Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

Archives for April 2016

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Peru: Don’t drink the potion

Timothy Leary had LSD. Now ayahuasca’s the thing.

Aya-what?

Ayahuasca, or yage, yet another min-altering drug, as if there weren’t enough out there.

Is Peru’s Psychedelic Potion a Cure or a Curse? Foreigners are flocking to try a traditional brew called ayahuasca that some say eases psychological distress—but it has dangers, too (emphasis added)

But some scientists—and users—warn that ayahuasca can be dangerous. It can be fatal when mixed with other drugs, such as antidepressants, and should be avoided by those who are bipolar or schizophrenic, since it has been known to trigger psychotic episodes. In 2012, a young man from California died after taking ayahuasca in Peru. And last year a Canadian tourist killed a Briton during a nighttime ritual that local authorities are still investigating.

The brew is made by boiling together a jungle vine called Banisteriopsis caapi with the leaves of a shrub that contains dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, a psychedelic that is illegal in the U.S. DMT can cause seizures and, in high doses, comas and respiratory arrests, said Mike Colston, a U.S. Navy captain who heads a Department of Defense agency in charge of studying psychological health and brain injury. The hallucinations caused by ayahuasca can be so traumatic that they can worsen medical conditions such as PTSD, Dr. Colston cautioned.

They have been linked to serious health problems and at least two other deaths, prompting warnings about the dangers.

Look, guys, I’m a mom, and my reaction is, “stay away from that stuff.”

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Venezuela: 200,000 signatures needed, 1.1 million collected

As I posted earlier, Venezuela’s opposition was trying to collect 200,000 signatures needed for a petition to recall dictator Nicolás Maduro.

Huge crowds turned up. Somebody even photoshopped Hugo Chávez up from the grave,

ChavezFirma

The numbers are astonishing,
Venezuelan Opposition Effort to Recall Maduro Advances. Petition to begin recall draws 1.1 million signatures, but the monthslong effort substantial challenges

The opposition’s recall petition is the first in a three-stage process that would last at least eight months and would need to surmount possible procedural obstacles from the Supreme Court and the electoral court, both staffed with Maduro loyalists, according to constitutional and political experts.Opposition leader Henrique Capriles, who is spearheading the referendum drive, said the opposition collected 1.1 million signatures on the first day, well above the threshold of 198,000.

But,

The signatures will be submitted to the National Electoral Council, known as CNE, which will then have 20 days to authenticate them and the accompanying fingerprints. If it does, the opposition must then collect nearly four million signatures in three days to trigger the actual recall vote.

To recall Mr. Maduro and force new elections, they would have to garner more votes than the 7.5 million the president got in the 2013 ballot.

I am extremely pessimistic that it would have any effect:

  1. For starters, “this is just the first step in a ridiculously slow, needlessly tortuous, laughably unfair process.”
  2. As the WSJ points out, “the government controls everything from the delivery of signature forms to the authentication process.”
  3. Maduro’s term ends next year. Why should the government hurry?
  4. Cuba is getting new funds from the US, and is in no hurry to pressure Venezuela to improve.
  5. The other actors in the region (drug cartels, FARC, Iran) have no incentive to precipitate a risky change.
  6. The purpose of the regime is to consolidate power around itself, not to act in the benefit of the country.

Let’s hope I’m wrong.

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The Council Has Spoken! Our Watcher’s Council Results

At the Watchers’ Council,

http://www.romanobritain.org/Photos/roman-senate2.jpg

The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast, and the results are in for this week’s Watcher’s Council match up.

“As an American liberal with impeccable credentials, I would like to say that political correctness is going to kill American liberalism if it is not fought to the death by people like me for the dangers it represents to free speech, to the exchange of ideas, to openheartedness, or to the spirit of art itself.” – Best selling author Pat Conroy

“Those who make conversations impossible, make escalation inevitable.” – Stephen Molyneux

“The idea that you have to be protected from any kind of uncomfortable emotion is what I absolutely do not subscribe to.” – John Cleese

Stately McDaniel Manor

This week’s winning essay,Staely McDaniel Manor’s Progressives: Bayoneting Their Wounded is his account of exactly what goes on in academia at your typical Orwellian White Privilege and Male Bashing conference, this one ironically held in Philadelphia where our freedoms began! Here’s a slice:

As regular readers will doubtless remember, I have often written about leftist ideology. Paramount in leftist thought—such as it is—is the principle that leftist policies, no matter how idiotic on their face, no matter how spectacularly and often they fail, can never be wrong. They’re not wrong; the people who thought they were wrong were mistaken. This unfortunate tendency to double down on disaster was nowhere in greater evidence of late than at the 17th annual White Privilege Conference held in Philadelphia.

I was not aware that there had been 16 prior conferences, but that omission is no doubt due to my white privilege. And to think: I’ve been missing out on 16 years of self-flagellation for working my buns off my entire life and believing the world owed me nothing at all, despite my general blue-eyed, pale-skinned whiteness.
[Read more…]

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Venezuela: 200,000 signatures needed

What you have in the fridge doesn’t matter if there’s no electricity,

Venezuela Opposition Kicks Off Petition Drive to Oust President Maduro. People line up to sign a day after protests over shortages, power blackouts rocked seven cities

His [Nicolás Maduro’s] adversaries first need to collect nearly 200,000 signatures, representing 1% of the nation’s more than 19 million voters. The National Electoral Council, which is closely allied with the government, has 20 days to authenticate them. If that drive is successful, the opposition must then collect nearly four million signatures over three days before the end of the year to trigger an actual recall vote. To win that new election, they would have to garner more votes than the 7.5 million Mr. Maduro got in the 2013 election.

The hashtag is #VenezuelaFirma

Here’s the perfect photoshop,

ChavezFirma

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How Brazil’s ruling Workers’ Party lost the workers

Alex Cuadros looks at
How Brazil’s ruling Workers’ Party lost the workers

One of the ironies of the Workers’ Party’s fall from grace is that its leaders had once vowed to wrest power from a corrupt establishment but ended up producing scandals of their own. It is a story of idealism that wilted as it came into contact with power. To get their projects through a fractious Congress long motivated by patronage and finance political campaigns for their wobbly coalition, some of Lula’s and Rousseff’s closest allies resorted to bribery to grease the gears.

And then they ran out of other people’s money.

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Our Watcher’s Council Nominations: Secrets To Hide Edition

At the Watchers’ Council,

Welcome to the Watcher’s Council, a blogging group consisting of some of the most incisive blogs in the ‘sphere, and the longest running group of its kind in existence. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council.Then we vote on the best two posts, with the results appearing on Friday morning.

So, let’s see what we have for you this week….

Council Submissions

[Read more…]

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“See you in court”, & today’s podcast

Imagine how the ratings of the Trump Infomercial Station™ (formerly known as Fox News Channel) and the other cable news stations will soar when the winner of the Republican primary has to show up in federal court to answer fraud charges.

Read my article, “See you in court”.

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Today’s podcast

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