Beautiful Horizons

Fewer Gringos Like These, Please

When I lived in Germany, the one constant I tried to be aware of was the fact that I was a guest in the country. Imagine what the outcry would be if, for example, a Bolivian moved to Montana, purchased land on the cheap and acted like he was above the law. Unfortunately, it appears that the reverse is true. Meet Ronald Larsen and his son, Duston:

Tensions here erupted one day in February when Alejandro Almaraz, the deputy land minister, arrived before dawn at the entrance to Mr. Larsen’s Hacienda Caraparicito to carry out an inspection, a step usually taken before the government seizes ranches and redistributes them among indigenous farmers.

Both sides differ as to what happened, but everyone agrees that some violence ensued. “I didn’t want this guy making any trouble, so I shut him up with a shot at one of his tires,” Mr. Larsen was quoted as saying last month by La Razón, Bolivia’s main daily newspaper.

Mr. Almaraz said he was kidnapped and held for a day on Mr. Larsen’s ranch. He responded to the incident by identifying the American rancher and his son Duston in a criminal complaint for “sedition, robbery and other crimes.”

Faced with a legal tussle over the standoff, Mr. Larsen now claims that he did not shoot at Mr. Almaraz’s vehicle. “The tires were punched out with sharpened screwdrivers,” Mr. Larsen said. “If I’d have been shooting at people that day, there would have been dead and injured.”

If you want to see the definition of an Ugly American, I think this is it:

“Evo Morales is a symbol of ignorance, having never even finished high school,” Duston Larsen said.

I have always believed that the issue as to where one is in one's life is not where you are, but how far you've come. regardless of how one feels about Evo Morales - and I'm the first to say my feelings about him are mixed, what he has accomplished is striking in and of itself, especially considering where he started.

How this plays out  - and to some extent this seems like a somewhat microcosmal view of the larger issues straining Bolivian society - remains to be seen, of course, but I don't think that the ugly rhetoric helps matters.

Friday Night Musical Commentary

Back when I lived in San Francisco attending college, I sublet an apartment for a couple of months from a couple whose next door neighbor was Boz Scaggs. This one's for you, Hillary:

Israel at 60

Tony Karon has a very provocative essay up at "Rootless Cosmopolitian" entitled Israel is 60, Zionism is Dead. What Now ? Well worth the read.

McClatchy vs. The New York Times

I make a point of checking out the McClatchy website - a news service that publishes second-tier papers like the Sacramento Bee and Kansas City Star - because over the past six years they've done a better job of covering the Iraq war story, including raising relevant questions about the hype that led up to it, than any other major news source. Unfortunately, the New York Times' record in reporting the war and it's rationales pales in comparison to the efforts of the much smaller, less prestigious and "poorer" McClatchy operation. The hallmark of McClatchy's reporting has been skepticism of administration claims and they've been proven right.

True to the cliche, history repeats itself and we see the Times' Iraq reporter Michael Gordon publishing reports based on unnamed administration sources touting the relationship of Iran - and via Iran, Hezbollah - to the Iraqi insurgents. I don't doubt that there've been connections, but I do doubt the implications of Gordon's reporting, which suggests that Iran is central to training insurgents. McClatchy's Iraq-based journalists report these allegations quite differently. Editor & Publisher looks at the differences in the story as reported by the Times and McClatchy here. Given their track records - and the fact that Gordon can't provide a single source for his assertions that isn't anonymous - my money is on the McClatchy version. At this point, the Times should run this stuff by McClatchy reporters before they go out on the limbs being supplied them by administration insiders with an agenda of extending the war.

Making my head hurt

Today Maureen Dowd sets some standard of stupendous punditary stupidity with a line about Hillary Clinton "crushing the remnants of her girlish innocence." (Won't even bother to link - save yourself those precious minutes for something more important, like trimming your toenails.) But I'm still moved to make mention of wealthy political consultant and Bill/Hill confidante Paul Begala's advice to the guy who's now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee:

My advice to Barack Obama is...to stop with all the arguments for the Volvo drivin', NPR totebag totin' liberals, he needs to talk to middle class working people.

Paul B. followed that appeal, broadcast on Lou Dobbs CNN "news" show with the observation, "We can't win with eggheads and African-Americans." Amazing stuff. My advice to Begala: don't hold back exposing the party's deep fissures over limousines and lattes.

Somebody buy the boy a microbrew. He's doing a great job.

Business as Usual in Para

It's hard not to despair over this:

A jury in Brazil on Tuesday convicted in a retrial a man accused of murdering a U.S.-born nun but acquitted a previously convicted rancher accused of ordering the killing in a land dispute in the Amazon rain forest in February 2005, a court said.

It's not hard to believe the fix was in:

The jury on Tuesday also convicted Rayfran Neves das Sales, who had confessed to firing six, close-range shots at Stang on a muddy road deep in the Amazon rainforest in 2005.

Prosecutors said he had been offered US$25,000 (euro16,100) to kill the nun after she fought to preserve a patch of jungle that ranchers wanted to raze for logging and cattle ranching.

Sales told the court that he had acted alone and in self-defense, contradicting previous testimony in which he said he had used Moura's gun.

Are we to believe that this young man feared for his life from a 73 year old nun? I think it's pretty obvious who he fears.

The Merchant of Venice

It was released apparently with precious little fanfare, its cast and director notwithstanding, The Merchant of Venice with Al Pacino as Shylock, Jeremy Irons as Antonio and Joseph Fiennes as Bassanio may be one of the best adaptations of a Shakespeare work I have seen on film - and I have seen many; some with the original story and others with a retelling of the story. The DVD is exceptional - and that is the only form in which I have ever seen it.

What really impressed me, however, was how they were able to convey so thoroughly the richness of the language. Shylock's famous "Does a Jew not have eyes" speech almost brought me to tears. Indeed, that may be what is so striking about this telling of the story. This may be the most sympathetic portrayal of Shylock I have ever seen. Whether it's Antonio spitting on him, the contempt in which so many seem to hold him - simply because of who he is, his heartbreak when Jessica runs away with Lorenzo, or the final moments when his status as a pariah is complete, it's impossible (for me anyway) to feel extraordinarily moved by his plight.

Ultimately, however, it is the richness of Shakespeare's dialog and how well it's delivered by the cast that carries the day. Don't miss it.

Oh Boy

The gang at Alterdestiny have posted several times about poverty tourism (I'm too tired right now to go look for some of them) and I think it has reached it's nadir here.

Police in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro are to investigate claims that tourists visiting some of the city's shanty towns are being offered a chance to meet armed drug dealers.

The police say they want to establish if the lives of tourists are being put at risk, but the company involved has defended its policy.

This still reeks of exploitation, not to mention the possibility of getting some naive tourist becoming crossfire in the crossfire that can erupt between the drug dealers and the all too overzealous police.

I will give the tour operator credit for this comment:

                   The tour company has been accused of glamorising criminal activity.                   

But the unrepentant owner of the agency involved says the presence of armed men in the favelas is the fault of the authorities, and they should clean up their own act before starting to criticise him.

The fact that the favelas exist is also the fault of the authorities, the government and a failure of Brazilian society.

Beef Need Not Be Bad

Ezra Klein has this post regarding the cost of meat and makes this comment:

When meat is cheaper -- particularly when it's subsidized and passing all sorts of costs onto payers other than the consumer -- people eat more meat than they would otherwise. They eat more meat than fish, and more meat than fruits, and more meat than vegetables, and more meat than grains.

I agree, but this appears to be a conundrum for countries like the US that subsidize meat in general and beef in particular heavily and seem more determined in industrializing production for the sake of speed rather than quality.

Full disclosure: my father-in law owns a farm in the north of the state of Minas Gerais. He raises cattle, although not as many as he used to a few years ago, but in visiting his farm, I remembered that we had to drive slowly the half-kilometer from the road to the house because more often than not a cow would be grazing and browsing, especially browsing the literally low hanging fruit hanging off the trees. All of his cattle are grass feed. Why? Two reasons. First, the public prefers the leaner beef that results from grass feed, free range beef. Second, and perhaps most important, the kind of rations commonly feed to cattle in the US are more expensive in Brazil than the US as is the beef.

In the US, beef raised the way my father-in-law raises beef costs more. It doesn't have to be that way.

You Know the Drill

Very busy today. I'll be back tomorrow.

Department of the Painfully Obvious

It's past time to end tariffs on sugar ethanol and clearly time to begin cutting back subsidies for corn ethanol. Ethanol is a good idea, but making it from corn - at a 1.3-1 gain in energy efficiency when you factor in the energy used in its production, compared to an 8-1 gain from sugar ethanol - is a "solution" to oil dependence which is remarkably minimal. Perhaps a bridge to developing more productive biofuels at best. Worse, it's a significant factor in the current crisis in grain prices that has become a matter of life and death for hundreds of millions of the poor worldwide.

The absurdity of putting a 54 cents-a-gallon tax on sugar ethanol (of which the dreaded, samba-crazed Brazilians are the leading producer) as a Beltway sop to the combined lobbying of sugar, corn and oil industries has long been apparent. Frankly, at this juncture of extreme rise in both oil and food prices, it's inexcusable. Midwestern liberals - most notably Senator Obama from Illinois in the current news cycle - are among the guilty parties in this utterly wrong-headed policy. In fact, party affiliation or political philosophy has virtually no bearing on where politicians stand on this issue. It's all about their proximity to the farm lobbies.

For more on this, as well as some of the concerns raised by expansion of Brazilian agricultural land as their sugar ethanol industry grows, McClatchy News Service has an informative article here.

Randy's Random 10

Other than the saxophone, there is probably no instrument I love to hear more than the acoustic piano and perhaps with the exception of McCoy Tyner, there are no pianists I love more in the history of jazz than Bill Evans and Tommy Flanagan, both of whom, to our everlasting regret, are no longer with us.

When I first moved to New York in August 1980, one of my dreams was to see Bill Evans at one of New York's jazz clubs. I thought I was in luck when I found out Evans was going to be playing for a week at Fat Tuesday's (also, sadly no longer around). The night I went to see him, however, one of proteges, Andy LaVerne was subbing for him. Less than a week later he was dead of the cumulative impact of the years of drug use, hepatitis, cirrhosis of the liver and a perforated ulcer.

Fortunately, I still have his extraordinary and diverse output, the long melodic lines he played and his ability to maintain a mood while improvising. He was probably the one jazz pianist most comfortable with the waltz tempo. See for yourselves

I was fortunate enough to see Tommy Flanagan live. My most memorable experience was at one of the free concerts that used to take place every summer at the 79th Street Boat Basin with him and Barry Harris, two of Detroit's favorite sons playing dual baby grand pianos. Towards the end of the show one of those horrific late afternoon thunderstorms unleashed buckets of rain on the area, trapping all of us under the cover of the roadway where the show took place. I got a chance to talk with Flanagan for a few minutes and tried without success not to be a gushing admirer. His consummate grace - outside of his playing - was never more on display to me at that moment as he indulged a fan with conversation. Here's another example of his gracefulness.

1.) Love - Sarah Vaughan (The Singles Sessions)

2.) Peri's Scope - Bill Evans (Montreux II)

3.) Carinhoso - Joel Nascimento (Rough Guide to the Music of Brazil)

4.) Domingo a Noite - Luiz Bonfa (Bossa Nova)

5.) Simply Natural - Carla Cook (Simply Natural)

6.) Since I Fell For You - Jimmy Smith (Home Cookin')

7.) Novo Tempo - Ivan Lins (Juntos)

8.) Rua da Passagem - Lenine (Na Pressao)

9.) Barbados - Tommy Flanagan (Montreux 77)

10.) Alma Guerreira - Dulce Pontes (O Primeiro Canto)

This Is Big

Excellent economic news for Brazil:

Standard & Poor's Wednesday raised its rating on Brazil to investment grade for the first time, providing a major boost to the Latin American giant's ability to raise capital in global markets.

The US ratings agency said it lifted Brazil's ranking from so-called junk bond status thanks to the "maturation" of its economic policy management.

[...]

The upgrades "reflect the maturation of Brazil's institutions and policy framework, as evidenced by the easing of fiscal and external debt burdens and improved trend growth prospects," said S&P analyst Lisa Schineller.

Here's what makes this stunning:

In late February, Brazil's central bank announced its currency reserves were more than four billion dollars above the country's public and private debt.

Brazil's currency reserves are denominated in dollars, yet this has been accomplished with a currency, the real, that has been one of the strongest currencies against the dollar for the past three years. Clearly this is the most tangible result of Brazil's trade surplus. Now's the time to invest in infrastructure and education.

Too Much Time on His Hands

What happens when you combine three transvestite prostitutes, a footballer recuperating from an injury with far too much time on his hands and too much money in his wallet?

A huge embarrassment:

Ronaldo, the Brazilian football star, is at the centre of a police investigation after a night on the town ended with an argument in a motel room after he discovered that three prostitutes he had allegedly hired were transvestites.

Ronaldo had been spending Sunday evening celebrating a victory by Flamengo, the local team he supported as a boy, in the Rio state football championship.

After attending the game the 31-year-old AC Milan player, who is recovering from a knee injury, went to a nightclub in the Barra de Tijuca neighbourhood, a nouveau riche enclave favoured by footballers and Brazilian soap opera stars. He reportedly left the club at about 4am and soon afterwards picked up a prostitute on a nearby avenue.

They went to a nearby sex motel, where the prostitute called two more friends to join them. Ronaldo told police that they offered him cocaine, which he refused, and that on discovering that the three were transvestites, he offered each £300 to leave and keep the story from the press.

It appears that he has also lost his girlfriend and his Nike sponsorship deal may be in jeopardy. The guy who was being talked about as the new Pele is becoming more and more like the new Garrincha.

Tough Luck

Alvaro Uribe is having a bad week:

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe should be investigated for bribery, an opposition party said on Tuesday, as a former Congress member testified that the government offered her illegal favors in exchange for backing Uribe's re-election.

Yidis Medina says she switched her vote to support the bill that allowed Uribe to run for and win a second term in 2006 after administration officials offered to let her appoint members of three local commissions in her home province.

A really bad week:

An incarcerated paramilitary soldier accused Colombia's president and his brother of helping plan a 1997 massacre, El Nuevo Herald reported Sunday.

The right-wing paramilitaries attacked the village because its inhabitants were suspected of harboring leftist guerrillas, sworn testimony given to the nation's prosecutor general and obtained by El Nuevo Herald revealed.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has denied the allegation, saying it was just another failed attempt to tie him to the paramilitaries.

While accusations don't rise to the level of proof, one cannot help but wonder why these accusations continue to dog him if, as he claims, he's as pure as driven snow. With regard to the bribery accusations, this is not something that can be blamed on the left.

There is this, however:

Medina says the government never delivered the favors it promised, prompting her to make the scandal public.

It seems to me that it would be much simpler to prove bribery if the party offering the bribe delivers on the bribe. The sheer number of those close to Uribe with ties to the paramilitaries cannot be good news for him, especially with regard to CFTA.

Unintended consequences

Worse than you thought. Here.

The More Things Change in Brazil . . .

Sadly, the more they remain the same. Here's some of the latest:

Pará remains a den of corruption and impunity:

Emival Barbosa Machado, 50, was shot three times Friday in the eastern city of Tucurui, the Globo TV network said. No arrests have been made.

Machado had often reported illegal logging and shipments of lumber in Para, a largely lawless state where American nun and rain forest defender Dorothy Stang was killed in 2005.

Machado told the environmental protection agency Ibama that locals were forced to deliver wood to loggers and were killed if they refused.

"He made various complaints to us, and we seized lumber and boats thanks to his reports," Anibal Picanco, Ibama's superintendent in Para, said in a televised interview.

The police in Rio are still trigger happy:

Police combed the alleyways of a Rio de Janeiro slum on Saturday in search of an alleged gang leader who escaped a raid that killed 11 people, including a 70-year-old woman.

Friday night's bloody operation failed to turn up the suspected head of the drug trade in the City of God shantytown, a man known as Tota, said a policeman who gave his name only as Sgt. Freitas in accordance with police policy.

"He's in hiding," Freitas said. "But we're there and looking for him.

Police said 10 of those killed on Friday were alleged drug gang members. Seventy-year-old bystander Jocelia Afonso was killed by a stray bullet, and two other elderly residents were wounded in the crossfire, Freitas said.

Sorry, but I don't believe them, As the article notes, 1,260 civilians were killed by police last year. That number  should be unacceptable.

I suppose the people in Rio can some comfort in this news about Recife, but any such comfort should be cold:

This seaside city, a favourite of European tourists, gets much more attention for the shark attacks that have killed 18 people since 1992 than for its human killings - at least 2,617 in the metropolitan area last year. While tourists are warned not to take valuables to the beaches, as in most Brazilian cities, little is said about the murder rate mostly because the violence largely stays in the poor areas.

While Rio de Janeiro's bloody drug war makes international headlines, this balmy city of 1.5 million has a homicide rate of 90.9 per 100,000 - more than twice as deadly as Rio, according to the Latin American Technological Network's Map of Violence.

That last sentence in the first paragraph goes to the core of the problem. As the article notes, some journalists are trying to put faces on these victims here (link in Portuguese). I wish them much success, but they have a difficult struggle to really make a difference.

A Little More Light and a Little Less Heat

Boz, in this post asks these questions and makes this request:

So is the entire Colombian government guilty of paramilitary ties? Are they all innocent victims of false accusations and a slander campaign? The truth almost certainly falls somewhere in the middle.

Unfortunately, the comments led to a spewing of partisan name calling with a little bit of light being shed here among the left and the right. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I come from a slightly different position from some of the commenters. I criticize leftist leaders like Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez; I carry no water for the FARC, the AUC or the Uribe administration.

What I do see are a number of bad actors on both sides:

• President Álvaro Uribe has a long record of either him or his surrogates saying nasty and false statements about those agitating for action against crimes by the paramilitary terrorists. These sorts of statements have endangered lives.
• If Hugo Chávez wants to help get hostages released from the FARC, he should assist without praising the likes of Raúl Reyes. One wonders how he would feel if when Pedro Carmona dies, Álvaro Uribe had a moment of silence in his memory.
• Ecuador and Venezuela need to protect their borders with Colombia better. The region is better off if all nations have more stability. If they want Uribe weakened, they should not countenance the terrorists who he opposes and help his popularity in Colombia on their territory and they should seek to rid their governments of elected officials who may very well be supporting such groups. Similarly, they would not want their political opponents receiving support from armed groups opposing them and seeking refuge in Colombia.
• President Uribe should also seek to establish common cause on issues of security even if they can't stand each other. There are greater issues than their own egos here.
• President Uribe should also realize that if he wants to transform Colombia, it must be done peacefully and with the establishment of institutions. Enduring change will come to Colombia not from one man, but from institutions and justice. That seems to be lost on him, however.

What is Colombia's best hope right now is an independent judiciary that can protect those seeking justice. That's proving to be harder and harder as time goes on.

The Next Couple of Days

I'm busy today and tomorrow I'm going to Town Hall to hear a lecture by Edward O. Wilson on biodiversity sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Back on Friday Saturday.

Mierda Golpea El Ventilador?

If you want to avoid the barrage of claims that you have ties to violent paramilitaries, it's probably best to make sure that your relatives don't either:

Colombian prosecutors arrested President Alvaro Uribe's cousin on Tuesday as authorities probed his suspected ties to paramilitary death squads in a deepening political scandal for the key U.S. ally.

The investigation of Mario Uribe, a longtime senator and presidential confidant, is expected to fuel concerns among U.S. Democrats who oppose a Colombian trade pact because of human rights abuses and lingering influence of ex-paramilitaries. [my emphasis]

No kidding. One wonders who does PR for Uribe, but they are clearly incompetent. Mario Uribe attempted to get political asylum at the Costa Rican embassy, but was denied in light of the warrant. Good for them. President Alvaro Uribe's response is typically arrogant and self-serving:

"The arrest warrant for Sen. Mario Uribe hurts me, but it is a pain I will accept with patriotism and without avoiding the fulfillment of my responsibilities," the president said in a brief statement before his cousin's arrest.

I think that the CFTA is essentially dead as long as Uribe is in charge.