Archives for December 2013

Read about the whole sorry mess where McGovern and Menendez are interceding for now-fired mayor of Bogota and former M-19 terrorist guerrilla Gustavo Petro, of all people at
Yankee Neocolonialism Returns to Colombia
Two congressional Democrats meddle in the affairs of a U.S. ally.

December 22, 2013 By Fausta

Chuck Norris out-splits Jean Claude

Jean-Claude Van Damme:

Chuck Norris:

Too much Chuck is never enough: Top 50 Chuck Norris Facts & Jokes

UPDATE:
Linked to by Calladitos están más guapos. Thank you!

December 22, 2013 By Fausta

Colombia: Don’t fire the mayor yet! And how about the GPS?

says a judge, after much to-do over garbage mishandling by a former guerrilla who’s mayor of Bogota:
Mayor’s Firing Should be Postponed: Colombia Chief Prosecutor:
Inspector General Alejandro Ordoñez Ordered Gustavo Petro’s Removal

Colombia’s chief prosecutor is urging President Juan Manuel Santos to postpone a controversial decision by the inspector general to fire Bogotá’s left-leaning mayor over alleged mismanagement of trash collection, saying the decision’s better left for courts or voters.

And here’s the thing,

The fate of the mayor of the city of eight million is being closely watched in Havana, Cuba, where Colombia’s government is engaged in 13-month-old peace talks with the country’s main Marxist rebel group FARC. A key outcome of any peace deal would likely include allowing leftist rebels who lay down their weapons to run for political offices, including that of mayor.

In other Colombian news, front-page, WaPo, finally, a bit of good news:

U.S. aid helps Colombia kill rebels

Covert action in Colombia
U.S. intelligence, GPS bomb kits help Latin American nation cripple rebel forces

The 50-year-old Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), once considered the best-funded insurgency in the world, is at its smallest and most vulnerable state in decades, due in part to a CIA covert action program that has helped Colombian forces kill at least two dozen rebel leaders, according to interviews with more than 30 former and current U.S. and Colombian officials.
…
The covert program in Colombia provides two essential services to the nation’s battle against the FARC and a smaller insurgent group, the National Liberation Army (ELN): Real-time intelligence that allows Colombian forces to hunt down individual FARC leaders and, beginning in 2006, one particularly effective tool with which to kill them.

That weapon is a $30,000 GPS guidance kit that transforms a less-than-accurate 500-pound gravity bomb into a highly accurate smart bomb. Smart bombs, also called precision-guided munitions or PGMs, are capable of killing an individual in triple-canopy jungle if his exact location can be determined and geo-coordinates are programmed into the bomb’s small computer brain.

Meanwhile, After Killing 8, Colombian Guerrillas go on Christmas Truce

December 21, 2013 By Fausta

Cuba: How to starve as a Cuban for 30 days

An excellent report by Patrick Symmes, author of The Boys from Dolores: Fidel Castro’s Classmates from Revolution to Exile, who tried to live in Havana as a Cuban for a whole month on the official salary of $15:
THIRTY DAYS AS A CUBAN
Pinching pesos and dropping pounds in Havana

I will not cut and paste from the article, which must be read in its entirety.

Via Carlos Eire, who also links to Symmes Starves in Cuba for Harper’s; ‘The ultimate f*ck you to food writing’.

December 21, 2013 By Fausta

Venezuela, the next Zimbabwe

Opposition leader Leopoldo Martínez looks at the dismal situation,
Venezuela Is the Next Zimbabwe
As inflation rages, Nicolás Maduro seizes private farms and companies, arresting businessmen for ‘speculation.’

Seven months later, the responsibility for Venezuela’s present crisis lies squarely with Mr. Maduro. According to his government’s own figures, inflation currently stands at 54%, the highest in the Americas. Much as Chávez did, Mr. Maduro has plundered Venezuela’s oil industry, which accounts for 95% of export earnings, by providing billions of dollars in oil subsidies to Cuba and other regime allies. Despite the regime’s much trumpeted commitment to wealth redistribution, the country is plagued by shortages of basic goods like cooking oil, milk and corn flour, while concerns over a government debt default have led Standard & Poor’s to downgrade the country’s credit rating to B-. Amid the deepening misery, barely a week goes by without some fresh conspiracy charge leveled at the United States.

It’s going to get worse, for sure.

UPDATE:
Linked to by Dustbury. Thank you!

December 20, 2013 By Fausta

Colombia: Maicao, Hezbollah money-laundering center

In the Colombia-Venezuela border town of Maicao, which is also near the Caribbean and has a free-trade zone and the third-largest mosque in the Americas, Hezbollah financing evolves beyond Colombia’s Muslim communities

Today, Hezbollah is the most powerful political movement in Lebanon — and its influence stretches all the way to Maicao. Each year, millions of dollars of drug money are laundered in Maicao, where some community members openly proclaim their support for Hezbollah. Recent U.S. Treasury Department actions have slowed the flow of cash to terrorist groups, but financiers have fled and new networks have reconstituted that are harder to identify.

This mirrors, as Spain’s ABC has reported, chavismo’s alliance with the FARC Colombian guerrilla becoming an essential factor of the illegal trade,

The way it works is a money launderer today may work for 5-10 different drug trafficking groups. Those groups in turn pay taxes or fees to terrorist groups to operate in their territories, proliferating terrorism and violence in Colombia and the Middle East. Likewise, sympathizing launderers may make sizable voluntary donations to Hezbollah.

The article states,

The launderers may not even realize they are ultimately funding terrorism organizations.

And yet, “the conversation switches to Arabic when it involves transferring drug money to terrorist groups abroad.”

It makes perfect sense for Maicao to be a location for this:

a commercial center because of its free-trade zone,
large Muslim population where Hezbollah operatives may go unnoticed
geographic location near both the Caribbean and Venezuela, the departing point for much of the drugs.

I wonder how this fits in with the FARC negotiations in Havana, considering the links to Colombia’s FARC, El Salvador’s FMNL, and their connection to Hezbollah.

December 20, 2013 By Fausta

Mexico: Manufacturing jobs moving back to US

It’s not all about wages:
Whirlpool Shifts Some Production to U.S. From Mexico
Move to Add 80-100 Jobs at Washing-Machine Maker’s Ohio Plant

Wages for production workers in Clyde, typically around $18 to $19 an hour, are roughly five times higher than in Monterrey. But Mr. Durham said the shift should lower costs overall. The Clyde plant is more automated and electricity costs are much lower than in Monterrey, he said. Whirlpool 500238.BY +2.12% also expects to save on transportation because the products won’t have to be shipped across a border before going into the company’s North American distribution network.
…
Since the beginning of 2010, companies have created more than 80,000 manufacturing jobs by moving production to the U.S. from foreign countries, estimated Harry Moser, president of the Reshoring Initiative, a nonprofit that advocates such shifts. The U.S. continues to lose other manufacturing jobs to offshore plants, but those losses now are being offset by inflows, he said, adding: “We’ve stopped the bleeding.”

As Mike Rowe points out, there are skilled job vacancies in what used to be called industrial arts.

But I also wonder, do the manufacturers expect an inflow of workers coming under immigration amnesty to depress salaries in the US? Even with the push for raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25?