Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

Archives for March 2013

March 24, 2013 By Fausta

Art, schnart UPDATED

I don’t call it performance art if anyone else other than the “artiste” would get busted for loitering if engaging in the same activity, but the MMA found the convergence of exhibitionism and celebrity worship:

Tilda Swinton sleeps in glass box for surprise performance piece at Museum of Modern Art
As part of her installation ‘The Maybe,’ the ‘Moonrise Kingdom’ actress napped in a transparent box full of cushions while museum-goers gawked.

The cot’s too short, too.

Here’s a group of bloggers engaging in performance art at a different venue,

IMG_0123

UPDATE,

Wait… you can get paid for napping? tinyurl.com/d8ynqb5

— Jazz Shaw (@JazzShaw) March 24, 2013

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Filed Under: art, entertainment, New York, NY Tagged With: Fausta's blog, Museum of Modern Art, Tilda Swinton

March 23, 2013 By Fausta

Pope calling!

Pope Francis has been keeping in touch with his friends at the old neighborhood: Pope calls Argentine kiosk owner to cancel paper delivery

Around 1:30 p.m. local time on March 18, Daniel Del Regno, the kiosk owner’s son, answered the phone and heard a voice say, “Hi Daniel, it’s Cardinal Jorge.”

He thought that maybe a friend who knew that the former Archbishop of Buenos Aires bought the newspaper from them every day was pulling a prank on him.

“Seriously, it’s Jorge Bergoglio, I’m calling you from Rome,” the Pope insisted.
…
Daniel’s father, Luis Del Regno, said they delivered the paper to the former cardinal’s residence every day.

On Sundays, he said, the cardinal “would come by the kiosk at 5:30 a.m. and buy La Nacion. He would chat with us for a few minutes and then take the bus to Lugano, where he would serve mate (tea) to young people and the sick.”

FP Passport reports that he also called his dentist to cancel appointments.

This reminds me of my late uncle in Puerto Rico, who, when he was the Pope’s age, would get up every morning, put on a suit and tie, walk to the newsstand and the coffee shop and chat with the regulars.


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Filed Under: Argentina, Catholic Church, Pope Francis I Tagged With: Fausta's blog

March 23, 2013 By Fausta

Panama: “Deepen the port of Savanna”. Is Washington listening?

This blog’s mission, if you want to call it that, is to highlight the intersection of American and Latin American news and events.

The expansion of the Panama Canal is a crucial event that, for the most part, has been ignored by the American news media. It’s going on right now, and expected to be completed in April 2015. It will enable super-large ships, called “Post-Panamax,” to cross, but it necessitates that ports around the world, and especially in the Gulf states are deepend to accomodate them.

Roberto Roy, Panama’s Minister for Canal Affairs and Georgia Tech graduate, met with Georgia governor Nathan Deal,

“It is a critical issue for Georgia and for Savannah,” Roy said in an interview outside the governor’s office. “The reason is that the shipping fleet is totally changing. It is not only a matter of the ships being bigger. The key is that the most important variable is the fuel costs.”
Roy said the new ships can carry more containers, which makes them more energy efficient with significantly lower fuel costs per container.
“That is the game changer,” Roy said.
…
Georgia already has received the necessary federal approvals for the project, but it will need hundreds of millions of dollars in order to complete the deepening of the port. Reed has been working with state leaders to build support within President Barack Obama’s administration and other Democratic leaders for the project.
“Georgia needs to do a hard lobbying in Washington to get approval for this dredging,” Roy said. “The message is the fleet is changing, and we are already late.”

Let’s hope the bureaucrats in Washington are listening. An infrastructure project of this magnitude should have already started in the US ports, instead of those so-called “shovel ready jobs” that wasted the stimulus money.

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Filed Under: business, Caribbean, Georgia, government, Panama, trade Tagged With: Fausta's blog

March 22, 2013 By Fausta

Friday afternoon bad optics

That’s Yasser Arafat, creator of modern terrorism, smiling down on the leader of the free world.

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Filed Under: Barack Obama, Israel, Middle East., news, politics, terrorism, Yasser Arafat Tagged With: Fausta's blog

March 22, 2013 By Fausta

Cyprus: Steve Hanke follows the money

Read his post, and check out the graph:

(click on graph for large version)

No wonder Putin’s unhappy.

This is not going to make you happy: The Government Generously Offers To Help You “Manage” Your Retirement Account. But I digress.

Also unhappy, a London cabby, [LANGUAGE WARNING: DEFINITELY NOT SUITABLE FOR WORK]

[Read more…]

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Filed Under: economics, economy, England, EU Tagged With: bailout, Cyprus, Fausta's blog

March 21, 2013 By Fausta

Pope Francis not dancing to Cristina’s tune

In spite of the cartoon,

The Economist points out that

A discomfited government puts a brave face on the election of Pope Francis, while its propagandists use history as a political weapon

Cristina rushed to present the Pope with a nice mate set, like the ones you can buy at Ezeiza airport, and unwrapped it for him,

At The Economist (emphasis added),

The president’s trip to Rome looked like a swift exercise in damage limitation. Her initial letter of congratulation was stiff, in contrast to the enthusiasm expressed by other Latin American leaders. When news of his election broke, her supporters in Argentina’s Congress refused to interrupt a eulogy to Venezuela’s late president, Hugo Chávez. While private television channels streamed uninterrupted footage from the Vatican, state-owned Channel 7 preferred a children’s cartoon.

One of Ms Fernández’s closest backers then raked up an accusation that Cardinal Bergoglio, when head of the Argentine branch of the Jesuit order in the 1970s, had been complicit in the crimes of Argentina’s cruel and repressive military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983. Horacio Verbitsky, an investigative journalist who as editor of Pagina 12, a newspaper, has been chief propagandist for the Kirchner governments, claimed in 1999 that Father Bergoglio had handed over two Jesuit priests to the navy, which held them for five months. The priests had failed to heed his warning that they should leave the poor district where they worked, for their own protection, after a lay worker had joined the Montoneros, a guerrilla movement.

This week Mr Verbitsky published a foreign-ministry document of 1979 which appeared to suggest that Father Bergoglio had recommended that one of the priests, Franz Jalics, who had fled to Germany after his release, should be denied a passport because of his suspected links with leftist guerrilla groups. The new pope was deceitful, argues Mr Verbitsky: while pretending to help the priests publicly, he had privately worked against them.

At first glance, the document looks damning. But academics who have studied Argentina’s political violence of the 1970s think there is no evidence that Father Bergoglio helped the dictatorship, and he himself has rejected that allegation. Marcos Novaro, a sociologist at the University of Buenos Aires, thinks that Father Bergoglio did not want Father Jalics to be granted a passport because he was afraid he would be killed if he returned to Argentina. Father Jalics himself stated this week that Father Bergoglio did not inform on him and his colleague. Loris Zanatta, a historian of the Argentine church, says he has found much documentary evidence of the Jesuits’ efforts to free their colleagues. Others add that Father Bergoglio personally led these.

Mr Verbitsky’s allegation against Pope Francis is an example of the way in which, under the Kirchner governments, history has become a political weapon. The government has promoted trials of retired military officers; unlike previous trials in the 1980s, which ended in an amnesty after threats of military coups, these ones have not included any guerrilla leaders. Several senior officials are former Montoneros, as is Mr Verbitsky. In referring to the past, Ms Fernández never criticises the guerrillas, who were responsible for some 600 deaths and whose terrorism provoked the formation of a right-wing death squad and the 1976 military coup.

A Google search turns up 204,000 results on “Montoneros Cristina Fernández,” going back to her college days.

That was then, this is now: After her Papal mate photo-op, Cristina declared that the Pope talked about “our motherland”, which she interpreted as meaning Latin America, when the Pope probably meant Heaven. Jaime Bayly riffs on that (in Spanish),

And a question,
Cristina: smokey eye look, or full Alice Cooper black eye look?

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Filed Under: Argentina, Catholic Church, Pope Francis I Tagged With: Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Fausta's blog

March 21, 2013 By Fausta

Yoani Sanchez meets Marco Rubio

In Washington, Yoani Sánchez speaks with senators, Obama aide

Sánchez, 37, met at the White House with presidential advisor for the Western Hemisphere Ricardo Zúñiga. And earlier she had held a meeting with Cuban-American U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Bob Menendez of New Jersey.

Sánchez wanted to clearly describe the difficulties the internal opposition faces, including the consistent harassment from the Cuban government.

Her agenda included a visit to the State Department in the afternoon to pick up her 2011 International Women of Courage Award, an honor she won in absentia two years ago. The award recognizes her commitment to integrity and the defense of human rights.

She later visited Georgetown University to speak at a forum with students and academics.

Sánchez said the meeting with the U.S. senators was positive and also highlighted the spirit of opening, despite the fact that she has expressed her opposition to the embargo the United States has maintained since 1962.

“We talked about relevant issues, of course, the support, the help and solidarity we can have from abroad,” said Sánchez, founder of the blog Generación Y. She added that there was also a touch of typical Cuban humor.” She said jokingly that she had invited the senators to have coffee “on the 14th floor of my Yugoslav-style building, where I hope someday they can go visit.”

In a different article, the Guardian points out,

Sanchez, whose attempts to travel abroad have been rejected more than 20 times in the past five years, is currently on an 80-day tour across Europe, Latin America and the United States

Yesterday, also in Congress, House Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere: Joint Statement on Cuban Government’s Continued Human Rights Abuses, Babalu has the post.


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Filed Under: Communism, Congress, Cuba Tagged With: Fausta's blog, Marco Rubio, Robert Menendez

March 20, 2013 By Fausta

In Silvio Canto’s podcast now

with Michael Prada and Jorge Ponce of Babalu blog. Listen live, or at your convenience.

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Filed Under: Blog Talk Radio, bloggers, Communism, Cuba, podcasts Tagged With: Fausta's blog, Yoani Sánchez

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