Folks, I am sorry, I am still new at this so if the spacing or scope of the document is not correct, I apologize. I am not opposed inter-Americanism or pan-Americanism and I never really have been. I like the idea of an "empire of liberty" that Jefferson said his principles would bring about. I think it is the best and most socially responsible model out there for the development of trade agreements. That being said, that model is opposed to our managed free trade agreements in NAFTA and CAFTA which both 1.) create net job loss in the intended countries are fueling immigration, 2.) create jobs on one end, for one class, in the social scale, but are non-reciprocal agreements that do not promise jobs in this country and 3.) create political tensions in each region they are enacted in. Much like Roman trade agreements that assure stability by protecting the propertied classes, NAFTA and CAFTA fuel the problems of immigration normal North Americans are forced to deal with. I am s...

Tuesday March 4, 2008 Brian On Critical Assignment in Poorastan , near someplace no one really knows or cares about While increasing pressure mounts on the Bush Administration to admit that while it took four years to win world war II, and has taken over six to win the global war on terror, a lone man with a camera has done the unthinkable and actually found out what may have happened to Osama Bin Laden. For details, watch here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjxXX70_R0A Following this Bush Administration officials told this reporter, "no comment." While former presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani, known affectionately as "Rudy" to supporters, said, "since the events of 9/11 the country has been in an ideological struggle with radical islamo -fascism." When asked about the reasons why Osama is basically gone, he responded, "no comment." One can only assume that the 9/11 phallus has repeatedly penetrated the American public's consciousne...

If I asked most people about the major health problem in sub-Saharan Africa, how likely would I be to hear about soaring HIV rates in places like Malawi, Zaire, Botswana, or even--recently--South Africa? How long has it been since some rock-star celebrity with an American flag sewn inside his jacket convinced Dubya to pony up more American dollars for HIV in Africa? In 2006 the international community spent approximately $350 Billion on HIV/Aids , the overwhelming bulk of which was spent in the developing world (think Africa and Asia) where roughly 380,000 children under the age of 15 died from the disease. But according to the British medical journal The Lancet , this has been a fairly substantive policy error, because what we should be spending money on is combating malnutrition during pregnancy and the first two years of a baby's life. According to researcher Bruce Cogill, malnutrition was responsible for 2.2 million deaths of children under 5 in 2005, and in 2006 the TOTAL glob...

Trying to follow the story on Tata Motors new "cheap car" [they prefer "peoples' car"] has led me into some interesting places, and a look at a free-for-all if-not-exactly-free market like we normally think of it. You will recall that in perusing Indian news sources I pointed out both the land acquisition problems that Tata was having in regard to its proposed Nano production plant in Singur, and also my discovery that the Indian constitution does not consider property a "fundamental right" any more. So I got hooked on this story and tried to dig a little deeper. It turns out that Tata Motors-- described by the India Times as "a somewhat hidebound company"--is using the occasion of the Nano to completely re-organize its facotry system into "independent production hubs," and has dropped its plans for a Nano plant at Singur, shifting instead to Pantnagar in Uttarakhand. I don't know where any of these places are, which is a majo...

Ever since A Secondhand Conjecture turned me on to Strange Maps , I have been plumbing their archives, and have found some incredible stuff. (Hube, you've really got to go there and take a look, man.) Below is a night satellite shot of North and South Korea. The South, of course, is home to a despicable capitalist engine producing Hyundai automobiles and all sorts of other things that give rise to a country with severe income disparities and lots of social turbulence. North Korea is one of the few remaining true Stalinist paradises on Earth (even the Chinese have been corrupted), where men are men (but have bad hair cuts), the peasants are self-reliant (and eat the bark off the trees), and the women are nearly 11 centimeters shorter (that's a little over four inches for those of you holding out for the English system) than their counterparts in the capitalist South. (Be sure not just to look at the map, but visit the original post at Strange Maps and read the whole article...

America is generally short of news outlets that take a genuine world perspective, which is why--as I noted in my post on the budding relationship between France and China --we miss so much of what's really going on in the world. For that--even though the graphics are pathetic and the stand is conservative enough to embarrass Thurston Howell III--I read The Economist . Among other advantages, the magazine is actually written by people who know something about economics rather than the glib but essentially puppet-like market analysts we constantly see on TV. Recently The Economist took on the issue of soaring food prices worldwide , attributing them to: ...long-running changes in diet that accompany the growing wealth of emerging economies—the Chinese consumer who ate 20kg (44lb) of meat in 1985 will scoff over 50kg of the stuff this year. That in turn pushes up demand for grain: it takes 8kg of grain to produce one of beef. But the rise in prices is also the self-inflicted result...

The release of, and controversy over, the new Indian Tata Nano (new car around $3,000, what's not to love?) got me started thinking about global automotive production, global warming, and all that. First I tried to find out about global automobile production, which has changed radically over the past few years, as China, India, and Brazil have surged forward in production. Here's the Top 22 for 2006 (every country that produces more than half a million cars per year): This is a list of countries by automobile production in 2006 mostly based on OICA accessed in September 2007. World/69.257.914 EU/18.887.996 1 Japan 11.484.223 2 US 11.263.986 3 China 7.188.708 4 Germ. 5.819.614 5 S. Korea 3.840.102 6 France 3.169.219 7 Spain 2.777.435 8 Brazil 2.611.034 9 Canada 2.572.292 10 Mexico 2.045.518 11 India 2.019.808 12 UK 1.648.388 13 Russia 1.508.358 14 Italy 1.211.594 15 Thail. 1.194.426 16 Turkey 987.780 17 Belgium 918.056 18 Iran 904.500 19 Cz...