Denver is in the midst of the Libertarian Convention. This evening’s Libertarian Presidential Debate will be broadcast LIVE on C-SPAN at 9 PM EDT/6 PM PDT. Six candidates for the Libertarian will debate for two hours. The candidates include Bob Barr of Georgia, Mike Gravel of Alaska, James Burns of Nevada, Daniel Imperato of Florida, Steve Kubby of California and Mike Jingozian from Oregon.
This is a public service announcement. I do not in any way endorse the Libertarian Party. I personally find Libertarianism rather short-sighted. Government is not always the problem, often times it is the only solution.
Campaigning in Miami, Mr. Obama vowed to take a new approach toward Cuba policy, but nonetheless maintain the embargo. Obama also blamed the Bush administration for “negligent” foreign policy that helped anti-American leaders such as Hugo Chávez of Venezuela come to power.
Who knew the Governor of Texas had such powers? For in 1998 when Hugo Chávez was first elected President of Venezuela that was where George W. Bush was serving. So right off the bat, Obama has his historical facts wrong once again. But it goes further than that, it clearly demonstrates that Obama has not one iota of knowledge when it comes to Latin America, its people or its history. Venezuela until 1958 was apart from Bolivia and Ecuador the most dictator prone country in the South America. But unlike Bolivia and Ecuador, Venezuela’s long list of military regimes were rather brutal.
The last military dictatorship in Venezuela was that of General Marco Pérez Jiménez. In the decade when he dominated Venezuela, one of the world’s largest producers of oil, General Pérez Jiménez was feared and hated inside his country and mocked elsewhere as the prototype of the Latin American military despot. His virulent anti-Communism and his tolerant attitude toward foreign oil companies, however, gained him the backing of the United States. In 1954, nearly four years before his fall from power in a coup and uprising, the US even awarded him the Legion of Merit.
Here is the Saturday May 24th, 2008 edition of interesting reads from around the world.
Poverty in South Africa
Failure to spread South Africa’s economic gains to the poor has fuelled violence against immigrants and could spark wider unrest as living conditions become tougher and higher food prices take a toll. More from Reuters.
Obsessive Sarkosis
Serge Hefez, a practicing psychiatrist, has identified a new mental illness among the French: obsessive Sarkosis, an unhealthy fascination with the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy. The New York Times reports.
Zimbabwe on the Brink
The Los Angeles Times reports that Zimbabwe hangs in a dangerous political limbo: A ruling party clique clings to power amid rumors of a coup if President Robert Mugabe loses the upcoming presidential runoff. His opponent, Morgan Tsvangirai, far from facing down military hard-liners, has been out of the country for weeks, fearing assassination.
Canada as an Energy Superpower
A refresher on Canada’s energy situation from The Oil Drum. Canada is the most important energy supplier to the United States and Canada is beginning to have a greater role in supplying the world’s energy.
This week, the By The Fault Weekend Reader is a video lecture given by Professor Jared Diamond of UCLA, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Guns, Germs and Steel. This lecture was part of his book tour for Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. It runs about an hour.
Here’s the promotional literature associated with this lecture:
Diamond began by noting his reasons for beginning this project: the phenomenon of civilizations that built great cities and structures only to abandon them completely. He pointed out the roles of deforestation and population control as important factors in societal lifecycles. Diamond compared this to the problem of modern societies in facing the same problems that led to the collapse of those civilizations, and noted that in some cases (such as China) those environmental problems can threaten those outside their own borders. Diamond noted the other factors, such as outside enemies and trade partners, that can threaten societies. Perhaps more importantly, he answered why some civilizations can overcome those obstacles and others are overwhelmed by them. Surprisingly, a leading indicator of impending collapse is high infant mortality.
Not to worry you but our infant mortality rate is rising.
American babies are three times more likely to die in their first month as children born in Japan, and newborn mortality is 2.5 times higher in the United States than in Finland, Iceland or Norway, Save the Children researchers found.
Only Latvia, with six deaths per 1,000 live births, has a higher death rate for newborns than the United States, which is tied near the bottom of industrialized nations with Hungary, Malta, Poland and Slovakia with five deaths per 1,000 births.
“The United States has more neonatologists and neonatal intensive care beds per person than Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, but its newborn rate is higher than any of those countries,” said the annual State of the World’s Mothers report.
The report, which analyzed data from governments, research institutions and international agencies, found higher newborn death rates among U.S. minorities and disadvantaged groups. For African-Americans, the mortality rate is nearly double that of the United States as a whole, with 9.3 deaths per 1,000 births. While infant mortality rates had been declining in the United States, since 2000 they have either stagnated or climbed slightly among the poor or minority groups.