It was 16 years ago today...I wonder how many people outside of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan remember.

Iraq's FM Favorite Song...

...would have to be this classic from KC and the Sunshine Band. Am I dating myself? Anyway AP reports that the FM is concerned about...oh it's so hard to say this with a straight face...he's concerned about premature pullout. I know I'm a sicko, but it sounds so wrong.

May: The Deadliest Month

The Iraqi security forces lost 220 this past month more than any other month. Almost 500 civilians were lost and 77 Americans. The Iraqi government is reacting by speaking in the only language that insurgents will respond to - violence. Iraq is once again applying the death penalty.

Jeffrey Sach's Intellectual Poverty

David Frum feels bad about it, but he piles on Jeffrey Sach's The End of Poverty:

Sachs envisions a future in which the governments of poor countries and the UN will together be granted authority to direct massive tides of capital to industries ranging from health care to energy. He believes, for example, that technology companies have invested insufficient funds in photovoltaic cells and improved battery technology. Under
his plan, the UN would correct this and other errors by putting money where he believes it should go. A half-century of failure does not discourage him.

Sachs similarly shrugs off the threat posed by bureaucracy and corruption, two forces that have crippled plans like his in the past. This central plan, he pledges, will be carefully constructed so as to minimize such structural problems. How so? Pretty clearly, Sachs envisions that the big bold planner will be someone much like himself—and he is unshakably confident that this godlike figure will get right what so many lesser minds before him have gotten wrong.

Sach’s confidence on this score would be a little more infectious if he showed more awareness that his preferred methods had failed in the past. Unfortunately, on the evidence of this book, the history he knows best is his own autobiography. More than half its length is devoted to the story of Sach’s career, detailing his successes and explaining away the failures (none of which, one learns, was in any way his responsibility).

The Nation Reviews The World is Flat...

...and it is underwhelmed by the book and globalization in general:

Except for those Third World NGOs, no one in the flat world seems to be doing anything of loftier significance than getting Wal-Mart's suppliers to make deliveries just a few minutes nearer to ship time or inventing a new radio-frequency identification microchip to track its inventory.

Chavez Starts Taking Land

Christian Science Monitor has a decent report on land expropriation in Venezuela. Chavez is taking from the rich and giving to the poor of course, but it makes little sense in this day and age. An economist from the Council on Hemispheric Affairs compares Chavez program's to Lincoln's during the Civil War. The biggest difference of course is that the US was 70-80% rural at the time and 21st century Venezuela is not even close.

Hitchens v. Hitchens

Most people here don't know that Christpher Hitchens has a Tory brother who also happens to be a writer. They really and I do mean really do not get along. Despite being estranged they did manage to appear together at a literary festival in the UK. The exchange is a rollicking affair touching on the Stalinist joke that lead to their estrangement, cold war politics, family dynamics and C. Hitchens doing his non-comformist thing. You can read the transcript here.

Sen. Nelson v. MS-13

Sen. Bill Nelson is going after the gang/terrorist group MS-13:

Nelson's office Tuesday released a bill he plans to file when Congress returns next week that would add aiding the entry of street gang members to a list of immigration violations punishable by 10 years in prison. The bill would apply to anyone who assisted any foreign gang member, but it is targeted at stemming the entry of MS-13 members.

"MS-13 is one of the largest and most violent street gangs," Nelson said Tuesday in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, before returning to the United States, according to a statement released by his office.

Freaking Out

By the way a special message for Emmanuel...thanks for scaring the life out of me. I saw the initials ecv and thought my wife had invited herself to the blog (those happen to be her initials). I love my darling wife but she would have turned this into a forum discussing the merits of telenovelas.

Getting it Going Again

My apologies for neglecting my duties at the blog, but the better part of the last month was spent looking for a new place to live and preparing for the baby. I am back...for now.