Fun For a Girl and a Boy

Found here.

HT: P @ AS

Woo hoo; Now Cubans can legally have cell phones. Toasters are still, however, illegal

Yes. The US Trade Embargo is a sick anachronism. But so too is the regime.

From: Ninetymilesaway

Yes, boys and girls, your ordinary citizen can now ante up to the check-in at any hotel establishment on the island of Cuba, as long as he or she has the money to pay in hard currency. Ah, there's the rub.

A cursory search reveals at least one hotel in Varadero where a weekend stay costs about 120 dollars. Do a little simple math. Convert it to CUC's and then divide it by the average monthly salary of a average Cuban. Soon you realize that a weekend in Varadero would cost the equivalent of 5 and a half months complete take home pay. Now say you make 35 thousand a year, it would be like paying about 10 thousand dollars for your weekend.

...

If you look at the "reforms" that have made the latest splash in the media, they all have one thing in common. Cell phones, computers, appliances (except for the lowly toaster, they'll have to wait 'til 2010 for them), they are the appurtenances of modern life, the must haves of the global consumer society. Your average American hears, "Cubans will be allowed to buy microwaves," and immediately pictures them in addition to the Kraftmaid kitchen with the Kitchen Aid appliances, not as a replacement for the lone hot plate with the grease of twenty years and the fraying cord, the cost of which must be paid out for years. So to the uninformed, the impression made is that Cuba is joining the 21st century.

Now Cubans may be isolated, but they have a sense of how the other half lives. All they have to do is look at the tourists, the party apparatchiks, and the State stores, or look to their exiled kin. And in part, they realize how little likelihood there is that they will be able to afford these luxuries the rest of the world takes for granted. As usual with the regime, appearance is all.

Still among the banned, however, are the rights of free assembly, free speech, free elections. Call me a skeptic, but I'm looking for one tell, and that is the release of the political prisoners. The day that Dr. Oscar Biscet walks out of whatever hell hole they've transferred him to a free man; then I will believe change is truly on the way. Until then, I fear I have misjudged Raul, who may very well have been the brains behind keeping the throne all these many years.

And as Canadians are always wont to tell you: they have great literacy and more doctors per square mile or some such tripe. Well, they do have great literacy, but there's little to read. And Fidel (who now wears a shell suit) sold off many of his doctors to Chavez for US$27 a barrel Venezuelan oil. There is also the little medical issue plaguing the Cuban medical system: antiquated equipment and an acute shortage of drugs. Oh yeah, that's America's fault....

Addendum: Spoke with a Cuban Graduate Student (in Divinity no less) at Trinity College about the toasters. His comments were. Practically everyone he knows in Cuba already has a cell phone, albeit registered in a foreigner's name, and that Cuba is not ready for toasters as there is not enough electricity on the Island to support them. However, unlike the Dominincan Republic, they have no longer have the nightly blackouts that those toaster wielding Dominicans do.

Excellent Idea: Why Not Just Buy Out Mugabe (It would certainly be cheaper and might set a decent precedent for other dictators looking for an out).

Beautiful isn't it?

As the Zimbabwean electoral soap opera continues to unfurl, I am led more and more to wonder why "we" (Western governments and IFIs) don't simply buy out corrupt dictators? The World Bank has loaned a lot of money to Zimbabwe, all of it seemingly wasted judging by current conditions there. From the Bank's Zimbabwe page:

Between 1980, when Zimbabwe joined the Bretton Woods Institutions, and 2000 when the country fell behind in its payments on World Bank loans, the Bank funded a total of 33 projects worth US$1.6 billion. Bank support concentrated on infrastructure, agriculture, health support, and community and local government programs, financed from both International Development Association (IDA) Credits (42%) available to low-income countries, and International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) loans (58%) available to middle-income countries. Zimbabwe’s arrears to the World Bank were estimated at US$521 million as of September 13, 2007. The arrears to the IMF stood at US$134 million at end-July 2007 and to the AfdB at US$359 million as of end-April 2007.

So why not "buy the rascals out"? Go to Mugabe in 2002 and offer him $500 million cash to go live in Canada. Is it that his expected profits from being in power are too large for us to afford the buyout? Is it because of moral hazard? Is it because of the moral outrage such a scheme would create?

Or is it because if the institutions of the country don't change, the new president will simply become the next Mugabe?

From Kids Prefer Cheese

I will say that this election has become that much more interesting. Mugabe, who often compared himself to Hitler as someone fighting for the rights of his people with the use of the white landowners as scapegoats, looks increasingly like he will jump. I don't know much about the opposition, but they certainly can't be any worse. It's a wonderful thing, cameras and democracy.

Good To See Old Habits Die Hard

Many Americans assume that China's internet users are both aware of and unhappy about their government's oversight and control of the internet. But in a new survey, most Chinese say they approve of internet control and management, especially when it comes from their government.

According to findings from the fourth and most recent of a series of surveys about internet use in China from 2000 to 2007,1 over 80% of respondents say they think the internet should be managed or controlled, and in 2007, almost 85% say they think the government should be responsible for doing it.

HT: AS
Original story here.

Isn't There Something Inherently Self-Negating or Even Oxymornic in Letting Ex-Behind the Curtain Countries Join Nato?

Harper Doesn't Seem to Think So.

PRIME MINISTER HARPER BACKS UKRAINE’S PROGRESS TOWARD NATO MEMBERSHIP

April 2, 2008
Bucharest

Prime Minister Stephen Harper today expressed Canada’s strong support for Ukraine to move towards membership in the NATO alliance.

“Ukraine has made great progress on democratization and in opening up its economy in recent years,” the Prime Minister said. “The country is on a path to a better future for its people, and I call upon our NATO partners to agree that we should keep Ukraine moving forward toward full membership in the alliance.”

...

The Prime Minister also indicated that Canada would join any NATO consensus to admit the Republic of Georgia to NATO’s Membership Action Plan.

Damn I Wish I Could Write Like This: Hitch on Hilary

(This concentration camp, Jasenovac,was set up by the Ustaša of Croatia in 1941, but you get the picture.)

The Tall Tale of Tuzla
Hillary Clinton's Bosnian misadventure should disqualify her from the presidency, but the airport landing is the least of it.
By Christopher Hitchens

The punishment visited on Sen. Hillary Clinton for her flagrant, hysterical, repetitive, pathological lying about her visit to Bosnia should be much heavier than it has yet been and should be exacted for much more than just the lying itself. There are two kinds of deliberate and premeditated deceit, commonly known as suggestio falsi and suppressio veri. (Neither of them is covered by the additionally lying claim of having "misspoken.") The first involves what seems to be most obvious in the present case: the putting forward of a bogus or misleading account of events. But the second, and often the more serious, means that the liar in question has also attempted to bury or to obscure something that actually is true. Let us examine how Sen. Clinton has managed to commit both of these offenses to veracity and decency and how in doing so she has rivaled, if not indeed surpassed, the disbarred and perjured hack who is her husband and tutor.

I remember disembarking at the Sarajevo airport in the summer of 1992 after an agonizing flight on a U.N. relief plane that had had to "corkscrew" its downward approach in order to avoid Serbian flak and ground fire. As I hunched over to scuttle the distance to the terminal, a mortar shell fell as close to me as I ever want any mortar shell to fall. The vicious noise it made is with me still. And so is the shock I felt at seeing a civilized and multicultural European city bombarded round the clock by an ethno-religious militia under the command of fascistic barbarians. I didn't like the Clinton candidacy even then, but I have to report that many Bosnians were enthused by Bill Clinton's pledge, during that ghastly summer, to abandon the hypocritical and sordid neutrality of the George H.W. Bush/James Baker regime and to come to the defense of the victims of ethnic cleansing.

I am recalling these two things for a reason. First, and even though I admit that I did once later misidentify a building in Sarajevo from a set of photographs, I can tell you for an absolute certainty that it would be quite impossible to imagine that one had undergone that experience at the airport if one actually had not. Yet Sen. Clinton, given repeated chances to modify her absurd claim to have operated under fire while in the company of her then-16-year-old daughter and a USO entertainment troupe, kept up a stone-faced and self-loving insistence that, yes, she had exposed herself to sniper fire in the cause of gaining moral credit and, perhaps to be banked for the future, national-security "experience." This must mean either a) that she lies without conscience or reflection; or b) that she is subject to fantasies of an illusory past; or c) both of the above. Any of the foregoing would constitute a disqualification for the presidency of the United States.

Yet this is only to underline the YouTube version of events and the farcical or stupid or Howard Wolfson (take your pick) aspects of the story. But here is the historical rather than personal aspect, which is what you should keep your eye on. Note the date of Sen. Clinton's visit to Tuzla. She went there in March 1996. By that time, the critical and tragic phase of the Bosnia war was effectively over, as was the greater part of her husband's first term. What had happened in the interim? In particular, what had happened to the 1992 promise, four years earlier, that genocide in Bosnia would be opposed by a Clinton administration?

In the event, President Bill Clinton had not found it convenient to keep this promise. Let me quote from Sally Bedell Smith's admirable book on the happy couple, For Love of Politics:

Taking the advice of Al Gore and National Security Advisor Tony Lake, Bill agreed to a proposal to bomb Serbian military positions while helping the Muslims acquire weapons to defend themselves—the fulfillment of a pledge he had made during the 1992 campaign. But instead of pushing European leaders, he directed Secretary of State Warren Christopher merely to consult with them. When they balked at the plan, Bill quickly retreated, creating a "perception of drift." The key factor in Bill's policy reversal was Hillary, who was said to have "deep misgivings" and viewed the situation as "a Vietnam that would compromise health-care reform." The United States took no further action in Bosnia, and the "ethnic cleansing" by the Serbs was to continue for four more years, resulting in the deaths of more than 250,000 people.

I can personally witness to the truth of this, too. I can remember, first, one of the Clintons' closest personal advisers—Sidney Blumenthal—referring with acid contempt to Warren Christopher as "a blend of Pontius Pilate with Ichabod Crane." I can remember, second, a meeting with Clinton's then-Secretary of Defense Les Aspin at the British Embassy. When I challenged him on the sellout of the Bosnians, he drew me aside and told me that he had asked the White House for permission to land his own plane at Sarajevo airport, if only as a gesture of reassurance that the United States had not forgotten its commitments. The response from the happy couple was unambiguous: He was to do no such thing, lest it distract attention from the first lady's health care "initiative."

It's hardly necessary for me to point out that the United States did not receive national health care in return for its acquiescence in the murder of tens of thousands of European civilians. But perhaps that is the least of it. Were I to be asked if Sen. Clinton has ever lost any sleep over those heaps of casualties, I have the distinct feeling that I could guess the answer. She has no tears for anyone but herself. In the end, and over her strenuous objections, the United States and its allies did rescue our honor and did put an end to Slobodan Milosevic and his state-supported terrorism. Yet instead of preserving a polite reticence about this, or at least an appropriate reserve, Sen. Clinton now has the obscene urge to claim the raped and slaughtered people of Bosnia as if their misery and death were somehow to be credited to her account! Words begin to fail one at this point. Is there no such thing as shame? Is there no decency at last? Let the memory of the truth, and the exposure of the lie, at least make us resolve that no Clinton ever sees the inside of the White House again.

Just What The Women of America Ought to Do With The US$ in A Tail Spin

Oh, The Irony: Geothermal Probe Sinks German City

Geothermal probe sinks German city

By Bojan Pancevski in Vienna
Last Updated: 2:02am BST 31/03/2008

A German town is subsiding after authorities drilled underground in order to harness green energy.

Staufen, in the Black Forest, was proud of its innovative geothermal power plan that was supposed to provide environmentally-friendly heating.

But only two weeks after contractors drilled down 460ft to extract heat from below the earth, large cracks have appeared in buildings as the town centre subsided about a third of an inch (8mm).

The baroque Town Hall, the main church, two schools and over 64 other buildings in the historic centre were severely affected. Experts said buildings in the outer part of the town had risen by a similar amount.

...

A spokesman for Staufen council said: "The community was so proud of the environmentally-friendly geothermal energy project that it would be a painful irony if that was the cause for this incredible occurrence."

Hat Tip: Kids Love Cheese

You Could Too if the ONLY had a Beak and No Bones

HT: Netscrap

Earth Day and Sussex Avenue Part II

Could Harper not have put the lights out for an hour at 24 Sussex? How much would that have hurt? How many cheap shots could that have avoided? And what’s wrong with saving a bit of power anyway, less than 6% I understand for 1 hour of 1 day of 1 year. Well, a lot--and that is perhaps what Harper was thinking, Borat not! If, for arguments sake, 10% less power was used during the hour (which is high), if my sums are correct, we would have saved 0.114077116% energy for the year. Spreadsheet available on request. Now if we subtract that figure from the amount of energy spent on Earth day (some would say incalculable, others invaluable—and you know who you are) I am pretty sure we would seriously be in the red and it is no wonder that the power companies get behind such projects: they look good and sell more power! Nonetheless, the Grades 1s, under the auspices of that August apolitical institution the Toronto District School Board, are being made to write letters to Harper about his failure to flick the switch. Why give the TDSB such fun? Dumb.

And He Couldn't Be Bothered To Turn Out The Lights on Earth Day

STATEMENT BY THE PRIME MINISTER OF CANADA

March 31, 2008
Ottawa, Ontario

Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued the following statement today to congratulate Canada’s women’s curling team:

“On behalf of all Canadians, I would like to congratulate Canada’s women’s curling team on capturing the 2008 Ford World Women’s Curling Championship after defeating China 7-4 in Sunday’s final.

Along with all Canadians, I am extremely proud of the outstanding performance by our women’s curling team. Their exciting play throughout the tournament coupled with some close final end victories proved that Canadian players have the talent and grit to overcome adversity and emerge as champions.

Team Canada, comprised of skip Jennifer Jones, lead Dawn Askin, second Jill Officer, third Cathy Overton-Clapham, Fifth Jennifer Clark-Rouire, and coach Janet Arnott, became the first Canadian team to win the title on home ice since 1996.

We are proud that with this most recent victory, Canada has now won the Women’s World Curling Championships fifteen times, and has won medals 26 times in 30 tournaments."

Now This Was Unexpected (at least by me): Outcome of Zimbawe Election May Not Have Been Pre-Determined.

Yesterday, I made a joke (in rather poor taste I hasten to add) to the effect that no one in Vegas would take my bet on the outcome of yesterday's election in Zimbabwe. The election I assumed would be like the one posted in that great Onion story about the Diebold machines accidentally released the US Presidential Results prior to the election.I am sorry I didn't actually consult any bookies though. Woulda, shoulda,coulda, I suppose. But the great thing about Zimbabwe's recent election is not the outcome -- though it would be a wonderful thing if the true winners of the election were able to take office without bloodshed, I doubt it though -- but the election is not (yet) a pre-done deal. Whether or not Mugabe cedes his throne, for that is what we should call it, if he should have lost the election--which his party most likely has--but that the whole world will be reminded of just how nasty a son of a bitch old-school African tin pot dictator he really is.
In any event, he's stowed billions abroad and has a very nice villa in Cap Ferrat to retire gracefully from the scene. Grace, I do not think is much that we will, however, see.

Quote of the Day

“Wil Shipley, a Seattle software developer, uses his iPhone at the Whole Foods fish counter to check websites for updates on which seafood is the most environmentally correct to purchase. He quizzes the staff on where and how a fish was caught. Because he carries the Internet with him, “I can be super-picky,” he said.”

From: stuffwhitepeoplelike


Hat Tip: Dalton48 at Mockturle

Fitna: Those Tolerant Dutch!

Yeah. That movie.



I am not sure who this speaks worse about. The maker or the subject. Actually, I know: the maker.

Is There No Rest for the Wicked: Elisabeth Nietzsche and her Brother Friedrich Likely to be Disintered by Evil Mining Company

Two gravestones stand side by side in the churchyard of the little village of Röcken, south of Leipzig: one belongs to Friedrich Nietzsche, one of the greatest and most misunderstood philosophers; the other marks the grave of his sister Elisabeth, a lifelong anti-Semite who hijacked her brother's writings after his death and used them to serve the cause of Nazism, leaving a stain on his philosophy that has never been fully erased.

Today, bulldozers belonging to a power company are preparing to dig up the town where Nietzsche and his sister were born and buried, to get at the seam of coal that runs beneath. Nietzsche and his sister may have to move.

Story here:

It wouldn't be the first time that a dead white thinker's bones have been moved.
I also understand that Kant's bones were taken from a Church in Koenigsberg by a Soviet General to his Dacha on the Volga after the Second World War as a souvenir. Alas, the world never had the benefit of ridding itself of the view of Jeremy Bentham's ugly mug. I have been given to understand that the Swiss born Rousseau is safe in The Pantheon in France. What do they say about Austria? It's the country where Hitler was born in Germany and Mozart was a native son.

A Gas of a Read from 'The Dearborn Independent' as Published by Henry Ford

Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville Beats the Anti-Semite Edison to the Recorded Sound Crunch

As many of you may know, I have a partiality to old recordings. Supposedly, they get no older than those of Thomas Edison's. (The fact that we share a birthday is purely coincidental. Another thing we share in common: neither of us invented the light bulb.) There are two interesting facts about Edison and his tin ear I want to bring up. The first is that Edison only ever thought of record and playback devices as a way to increase office efficiency. Second, when it was pointed out to Edison that people were using their phonographs to listen to music, Edison, never one to miss a business opportunity, set out to record the greatest opera singers of the time. Edison, as was his wont, made himself the ultimate judge of what a good singer sounded and summarily dismissed any singer who at all deviated from how Edison had already decided a singer should sound. Maria Callas, for example, would never have made the cut. And while people still give Edison credit for inventing recording, he didn't. Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville did. What's more, Edison's system used a roll, which you could only record on one side, and 'hill and dale' modulation, where the sound was recorded vertically rather than horizontally. Neither system gained much traction in the market but still, curiously, our winter neighbor of Henry Ford who printed at his own expense that anti-semitic rag The Dearborn Independent still managed to procure himself the credit.We also, outside of cars, do not use DC powered light bulbs either.



I won't even get to the fight wit Tesla over Direct Current. Fortunately, Edison lost the battle, but even more unfortunately Tesla was found dead and penniless in a New York Hotel room. Curiously, even though our favorite Serbian inventor supposedly committed suicide, Nikola's notebooks were never found.

You may hear Scott's original recording here.

Perpetually in Motion: A Terribly Sad Story Concerning Love

Latvia 1912: Ed Leedskalnin, 26 was jilted on the eve of his wedding by his 16- year-old fiancee, Agnes Scuffs. Broken-hearted, Ed wandered, visiting Canada and Europe before settling in Florida City, near Miami.

During his wandering in Europe, Ed noticed one outstanding feature-the land was covered with castles. This gave him a romantic notion to build a castle for Agnes and to send her pictures of it in hopes that she might come to Florida and marry him. Working only from midnight to sunrise so that no one could see how he moved the great coral stones weighing more than those of the Great Pyramid, Ed built Coral Castle for Agnes. When he finished it, he gave tours, telling his visitors that he was "Waiting For Agnes."

During the late tea-time of my insomnia last night, this story touched me. Next time I am down in sunny Florida, I hope to my best to visit this monument to Ed Leedskalnin's monument to his love Agnes. More info here.

Incidentally, I also learned that the Coral Castle (which was never called that while Mr. Leedskalnin built and lived in his home is not made out of Coral, but, rather, Oolitic Limestone.

The Truth Always Outs

Attention, Yet Another Film Review (two in fact): Goodbye Lenin (2003) and East of Bucharest (2006)

I saw with my father last night ‘Goodbye Lenin.’ If the term 'German Comedy' is not an oxymoron, I don't know what is. (I do know that some Bosch will object to my characterization though. A cute, sweet enough film, but the nostalgia for the former East Germany (which I can sort of understand) fell a little flat. The too often used voice over reminded me very much of that of Oskar the diminutive drummer in ‘The Tin Drum, a far better film. While the idea of having your mother missing the fall of the Berlin Wall as a result of a coma and convincing her that it was actually the 'Wessies' who were flooding into East Germany because they were tired of the ‘rat race’ was a clever enough conceit, but the film did not quite capture the horror of the state (for some at least). A much better, funnier film about the time, albeit in a different land, I thought was ‘East of Bucharest,’ a movie about a television talk show where people recount (and lie) as to where they were and what they were doing on December 23rd when the Securitate expelled and afterwards murdered Nicolae Ceauşescu, who knocked down central Bucharest to build a palace bigger than Versailles, and faked the revolution. What I particularly found fun was the absurd question that the Television host presented to his two guests, a drunken professor and a kindly old man: ‘Did our town have a Revolution or Not?’ Indeed, there was something very Ionesco about the film. Both films are worth watching, and both cover the same period, but I found the latter just that much better and that much more terrible.

Tonight, Das Boot: The Original Cut