I really haven’t had much to add to the rescue of the Chilean minors miners.
Well, thanks to Nick Mueller,I now have this bit of artwork to share.
My congratulations to the minors and the rescue team.
The mine owners, however, can go Cheney themselves.
Someone had the grand idea of having political rivals in Bolivia play a friendly game of football (soccer).
So, when you have political enemies on the field, what happens?
Well, it appears that there was a bit of rough play:
During a soccer match between teams of political rivals in Bolivia, the country’s president, Evo Morales, was caught on tape delivering a swift knee to an opponent’s groin in retaliation for a hard foul.
As Rory Carroll reported for The Guardian, the incident took place on Sunday in the Bolivian capital, La Paz, as the president’s men took on a team led by the city’s mayor, Luis Revilla.
Mr. Obama, the next time that John Boehner opens his mouth, take your cue from Bolivian President Evo Moralez, please.
*The tallest mountain in Bolivia.
That is all.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will now make the decision after elections but before he leaves office:
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will decide who gets Brazil’s multi-billion dollar contract to build jet fighters after the October elections but before he leaves office on Jan. 1, his defense minister said Sept. 7.
The finalists now battling it out in the final stages of the tender are France’s Rafale made by Dassault, Sweden’s Gripen NG by Saab, and the F/A-18 Super Hornet manufactured by U.S. giant Boeing.
Da Silva favors the Rafale, because he thinks that there are more opportunities for technical transfer and other cooperation with the French, while the military favors the Gripen, which will be the least expensive aircraft over its life time, having half the engines, and half the weight of the two competitors.
As to the F/A-18, tech transfer is rather iffy, but the unit price is likely the lowest, and it might help with cooperation with any US military operations in Latin America.
My guess is that he will choose the Rafale, he has already expressed a strong preference for the aircraft.
At this point, there is no intention to use it on Brazil’s aircraft carrier, but that possibility might push them towards either the Rafale-M or the F/A-18 E/F, both of which are carrier capable.
The Chilean President has denied a request by the Catholic Church to pardon members of the Pinochet junta currently jailed for murder, rape, kidnapping, etc.:
Chilean President Sebastian Pinera on Sunday denied a pardon to people jailed for dictatorship-era crimes, a move likely to ease tensions with the opposition and rights groups over a controversial call for clemency.
Chile’s Catholic Church had asked Pinera to free or lower jail sentences of military officers convicted for human rights violations as well as other criminals in a call for clemency to mark the country’s upcoming bicentennial celebrations.
The pardon request infuriated human right groups and the center-left opposition, rekindling memories of General Augusto Pinochet’s 1973-1990 rule that still divides many Chileans.
I’m thinking that the Church of Rome issues of forgiveness that are a bit “closer to home”.
Perhaps they should address these matters before engaging in a full throated defense of the perpetrators of horrors of the Chilean dictatorship.
It’s Not “Free Trade” When Union Members are Murdered
Call your Congressman, and ask them to vote against a free trade deal with Columbia, where more union activists are murdered than in the rest of the world combined.
Without the right to organize, and government enforcement against management thugs, Columbia is subsidizing the labor costs of business.
Laura Silsby, the leader of the “missionary” expedition to rescue Haitian “orphans”, wasconvicted on charges related to human trafficking and sentenced to time served, so she has been released, and I assume that she is heading back to Idaho:
All 10 of the Americans were initially detained by the Haitian authorities, but only Silsby was charged.
Prosecutors first accused her of abducting the children, but the charge was downgraded to one of “irregular travel” – a crime which covers people smuggling.
Prosecutor Jean-Serge Joseph said she had been sentenced to three months and eight days in jail – the exact time she had spent in custody waiting for her trial.
IMHO, she used the tragedy, as well as the fervor of her fellow church members, who believed that they were rescuing from Catholicism and damnation by raising them as Evangelicals, to get the ball rolling, and I think that at least part of her motivation was money.
Considering her own problems with her failing online shopping business and her association with a man under investigation for sex trafficking, there is a strong stench of corruption and the profit motive.
Older posts are here.
This is a good thing for democracy in Columbia.
12 years is too long.
Interestingly enough, they stopped a plebiscite on this not for broad constitutional reasons, but on narrow procedural ones, “on the grounds that a referendum approved by congress ignored checks and balances and because supporters exceeded financing limits during a petition drive”.
The campaign finance violations are no surprise; he is a darling of the moneyed class in Columbia.
This is not an exoneration. It’s an acknowledgment that the courts in Haiti are a shambles, and that they are getting a lot of pressure from the US.
It’s clear from the back story that something very wrong was going on:
A judge in Haiti has said the last two Christian US missionaries being held on suspicion of abducting children after the earthquake may be freed in days.
Bernard Sainvil told Reuters the case, which involves 33 children, should be closed this week because there were no criminal grounds to pursue it.
A lawyer for the two said he thought they would be freed by Thursday.
Eight fellow missionaries were released last week but their leader and her assistant were kept in custody.
The other 8 are claiming that they had been scammed by Silsby and Coulter, and I am inclined to believe that something more than inattention to the finer points of Haitian immigration law is involved.
The two apparent ring leaders remain in custody, and as a condition of their release, they must return later to Haiti to answer investigator questions:
While Judge Saint-Vil’s ruling allows eight of the Americans to leave Haiti on the condition that they return to the country to answer further questions in the case, it requires that Laura Silsby, the Idaho businesswoman who led the group, and her live-in nanny, Charisa Coulter, remain in jail to answer questions about traveling to Haiti before the Jan. 12 earthquake.
Some of the freed Americans had already contended this month that they were misled by Ms. Silsby, who had faced more than a dozen legal complaints connected to her online shopping business before she persuaded fellow Baptists from Idaho to assist her in setting up an orphanage for Haitian children.
“We are disappointed that all in the group are not being released,” said Terry Michaelson, a lawyer for Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho, where five of the detainees, including Ms. Silsby and Ms. Coulter, attended church.
The church mission’s lawyer had put forward about $7,000 to help pay for the first month’s rent for the orphanage that Ms. Silsby planned to establish in the Dominican Republic.
…………
Some of the freed Americans had already contended this month that they were misled by Ms. Silsby, who had faced more than a dozen legal complaints connected to her online shopping business before she persuaded fellow Baptists from Idaho to assist her in setting up an orphanage for Haitian children.”
(emphasis mine)
This is beginning to sound like something written by Dashiell Hammett.
First, I think that it’s pretty clear that something if fishy, since the State Department is refusing to intervene in the case, despite the fact that they, and their allies have aggressively lobbied for this.
It may have something to do with a report that this appears to be the 2nd time that they tried to abscond with children without paperwork or vetting that these were in fact orphans.
As I said before, this was a religiously motivated kidnapping.
Luckily for them, it looks like the they will be released shortly, with a finding by the judge of “the White American get out of jail free card” “no criminal intent.”
We have a report from the Brazilian Newspaper Folha de S. Paulo reporting that there will be 36 Dassault Rafales purchased at $175 million each, ($6.2 billion) and this constitutes a $2 billion price cut in the deal.
On the other hand, the Brazil defense ministry had denied that any formal decision has yet been made.
$175 million each? Great googly moogly, for a few bucks more they could buy the F-22, if it could be sold, and if the production tooling still existed.
Let’s be clear about this: There is sufficient evidence for formal charges to be filed against these “missionaries” attempting to “rescue” the children.
Now that they have been officially charged with a crime that can result in 5-15 years in prison, we can see some truth seeking.
As I have said before, I think that they were kidnapping the children with the goal of raising them as Evangelical Christians, and so I welcome the fact that they have been charged.
There has been all to much in the way of prosecutorial discretion cutting in favor extremist religious fundamentalists, and the realization that they can charged, tried, and sent to jail when convicted makes for a good deterrent.
Much of the problem with violent religious extremists throughout the world has been an outgrowth of authorities ignoring the “little things”, because it is seen that their hearts are in the “right place”.
For a few days, the Baptist missionaries currently detained in Haiti for trafficking in children has been in the news, and I have been marinating on this.
At its most basic, I think that this was a deliberate attempt to abduct these children, though I think that money was at the root of this evil.
These people weren’t just missing paperwork, they were moving children out of the country for a purpose: to save souls.
They believed that these children would go to hell unless they were raised as, and became, Baptists, so they were breaking the law to “save” these children, some of whom were probably actually had living relatives.
So, much like William Calley, they likely, “destroyed families to save them”.
You must understand, notwithstanding all the stories about Voodoo in Haiti, the populace there is overwhelming (80%) Catholic, and these people were not rescuing people from Voodoo, but from Catholicism, which they see as not Christian, and hence a road straight to hell.
This is the evil that true believers do: Stealing children from the families.
As to the disposition, should it be determined in court that they are guilty, they should go to jail for a very long time.
Any consideration in terms of sentencing on the of the sincerity of their faith will just encourage more people with similar world views to do similarly evil things.
FWIW, I chose the Al Jazeera link just because it f%$#s with these people, here is the Google news link.
According to this report, the Brazilian President’s first choice, the Dassault Rafale, is actually ranked 3rd:
Brazil’s F-X2 fighter programme could be the subject of further delays, after a summary of the air force’s 30,000-page evaluation report was leaked to one of the country’s leading newspapers.
The Folha de São Paulo newspaper reported that the air force’s F-X2 procurement programme committee has ranked Saab’s Gripen NG as its first-choice candidate for the deal, initially for 36 aircraft, due to its lowest acquisition and operating costs. It is followed closely by Boeing’s F/A-18E/F Super Hornet Block II.
I think that part of this is higher level diplomacy, with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva believing that closer relations with France are more important than those with Sweden (that’s a no-brainer), and his belief that allying with Dassault will provide more opportunities to the Brazilian aerospace industry.
The Rafale is certainly not the low cost solution, it’s low production numbers mean that acquiring the aircraft will necessarily be expensive, and the Gripen is ½ the size of its competitors, with ½ the number of engines, so it will be much cheaper to operate.
I would also note that, given Swedish requirements for austere field operations, it would likely be better suited to operating from some hole-in-the-wall air strip in the Amazon jungle.
Unemployment, SA vs NSA, h/t Brad Delong
Well, it’s Thursday, and initial unemployment claims rose for the 2nd straight week, once again worse than forecast.
What might be more significant is the significant divergence between seasonally and non-seasonably adjusted numbers, because the NSA unemployment number was 800,000 initial claims. (see graph pr0n)
The 4 week moving average continued to fall though, down 9,000 to 440,750 and the continuing claims number fell by 211 thousand to 4.596 million, though it should be noted that all these numbers are seasonally adjusted, and it appears that the adjustments are getting a big hinky.
In any case, the DoL’s numbers are here.
Retail sales also were below forecast, with the December number showing a -0.3% drop, missing analysts expectations of +0.5%.
We do have some good news though, with business inventories rising in November; it is the 2nd straight month, and the 2nd month-to-month increase in 15 months.
In real estate, foreclosures rose 14% in December, and total defaults for 2009 hit a record, 2,824,674, up 21% from 2008, and more than double the number for 2007.
In central bank land, Chilean central bank kept it’s rate at 0.5%, as the economy in the Latin American nation remains mired in recession and deflation.
In the US, the bad financial numbers had Treasurys rising as investors looked for safety.
In energy, warmer weather continued to push oil prices down, while in currency, the dollar was essentially unchanged.
It’s tentatively a 7 on the Richter scale.
Considering the fact that casualties in earth quakes are buildings collapsing on people, and this fact, when juxtaposed with the abysmal quality of construction in Haiti, casualties will no doubt be high.
There have also been aftershocks.
This will not be pretty.
So, the cut a deal between the President of Honduras, and the leaders of the coup that ousted him.
It’s a fairly simple deal, a power sharing arrangement, but then the coup leaders decide that they can’t hold a vote to approve this until after the elections, meaning that they will be in complete control of the electoral process, and doubtless engaging in fraud, and the response of the Obama administration is, “Sounds good to me”:
Under fire from allies in Latin America and on Capitol Hill, the Obama administration moved Tuesday to try to salvage the American-brokered agreement that had been billed as paving the way for a peaceful end to the coup in Honduras. Instead, the accord seems to have provided the country’s de facto government with a way to stay in power until a presidential election scheduled for the end of this month.
The State Department sent Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Craig Kelly to Honduras on Tuesday for meetings with Manuel Zelaya, who was ousted from power as president more than four months ago, and with the head of the de facto government, Roberto Micheletti.
The problem here is that when bad people seize power, they like to hold onto it, and the Obama administration took a cowardly position, because they just did not want to be bothered with little things like the principle of democracy and free elections:
The deal began to unravel last week when the Congress announced it would postpone a vote on Mr. Zelaya’s return to power until after the election. In protest, Mr. Zelaya then refused to submit names for the coalition government. And the United States, breaking with its allies in Latin America, announced it would recognize the results of the coming presidential election, even if Mr. Zelaya were not reinstated.
A hint that this move on their part was a completely boneheaded move that gave succor to tyrants? This:
While the announcement was celebrated by Republicans as a “reversal” of the administration’s policy, it ignited a storm of criticism from Mr. Obama’s allies at home and across Latin America.
If you are getting cheers from the ‘Phants, you are on the wrong side of the argument.
What happened here is that it was pressure from other Latin American nations that forced the State Department to start talking about sanctions against the coup leaders, and the Treasury started talking about possible restrictions on remittances, which created an agreement.
The problem was that once the agreement was signed, signals were sent indicating that the US no longer had any interest in the matter.
This is a big deal for a number of reasons.
First, it is a reversal on the progress toward democracies in Latin America, and second it has some very real implications for US foreign policy in the region, because, unlike the US (and Canada), the rest of this hemisphere takes a very dim view on green lighting coups, because they all remember the bad old days when the overthrow of a legitimately elected government, sometimes at the request of US corporate interests, was the rule, rather than the exception.
China and Russia are both making significant efforts in the region, both in terms of securing raw materials and making military sales, and this, along with out completely boneheaded policies on Cuba, are likely to make Latin American countries much more receptive to their overtures.
