Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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Let’s ditch entertainment

So, what are the top stories?
OJ, and Sally Fields.

Don’t email me blaming the cable networks, or anything other than people’s own stupidity.

More blogging later.

Update, Tuesday, 18 September
Can you tell I’m sick of the OJ coverage?

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The Economist survey: U.S. as peaceful as Iran, Venezuela, but more than Iraq

I’ve been subscribing to The Economist since I was a college student, but the quality of their material has been declining for years. About the only worthwhile sections left are science business, so The Husband requested that I renew the subscription. Stuff like this tempts me to cancel:

Magazine suggests U.S. as peaceful as Iran, Venezuela, but more than Iraq

The United States and Iran finished in a virtual dead heat, and way down the list, in a magazine’s assessment of the peacefulness of 121 countries.

The United States placed 96th and Iran came in 97th on the global index released Wednesday by the Economist magazine.
The data were drawn from the United Nations, the World Bank, peace groups and the magazine researchers’ own assessments, Williamson said.

“We are just mechanics and technicians behind the index,” he said. “We are not making judgments about foreign policy.”

People without judgment can’t make judgements, after all.

Norway was rated as the country most at peace, followed by New Zealand, Denmark, Ireland and Japan. Iraq was in last place, with Sudan and Israel just above.

Some two-dozen indicators were used, including wars fought in the past five years, arms sales, prison populations and incidence of crime.

“The United States arguably has kept the peace since 1945, but with a high level of defense spending,” Leo Abruzzese, an editorial director for the magazine’s intelligence unit, said at a news conference.

That’s how the US won the Cold War.

Leo works at The Economist’s intelligence unit. Hmmm.

Western Europe was rated the world’s most peaceful region,…

Peaceful, alright.

…although France was ranked 34th and the United Kingdom 49th.

This is what peace looks like in France.

Let’s take a look at Iran and Venezuela:

Iran:

Venezuela:

Peaceful, alright.

A Jacksonian was looking at The Economist a couple of months ago.

Update: Gateway Pundit looks at the list.

Update, Friday 1 June: Taranto:

Another example of the survey’s absurd bias: Israel places No. 119, ahead of only Sudan and Iraq. But of course most Israelis would like nothing more than to live in peace, as would their leaders. They are forced into frequent wars because they are surrounded by enemy states, almost all of which The Economist reckons as more “peaceful”–including Iran, which comes 22 places above Israel despite its pursuit of nuclear weapons and its president’s vow to “wipe Israel off the map.” Syria, at No. 77, actually places well ahead of the U.S., despite its support for terrorists in Iraq, Lebanon and Israel. The Palestinian Arabs aren’t even mentioned in the survey, which covers only nations.

An embarrassing excercise, indeed.

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Venezuela on the front page, again

I must admit that I haven’t been posting much about Venezuela because of personal reasons.

I blog because I greatly enjoy blogging. I enjoy not only posting at this blog, but also receiving emails, corresponding with readers and bloggers from all over the world, talking to other bloggers over Skype, and meeting with bloggers in person. When my family is out of town I go to New York and meet with other bloggers.

Through blogging I am also able to allow my visitors to participate in my thought process, something this guy realized way before I realized it myself (which is probably why he writes with the name of three dead shrinks. But I digress). And he’s correct: a lot of times I figure out my own position on an issue as I write the post.

Obviously I’m not the most insightful of bloggers, but my research is solid and current, and I always welcome more information. As I said, I really enjoy what I’m doing. But some news do get me down.

Since I purposely try to convey a message of cautious optimism in nearly all of my posts, I have become most reluctant to post about Venezuela.

My reluctance, however, is also matched by my desire to continue to convey accurate information on a subject about which I have posted for the past 3 years. It is a subject of national interest, particularly in view of the current seditious leadership in Congress.

The feedback I get from people who are living in Venezuela, or have travelled recently to Venezuela, is uniformly glum. Things are bad with no end in sight. The prospect of another 50-year-long regime like Cuba’s is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a good prospect. Make no mistake, the road to perdition is well marked.

This morning I wasn’t planning on posting about Venezuela, but as I picked up the newspaper the headline, Farms Are Latest Target In Venezuelan Upheaval, continues to confirm that Venezuela is firmly positioning itself as Cubazuela:

Vicente Lecuna jabs a wall map of his Santa Isabel ranch so angrily that the map crashes to the floor. “I used to produce 10,000 tons of sugar cane a year,” says the 67-year-old Venezuelan cattleman. “Now it’s zero! Zero!” he shouts.

Two years ago, squatters seized about half of Mr. Lecuna’s 3,000-acre ranch, setting up a cooperative named “Re-Founding the Fatherland.” Far from being evicted, the squatters got loans and tractors from the government of President Hugo Chávez. They then uprooted the sugar cane and decided to try their hand at growing plantains.

Mind you, this is at a time where cane-sugar derived ethanol is increasingly becoming a resource for wealth creation.

By ruining the sugar industry, Chavez shot his country in the proverbial foot twice, not just because sugar-cane ethanol is now a commodity, but also because Venezuelan oil production declines as operational oil rigs are down.

But it’s all in the name of the revolucion

If the rhetoric smacks of the 1960s, it’s because Mr. Chavez dreams of transforming Venezuela just as Fidel Castro did Cuba. Mr. Chavez has already sharply cut private companies’ role in Venezuela’s lucrative oil industry, and uses the state oil company to funnel billions of dollars to his social projects. He has nationalized the leading telephone company and the main electric utility. He speaks of wanting to drive a stake through the heart of capitalism, limiting the role of money and installing a barter system.

Aside from destroying property rights, a cornerstone of democracy, one fact is ignored when dividing agricultural land into small parcels for the use of untrained people:

Agriculture is a science, and as such it needs to be managed by well-trained personnel that know what they’re doing.
I learned this at a young age: my father owned a farm; my brother is an agronomist.

Farming looks deceptively simple because so much of the work involved can be done by unskilled labor. But agriculture is a science that involves a body of knowledge and the application of tested practices that will not respond to a command economy like Chavez is trying to bring about:

The chaos in the countryside has contributed to shortages in basic items like milk and meat, a paradox in a country enjoying an economic boom traceable to high oil prices. Also spurring the shortages are price controls on certain foods that keep them priced below the cost of production. Meanwhile, 19%-plus inflation – as oil revenue foods the economy – spurs panic-buying: purchasing price-controlled and other goods the shopper might not immediately need for fear of having higher prices in the future or not finding the items at all.

The article goes on, explaining how thousands of slum-dwellers are paid a monthly stipend

to learn a hodgepodge of Marxism, “ancestral” Venezuelan farming methods, and Cuban fertilizer-making techniques

The Cuban fertilizer is known as humus de lombrices, and was highly praised in the film I watched last Friday at the PHRFF. It is nothing more than a pre-Medieval technique of growing worms in cow manure within a cement trough.

I assure you, worm humus does not sustain the large-scale farming necessary for a country such as Venezuela to feed itself.

More mismanagement had turned the Hato Paraima, a 120,000 acre cattle ranch, into fallow land.

A related article in today’s New York Times also mentions that there have been dozens of kidnappings of landowners by armed gangs in the last two years.

The bad news continues: Venezuela’s climbing GDP deemed to be unsustainable due to the lack of production and investment. Hardly surprising, considering how Nationalisation sweeps Venezuela

On 1 May, Labour Day, he took control of the last remaining private oil companies in the country.


Next are CANTV, the main telecom company; the electric company, Electricidad de Caracas; and the banks.

While nationalizing the banks, Chavez wants to branch out into international banking: apparently Chavez is going ahead with the proposed Banco del Sur, involving not only Venezuela but also Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay. The countries involved, however, might not share Hugo’s goals – particularly if Venezuela wants them to pull out from the World Bank and the IMF. As the article points out,

Pulling out of the IMF would amount to a technical default on Venezuela’s bonds and would raise the cost of future borrowing. Leaving the World Bank would tear up bilateral investment treaties that Venezuela has signed with other countries (and which use the bank’s investment-dispute machinery).

While the Minister of Finance stresses that “No trouble or inconvenience is expected with regard to Venezuela’s scheduled repayment of the external debt, amortizations and interests to bond holders for an amount near USD 22 billion” if Venezuela leaves the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, it begs the question as to whose trouble and inconvenience.

The ministers involved have decided that the Banco will be just a development bank.

Development, indeed.

Update, Friday 18 May: The Wall Street Journal does Yaracuy, and The New York Times does Yaracuy. Don’t miss Daniel’s excellent essay on Land seizure in the bolivarian revolution

Update, Sunday 20 May: Hugo Chavez approaches the Mugabe level of economic mismanagement

Update, Monday 21 May: WSJ Americas columnist Mary Anastasia O’Grady predicts a gloomy outlook for Hugo Chavez’s price controls

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Berger forfeits law license, and other items

Clinton aide forfeits law license in Justice probe

Samuel R. Berger, the Clinton White House national security adviser who was caught taking highly classified documents from the National Archives, has agreed to forfeit his license to practice law.
…
In giving up his license, Mr. Berger avoids being cross-examined by the Board on Bar Counsel, where he risked further disclosure of specific details of his theft.

(h/t MIchelle Malkin and Pajamas Media)

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Congressman Eric Cantor is launching his website, Solutions Factory, where he invites you to suggest solutions to political problems. The suggestions are rated by other visitors to the website.

Go visit and participate.

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Sarkozy has appointed Bernard Kourchner as foreign minister (h/t Judith)
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Jeff has a sneak peak to “Sicko”
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Iraqis observe moment of silence to mark “Mass Graves Day”

Human rights organizations estimate that more than 300,000 people, mainly Kurds and Shiite Muslims, were killed and buried in mass graves before Saddam was overthrown by U.S. forces in 2003.

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Wolfowitz Hangs On As Ouster Hits Wall
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A Disaster: The GOP Caves On Border Security, via Larwyn
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The Freedom Alliance offers scholarships for the children of military heroes: Here’s information.
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I once was lost….

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The World Bank putsch, and today’s items

Wolfowitz ‘broke World Bank laws’, claims the Beeb; the WaPo says the committe found that Wolfowitz undermined the integrity of the institution.

Clarice Feldman explains The Attempted Putsch at the World Bank

This suggested, of course, that Wolfowitz would be allowed to directly comment to the Board on their testimony before the Ad Hoc Committee issued its final report but apparently he will not be, the Board having received an updated version of the Ad Hoc Report without Wolfowitz having been given an opportunity to address his rebuttal directly to the Board ahead of that transmittal. Certainly, he was given no opportunity to cross examine these witnesses himself, and as the discrepancy on the record of outgoing vice president for human resources Xavier Coll shows, there is plenty of reason to question the veracity of the chief witnesses against him.

Confidential proceedings of this group and the Board are regularly being leaked to friends in the press and to outside organizations critical of Wolfowitz, while he and Riza have been gagged and precluded from responding quickly by releasing internal documents supportive of their defense. In this way, it seems clear the Ad Hoc Committee is trying to force recalcitrant Board members to cede to their recommendations, thereby precluding independent judgment by the larger 24 board of Executive Directors. Indeed, although the media has been rushing to print every word of Board members and staffers opposed to Wolfowitz, the report takes issue with his deigning to defend himself against these baseless and overblown charges of improper dealing.

(h/t Larwyn)

World Bank Jobbery
More evidence the Wolfowitz accusers chose to ignore.

All of this is further evidence that what Mr. Wolfowitz is facing here is a kangaroo court. The Europeans and bank staff thought they could get him to leave quietly if they smeared him and Ms. Riza enough in the press. But now that he has fought back to clear his name, the Europeans led by Dutch politician Herman Wijffels have decided to ignore evidence to justify their one-sided conclusions. They also largely ignore Ms. Riza’s own statements to the committee while condemning her for objecting to a process that all but ended her career at the bank.

Claudia Rosett writes on World Bokum.

Meanwhile, George Soros sets his sights.

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Call It the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Dictatorships
Business as usual as Zimbabwe takes a seat. This is exactly how the UN is meant to work.
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Sarkozy soap opera grips Paris
Amazing how the press is spilling the beans on Sarko but kept silent everybody else’s soaps – starting with Chirac and his Japanese mistress.

Update: Via Maria, No rest for Citizen Chirac as he relinquishes the throne

“Jacques Chirac has deep convictions,” he told Le Monde. “A locomotive like Chirac will get things moving.”

As vans shuttled the Chiracs’ belongings across the Seine, staff at the Elysée Palace spent the day shredding documents. Orders were given to destroy or take home all personal documents and notes. Tapes of meetings and press conferences were also destroyed and deposited in rubbish skips that were parked around the palace.

Don’t expect any new developments to shed light on Chirac’s mysterious millions any time soon.

Or ever.

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Getting past prestige names when searching for a college

Strategically, students have a better chance at capturing merit money if they look for schools where they will be among the top 25 percent of incoming students in grades and SAT scores. You can find out how your child stacks up by looking at the CollegeBoard.com and examining the range of SAT scores.

Being in the top tier of kids, however, won’t get you any money if the school doesn’t award any. So it’s important to know which schools do. This will be especially important if you do not expect to receive any need-based financial aid. Some Ivy League schools and other prominent East Coast schools don’t award merit money.

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Mr. Beans, and today’s items

“It doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”

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In more serious matters,
Separation Clause Invoked over Postal Contractor
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TigerHawk Liveblogged the Democratic Presidential Debate so we wouldn’t haZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Update: Dozing off to the Dems
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Africans for Wolfowitz
Third World reformers resist a coup by rich Europeans

The real World Bank scandal is that Mr. Wolfowitz’s enemies don’t care much about Africa. The French and Brits who want him ousted have never entirely shaken the paternalism they developed during the colonial era. Their real priority is controlling the bank purse-strings and perquisites.

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One Choice in Iraq

Indeed, to the extent that last week’s bloodshed clarified anything, it is that the battle of Baghdad is increasingly a battle against al-Qaeda. Whether we like it or not, al-Qaeda views the Iraqi capital as a central front of its war against us.

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Will Franken: Comedy, Not Political Correctness
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El Cafe Cubano continues the Friday fast for all political prisoners in Cuba
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It’s pouring rain again. Will make sure to keep the modem dry.

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Q: What did Wolfkowitz do wrong?

A: He didn’t work for the EU Commission

In April, Mr. Verheugen, a former German parliamentarian for the Social Democrats, appointed economist Petra Erler as his chief of staff. In August, the couple was spotted au naturel on a Baltic shore. Mr. Verheugen–who also has a wife–has dismissed allegations of impropriety as “pure slander” and asked the German newsweekly Der Spiegel whether “two adults [can’t] do as they wish in their private lives?”

In fact, they can’t: The EU Commission’s Code of Conduct, which he helped draft, observes that “in their official and private lives Commissioners should behave in a manner that is in keeping with the dignity of their office. Ruling out all risks of a conflict of interest helps guarantee their independence.”

Here’s the real story:

When Mr. Wolfowitz arrived at the World Bank in 2005, it was to an institution ideologically committed to seeing him fail. When he announced that he would make the fight against corruption his signature issue, the ideological opposition became institutional as well. As development economist William Easterly observes, for the World Bank “priority No. 1 is to get the money out the door. When you introduce a wild card like cutting off corrupt governments, you threaten the loan-pushing culture.”

Since then, it’s been a steady dribble of leaks about Mr. Wolfowitz’s every misstep and perceived wrongdoing, most of them to the suggestible Financial Times. The operative theory here, says former Bush administration diplomat Otto Reich, is that if you throw enough mud at a man “the stain will remain even if none of the mud sticks.” That’s just what has happened in the campaign at the World Bank: Having doused Mr. Wolfowitz in skunk juices, the critics can now say, with justice, that he stinks.

This isn’t to say that Mr. Wolfowitz’s tenure at the World Bank has been without disappointments: Mr. Easterly faults him for indulging utopian ambitions for what the Bank can do to alleviate poverty and promote democracy.
But that can’t possibly justify the furies that have now descended on Mr. Wolfowitz. Like Mr. Verheugen, he sought to use his office to change an organization he thought–mistakenly, as it turns out–that he ran. Unlike Mr. Verheugen, he never really did anything improper. That he is now on the firing line while Mr. Verheugen is not is a point worth noting. That both men, despite the great differences between them, have been thwarted by their bureaucracies should be a reminder to everyone that the government of mandarins is more than just a danger to interloping neocons.

It is indeed.

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