101 Dalmatians (and its sequel) came out, Dalmatian ownership in the US skyrocketed, as everybody wanted the little puppies they saw on the big screen, all without knowing that Dalmatians aren’t the greatest “family pets” and often go deaf early. As a result, rescue organizations had to work overtime trying to save Dalmatians and find them new homes, and thousands of Dalmatians still had to be euthanized, all because the families that bought them that actually owning a dog was far different from what they saw in the theater. There’s no reason to expect a live-action Chihuahua movie to not have the same effect, particularly given that some people actually do culturally and/or ethnically identify strongly with the Chihuahua in ways that I doubt anybody really could culturally or ethnically identify with the Dalmatian (save, of course, for that small number of people with ties to western Croatia and Montenegro).

I can’t explain how badly I hope this movie bombs. Based on how the preview looked (and they can be misleading), I fail to see how there won’t be some public outrage or even protest over the racial stereotyping of this film. And as sad as that will be if it’s the case, it will dwarf in comparison to the number of dogs that get euthanized, all because Disney sold some new sanitized, fluffy image on the big screen that had virtually nothing to do with reality, and people bought it hook, line, and sinker. Disgusting.

Bookless academics

It's time. The hour is upon us to start packing away our crap into boxes and move to Southern California. Moving companies are hilarious. The moving company we were working with estimated an exorbitant amount of money to move us-- I did a double take and the lady said "Well, we can take about $1,000 off if you don't take any of your books."

Hilarious. She knew this was a University move, too, as we had just talked about the University Purchase Order she had received. No books my ass. So I'm going to rent a U-Haul and drive the sum'bitch to California.

Digging holes...

This is something:

Former Sen. Phil Gramm, a top economic adviser to presumptive GOP nominee John McCain, referred to the economic slowdown as "a mental recession" and called the United States “a nation of whiners.”

On behalf of those in America who didn't sit on the Board of Directors of a company that benefited from your wife's stint as top banana at the CFTC, or had a wife a who made piles of cash with a company whose industry she helped deregulate, to the expense of thousands of people's retirements, fuck you, William Philip Gramm, fuck you.

On a lighter note, now the Obama campaign can play this over and over in Michigan, Ohio, Missouri, Indiana, and Pennsylvania.

Killing Coral for Ice Cream

In example 48,000,000 of how industrialization fucks the planet, coral reefs are dying around the world because for the last several decades, industries and rich nations have convinced poor island nations to grow a particular kind of seaweed that produces carrageenan, a binder used in ice cream and a lot of other foods. So the next time you are enjoying your ice cream, remembering that you are driving species to extinction in the process.

But then what the hell does it matter anyway since climate change is altering the ph balance of the ocean and killing coral too.

The McCainanites and a new threshhold of stupidity

Couple of things I'd like to point out-- Steve Kraske from the Kansas City Star reports that Obama has tripled his staff in Missouri in an effort to bring the Show Me State back into the democratic fold. Of course, Obama is able to do this because he is a fundraising juggernaut; McCain is starting to catch up with the aid of the Legion of Doom, but McCain's asshat Missouri co-chairman Jack Jackson had this to say, according to Kraske:

"Desperate. When you feel like you have to put that many people in the state to cover it, it means you think you're in trouble and you have to have a surge."

Are you kidding me? Did you just use the word "surge" to characterize an influx of manpower and resources into a situation that you think is desperate and troubled? Did you really just say that? The McCain camp plans to have around 14 staffers in MO; Obama plans to have about 150.

Via Alterdestiny frequent commenter Sator Arepo via Crook and Liars-- have a look a McSame's latest joke about killing Iranians with good old American smokes.

The 2008 Presidential Longshots: No Gin Gene Admonishin’ America

We will continue our series looking at the 2008 Presidential Longshots with the Prohibition Party’s (or at least one faction of the Prohibition Party, which had a rancorous split a few years ago) candidate for the 2008 Presidential election-- one Gene Admonson. Where to start with this guy—I highly recommend his website, which double as his campaign on-line HQ and a personal (highly personal) site. Highlights from his include a chronicle on his divorce, his oil panting and wood-carving, a poem about a love boat cruise he took in 1999, and why he needs a wife by winter (seriously, click this link now; his site makes Green Party candidate Kat Swift's Wonderwoman picture look almost stately). He also has a MySpace page. He has one friend (Tom).

Admonson ran for president in 2004, getting over 1,800 votes, which is downright successful compared to Earl Dodge's 2000 run, where Dodge got just 208 votes nationwide. The Rev has appeared on the Daily Show, Oprah, and other TV shows, and has received some press attention (though it seems to be of the kind your crazy uncle with the collection of 1,245 matchbooks from America's finest Tiki Bars would get). He is very upfront about his campaign platform—no alcohol. No economic plan, no plan for Iraq, no healthcare plan, not a damn thing. Just no drinkin’. Admonson is a minister that dresses like a priest and does presentations and protests across the county—including dressing up like the Grim Reaper outside of an Anheuser-Busch brewery and a skit where he impersonates Billy Sunday, a temperance preacher who was allegedly offered a million dollars by the alcohol industry to stop preaching.

In all actuality, Rev. Admonson seems like a really awesome guy. He is very quirky and has a kind of home-spun sweetness and wit that is pretty endearing. He is the longest of longshots, I think, yearning for what feels were the greatest 13 years of American history. Go get 'em Gene. Hope there's a teetotalling foxy lady out there for you.

"Drinking responsibly is like teaching a pig to eat with a spoon. Can't happen."

Former Suriname Dictator Now On Trial

I mentioned awhile back that (in addition to my ignorance on nearly all things Suriname,) former Suriname dictator Desi Bouterse would be facing trial for human rights abuses. Well, that trial began last Friday with testimony from one of the members of the firing squad that killed 15 opposition members in 1982. As with most cases in Latin America (be it Peru or Argentina) and Africa, whether this trial will actually result in any real jailtime for the former leader. While an honest jail sentence for human rights violations would be good, the simple fact that trials are happening is good news in and of itself, and this case will be worth continuing to watch.

G-8 Does Nothing

So the G-8 didn't do a goddamn thing about climate change. Again. A nonbinding pledge to cut emissions in 50 years with no short term goals? Totally meaningless. It just says that no politician is willing to do anything that could mildly compromise their economy and they are hoping someone else will deal with it in the future. Real leadership on the international front.

Brazil's Quiet Ascendancy over Chavez in South America

The NYT ran a great article yesterday about Brazil's ascendancy as (not "a," but) the regional leader for South America. There really is no question that Brazil has successfully assumed that role, and done so quietly yet firmly. As Kenneth Maxwell, a highly respected Brazilianist, puts it in the article, “While Chávez grabs the headlines, the debate over whether Brazil is becoming a regional power is moot [...] Brazil has actually made it to that level, but in a very nonbombastic way.”

This point cannot be stressed strongly enough. The U.S. media and public pay virtually no attention to Latin America, and I would venture (in a sheer guess based on no statistical analysis whatsoever) that 75%-95% of our attention focuses on Mexico, Cuba, and Venezuela. The current administration has amplified this Venezuela-centric gaze, too, with its efforts to overthrow Chavez in 2002 and then its constant black-and-white propaganda battle that tried to succeed where covert involvement failed.

Yet for all the fear and rumbling and grumbling that comes from politicians and the media over Chavez, Lula has been the real force, all while being a non-threat to the U.S. The article outlines all this so clearly, but just to summarize, Lula's development of Brazil's own BNDES (which is itself becoming a very strong foreign lending institution within Brazil), as well as of alternate regional banking and financial institutions, have made more progress quietly than Chavez's Bank of the South, which is only a dream right now and has no sign of any real progress in the foreseeable future (if ever); Lula's infrastructural investments to genuinely help neighbors like Bolivia and Venezuela are only strengthening the goodwill between Latin American countries to a degree unseen since right-wing military dictatorships joined forces to combat "subversives" in each other's country (but with democratically elected governments this time); and the discovery of the Tupi oil field last year stands to really threaten Venezuela's Latin American monopoly in oil production in the world. Brazil's economy is not only one of the strongest in the region, but in the hemisphere, growing and improving while the U.S. economy is in a downfall (the real reached the level of 1.59 to the dollar, the lowest it's been since natural inflation kicked in in the mid-1990s when the previous president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, artificially set the exchange rate at 1 real to 1 dollar). In short, Brazil has done an amazing job in simultaneously improving its domestic standing economically and infrastructurally while also becoming the major regional force in South America.

However, for all the good that there is in the article, the Times correspondents once again can't help but reveal their total ignorance when it comes to the functioning of political parties within the Brazilian political spectrum. Not to put too fine a point on it, but when they write that "Mr. da Silva’s unexpected embrace of the market-friendly ideas begun by his predecessor, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, has emphasized how heterogeneous political thinking has become in Latin America, even on the left," they show a complete and total failure to even remotely begin to understand Brazilian politics. While Lula's policies in many ways can be considered "market-friendly," there's about as much similarity between Lula's approach to the economy and Cardoso's as there was between Hoover and FDR. Cardoso was extremely dependent on neo-liberal policies of privatization and dependency upon the US, Europe, the IMF, and the World Bank; Lula's fiscal and development programs have been dominated by state-sponsored investment and growth (like offering federal grants for college students to gain professional experience upon graduation), not privatizing everything at the first sign of trouble, investing heavily in infrastructural developments, and completing trade deals with new partners like Africa, China, and other parts of South America. One might think that the simple fact that Lula's party, the PT, and Cardoso's party, the PSDB, are two of the most antagonistic parties in all of Brazilian politics would suggest to the correspondents that Lula hasn't "followed" in Cardoso's footsteps very strongly, but the Times correspondents don't seem to grasp that (in the same way that they, with their too-American perspective on politics, have in other articles called Cardoso's PSDB "center-left" when it's firmly "center-right" to "right" in any broader political spectrum).

Additionally, the comment on "how heterogeneous political thinking has become in Latin America, even on the left" is as damning a statement on their ignorance as any sentence could be. Political thinking within the left in Latin America hasn't "become" heterogeneous; it's always been heterogeneous. Even when "Communism" was the main vein of political thinking, the debates and struggles over what vision of "Communism" (which many times wasn't even Commmunism) not only between but within individual countries was extremely heterogeneous. The fact that leftist (and rightist) political thinking in Latin America is heterogenous shouldn't really be a revelation to anybody who bothers to spend more than a half hour learning about South American politics. Yet these two men let their political ignorance besmirk what is an otherwise very well done piece.

Which is really a shame. The content of the article is really great in outlining what is an extremely important phase in Brazil's history that can and probably will have very long-term effects on the country's place regionally and even globally. It's just too bad that the Times' correspondents had to briefly inject their political ignorance and reveal how little they understand South American political thinking and political systems even while getting the main points of Brazil's growth right.

Brett Favre Has Officially Crossed My Annoyance Threshold

I never really related to Lyrad's perpetual contempt for Brett Favre (and indeed, I heartily, if ultimately unsuccessfully, rooted him on against the Broncos.....stupid John Elway.....). But if what Peter King is reporting is true, I'm on the bandwagon of Favre hating. I understand that some of the best atheletes of their generations (be it statistically, the media's eye, or their own) often have to have a certain obnoxious arrogance and disconnect from reality, but this is just ridiculous. Even I can easily admit that Favre has been pampered by the media and most football fans for far too long, and he has never really had to hold to any decision he's made or accept any major responsibility for what he does to the team in the name of his ego. I found this annoying at times, but again, I really don't see how that's so different from a Jordan or a Tiger Woods or any number of high-paid atheletes. But this is just getting ridiculous. If he comes out of retirement, the Packers are screwed, period. I fully agree with King's analysis. If Favre finds it too boring hanging out on his 430 acre farm in Mississippi with nothing to do, all while being set financially for life and never having to worry about employment again, well, color me less than sympathetic. Favre needs to just shut up and sit at home. He spent 6 weeks thinking about his decision, and he made it; he's reneged and left the Packers out to dry long enough, and if he shows up at any camp, Green Bay or otherwise, this fall, I hope that every professional football fan is as unsympathetic and antagonistic to Favre's return as they should be, that he takes the Colin Powell route and has his reputation forever tarnished. In short, Brett Favre should shut up and stay home.

Doing My Work For Me

I always appreciate how d at Lawyers, Guns, and Money reports on so many historical documents because it does my work for me. I am considering putting together a U.S. foreign foreign policy class for the spring, and posts like this one, quoting Gerald Ford's lauding of the disgusting Indonesian dictator Suharto, give me endless good material.

I recognize, as all of us do here from the United States, that you have
achieved a great deal for your country in the period during your Presidency. The
Indonesian people, we recognize, have developed a solid foundation to deal with
your nation's very complex challenges and the very difficult road, but in the
process of development, great progress has been made. . . .

We do attach, in the United States, a great deal of importance to our
relations with you. You have been a source of strength in Southeast Asia and in
Asia as a whole, and we respect you for this part that you have played in the
area, as well as the leadership that you have given to your own country in the
process of development in the last 5 to 10 years.

We look forward to the opportunity of working with you in the future. The
fact that we had a recent tragedy in Indochina actually should redouble, and
does, our interest in the stability of Southeast Asia.

One More Note on Jesse Helms

Jesse gives me 2 on my death list this year, along with LSD inventor Albert Hoffmann. And it feels so good when the death of an evil man helps you directly in some way.

Welcome to the 21st Century

As I have stated many times, the 21st century will be defined by environmental crisis. One aspect of that crisis is the disappearance of several elements from human use because of their essential extinction. They don't disappear, but there aren't any more of them to be used. And this is happening very fast. Devilstower links to this Robert Silverberg article on the disappearance of gallium and other key elements. What the heck is gallium? It is a key element in the making of many modern products, including computers.

Gallium’s atomic number is 31. It’s a blue-white metal first discovered in
1831, and has certain unusual properties, like a very low melting point and an
unwillingness to oxidize, that make it useful as a coating for optical mirrors,
a liquid seal in strongly heated apparatus, and a substitute for mercury in
ultraviolet lamps. It’s also quite important in making the liquid-crystal
displays used in flat-screen television sets and computer monitors.

As it happens, we are building a lot of flat-screen TV sets and
computer monitors these days. Gallium is thought to make up 0.0015 percent of
the Earth’s crust and there are no concentrated supplies of it. We get it by
extracting it from zinc or aluminum ore or by smelting the dust of furnace
flues. Dr. Reller says that by 2017 or so there’ll be none left to use. Indium,
another endangered element—number 49 in the periodic table—is similar to gallium
in many ways, has many of the same uses (plus some others—it’s a gasoline
additive, for example, and a component of the control rods used in nuclear
reactors) and is being consumed much faster than we are finding it. Dr. Reller
gives it about another decade. Hafnium, element 72, is in only slightly better
shape. There aren’t any hafnium mines around; it lurks hidden in minute
quantities in minerals that contain zirconium, from which it is extracted by a
complicated process that would take me three or four pages to explain. We use a
lot of it in computer chips and, like indium, in the control rods of nuclear
reactors, but the problem is that we don’t have a lot of it. Dr. Reller thinks
it’ll be gone somewhere around 2017. Even zinc, commonplace old zinc that is
alloyed with copper to make brass, and which the United States used for ordinary
one-cent coins when copper was in short supply in World War II, has a Reller
extinction date of 2037. (How does a novel called The Death of Brass grab
you?)

What can be done about this? Very little. The decline of an oil-based economy and what I increasingly see as the end days of globalization may cut the demands for products, but not until those products are either prohibitively expensive because the elements to make them are so rare or gone altogether. It is very depressing because I really foresee the rolling back of much material and human progress. It is just not sustainable. You can't create more zinc, more oil, or more water. We really may be seeing the last decades of human material growth. What kind of decline that causes in medicine, life span, nutrition, and environmental protection, not to mention luxuries like travel and computers, remains to be seen.

Jesse Helms Is Dead

Burn in hell motherfucker.

And on the 4th of July too. The nation's present to its citizens.

A practice that would make the Puritans and the Taliban smile...

Sometimes it takes a story like this to make one realize how abjectly horrible some parts of the American criminal justice system are. This announcement pertains to a piece of legislation in New York that would allow children under 15 who are caught working as prostitutes to not be arrested and instead referred to social services.

What?

This compelled me to do a little research, and it’s pretty appalling. The idea that someone under 18 would be arrested for prostitution is ludicrous. Insane. The fact that New York is just now getting around to treating SOME of these children as victims, not offenders, is detestable. Under the proposed law, a 16 year old could still be arrested for prostitution. Sorry Albany, but this well-intentioned little bill sucks. How about offering social services to all victims of statutory rape, not just the ones young enough to get Nancy Grace riled up?

How big of a problem is this? Well, according to FBI statistics reported by the Department of Justice Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 74% of juveniles working as prostitutes that are picked up are booked for arrest. By over 10%, males are more likely to be arrested than females, and there are more underage male prostitutes than female. In only 4% of juvenile male prostitution arrests were other charges filed—meaning that the only thing the kid was arrested for was prostitution.

From the same document:
“Police are more likely to categorize juveniles involved in prostitution as offenders than crime victims, but those categorized as victims are more likely to be female and young”.

Here’s the kicker: most state laws, including the one proposed in New York, are seemingly in conflict with the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, which gives “victim status” to any commercial sex worker that was forced, coerced, or a minor. Why are the state laws so behind the curve on this? This bill is like painting half of your house: it looks okay on the top half, but the fact that you haven't bothered to paint the bottom half draws attention to how stupid it looks. Isn’t it painfully obvious that minors engaged in prostitution need help, not arrests?

The 2008 Presidential Longshots: A Green from GA

The Green Party’s convention will be held in the coming weeks, and former Georgia Representative Cynthia McKinney seems to be the presumptive nominee at this point, leading all other GP candidates comfortably in delegates (having 291.5). Ralph Nader, who isn’t running for the nod, is in second place (139), with Kat Swift (whose election site has a very un-presidential looking picture on the first page—then again, Wonder Woman would have made a fine president), Jesse Johnson, and Kent Mesplay in the 20’s.

McKinney is the daughter of a former member of the Georgia House (the two even served simultaneously in that body for a time, the first time a father and daughter had managed that). She served in both the Georgia House of Representatives and the U.S. House.

Fun facts:

She was the first female representative in the Georgia House to break the rule requiring women to wear dresses.

She was the first African American woman to represent Georgia in Congress.

She is a Ph.D. candidate at UC-Berkeley, and she got her B.A. from the same school as AnthonyS (The University of Southern California).

Has supported and even introduced legislation to impeach Bush.

Was involved with Cindy Sheehan’s bid to unseat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from her San Francisco district.

Angered some Democrats during the 2000 election by saying that “Al Gore’s Negro tolerance level has never been too high. I’ve never known him to have more than one black person around him at any given time.”

Served on the 9-11 Commission and the Hurricane Katrina Commission.

On the issues:

She supports real universal healthcare (unlike McCain, Clinton, Obama, etc.) via a single payer system.

Supports raising of CAFE standards and joining the Kyoto Protocol.

Supports Instant Run Off Voting.

Voted to prohibit the U.S. from participating in the NATO operations in Kosovo, and opposed The Iraq War: Episode One in the early 90’s.

Has a strong record on oppose free trade deals and voted against easing of trade relations with China on human rights grounds.

Opposes the Death Penalty.

McKinney is quite clear on a number of issues, especially environmental and social issues. From what I can tell, though, she lacks a clear economic message, which seems to be a problem for the GP in general (aside from anti-corporate stances). A long shot, to be sure, as I can’t see the GP gaining any traction in this Presidential election. I’d wager the disenchanted conservatives that won’t vote for McCain will give a leg up to the Libertarians or even the bat shit Constitution Party this go around.

Fantastic

I feel so good about my government today, knowing that they based the Guatanamo interrogations on a discredited 1950s Chinese commnunist torture manual used to gain false confessions from US prisoners during and after the Korean War. I'm not sure what is more disgusting, that they used a manual that they knew created false confessions or that the government so blatantly supports torture that they would use such methods to begin with. Really, did they think their interrogations would provide true confessions? Did they think because they were Americans and righteous or something that they could tell true from false? They probably did.

Alterdestiny Eats

Chiles abound in my plot o' earth out back. I have several varieties of organically grown chiles, which do very well here in the hot, dry Central Texas climate. Chiles are kind of a weird thing to grow-- it's not like chiles are all that expensive. But it's nice to have a steady supply in the backyard, and one has more options for varieties.

Thought I would share this one with you all, since it is time for great chiles and fresh tomatoes. Totally vegetarian, and there is even a vegan variation at the bottom. Slice them up and eat them with torn pieces of a warm corn tortilla. A margarita might be a bit on the nose; I'm sure pairing suggestions will abound. And Erik, I'm waiting for a post about the food in Bolivia.

Pineapple and Chipotle-Stuffed Poblanos

serves 4 (side dish sized-portions)

4 large poblano peppers
2 – 3 mild or hot chiles, depending on taste (Anaheim, Fresno, Hatch Green
Chiles, etc)
1 TB butter
1 medium onion
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 medium tomato, juiced, seeded, diced
1 tsp of minced epazote (can substitute dried oregano)
2 ½ cups of freshly diced pineapple (can substitute 16 oz can)
2 TB of chopped cilantro

• Roast all chiles over gas range flame, turning until all sides are charred black (These can also be roasted in an over broiler or over a grill). Let cool.
  
• Remove charred skin of chiles, and seeds. Be very careful with the poblanos; the flesh will tear easily after roasting.
  
• Dice the mild or hot chiles; reserve the poblanos for stuffing.
  
• In a medium saucepan, heat butter, then add onion, garlic, and epazote. Cook until tender, slightly carmelized.
  
• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  
• Add pineapple, tomato, diced chiles and cilantro. Simmer until pineapple is soft and cooked through.
  
• Pour some liquid from the saucepan into a 9 x 9 glass baking dish. Begin to spoon pineapple mixture into the poblanos, being careful not to tear peppers.
  After stuffing, place peppers in the baking dish. Smother the peppers with any pineapple mixture left, bake for 10 – 15 minutes, until peppers are heated through.
  
• Serve with warm tortillas.

Variations: one could also add cooked rice or beans to the pineapple mixture for a heartier main-course style meal. To make the dish completely vegan, substitute olive or canola oil for the butter.

Reevaluating Carter, Reagan, and Clinton on the Environment

Historians' views of presidents change over time, depending on the circumstances of the present. In my view (which I think is becoming increasingly obvious) the key question of the 21st century is the environment, broadly defined. This includes pollution, climate change, energy supplies, urban issues, etc. Rising oil prices may not feel like an environmental issue, but of course it is given the larger importance of oil production, what could replace it, and how cheap oil has allowed us to so drastically alter nature.

How will a new environmental interpretation affect how we view presidents? The one president such a view clearly helps is Jimmy Carter. So often, Carter is seen as a bad president. McCain called him "lousy" recently. I wonder how McCain would compare Bush to Carter? Anyway, while Carter had his weak points, particularly in his handling of the Iran hostage crisis, he was a real visionary on environmental issues. I believe that future historians will see Carter as a man far ahead of his time, telling Americans things they needed to hear. Carter had the vision to change America before it was too late, too get us off a strictly petroleum based energy economy before the problem became unmangable. But this was not the lesson the nation wanted to hear.

And that leads us to presidents whose reputations will be sullied as a result of their environmental policies. No one will suffer as bad as Ronald Reagan. His destruction of the solar energy industry was disgusting. Across the board, Reagan's environmental policies were terrible, but his rejection of everything Carter tried to do will be seen as one of his most important legacies. The perception of Reagan will decline for many reasons I believe, but none more important than his horrible energy policy.

I also believe that Bill Clinton will suffer on this account. Clinton was great at the big environmental acts that garnered him tons of headlines. He was great on national parks for instance. And obviously, he was better than Reagan in all aspects of environmental policy. But Clinton also happily supported American automakers' investment in trucks and SUV's in the 1990s. He took no steps to reduce the nation's dependence on oil, to solve untrammeled growth, or to prepare the nation for living in the 21st century environment.