A drug-induced dream
The Soviet Union and Cuba are paradises, and Mao was a great statesman, according to a textbook until just recently used by the Brazilian government in eigth grade. Which they just canceled, much to the outrage of the “academic” author:
Without saying why, the Education Ministry said Wednesday it has stopped using “New Critical History” by Brazilian academic Mario Schmidt. The textbook has been distributed free since 2002 to nearly a million students.
Gee, let’s see if we can parse this mystery. Predictably, the book’s publisher faults conservatives. But what might they object to?
“New Critical History” speaks of Mao as “a great statesman and military commander” who “loved innumerable women and was loved by them.”
And killed innumerable men women and children in the cultural revolution, eh?
The book also describes the former Soviet Union as a country without unemployment, inflation or hunger.
“Free medicine, rent equal to the cost of three packs of cigarettes, great cities with no abandoned children,” [!] Schmidt wrote. “For us in the Third World, it’s almost a dream, isn’t it?”
Which is why it collapsed, right? Dream on dude.
The text also says that while some Cubans hope that U.S. investments will return once Fidel Castro is gone, “there’s a chance Cuba again will have the poor districts and abandoned children [again with the abandoned children. An obsession?] as in the time of Fulgencio Batista,” the rightist dictator whom Castro overthrew in 1959.
Whereas, right now, it’s a workers’ paradise.
There was a moment in 1989 when we thought Lenin would be finally buried — not just literally, but metaphorically. But the dream lives on in the backward minds of the backward teachers of a backward society.
Chavez Youth on the way
Chavez is consolidating his grip on Venezuela now by attacking private schools, which will either have to submit or be closed. Betcha didn’t see that coming:
A new curriculum will be phased in during this school year, and new textbooks are being developed to help educate “the new citizen,” added Chavez’s brother and education minister, Adan Chavez, in their televised ceremony on the first day of classes.
Ah, so he picked that one up from Fidel? Appoint your chump relatives to all the ministries?
But one college-level syllabus obtained by The Associated Press shows some premedical students already have a recommended reading list including Karl Marx’s “Das Kapital” and Fidel Castro’s speeches, alongside traditional subjects like biology and chemistry.
The syllabus also includes quotations from Chavez and urges students to learn about slain revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara and Colombian rebel chief Manuel Marulanda, whose leftist guerrillas are considered a terrorist group by Colombia, the U.S. and European Union.
Why do all dictators think that they and other dictators have such profound things to say? The megalomania here is starting to sound more like Robert Mugabe, Mao, Pol Pot, Hitler, and the hit parade goes on. Those who do not learn from history are, as they say, doomed to repeat it.
Brazil digs global warming
Brazil’s president is making it clear that he thinks everyone needs to do their share on global warming, and he is also making it clear what he means by that: buy Brazilian biofuels, please!
During his visits to Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, Silva used the opportunity to promote biofuels — Brazil is the world’s largest export[er] of ethanol — as a way of providing energy while cutting emissions from fossil fuels.”We all have to assume our share of the responsibility,” said Silva, appearing with Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg after talks. “In the Brazilian case, we have 32 years of experience in dealing with ethanol.
“It’s a renewable fuel. Much, much less polluting than any other fuel, creates more jobs and every time we grow a plant, we are diminishing the greenhouse effect.”
Memo to Silva: Most biofuels require huge amounts of diesel and fertilizers to grow. Also, growing plants does not destroy CO2. It sequesters it temporarily. When the plant decays or is destroyed — say, is harvested, distilled and turned into biofuels, with the refuse being burned or rotting — the CO2 you just sequestered is released again into the atmosphere.
But perhaps I should hold my peace. After all, this isn’t really about solving global warming: it’s about pumping up Brazilian exports and giving their customers a warm fuzzy.
Superman votes
Venezuela is apparently giving up on enforcing naming regularity. So expect the number of supermen voting in the future to be grow:
When opponents of President Hugo Chavez last year sought to question the accuracy of the country’s voter rolls, they noted that even “Superman” was listed. Electoral officials subsequently confirmed there are in fact two Venezuelans by that name registered to vote.
Not that their votes will matter in the kind of 98% Castro-style plebiscite Chavez has in mind.
Oil, dictatorships & terror
Almost all money we spend on foreign oil goes to subsidize ideologues and dictators ranging from Saudi Arabia to Venezuela. I’ve wondered why this isn’t more of an issue in our politics and why we haven’t launched a Manhattan project for alternative fuels or advanced carburetors.
Andres Oppenheimer has a piece in the Miami Herald on Chavez’ power grab in Venezuela, including some thoughts on how it might be successfully opposed. He finishes with an appeal for energy independence:
The United States could do more than anybody to stop Chávez’s megalomania if it stopped subsidizing it. Indeed, the United States is spending $34 billion a year on oil imports from Venezuela.
The White House should impose a $2 a gallon tax on U.S. gasoline imports from petro dictatorships around the world, or a 50 percent tax on Hummers and other needlessly gigantic SUVs, or demand Detroit carmakers double the fuel efficiency of American cars.
Reducing America’s foreign oil addiction should be the single most important issue in the 2008 presidential election. In addition to being the most effective U.S. weapon against Middle Eastern countries that support terrorism, it would weaken oil-rich autocrats like Chávez, and would help reduce global warming.
Chavez wants 5,000 sniper rifles. Qué pasa?
So now Chavez is buying 5,000 super high tech sniper rifles from the Russians. To go along with his submarines, no doubt. Analysts have no idea what he wants them for. Not a clue:
Venezuela has about 34,000 soldiers in its army and 23,000 in its national guard, according to estimates by Jane’s Information Group, which analyzes military forces and regional risks.
Because sniper rifles are specialized infantry weapons and not typically issued to large numbers of soldiers, diplomats and military officers and analysts said, a purchase of several thousand Dragunovs would not seem to have a conventional military use for Venezuela’s armed forces.
“Sales like this, and other sales of military equipment and arms to Venezuela, don’t seem consistent with Venezuela’s needs,” David Kramer, deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, said by telephone.
“It does raise questions about their ultimate use,” he added. “We’re not sure what their purpose would be.”
My guess is that it’s like the nouveau riche who build ghastly homes with ridiculous towers to demonstrate their wealth, a newly coined dictator in an oil rich regime wants toys. He’s like someone who won the lottery running through the mall laughing hysterically while he throws everything he sees in his cart.
Crossing a dried creek bed Rubicon
What is the point of idolizing Castro if you can’t be dictator for life yourself? Chavez has just crossed whatever dried up creek bed passes for a Rubicon in Venezuela, proposing constitutional changes that will allow him to be “re-elected” [with the help of his armed street thugs] for life. You know, managed elections with tame voting machines and a domesticated media, not those messy unpredictable kind.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Wednesday that the United States would wait for details of Chavez’s proposal before commenting on it, but said Chavez in the past “has taken a number of different steps … that have really eroded some of the underpinnings of democracy in Venezuela.”
Moore freedom fighters?
Day 2000 for for Ingrid Betancourt’s imprisonment by Columbian Marxist freedom fighters [in Michael Moore lingo]. A political candidate naive enough that she could go negotiate with the gang, which was already holding thousands hostage, she traveled directly into their lair and–surprise–was kidnapped.
“Ingrid is one hostage among about 3,000 others,” the political scientist Vicente Torrijos told AFP in Bogota. “She is part of the phenomenon, but not its protagonist, as she is seen in France.”
The 17,000-strong Marxist militia is Colombia’s largest armed rebel group, and has been fighting the government since the 1960s. The hostages’ fate hangs in the balance as it quarrels with President Alvaro Uribe over a settlement for its imprisoned members. [note the oddly neutral language there.]
3,000 hostages. So far they have resisted the temptation to behead them on Al Jazeera. But their rejection of democratic process and proclivity to target civilians still qualifies them for Freedom Fighter status in Michael Moore’s pantheon.
