Bob Morris @ Feb 19th 2008 22:26 - Category: Election 2008 Tags: Clinton, Obama;
Exit polls in Wisconsin showed Obama leading among white voters and splitting women’s vote with Clinton, which is quite astounding when you think about it.
And McCain, upon winning in Wisconsin, immediately attacked Obama…
Bob Morris @ Feb 19th 2008 17:46 - Category: Unfiled Tags: Cuba, embargo;
Steve Clemons says the US thinks the embargo gives it leverage in Cuba, but in reality is does no such thing.
Wen I was in Havana, I met some Israelis involved with managing Cuban citrus groves. I saw a Benetton store in the new Havana. I saw Chinese selling major port infrastructure loading equipment to Cuba. British Petroleum was having a cocktail party on the roof of my hotel. Tourism is high. There is always a sense of leverage that the US thinks it has — but that leverage is now mostly fictional — as Cuba has found other thoroughfares for growth.
The only leverage America has on lifting or maintaining the embargo is with an aging, Castro-obsessed, reactionary population in Miami that thankfully is being taken over by a more rational contingent of Cuban-Americans who have either rethought their views or who just don’t carry the same views as their elders in their younger portfolios of experience.
End the embargo now.
Can you imagine what kind of creativity and mashups will occur when US hip hop gets together with Cuban musicians? Seriously! This being just a tiny example of what could happen once the embargo is lifted. Which may be what the younger Cuban-Americans in Miami are thinking too.
Bob Morris @ Feb 19th 2008 17:09 - Category: Unfiled Tags: Cuba, Fidel Castro;
From The Independent comes a fascinating assortment of information about Cuba.
Quote attributed to Castro: “If surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic event, I would win the gold medal.”
Size of the original rebel army led by Castro and including Che Guevara that sailed to Cuba in 1956, eventually toppling President Batista on 1 January 1959: 82
Most were killed quickly upon landing. Just eleven, I believe, escaped to the mountains, on the run from Batista’s forces. Three years later the rebels marched on Havana as victors with hundreds of thousands following them. This could not have happened without huge and genuine support from the populace.
In 2004 Cuba passed a law forbidding private citizens to access the internet. It is illegal to buy a computer without government approval, which is rarely granted to ordinary Cubans. Similar restrictions apply to the ownership of mobile phones.
Cuba declines all requests from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to visit the island.
Castro, on abolishing general elections in 1961: “The revolution has no time for elections. There is no more democratic government in Latin America than the revolutionary government.”
Democracy means the people elect their leaders, and not a privileged inner council only vaguely beholden to the population. If Cuba wants to stop US criticism cold, having open elections of the president would be the best way to do it. And let AI and HRW in too.
Healthcare, Cuban
Life expectancy at birth: male 75.11; female: 79.85 (US: 75.02; 80.82).
Infant mortality rate: 6.22 deaths per 1,000 live births (US: 6.43).Number of “organoponicos” (organic urban allotments) in Cuba: more than 7,000, totalling about 80,000 acres.
Number of such gardens in Havana: more than 200 (which supply the city with more than 90 per cent of its fruit and vegetables).
In health care and organic, locally grown food, Cuba absolutely shines. They’ve made huge friends worldwide by sending highly qualified doctors everywhere at no charge. When the USSR collapsed, they were forced to create organic, locally grown food and are now a world leader at this.
Cuba has been described as the largest American car museum in the world.
Ah. when the embargo is lifted, and I expect this will be happening sooner rather than later, will a Cuba that survived decades of CIA plots be able to survive the invasion of Wal-Marts, iPods, and collectors willing to pay huge bucks for a cherry ‘55 Chevy Bel Air convertible? Time will tell…
Bob Morris @ Feb 19th 2008 14:43 - Category: Unfiled Tags: Musharraf, Pakistan;
Bush and Cheney put most of their eggs in the basket of a military dictator, Pervez Musharraf, who has been on a self-destructive downward spiral during the past year that makes Amy Winehouse look level-headed.
So, will he resign gracefully or not?
Bob Morris @ Feb 19th 2008 12:01 - Category: Unfiled Tags: eBay;
Hadn’t sold on eBay in a while and just listed a sale with has seven photos(shameless plug:Japanese porcelain lithopane Dragon tea set.) This took several tries because the archaic, kludgy eBay method for posting an ad kept mangling the content.
I added the photos, then calculated shipping charges, only to come back to discover the photos were gone. Grrr. Re-added them, changed something else, and then discovered it now listed both sets of photos. Tried to delete the dupe photos and couldn’t. They kept coming back, even when they were confirmed and shown as being deleted. Except for the final two photos, that is - the delete button wouldn’t work at all with them.
Oh, during all this, it would delete the ad copy at random intervals too. Thanks so much for that.
Contrast that brain-dead interface with Amazon. The Amazon interface is easy to use, powerful, and unquestionably delivers them vastly increased sales. Plus they are always improving it. eBay, OTOH, has barely changed anything in ten years.
Perhaps eBay thinks they own the auction market so they don’t have to update their interface to something modern and not error-prone. They would be wrong. The tech world is filled with dead companies who thought they were secure and didn’t or couldn’t change.
Bob Morris @ Feb 19th 2008 10:14 - Category: Unfiled Tags: open source warfare;
They still don’t get it. Even when they know the other side(s) are gaining advantage by using OSW, the US Army, resolutely and with firm determination, makes sure they will not do the same.
It’s like the Army is clanking around in a swamp wearing full armor using voice communication only, looking for something to attack frontally, while the opposition ghosts around in ninja suits twittering each other with updates, attacking in flash mob swarms.
Bob Morris @ Feb 19th 2008 07:07 - Category: Renewable energy Tags: wave power;
From Greenpeace UK EfficienCity, a short, silent, informative video on how wave power works.
Bob Morris @ Feb 19th 2008 06:15 - Category: Election 2008 Tags: Clinton, disruptive technologies, Obama;
My memory is hazy. Was the Dean campaign as pathetic during its “implosion” stage as the Clinton campaign has behaved the last week or two?
I’m trying to figure out if this is normal behavior for a desperate campaign or if the Clintons are reaching new heights of idiocy.
Update: To add, how long before we have a YouTube of Hillary “plagiarizing” words and phrases from other places? I say 36 hours.
If the implosion continues and her campaign self-destructs, then many a book will be written and tea leaves analyzed to discern precisely how it happened and what the root causes were. Given that this appears to be the season for supposed frontrunners getting dethroned (as witness Guliani and Romney and maybe Clinton soon) then maybe we’re seeing the political version of disruptive technologies.
The music CD destroyed the market for the LP. Sure, some collectors and purists squealed, but it never was a fight. The CD was smaller, held more information, and within a few years, hardly any new LPs were being made. They’ve couldn’t compete. The disruptive technology of the CD eliminated LPs from the marketplace. (Just like what mp3s are doing to the CD now.)
Obama, Huckabee, Ron Paul, and maybe even McCain are not the “standard” breed of politician. They are the disruptive technology that the established old guard of Clinton, Guliani, and Romney do not understand and clearly have trouble coping with.
Bob Morris @ Feb 19th 2008 00:23 - Category: Unfiled Tags: Kosovo;
Socialist Unity says it is.
It amazes me that some on the left support this Albanian fascism, due to an utterly mechanical understanding of the politics of nationality.
From Splintered Sunrise
There is a strong case in the abstract for Kosovo Albanians having the right to self-determination. In the here and now, I’m opposed to independence for Kosovo because the place is run by a bunch of mafiosi, its economy is based on the trafficking of drugs, arms and women, and giving this basket case the attributes of statehood will make a bad situation worse.
From a comment to the post.
So you support resistance movements only when you find the politics of its leadership somewhat compatible from your own point of view?
Ouch. Good point though, does a group of people who others consider to be thugs have the right to self-determination? If not, what are the limits, and why?
From another comment.
The most important thing to get about the various laws and norms of international relations theory is that it’s all total fantasy. In reality, it’s pure power games.
Aided and abetted by more powerful countries like the US and Russia for their own ends, of course.
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