Beautiful Horizons

Bad Guests

In November 2001, shortly after Mércia and I moved into our apartment, we had a number of guests over one day for a housewarming party. The last guest to leave were João and Cristina. He's Portuguese and she's Brazilian by birth, but they became naturalized US citizens and have been so for several years.

João, who voted for George Bush, started arguing with me about the attack on the Taliban in Afghanistan. He felt it was incredibly wrong and the US had no right to do so. We argued about it for a while and when I tried to make my case, he accused me of being brainwashed. I then asked them to leave and we have had virtually no contact with them since.

Why? For the simple reason that you don't go to someone else's house as their guest and insult them. With that in mind, I don't think that I have been more deeply offended by a guest since then as I have been by this comment from Leon Mosley, co-chairman of the Iowa State Republican Party:

"I left God's country," said Leon Mosley of Waterloo, Iowa, co-chairman of his state party. "They could use a bunch of people from Iowa to come here to show New Yorkers what life is all about, what being patriotic is all about, and what country is all about."

Mr. Mosley, first of all you should probably disabuse yourself of the notion that Iowa is God's country. If you really believe in God, then God is everywhere, even in places where there are people who don't share your views. I would be very angry if someone from New York came to Waterloo, Iowa and make the comments that you made. Perhaps you can afford the same courtesy to those who live in places where people disagree with you. If not, then perhaps you should leave as well.

As Jeanne D'Arc noted (hat tip to her, by the way), New Yorkers do not need you to tell us the value of community. We are made of no less fine stock than you are, sir. If you find Mr. Mosley's comments offensive, click here to send an e-mail to the Iowa State GOP.

Republi Cant*

You know when I read something like this I begin to think that I am wasting time reading blogs and should just start downloading porn as I slide toward middle age.

This line shows an appalling lack of awareness:

But we should recognize that these are the people who will have a voice in the governance of the United States if Kerry wins.

To begin with Tacitus, we all have the right to vote (except those disenfranchised for whatever reason), so we all have some sort of "voice in the governance of the United States," however small, regardless of who is in power.

But do you really think that if John Kerry is elected he will be meeting with, taking direction from or nominating or appointing the Socialist Worker Party members, the large-sign-carrying kooks, the kaffiyeh wearing Palestinian sympathizers, the Iraqi Resistance Solidarity Group or the Speedo-wearing Stop the War on Youth campaigners?

Get a grip.

Hat tip to Ezra at Pandagon.

*cant:

1. Monotonous talk filled with platitudes.
2. Hypocritically pious language.

The Future of the Dominican Republic and Leonel Fernandez

My recent trip to the Dominican Republic was brief and not very comprehensive. We flew into Santo Domingo and stayed at a resort near San Pedro de Macoris.

I did talk with some people, however, about how they felt about the presidency of Leonel Fernandez. One man commented that Fernandez's predecessor, Hipolito Mejia was an abominable failure and that Fernandez could only make things better. He turned to Mércia and commented that Mejia "couldn't even get the Brazilian flag right" during last year's Pan American Games. He felt that Fernandez can only make things better for his country.

We went into Santo Domingo in a tourist cab on Sunday afternoon. I talked with our driver about Fernandez. He seems to feel that Fernandez will not be as bad as Mejia, but won't be much better. He pointed out the venues of last year's Pan Am Games and commented that there were more important concerns on which his nation should spend that kind of money. He thinks that ultimately Fernandez and Mejia are cut from the same cloth and that the avergae Dominican will not see much improvement.

He may very well be right. This article in today's Miami Herald underscores that point.

The country owes $7.7 billion, has an unemployment rate of 16 percent and faces inflation of up to 45 percent this year, according to reports by the Associated Press. This year the Dominican peso lost half its value against the dollar, skyrocketing to 44 pesos per dollar this month.

Millions of Dominicans have been living with daily power outages that last up to 20 hours, gas prices that force them to fill their tanks one gallon at a time and food prices so out of reach that proper nutrition is becoming a luxury for the impoverished.

For decades now, the Dominican Republic has been following the economic nostrums of the U.S. government and the International Monetary Fund. It has opened up its economy to foreign corporations and has shrunk its public sector. The results have been disastrous.

Recently inaugurated Dominican President Leonel Fernández is bracing himself and the country for more of the same.

''From this instant on, we start a period of austerity,'' he said at his swearing-in. He promised to cut spending by 20 percent.

Unfortunately, many other things need to be done to keep Dominicans from boarding rickety vessels to face an uncertain fate at sea.

When you're poor in a country with as many economic problems as the Dominican Republic, how much more austerity can you stand?

The economy has great potential. Gold, silver and bauxite are mined in the Dominican Republic. The land is fertile and farming is widespread. The tourism industry is growing in leaps and bounds and there are five international airports there.

As the article notes, a gallon of gas costs about $4.77. Those who think I have an animus towards Hugo Chávez will probably seize on this next point as evidence of that, but last September Chávez cut off oil supplies to the Dominican Republic for a short time claiming that officials in the Dominican Republic were plotting against him. He later threatened to do the same thing to Costa Rica. His proof? None, really. Carlos Andre Perez, the disgraced former president of Venezuela lives in the Dominican Republic and Carlos Ortega, a union leader and opposition figure in Venezuela sought and was granted political asylum in Costa Rica. Their presence in those countries is not proof any more than the Ayatollah Khomeini's years in exile in Paris are proof that France was plotting against the Shah of Iran.

What is telling about this with regard to Chávez is this: much of his rhetoric about plots against him concern the USA; whether true or not I won't speculate. I find it telling, however, that Chávez has never cut off oil supplies to the US, yet he has decided to extract revenge against two much smaller (and in the case of the Dominican Republic, much poorer) countries than both Venezuela and the USA. So what would one call someone who picks on those smaller than him while avoiding direct confrontation with those more powerful than him? Bully works for me.

Luis Posada Carriles May Have Sneaked Into Honduras

The Miami Herald is reporting that pardoned terrorist, Luis Posada Carriles is being sought in Honduras:

Fugitive Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles, accused by Havana of multiple terror attacks, sneaked into Honduras using an altered U.S. passport after he was freed from a Panama prison, Honduran officials said Saturday.

A Honduran immigration worker at the airport in the northern city of San Pedro Sula confirmed that a known photograph of Posada matched a man who landed there Thursday, the officials said.

''Based on that identification, we believe Posada did enter Honduras, and we have many teams out looking for him,'' said a top government official who asked for anonymity because of the sensitivity of his job.

Honduras also has the right attitude towards Posada:

Honduran officials said that if he is arrested, Posada will be deported immediately but acknowledged that would be difficult because he is believed to have only Cuban citizenship. ''At no time are we going to allow our country to be home nor sanctuary for terrorists of any type, whether they attempt against Cuba . . . or any other country,'' Interior Minister Oscar Alvarez said Friday.

I wonder what will happen if he tries to come to the US. Will the Bush administration be as morally clear towards this terrorist?

Panama-Cuba Pardon Rift

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I have nothing but contempt for Fidel Castro, but the pardons by Panamanian President, Mireya Moscoso of four Cuban terrorists - who planned to assassinate Castro with 33 pounds of explosives at a summit meeting in 2000 - is indefensible. David Holliday has a link to a Wasington Post story on the subject as well with specific information as to who these individuals are:

Venezuela had sought one of the activists -- Luis Posada Carriles -- because he had escaped from a Venezuelan jail where he had faced charges of planning the 1976 bombing of a Cuban jetliner that killed 73 people. Posada, 74, is not a U.S. citizen, and it is not clear whether he left Panama. Posada has also claimed credit for having planned and directed six Havana hotel bombings in 1997 that killed an Italian tourist and injured 11 other people.

The other three men -- Gaspar Jimenez, Pedro Remon and Guillermo Novo Sampol -- have U.S. passports and arrived in Miami yesterday.

New Times, a Miami newspaper, said U.S. law enforcement records say that Jimenez, 69, helped kidnap Cuba's consul to Mexico in 1977 and killed a consular official, and that Remon, 60, was identified as the triggerman in the slaying of a pro-Castro activist and a Cuban diplomat. Novo, 65, was convicted in the United States in the late 1970s of taking part in the 1976 assassination of Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier. He was acquitted on appeal but served four years in prison for lying to a grand jury.

The talk in Panama is that the Bush administration pressured Moscoso to grant the pardons. I certainly won't speculate on the likelihood of that, but the timing doesn't pass the smell test and their silence on the issue speaks volumes:

Reflecting the political sensitivities of the case, U.S. officials declined to condemn the actions of the four men -- who authorities said had planned to use 33 pounds of explosives to kill Castro -- even though Bush has said the war on global terrorism is his top priority.

"These are bad guys. The absence of a statement says a lot," said Julia E. Sweig, a Cuba expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. "It is the most preposterous violation of what this administration stands for."

Sweig said direct White House involvement in the pardons was perhaps unnecessary. She noted that Bush's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R), is influential in Cuban American circles, and that there is a complex web of business and personal connections between Panama and the Cuban American exile community. "My gut is this reeks of political and diplomatic cronyism," Sweig said.

In 1986 when members of the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front attempted to assassinate Augusto Pinochet, I was outraged. That was an act of terrorism and deplorable; his grandson was in the car with him. It also provided Pinochet with a rationale for a brutal crackdown. The assassination of Jaime Guzmán, one of Pinochet's right hand men in 1991 was also an act of terrorism.

So is attempting to kill a leader you detest with 33 pounds of explosives, putting a bomb aboard an airplane, bombing hotels and killing diplomats. The Bush adminsitration's failure to condemn the pardoning of these terrorists shows that their view of terrorism is selective at best and that when they speak of moral clarity in the "war on terror", they are seeing through a glass darkly.

Well Said, Richard

A long time ago I worked for a brief period for a lecture agency. One of our clients was Richard Reeves, probably one of the most articulate people I've ever conversed with. This article underscores the importance of voting for change on November 2.

Bush Sneezed, I Offered Him a Tissue, But He Thought I Said Issue and Avoided It

Thanks, I'll be here all week.

But seriously folks, if I were President Bush, I would be glad that I had surrogates to fight my battles for me rather than have to acknowledge the fact that the number of Americans living below the poverty line has increased for three straight years, as has the number of Americans without health insurance. We're turning the corner alright and heading off the cliff.

Who in their right mind would want to run on a record like that?

Justice Moves Slowly, But By God, It Moves

They have a saying in Brazil that goes like this: "A lingua é o chicote da bunda" which means the tongue is the whip on the ass. Well, Augusto Pinochet's tongue has come back to whack him squarely on the ass:

The Supreme Court of Chile yesterday stripped Augusto Pinochet, the country's former military dictator, of his immunity from prosecution - opening the way for him to be charged with human rights abuses and the alleged death and disappearance of more than 3,000 people.

The court in Santiago, the capital, voted 9-8 to lift the immunity protecting the former president, overruling its own previous decisions that the 88-year-old was too physically and mentally ill to face prosecution. Two years ago, court-appointed doctors determined that General Pinochet had a mild case of dementia, used a pacemaker and suffered from diabetes and arthritis. He has had at least three mild strokes since 1998.

Why did they change their minds? Here's why:

Francisco Vidal, a cabinet minister, said: "Nobody is above the law." Lawyers had presented the Supreme Court with new evidence that suggested Gen Pinochet was capable of being put on trial. Part of this evidence was a television interview Gen Pinochet gave last year to a Miami-based, Spanish-language television station, in which he calmly talked about his rule, described himself as a "good angel" and blamed the abuses of his regime on others.

Marc Cooper has a perspective on this that is fairly unique for a Norteamericano. Check him out.

Brazil Nuts Becoming Bolivia Nuts?

Not hardly. To begin with, in Brazil they call them Castanhas de Pará which literally means Chestnuts of Pará, the large state in the north of Brazil at the mouth of the Amazon. The New York Times had an article today on this subject .

This sort of thing is nothing new. In the 19th Century Sir Henry Wickham illegally removed 70,000 seeds of rubber plants and took them to England's colonies in Southeast Asia. I guess that's the sort of thing one gets knighted for in England. Prior to that, Brazil's monopoly on rubber had made a number of rubber barons extraordinarily wealthy; they used to send their shirts to London by ship to be laundered.

The 19th Century also saw the rise of the cacao plantations in and around Ilheus in the state of Bahia. Many of the plantation owners did not reinvest the proceeds back into their business and merely took the profits out. As a result of this and also due to a fungus called Vassoura da Bruxa (Witch's Broom), Ilheus, once the cacao bean center of the world had to import cacao from the Ivory Coast in order to keep the processing plants running.

Part of the problem with the Brazil nut situation seems to be the dominance of one family:

"The industry in Brazil is confronting a huge crisis because we don't enjoy the same kind of subsidies and tax exemptions the Bolivians do, not because of something that the Mutran family has done," complained Benedito Mutran, president of the Brazilian Association of Nut Growers. "We're not the guilty party. We're the victims of this catastrophe, this hurricane called Bolivia."

The Mutran clan, of Syrian-Lebanese descent, arrived here at the end of the 19th century as merchants, extending credit to Brazil nut gatherers on lucrative terms. By the 1930's, though, they had became big landholders and later moved into politics, generating mayors and legislators who protected the family's expanding commercial interests.

"At their peak, the Mutrans had a monopoly on everything connected with the Brazil nut industry, from harvesting to transport to exports," said Marilia Emmi, a professor at the Nucleus for Amazon Research at the Federal University of Pará. "Much of their own production occurred on public lands that belonged to the state but were initially leased to them for a pittance as the result of backroom political deals."

The Mutrans still want to burnish their image:

Members of the Mutran family do not deny their domination of the Brazil nut trade, but argue they have also brought prosperity to the region. "There are only three exporters of Brazil nuts in Brazil who matter, and we are all named Mutran," Aziz Mutran said proudly during a walkabout on his ranch here, which includes a 10,000-acre grove of Brazil nut trees he says is the last of its kind in the area. "We provide jobs to many people and create wealth for Brazil."

Critics tell a different story. "Because of their monopoly, the Mutrans paid a price so low that production dropped off the map," said Zico Bronzeado, a former Brazil nut harvester who now represents Acre in the lower house of Congress. The low prices drove growers to abandon the business, the critics say, selling their lands to loggers and cattle ranchers in a process that deforested vast stretches of the Amazon and further enriched the Brazilian elite.

At least there is some good news in this:

To help break the Mutrans' domination, the Acre state government has supported construction of a nut processing factory, which recently began operating, to compete with plants in Bolivia. "We want exports to take place from this side of the border so that we can get the benefits here," said Mr. Bronzeado, a member of the left-wing Workers' Party.

By Mr. Bronzeado's calculations, the price paid to local nut producers in Acre has tripled since 2000, thanks to Bolivia's challenge to the Mutrans' monopoly. As a result, former rubber tappers and nut harvesters are abandoning cattle ranches and returning to the jungle to resume their trade, which has in turn slowed the rate of deforestation in the region.

Time will tell if the production of Brazilian Brazil nuts bounces back. I certainly hope so. As for me, give me a bowl of cashews instead.

FARC Rejects Prisoner Swap

The FARC has rejected President Uribe's offer to exchange prisoners that I mentioned here.

Colombia's main rebel group criticized a government proposal to swap jailed guerrillas for kidnapped politicians, soldiers and three American contractors, saying Monday that any deal should allow its freed comrades to return to the rebel ranks.

The rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, said the government had made the proposal, and it hoped the two sides could find common ground.

FARC criticized a condition of the proposal, announced by President Alvaro Uribe's administration Wednesday, that says guerrillas freed from prison either must leave the country or enter a government-sponsored program to bring them back into society.

I certainly didn't expect them to agree to the proposal. It was a good move by Uribe as it really cost him nothing and made it certainly appear that he was willing to be a little more even-handed in dealing with the FARC than he usually is. The FARC, for their part in their insistence that the freed guerrillas be allowed to rejoin show once again that they are more interested in making Colombia ungovernable than in peace. Good for Uribe; something I don't often say.