Fausta's Blog

Today at 4:30PM EDT Silvio Canto’s guest will be Jon Perdue, author of the must-read book on Latin America, The War of All the People: The Nexus of Latin American Radicalism and Middle Eastern Terrorism.

Jon Perdue is the director of Latin America programs at the Fund for American Studies in Washington, D.C. In this capacity he travels extensively throughout Latin America, lecturing at universities and think tanks (in English and Spanish) and participating in conferences that bring together Latin America scholars and policymakers.

The Amazon page describes The War of All the People: The Nexus of Latin American Radicalism and Middle Eastern Terrorism as

The War of All the People elucidates the ideological and political war against the United States, capitalism, and the widely accepted tenets of modernity. Spearheading this war are Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, two “revolutionary” leaders who have forged an active alliance hell-bent on destroying the established order in the developed world.

Adopted as the operative name of his war on U.S. “imperialism,” the “War of All the People” is Hugo Chávez’s plan to supplant U.S. dominance in the hemisphere with “twenty-firstcentury socialism.” Although U.S. presidents and policymakers have treated Chávez’s antics with benign neglect thus far, his 2010 missile accord with a soon-to-be nuclear Iran has escalated the threat to an unavoidable level. Chávez’s ability to thwart sanctions on Iran by providing oil, and possibly uranium, to the corrupt regime makes his bluster more sinister than the simple rant of a third world caudillo.

The War of All the People goes beyond merely pondering the unlikely alliance between seemingly antithetical cultures. Scholars, students, and policymakers will learn about the long history of cooperation between Middle Eastern and Latin American terrorist groups, from the radical mecca of Algiers in the 1960s, where Che Guevara and Amilcar Cabral both resided, to the Tricontinental Conference in Cuba in 1966, which first brought Fidel Castro and Yasser Arafat together.

I have recommended the book in the past, and can not emphasize enough that this is a must-read.

Listen to the podcast live at 4:30PM, or to the archived podcast at your convenience.

Or, more to the point, healthy narcissists, if you can find them,

Why Divas Need Make No Apology
Demanding People Get a Bad Rap, But Behind the Tantrums and the Drama Lie Lessons in Success

“Having a healthy diva around brings a lot of sparkle,” says Meredith Fuller, an Australia-based psychologist. “They make your world more interesting and pleasurable because you can bask in their spotlight with them.”

Fuller has written a book, Working with Bitches: Identify the Eight Types of Office Mean Girls and Rise Above Workplace Nastiness, and is blogging about the Screamer type, which must be in a circle of hell Dante didn’t get to – Virgil probably thought better to avoid it. Indeed,

It is a waste of time to have women caught up in bitching. She wonders why organisations would allow this behaviour.

But back to the healthy divas, Fuller says,

What separates a healthy diva from an unhealthy diva is this: Healthy divas stand up for others, not just themselves, says Ms. Fuller, author of a recent book about overcoming “mean girls” and nastiness at the office. “They are confident of their abilities and contributions, and they love recognition—but they are happy to give credit to others, too.”

All divas are talented and feel a sense of entitlement.

The issue here is, have you ever met a self-proclaimed “diva” who wasn’t a conceited schmuck, not matter how talented?

The article even has a quiz,

Diva Behavior

Divas are, by definition, high-maintenance star performers. But some are healthier than others, because they are self-aware and willing to share the spotlight. Psychologist Meredith Fuller provided some scenarios to test your ability to tell the difference. Identify which of the two behaviors in each question is healthier. Answers at bottom.

1. Sticking to Their Guns

a. The diva makes various demands about food or working conditions – only to make more demands after the initial demands are met.

b. The diva has specific, but reasonable, demands about working conditions and rarely waivers from them.

2. Accepting Accolades

a. The diva relishes recognition, awards and promotions and if allowed will speak eloquently about how to achieve a dream.

b. The diva relishes recognition, will speak eloquently—and shares credit and acknowledges others’ contributions.

3. Surrounded by Strangers

a. The diva doesn’t really care who is present and will be as demanding with one close colleague as with a room full of people.

b. The diva is most likely to be demanding and inflexible when there are people around, especially those who aren’t friends or colleagues.

4. Trials and Tribulations

a. The diva loves to talk about him- or herself, especially by talking about accomplishments and the difficulties he or she has overcome.

b. The diva loves to talk about him- or herself, especially by telling stories that are engaging but sometimes cast him- or herself in a self-deprecating light.

5. Diva Mode

a. The diva often shifts into diva mode, in which he or she clearly states her requirements, often in an uncomfortably direct manner.

b. The diva often shifts into diva mode, in which he or she expresses displeasure and rants, while co-workers hover and try to figure out what to do.

6. Creative Vision

a. The diva insists on pursuing his or her own creative ideas and vision, but sometimes the ideas fizzle out and then the diva drops them.

b. The diva insists on pursuing his or her own creative ideas and vision and in the vast majority of instances brings the vision to fruition.

Check out the answers. Commenter Kerry Fitzpatrick cuts to the chase, though,

No thanks, Elizabeth. I would never hire or date a “diva”. A professional woman willing to take responsibility and offer her ideas and suggestions? I hired them decades ago. An Intelligent, polite but firm, independent woman who expects to be treated as an equal ? That’s the woman in my personal life now.

Be a star performer, and cut out the tantrums and the high maintenance crap. Be polite. Be professional. Treat people with consideration and respect.

You’re an adult, not a petulant child, fer cryin’ out loud.

And, as for the diva in the video, don’t travel to Cuba.

Abridged and available right now. Via Caracas Chronicle, who says

It’s a great chance to hear Rory’s book read by a professional, but hurry: they don’t leave these online forever.

• Episode 1
• Episode 2
• Episode 3 <- This is where he puts the knife in.
• Episode 4
• Episode 5

You can also purchase the book through the Amazon link above.

knocked it out of the ballpark!

Among the highlights:

• A deep belief in God
• Strong support of the Constitution and the Founding Fathe
• A strong nation of educated, well-informed citizen
• Equal taxation (“don’t punish” the rich)
• And, no culture of victimization

In a nutshell, the opposite of everything the current administration has been peddling.

Listen to the whole thing,

Dr. Carson, head of pediatric surgery at Johns Hopkins, is the founder of the Carson Scholars Fund, and author of America the Beautiful: Rediscovering What Made This Nation Great, Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence, and Take the Risk: Learning to Identify, Choose, and Live with Acceptable Risk

Several years ago my cousin, who lives in Chile, insisted that I read Roberto Ampuero’s novel, Nuestros años verde olivo (link to Kindle version). Finding the book took some doing, and, when I finally got it, could not put it down.

“Nuestros años” is semi-autobiographical. Like Ampuero, the Communist protagonist had to get out of Chile in a hurry after the fall of Allende. He headed to East Germany, where he met and married the daughter of a Cuban general, and later they moved to Cuba.

And then he got screwed.

Today the Wall Street Journal has an article on Ampuero:
A Literary Ambassador

His autobiographical novel “Nuestros Años Verde Olivo,” or “Our Olive Green Years,” a reference to Cuban military fatigues, chronicled Cuba’s reality of scarcity and secret-police paranoia, and became a sensation in Latin America.

The novel, published in 1999, is one of a handful of texts by disillusioned Latin American leftists critical of Cuba and communism in general. “Latin Americans who knew real socialism from the inside or saw how it fell apart, mostly opted for silence,” says Mr. Ampuero.

The book put Mr. Ampuero on Havana’s black list. “Neither Ampuero or anybody who remotely looks like Ampuero will ever be able to travel to Cuba,” the Cuban ambassador in Chile said after the book was published, according to the writer.

Ampuero has written crime novels since, among them “El caso Neruda” (“The Neruda Case”), which, like Il Postino, features real-life writer Pablo Neruda in a fictional setting,

Brulé, the neophyte detective in “The Neruda Case,” could be a fun-house mirror image of his creator. The detective is a Cuban-American émigré who falls in love with a revolutionary Chilean student he meets in Miami, and follows her to Chile just in time to experience the bloody 1973 coup against socialist President Salvador Allende.

Just before the coup, Brulé takes on his first case on behalf of Pablo Neruda, the Nobel Prize-winning poet and Communist Party politician. In the book, Neruda is dying of cancer and wants to find a loved one who has been missing for decades.

The Neruda Case is now available in Kindle; so is Ampuero’s latest, El último tango de Salvador Allende. I’m adding them to my wish list.

Amy Webb was minding her business as CEO of Webbmedia, when, after a series of disastrous dates, she decided to put her geek skills to the internet dating scene by Hacking the Hyperlinked Heart. Not only did she research it, she took one drastic step further and,

Drawing on my background in data analysis, I set out to reverse engineer my profile. I outlined 10 male archetypes and created profiles for each of them on JDate. There was JewishDoc1000, the private-practice cardiologist who hated cruise-ship travel, and LawMan2346, an attorney who was very close to his family and a former national debate champion.

Posing as these men, I spent a month using JDate.

Heartiste would not approve.

Among her findings, this one is rather alarming to us 5’9″ers,

All of the 96 women I interacted with listed their height as between 5-foot-1 and 5-foot-3

but she found other, more useful information, which she acted on.

Her research paid off and now she’s happily married, and her book, Data, A Love Story: How I Gamed Online Dating to Meet My Match, is coming out this week.

Amy’s also in a very entertaining TED video (did I mention I watch TEDs?),

I’m slightly under the weather, so blogging will resume sometime. Until then, here’s Yaya Tango

Selected by the WSJ’s editors:

The Astaires
By Kathleen Riley (Oxford)

Fred Astaire was our most elegant film star. But he danced in the shadow of a partner, his glamorous sister, Adele, until she retired from the stage in 1932 and he headed off to Hollywood. Kathleen Riley chronicles this sibling non- rivalry and gives us a broad portrait of a very American art form, the Broadway and Hollywood musical. “A salute to an America at ease with itself,” our reviewer called it. This is cultural biography at its best.
…
The Signal and the Noise
By Nate Silver (Penguin Press)

Numbers don’t, in fact, speak for themselves. Much has been made of Nate Silver’s electoral predictions. But his impressive book explores the principles of prognostication in fields from sports and politics to Wall Street and the weather. His “breezy style makes even the most difficult statistical material accessible,” our reviewer said, as Mr. Silver gently reveals how too often we color data with our hopes and biases.

All of them are available on Kindle, too.

your Kindle, that is, along with subscriptions to your favorite blogs!

The perfect gifts for everyone on your list!

You may feel that you have enough material on a-holeness to write a book, but two guys beat you to it; not only that, the NY Post has an article about them, Rise of the a-hole
Two books examine why there are so many of them these days.

The author of the article points out that,

A-holism is a virus: The acts of an a-hole are so outrageous they give us cause to be a-holes right back at them.

Is it worth your time to read books on the subject?

And what about gifting: Do these books present an opportunity to point out that the receiver has been behaving like an a-hole; or is giving them as a gift a-hole behavior?