Foreign Tranquility

Internalizing the externalities

2012-01-19T18:15:00.003-03:00

SOPA!

The recent widespread Internet protests over the SOPA and PIPA bills in the U.S. Congress were a response to the cultural production industry's attempt to protect its economic interests – a natural inclination, by most accounts, and something they've been doing for years.

But something happened yesterday.

Because of the ease of copying, movies and music can easily be shared across the Internet. The production of a Hollywood movie or a rock-and-roll album therefore can produce positive externalities for those who download these cultural productions: they're getting some benefit without paying for it, or "free-riding."

The goal of copyright law is to give the creators of art the right to control its distribution, and allows them to be remunerated for their work. If artists are expected to disseminate their work for free – producing a positive externality for those who consume it but no economic benefit for the producer – they would have little or no incentive to produce. Without an effective copyright system, our culture would arguably be worse off.

In other words, the industry wants to internalize the externalized benefits it produces by making sure people are paying for the products they consume and keeping piracy under wraps. And indeed, Congress has responded.

"Since 1995, Congress has enacted 32 different statutes to further refine and strengthen the protection of copyright. The frequency of these new laws has increased as digital technologies have put more pressure on the traditional architecture of copyright," Lawrence Lessig writes in his book, Republic, Lost.

Action taken by Congress on copyright matters is probably a response to the massive political contributions in favor of robust copyright laws. As Lessig points out, "pro-copyright reformers were outspent by anti-reformers by $1.3 billion to $1 million – a thousand to one."

But what about negative externalities, i.e. industries that produce negative consequences for society at large without paying for them? Or, rather, what about the biggest one there is: carbon pollution?

Given the enormity of the global warming threat caused by unchecked carbon emissions, you'd think Congress would have addressed this issue by now. The opposite is true. In the past 25 years, Lessig points out, Congress has not passed a single law to make carbon emitters pay the price of their pollution.

Again, let's follow the money: During the 2009 debate over a cap-and-trade bill, pro-carbon reformers spent $22.4 million versus $210.6 million from anti-reform camps.

In the copyright case, the industry wants to make sure positive externality diffusion doesn't get out of hand. In the carbon emissions case, the industry wants to make sure negative externality diffusion stays out of hand.

So the lesson here is that organized and moneyed interests get their way in Washington. That is, roughly, the basic thesis of Lessig's book. (He explains it more lucidly, of course.)

But on Wednesday the Internet protests helped to defy this logic. According to Maplight.org, the SOPA pushers outspent its opposition by 5 to 1, meaning it should have easily passed in Congress.

So could it be that the massive, massive protest on the Internet against these bills actually shut them down, even though campaign contributions should have produced a different result? It looks that way, and it's a great sign for future Internet mobilizations.

For example, what if Wikipedia and others shut down in order to spread awareness and mobilize people to support strong legislation on climate change? Could we get polluters to internalize their externalities, once and for all, despite strong opposition from those very polluters? I say yes.

The World's Newspapers

2011-12-05T13:39:00.000-03:00

From a study on where the world's knowledge is produced from the Oxford Internet Institute:

Amado Boudou: An orthodox wolf in Peronist leather?

2011-11-20T18:56:00.012-03:00

Cover of Noticias, an Argentine weekly news magazine

Amado Boudou it seems has spent more time in the last month crunching numbers than playing guitar clad in black leather with local rock bands, something he did prolifically up until Argentina’s elections on October 23, when President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was re-elected and Boudou, the Economy Minister, was voted in as Vice-President elect.

Although you won’t hear it from him – or any other government official – Boudou, with his newfound prominence in the closed inner circle of the president, looks to be moving Argentina’s economic policy in a more orthodox direction after years of eschewing warning signals and overspending.

Boudou, along with Planning Minister Julio De Vido, announced spending cuts in subsidies for gas, water, and electricity, heavily financed in recent years with record outlays from the federal government amounting to 4 percent of GDP. The measure comes as Argentina’s budget deficit widens amid slower growth of major trading partners and diminished competitiveness at home.

Subsidies will be eliminated for large companies – financial institutions, casinos, telecommunications, oil and mining, among others – and people living in certain upscale neighborhoods, including Puerto Madero and Barrio Parque.

It’s an attempt to “personalize” the subsidy scheme, and won’t be reflected in higher prices for the rest of the population, according to Boudou. “There will be no impact on the price of the goods and services that these businesses produce,” he said in a press conference.

But De Vido said consumers in the city of Buenos Aires would have the opportunity to “renounce” the subsidies “voluntarily”: Users will receive a form along with their gas, water, and electricity bill in order to indicate whether they need the subsidies or not, the veracity of which will be “checked against a database.” The criteria for needing the subsidies were not immediately clear.

A long time coming

The government’s policy on subsidies has long been a focal point for criticism from opposition politicians and economists of all stripes. High pro-cyclical spending has fueled consumption rather than investment in productive capacity, contributing to high inflation, economists say.

Boudou, rocking

So perhaps it should be no surprise that the government is eating the bitter fruit of removing subsidies now: Cristina Fernandez just won a landslide victory and likely wants the impact of lower spending to be felt in the immediate term rather than in two years leading up to the mid-term elections.

The cuts should also bring down inflation in the medium and long term, according to economists, though the government has yet to publicly recognize the inflation problem or introduce an integral plan to solve it.

And although there was allegedly a leak to several journalists last month about upcoming spending cuts, none of these measures were mentioned during the presidential campaign, except cloaked in lines like “fixing what’s wrong.” The campaign instead included the ubiquitous phrase “deepening the model,” which contrasts the recent reverse on subsidies and which business leaders criticized as ambiguous and only adding to an environment of uncertainty.

Not austerity

The cuts, Cristina Fernandez’s gestures toward the United States, including the potential resolution of long-standing debt issues leftover from the 2001 default, and the absence of U.S.-bashing rhetoric during the campaign have been received as a sign the government will be moving the economy in a more orthodox direction.

But don’t call it an austerity plan.

Cristina Fernandez has been a vocal critic of austerity measures, often invoking Argentina’s 2001-2002 crisis as a lesson in how not to implement a fiscal adjustment. She’s also been critical of measures in the US (she considers the August debt deal an austerity plan) and Greece.

But the government, even as it faces a widening budget deficit, has been careful to portray the recent cuts not as austerity but as a “progressive adjustment” that only affects well-situated Argentines.

And as DsD points out, in a media environment polarized between the opposition and pro-government press, both sides have had difficulty explaining the subsidy cuts as orthodox: the opposition because it’s a measure they’ve long been demanding and the government’s militants because it would reflect poorly on the left-leaning administration.

'Unabashedly pro-American'

After the ouster of Economy Minister Roberto Lavagna in 2005, former president and Cristina Fernandez's late husband Nestor Kirchner took the reins of the economy, often butting heads directly – or through his loyal foot soldier Guillermo Moreno – with subsequent economy ministers. (Martin Lousteau, one of the casualties of confrontation with the government, called Moreno a "caveman who thinks he's an economist.") Kirchner maintained a central powerbroking role in the government until his sudden death of a heart attack last year.

Boudou was the director of ANSES, Argentina's social security administration before he was appointed Economy Minister in 2009. Reproached by Kirchner loyalists for his liberal economic past – he was active in the conservative political party UCD – Boudou has expertly assimilated himself into the Kirchner fold, with Argentine opinion-makers now believing he has the ear of the president on economic matters and that he's steering a more moderate course.

An exchange with Boudou at the U.S. embassy revealed in a Wikileaks cable offers a look at what he might really believe and the double act that Argentine politicians must often perform with the U.S.

In the meeting with Ambassador Dilma Martinez in 2009, Boudou is eager to work with the United States on everything from repairing its relationship with the IMF, negotiating outstanding debt with the Paris Club, returning to international markets, and attracting foreign direct investment that Argentina needs to grow, with the U.S. "playing a particularly important role."

Boudou also requested that President Obama visit Argentina on a trip through Latin America (he didn't) saying "Argentina is moving towards a more cooperative, market-oriented approach to international economic policy, and a visit could accelerate the momentum of that swing."

And finally, Boudou repeatedly described himself as "unabashedly pro-American, though he added that he had to be careful to downplay this publicly."

The cable ends with the best part: "Boudou said that he likes to ski every season at Aspen and surf at San Diego-area beaches. He also described himself as a fan of the National Football League."

Whatever Boudou believes, his recent focus on policy matters rather than rock music looks to be good news for Argentina.

Greenback Boogie: New controls on dollar purchases

2011-11-06T19:44:00.005-03:00

An 87-year-old woman was the first to bring a judicial case against AFIP, Argentina's tax agency, for denying a dollar purchase last week under tighter rules for buying foreign currency.

All transactions must now be cleared by AFIP, ostensibly a move to slow down near-record capital flight that reached $3.6bn in October. Experts say the move could backfire.

The claim brought by Justa Ruperez, who buys dollars routinely with her retirement money in order to save for her grandchildren, says new controls on dollar purchases nationwide violate constitutional guarantees.

"She felt disenfranchised of her liberty because the bank didn't even give her an explanation," said the woman's lawyer.

The lack of investment options that keep pace with high inflation and an expected devaluation of the peso lead Argentines to seek refuge in the greenback, analysts say.

The economist Eduardo Levy Yeyati says the new regime could create panic, and compared the controls to the Puerta 12 tragedy, in which 71 people were killed after an exit was closed following a River-Boca soccer game.

Economy minister and vice-president elect Amado Boudou said the measure was fiscally important "in order to fight tax evasion and money laundering" but also in terms of equality.

"Those that want to buy dollars need to verify their capacity to do so," he said. Authorities recently detected a businessman in the agricultural sector who claimed revenues of $1.7 million annually wishing to acquire $2 million dollars in a single purchase, according to Boudou.

He added that four businesses are responsible for 80 percent of dollar purchases and that an additional 100 people were found buying dollars who hadn't reported sufficient income.

Shantytown scheme

Residents of a shantytown just blocks from Argentina's financial center have been used to foil limits on dollar purchases, according to a recent court filing.

Up to 1,800 people from the Villa 31 shanty may have acted as front men and women, exchanging nearly $1.8 billion dollars and allowing the money's real owners to remain anonymous, according to court documents filed last week by federal judge Maria Servina de Cubria. The operations took place in 2008.

Until this week, front men known as coleros could be seen standing outside the capital's banks and financial houses, waiting to be called upon to use their names and identification to purchase dollars in excess of upper limits without scrutiny.

The local daily La Nacion analyzes the country's historic relationship with the dollar, saying economic instability since WWII has undermined confidence in the local currency and driven Argentines to acquire more dollars than any other country except Russia, with $50 billion in Argentine hands.

Charles Darwin on Argentine corruption

2011-09-16T15:51:00.001-03:00

To give you an idea of the pervasive and historical nature of corruption in Argentina, here's a passage from the book A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World by Charles Darwin, written in 1833 on a trip around South America:

During the last six months I have had an opportunity of seeing a little of the character of the inhabitants of these provinces. The Gauchos, or countrymen, are very superior to those who reside in the towns. The Gaucho is invariably most obliging, polite, and hospitable: I did not meet with even one instance of rudeness or inhospitality. He is modest, both respecting himself and country, but at the same time a spirited, bold fellow. On the other hand, many robberies are committed, and there is much bloodshed: the habit of constantly wearing the knife is the chief cause of the latter. It is lamentable to hear how many lives are lost in trifling quarrels. In fighting, each party tries to mark the face of his adversary by slashing his nose or eyes; as is often attested by deep and horrid-looking scars. Robberies are a natural consequence of universal gambling, much drinking, and extreme indolence. At Mercedes I asked two men why they did not work. One gravely said the days were too long; the other that he was too poor. The number of horses and the profusion of food are the destruction of all industry. Moreover, there are so many feast-days; and again, nothing can succeed without it be begun when the moon is on the increase; so that half the month is lost from these two causes.

Police and justice are quite inefficient. If a man who is poor commits murder and is taken, he will be imprisoned, and perhaps even shot; but if he is rich and has friends, he may rely on it no very severe consequence will ensue. It is curious that the most respectable inhabitants of the country invariably assist a murderer to escape: they seem to think that the individual sins against the government, and not against the people. A traveller has no protection besides his firearms; and the constant habit of carrying them is the main check to more frequent robberies.

The character of the higher and more educated classes who reside in the towns, partakes, but perhaps in a lesser degree, of the good parts of the Gaucho, but is, I fear, stained by many vices of which he is free. Sensuality, mockery of all religion, and the grossest corruption, are far from uncommon. Nearly every public officer can be bribed. The head man in the post-office sold forged government franks. The governor and prime minister openly combined to plunder the State. Justice, where gold came into play, was hardly expected by any one. I knew an Englishman who went to the Chief Justice (he told me that, not then understanding the ways of the place, he trembled as he entered the room), and said, "Sir, I have come to offer you two hundred (paper) dollars (value about five pounds sterling) if you will arrest before a certain time a man who has cheated me. I know it is against the law, but my lawyer (naming him) recommended me to take this step." The Chief Justice smiled acquiescence, thanked him, and the man before night was safe in prison. With this entire want of principle in many of the leading men, with the country full of ill-paid turbulent officers, the people yet hope that a democratic form of government can succeed! (p. 259)

Collective Aggression

2011-09-11T20:33:00.007-03:00

A security camera captured the incident from Friday

Anyone who's walked through the streets of Buenos Aires has probably, on more than one occasion, had their head narrowly missed by the side-view mirror of a city bus, known here as colectivos.

Pedestrians, even when crossing the street with the walk signal, are hurried and threatened by the metal frame and roaring engine of a bus in the middle of a turn.

Buses in Buenos Aires – implacable, earsplitting, belligerent – are the asphalt sharks of the city and provincial transportation ecosystem. They seem to run on every street, making the system comprehensive. And it's cheap, thanks to subsidies from the federal government, with fares averaging between one and two pesos per ride. But you can't walk more than a few blocks without coming face to face with a wall of smoke and stridency.

On Friday, a 71-year-old woman and an 81-year-old man, both retired Argentines, were crossing the street in the Buenos Aires municipality of Merlo when the woman was struck by a bus.

The man, an ex-military officer, took his head in his hands upon seeing his wife on the pavement, dead. "Where's the driver? ... Where's the driver?" he began to utter, according to news reports.

The driver, having stopped the bus, got out of the vehicle. The retired man pulled out a 32-caliber revolver and shot the driver in the abdominal area. The widower then kneeled alongside the cadaver of his wife and began to weep.

The ex-military officer has been detained and charged with attempted homicide. The driver was brought into surgery and is in stable condition. So far no charges have been filed against him.

A Clarín article from 2010 reveals that there were 17 deaths caused by buses in the city of Buenos Aires in the first four months of that year. The same article mentions the difficulty the city government has in sanctioning bus drivers who break the law: many of them are registered in the Province, and there's "no way to get them to come in to the controlling office or charge them through the companies," according to an official cited in the article.

Cristina Destroys Everyone

2011-08-26T15:30:00.003-03:00

So what's the incentive to change course on macro policy and high inflation?
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Cristina speaks after her primary victory

President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner received more than 50 percent of the vote in Argentina's primary elections on August 14, making her victory in October's presidential elections a foregone conclusion for many observers.

Recent elections for mayor in Buenos Aires and in the provinces of Santa Fe and Cordoba in which Kirchner-supported candidates performed poorly were interpreted as a referendum on Cristina's governance, with some predicting a more competitive campaign for October. But the primary results surprised both critics and supporters of the government.

"We weren't expecting a difference of 8 million votes between first and second place," said Anibal Fernández, the government's Cabinet Chief.

Commentators have attributed her success at the polls to at least three factors: a booming economy, with expected growth of 8 percent for 2011, stable employment, and a prolonged consumption bonanza; ideological identification with Kirchner's Peronist Victory Front party (Frente para la Victoria); and a splintered and weak opposition.

The next closest finishers, Ricardo Alfonsín, of the Radical party, and Eduardo Duhalde, of a dissident Peronist faction, each received roughly 12 percent of the vote. Alberto Rodriquez Saa, another Peronist and former governor of San Luis province, received 8 per cent of the vote, giving Peronist-affiliated candidates over 70 percent of the total vote.

As the country's economy has sailed along it has also faced inflation of up to 25 percent annually in recent years – a problem the government has chosen to publicly deny. Instead of addressing inflation by reducing spending and raising interest rates to cool down the economy – as Brazil did – the country's economic leaders have enacted mostly ineffective price controls and tried to conceal it through the manipulation of official inflation statistics.

Argentina's export revenues, primarily through the extension of soy farming, have grown along with record-high prices for commodities, fueled by demand from emerging markets, especially Asia. China is the biggest recipient of Argentine soy. High taxes on exports, known as "retenciones," have filled government coffers with cash and allowed them to spend aggressively.

But government spending has been widely blamed for pumping excessive amounts of money into the economy and fueling consumption. Business leaders have few incentives to invest in new production, reducing the economy's ability to absorb high demand and leading to price inflation.

Graciela Bevacqua, former director of the country's consumer price index at INDEC, the nation's statistics bureau, estimates prices are 21 percent higher in July compared with the same month in 2010. Bevacqua, who now works as a private consultant, was forced out of INDEC in 2007 when the Kirchners intervened. Since then, official inflation and poverty estimates have been significantly lower than private estimates.

Government supporters often speak of "deepening the model" based on human rights, social inclusion, and a competitive real exchange rate promoting exports. Through policies such as the Asignación Universal por Hijo, a conditional cash transfer program requiring school attendance and vaccinations for the children of recipients, the country has significantly increased spending for social programs.

But former officials have questioned the competitiveness and sustainability of the economic model. Former Central Bank chief Martín Redrado, who was forced out in 2010 after refusing to allow the executive to dip into Bank reserves, writes that the "pillars of the model" – commercial and fiscal surpluses, and a competitive real exchange rate – "are exhausted." He calls for more incentives for businesses to invest, the elimination of "distortive" taxes that reduce competitiveness, and plans to reduce informal employment (40 percent of private employees, according to Redrado), thereby adding to the tax base.

Another former economy minister Martín Lousteau* (of agricultural conflict fame), in a recent budget analysis, says that 20 of every 100 pesos spent by the government goes out in subsidies for energy, transport, agribusiness, and debt financing for publicly-owned companies, whose beneficiaries are primarily the middle class. In contrast, only 5 of every 100 pesos spent goes to social programs.

Opposition candidates have made sound macroeconomic management a pillar of their campaigns. But arguments for reduced fiscal expenditures and a plan to combat inflation have not taken hold outside the so-called "opposition" media. The issue of inflation is rarely, if ever, mentioned in the government's several state-controlled newspapers and television programs.

Based on the votes of a slim majority in the August 14th primaries, most Argentines don't seem to mind paying a bit more every month for their bread and milk as long as the economy is growing. The Kirchner government could triumph in the first round of voting in October, and win back a majority in both houses of congress, allowing for unfettered control over the political system. A first-round win would also prohibit a potential consolidation of non-Kirchner voters in the second round of voting, vanquishing any effective opposition.

If a macroeconomic policy that fuels inflation hasn't impeded such exquisite electoral success for the Kirchner government, and Cristina could enjoy an opposition-less second term, what's the incentive to change course on these policies? Argentina's inflation problem might be around for a long time.
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*I realize I've drawn heavily from former officials who might have an interest in making the current government look bad, but I still feel it lends an air of credibility to the proceedings here.

Fun with optical illusions

2011-08-18T21:40:00.000-03:00

The cover art from Animal Collective's 2009 album Merriweather Post Pavilion, based on the art of Akiyoshi Kitaoka.

What soccer does to Argentines

2011-07-09T11:52:00.000-03:00

The video below is making its way around the Argentine blogosphere. It's a guy watching one of the River Plate relegation games from a chair, presumably in his own home, that's pretty close to the television.

He yells. He gesticulates. He may have even popped a few veins in his head. It's a nice caricature of what some Argentines do while watching soccer games.

River Plate, a legendary Argentine soccer club, was dropped to Argentina's "B" league for the first time in its 110-year history, considered a tremendous insult and failure for a team of its stature and for its fans. After the final loss to Belgrano de Cordoba, the team's hooligans erupted in violence against the police and destroyed parts of Monumental stadium.

Evolution of purchasing power for cash transfer recipients in Argentina

2011-07-06T11:04:00.000-03:00

In 2009, Argentina's government implemented a popular measure called the Asignación Universal por Hijo, a conditional cash transfer program that provides a monthly sum for each child of unemployed and informal workers in return for proof that their children are attending school and receiving vaccinations.

What the government didn't do during the same period was implement inflation targets. During the period in question, according to Buenos Aires City Consulting, accumulated inflation was 23.4 percent. Watch how the purchasing power of the program's recipients goes down over time as the price of basic goods goes up. The full report can be found here. (The initial amount of the transfer, $180, was increased to $220 in September of 2010.)

Purchasing power evolution of AUH from Buenos Aires City consulting

Argentine Senate Website Attacked Over Digital Tax

2011-07-05T12:49:00.011-03:00

Argentina's senate website was shut down by hackers last Tuesday in protest of a tax on electronic items that would be used to compensate musicians.

The measure aimed to tax the sales of select devices that support audio-visual content, the rights to which are typically owned by individual authors or associations.

The shutdown, claimed by the worldwide hacker group Anonymous, comes after attacks against Brazilian and Colombian government websites, laying bare vulnerabilities in Latin America's digital infrastructure.

Strong resistance on the internet and the attack on the senate website led to the removal of the measure from the senate agenda, according to Senator Miguel Ángel Pichetto, who introduced the bill.

Though recognizing the law may be controversial, Pichetto, a supporter of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, said "the attack against the senate network is not justified." The bill will return to the committee phase for further revision and likely appear before parliament later this month.

"We will continue to debate the law and find a balance between the protection of intellectual property and the demands of users," said Pichetto in a Twitter post.

Social networks erupted in celebration after the announcement, with several users commenting that the tax would disproportionately punish the country's poor. Others said the law "presupposes" criminality, and that it favors a minority of private musician's associations that are unlikely to share the new resources with their membership.

The law would see a 75 percent tax on recordable CDs and DVDs, and a 10 percent tax on devices that allow users to make copies or reproduce content, such as disc recorders and iPods. (Click here for a more detailed explanation of the law in Spanish.)

Paraguay recently passed by presidential decree a law that charges .5 percent on sales of cellular phones, routers, and other devices as compensation for the holders of authors' rights.

Eladio “Lalo” Villalba, president of the Paraguayan Association of Artists, Interpreters and Executives (AIE), said the law had been passed but was never implemented until now.

"The importation centers say the cost of the remuneration will fall to the final consumer," said Villalba in news reports. "Something that was $1,000 before will now cost $1,005, which is very little."

Argentine Businesses Lag Behind Latin America's Expansion

2011-06-15T17:55:00.005-03:00

Geographic location of Argentine MNCs, according to VCC

AS many Latin American businesses are poised to expand their global reach in coming years by taking advantage of the region's modernizing economies and abundant natural resources, Argentina is falling behind.

A ranking of business internationalization by América Economía shows Brazil (26), Mexico (13), and Chile (12) lead the list of 60 companies, known as 'multilatinas', operating beyond their borders.

Argentina, which has a nominal GDP slightly higher than Chile, has only three companies on the list: Tenaris (Techint), a conglomerate; Arcor, a food company; and Bagó Laboratories, a pharmaceutical firm.

IMPSA, a producer of machinery and equipment, appears on another ranking by the Vale Columbia Center on Sustainable International Investment (VCC).

"Over the past two decades, privatization, trade agreements, deregulation, the development of capital markets, and increased pressure from international competitors have contributed to a market environment dominated by private companies – an increasing number of which are operating internationally," says a Boston Consulting Group report on the region's 100 biggest 'multilatinas'.

"The internationalization process is both deeper and more advanced than most observers might realize," says the report.

While countries like Chile and Brazil have enjoyed favorable policy environments, the incentives for outward investment for Argentina's companies remain low.

Chile benefits from a business-friendly environment, including low economic volatility, sound fiscal and monetary policies, solid institutions, and well-developed capital markets, according to BCG.

In addition, the report concludes, Chile has a "fairly open economy with international reach, including participation in regional blocs, a vast network of bilateral trade and investment agreements, and supportive institutions such as Fundación Chile and ProChile."

Public policy in Brazil, meanwhile, is increasingly recognized as an important factor for the emergence of its multinational corporations (MNCs). Brazil's state-led, inward-oriented industrialization of the 40s, 50s, and 60s created many of the MNCs of today.

Currently, according to MIT professor Ben Ross Schneider, "the Brazilian government does not maintain an explicit policy designed to encourage domestic enterprises to invest overseas."

However, Brazil's National Development Bank finances companies' export operations and oversees infrastructure projects in which Brazilian firms are involved, Schneider writes in the book "Brazil As An Economic Superpower."

This institutional push for export promotion creates a favorable environment for increased internationalization, as companies gain access to local markets in foreign lands.

Expansion for high-tech industries in which Brazil is advancing requires access to significant capital, which has historically been limited in Brazil. But the macroeconomic stability provided by the Real Plan is providing lower interest rates and improved financial conditions.

According to the VCC, Argentina, starting with Techint in 1947, was a pioneer in outward foreign investment among developing countries, but has fallen behind in recent years because of the policy environment.

The debt crisis of the 1980s curtailed outward flows in many Latin American countries, including Argentina. But many Argentine businesses expanded significantly in the 90s as the country's overvalued currency made foreign investment cheaper.

"A lack of long-term financing and past macroeconomic volatility have been limiting factors in the growth and international expansion of Argentine companies," the VCC report says. "Argentine companies have a much smaller access to domestic credit relative to companies in other countries in the region."

Argentine business leaders have blamed macroeconomic uncertainty and shoddy policy.
"There's no policy instrument to facilitate operations," said Bernardo Kosakoff, an economist at the Universidad de San Andres, to El Cronista.

And instead of enabling businesses, Argentina's government in recent years has sometimes taken a combative stance towards its biggest companies.

The national government recently created controversy when it decreed it would use its holdings in various companies through nationalized pension funds to name business directors.

One of the companies, Techint, refused to allow the government's delegates into the company, preferring instead to buy out the government's share.

Earlier this month, the Argentine government lifted import tariffs on sheet metal coming from Brazil, Russia, and the Ukraine at dumping prices. The measure was seen as a direct hit on Siderar, a subsidiary of Techint and the country's biggest producer of sheet metal.

The government also allowed steel tubes from China at dumping prices, in detriment to Techint and national production.

"In Argentina, because of the discretion of the government, businesses are fearful and don't say anything because they're afraid of measures that might be more inconvenient," said Manuel Solanet, a partner at Infupa in a Cronista article.

The VCC report recommends that Argentine companies begin internationalizing by building ties through Mercosur, the South American regional trade bloc.

"The region is the natural platform from which companies can launch themselves into the world."

One of these countries is not like the others (hint: it's the red one)

2011-05-25T17:26:00.015-03:00

From the International Monetary Fund's World Economic Outlook 2011:

Which begs the question: What's going on with Venezuela?

The Venezuelan economy is conditioned by the performance of its petroleum sector and international oil prices. The collapse in prices in the mid-1980s led to a long wave of political and economic instability. Attempts to reform its economy and welfare state were met with widespread resistance from the population, including the Caracazo, in 1989, over the liberalization of transportation fares, and a coup attempt in 1992 led by a young military officer named Hugo Chávez.

The crisis and failed reform attempts led to the demise of Venezuela's two main political parties, Acción Democrática and COPEI, and the crumbling of its long-standing democracy (in Latin American terms, at least). These conditions facilitated the landslide victory of Hugo Chávez in the presidential elections of 1998. (Source: Haggard and Kaufman (2009). Development, democracy and welfare states. Princeton.)

Since the election of Hugo Chávez, oil production at PDVSA, Venezuela's state oil company, has dropped from 3.3 million barrels a day to 2.25 million barrels a day. Venezuela, the recipient of loans and investment from China, must pay back those debts with oil. It also provides subsidized oil for domestic constituents and for political allies, reducing the amount available for export. In addition, according to this Economist article from February:

The president’s hostility to business has devastated the rest of the economy. He has nationalised hundreds of companies and trumped up charges against their owners, causing much of Venezuela’s private sector to shut up shop and flee. As a result, the country has seen vast capital flight, and must import many goods that it used to produce. Non-oil exports have ground to a halt: petroleum now accounts for 92% of its dollar intake. A misguided currency policy has exacerbated the malaise.

Just one more reason to start learning Portuguese.

Soccer violence in Argentina

2011-05-22T19:58:00.001-03:00

According to an AP piece on soccer violence, there have been thirteen soccer-related deaths in the last year in Argentina. Below, a photo from Saturday's Huracán-Estudiantes game shows a fan preparing to throw an ad hoc javelin at the opposing team's fans. The game was suspended after 32 minutes due to violence.

Photo: Fotobaires

Mike Tyson dances on Argentine television

2011-05-22T15:18:00.001-03:00

Iron Mike Tyson, Brooklyn native, former heavyweight boxing champion, convicted rapist, and Holyfield ear-eater, made his way south to dance on Argentina's highest-rated show, Showmatch. Watch what happens.

Biblioteca Nacional lands smoothly on planet, engrosses Earth dwellers

2011-04-13T10:59:00.000-03:00

The Militant Bus and other photos, also sounds

2011-03-25T02:22:00.012-03:00

This is what it sounded like:

Demonstration

Inflation Watch: This is where Guillermo Moreno wants you to stick your loaf of bread

2011-03-22T20:22:00.008-03:00

Moreno had this to say about your loaf of bread

Argentina's Internal Commerce Secretary Guillermo Moreno has been accused of manipulating inflation and other statistics at INDEC, Argentina's statistics bureau, since 2007. He's now turning his attention to private consultancies that release inflation numbers contradicting those of the government.

Moreno claims the consulting firms are releasing "erroneous information" that goes against Article 9 of the Commercial Loyalty Law, a relic of the country's last military dictatorship.

The firms, including Estudio Bein, Econoview, and abeceb.com have been threatened with a fine of $500,000 pesos for the alleged infraction of the law.

Last week, the consulting firm E&R (Economía & Regiones), became the first to say it would no longer release its inflation numbers after pressure from Moreno, but said it will still use its own calculations for analysis.

The firms involved, some of which have agreed to change the name of their inflation indices, claimed they would appeal any measures taken against them by the government, saying it's a violation of free speech.

In 2010, the reportedly short-tempered Moreno threatened to cut off funding for CEPAL, the UN's Latin American Economic Commission, because it was made up of investigators from the University of Buenos Aires who had criticized Moreno's inflation numbers.

The US embassy in Argentina, in its annual investment climate statement from this month, qualified rising inflation as "dramatic," and warned investors that it may "diminish the attractiveness of prospective investments in some sectors."

Latin American Green City Index

2011-03-17T21:26:00.001-03:00

The Economist Intelligence Unit, commissioned by Siemens, published a report on the environmental performance of 17 major Latin American cities based on several criteria. To the surprise of absolutely no one, Buenos Aires received a score of "below average."

The report summarized its findings on Buenos Aires as such:

Despite its relative affluence [the highest GDP per capita of all the cities measured at US$24,200], Buenos Aires ranks below average in the Index overall. The city’s best results come in the areas of energy and CO2, land use and buildings, transport, and environmental governance; in each of these categories it ranks average. Its performance in the energy and CO2 category is driven by a relatively low rate of electricity consumption per unit of GDP and strong policies aimed at curbing the effects of climate change. In the area of transport, Buenos Aires has one of the longest public transport networks and well-developed policies aimed at congestion reduction. However, the city’s overall performance is weighed down by a well below average rank in the water category. Although all of Buenos Aires’s residents have access to potable water, the city has a high rate of water consumption and system leakages. The city’s score is further hindered by below average rankings in waste, sanitation and air quality. However, when measured against other high-income cities in the Index (GDP per capita above US$16,000), Buenos Aires has the highest share of residents with access to potable water and sanitation services. Furthermore, the city has adopted one of the most ambitious climate change action plans in the Index, and its performance in many categories will likely improve as a result.

Here is Buenos Aires's scorecard:

Source: Economist Intelligence Unit

Here's how the other cities fared:

Well above average: Curitiba, Brazil. Above average: Belo Horizonte, Bogotá, Brasilia, Rio de Janeiro, and Sao Paolo. Average: Medellín, México DF, Monterrey, Porto Alegre, Puebla, Quito, Santiago. Below average: Buenos Aires and Montevideo. Well below average: Guadalajara and Lima.

The Best Thing I Read This Week: Imprudent Writings

2011-02-23T00:13:00.002-03:00

From the prologue of José Pablo Feinmann's book, Imprudent Writings (Escritos Imprudentes):

Exultant God says to Saint Paul: "Far away, in the South, way down, I'm going to create a marvelous country. It will lack nothing. It will have plains, forests, mountains, minerals, livestock, benign climates, generous seas, abundant petroleum. Oh, yes, it will lack nothing." Saint Paul, worried, says to the benevolent God: "But, Lord, that country will be too powerful, nothing will be able to stop it, it will dominate the world!" God shrugs his shoulders, snaps his divine tongue, calming Saint Paul, and says: "Don't worry: I'm going to fill it with Argentines."

A disingenous politician? Nah...

2011-02-14T18:13:00.013-03:00


Eduardo Duhalde about to give everyone the finger

In a recent interview with the Argentine daily La Nación, former President Eduardo Duhalde, a pre-candidate for president for the Dissident Peronist party, spoke out strongly against the current government's policy of not repressing social protests.

In the article, titled "I will be the president of order," Duhalde is quoted saying, "[Repression] is an inherent responsibility of the State, which has a monopoly on the use of force and must use it." He added that he wouldn't allow protesters (piqueteros) to block the Pueyrredón Bridge, an access point to the Capital from the southern suburbs.

When asked if he would send police and get an order from a judge, he replied: "There's no need to ask anything of the judge ... The police have to greatly exceed the number of protesters. If there's a 40-person protest blocking a road, you have to send 200 police, without arms, and trucks to arrest [the protesters]. And something else: you have to photograph everyone and identify them in order to start criminal proceedings. That way, they know they will be identified while committing a crime, and the second time they won't do it because they've been charged."

Now comes the fun part.

Last week, when Momo Venegas, the leader of the Rural Workers' Union (UATRE), was arrested for his alleged ties to the "Mafia de Medicamentos," a crime ring involving the falsification of pharmaceuticals, there were massive street mobilizations by union-related groups demanding his release. They even blocked the Pueyrredón Bridge. Venegas is closely associated with Eduardo Duhalde – Duhalde spoke on his behalf in a press conference during his arrest – and the former president reportedly organized the street protests.

In an election year in Argentina, documenting the contradictions, hypocrisies, and unfulfilled promises of political candidates would be a full-time job requiring a strong stomach. That's why they won't be related here.

But this incident was particularly alarming because there were street protests and roadblocks reportedly organized by a presidential candidate promising to repress those very protests – and also maintain law and order – in order to demand the release of a union leader being investigated for a crime. It's a dangerous posture for judicial security.

How to Sometimes Be a Vegetarian in Argentina: The federal government's cooked inflation numbers

2011-02-12T16:14:00.022-03:00

Internal Commerce Secretary Guillermo Moreno, with the political support of the Kirchners, has been cooking inflation statistics at the National Statistics Institute (INDEC) of Argentina since early 2007, even though jurisdiction over INDEC falls under the Economic Ministry. 2007 was the last presidential election, which saw increased fiscal outlays, adding to already high aggregate demand in the economy and putting upward pressure on prices.

The researchers Damill and Frenkel provide the following graph illustrating the gap between the government's inflation statistics and private sources. (The divergence occurs in early 2007.)

Martín Redrado, the ex-chief of the Central Bank, in his book Sin Reservas, documents how the manipulation by Moreno was done: "According to what I had analyzed, whenever a product would go up more than 15% in a month, they took it out of the [inflation] measurement," he writes, thereby limiting the effects on the basket of goods comprising the overall figure.

Martín Lousteau, former Minister of the Economy and author of the infamous Resolución 125, an agricultural tax scheme that led to the conflict with agricultural sectors, reportedly had a contentious relationship with Guillermo Moreno over the INDEC intervention and the government's unwillingness to set inflation targets. After leaving the government, Lousteau had this to say about Moreno: "He's a caveman who thinks he's an economist."

Meanwhile, the government refuses to publicly acknowledge the existence of inflation. Last week, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner said, "Talking about price variations in fruits and vegetables is absurd. What's happening is price dispersion and distortion, and taking advantage (aprovechamiento) of the situation."

MOE Boudou, interested in avocados, presumably for guacamole-related purposes

Minister of the Economy Amado Boudou suggested that shoppers "walk the streets" in search of better prices. He also said that Mercedes Marcó del Pont, the chief of the Central Bank, gets avocados at the Mercado Central for one peso, an impossible price this time of year, not to mention a nearly impossible place to get to if you don't have a car and a ton of spare time. Argentines were happy to hear their MOE talking about avocados, and not anything that might be considered silly.

A recent article in the New York Times explores the inflation phenomenon.

The Santa Rita, also known as Bougainvillea, is a plant native to South America. One of them lives on the balcony and has bloomed, bringing great joy:

2011-01-09T19:48:00.010-03:00

Photos submitted for the manual 'How to Shovel Snow':

2011-01-01T17:33:00.003-03:00

Richard Holbrooke's dying words

2010-12-14T15:18:00.004-03:00

Richard Holbrooke, foreign policy adviser, veteran diplomat, most recently President Obama's envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, said as he was going under for surgery: "You've got to stop this war in Afghanistan."

Holbrooke passed away after complications from surgery to repair a torn aorta, according to the Washington Post.

The Best Thing I Read This Week: Paul Goodman

2010-12-12T15:35:00.003-03:00

Paul Goodman, 1960s iconoclast, was asked to give a speech to the National Security Industrial Association at the State Department auditorium in 1967. This is how he began his remarks:

You people are unfitted by your commitments, your experience, your customary methods, your recruitment, and your moral disposition. You are the military industrial of the United States, the most dangerous body of men at the present in the world, for you not only implement our disastrous policies but are an overwhelming lobby for them, and you expand and rigidify the wrong use of brains, resources, and labor so that change becomes difficult. Most likely the trends you represent will be interrupted by a shambles of riots, alienation, ecological catastrophes, wars, and revolutions, so that current long-range planning, including this conference, is irrelevant.

Check out the trailer for the film "Paul Goodman Change My Life" by Jonathan Lee.

Trailer for Paul Goodman Changed My Life from Israel Ehrisman on Vimeo.

Wikileaks' logic

2010-12-03T18:11:00.009-03:00

This essay by Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, from 2006, explains some of the logic behind Wikileaks. In brief, he writes about attacking existing authoritarian structures by eliminating or weakening the links between conspirators. (It's available on his old blog archive.)

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Conspiracy, Conspire : make secret plans jointly to commit a harmful act; working together to bring about a particular result, typically to someone’s detriment. ORIGIN late Middle English : from Old French conspirer, from Latin conspirare agree, plot, from con- together with spirare breathe. (OED)

The best party is but a kind of conspiracy against the rest of the nation. (Lord Halifax)

Security gives way to conspiracy. (Julius Caesar, act 2, sc. 3. The soothsayer’s message, but Caesar is too busy to look at it)

Introduction

To radically shift regime behavior we must think clearly and boldly for if we have learned anything, it is that regimes do not want to be changed. We must think beyond those who have gone before us and discover technological changes that embolden us with ways to act in which our forebears could not.

We must understand the key generative structure of bad governance.

We must develop a way of thinking about this structure that is strong enough to carry us through the mire of competing political moralities and into a position of clarity.

Most importantly, we must use these insights to inspire within us and others a course of ennobling and effective action to replace the structures that lead to bad governance with something better.

Conspiracy as governance in authoritarian regimes

Where details are known as to the inner workings of authoritarian regimes, we see conspiratorial interactions among the political elite, not merely for preferment or favor within the regime, but as the primary planning methodology behind maintaining or strengthening authoritarian power.

Authoritarian regimes create forces which oppose them by pushing against a people’s will to truth, love and self-realization. Plans which assist authoritarian rule, once discovered, induce further resistance. Hence such schemes are concealed by successful authoritarian powers until resistance is futile or outweighed by the efficiencies of naked power. This collaborative secrecy, working to the detriment of a population, is enough to define their behavior as conspiratorial.

Thus it happens in matters of state; for knowing afar off (which it is only given a prudent man to do) the evils that are brewing, they are easily cured. But when, for want of such knowledge, they are al lowed to grow until everyone can recognize them, there is no longer any remedy to be found.
(The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli [1469-1527])

Terrorist conspiracies as connected graphs

Pre and post 9/11 the Maryland Procurement Office2 and others have funded mathematicians to look at terrorist conspiracies as connected graphs (no mathematical background is needed to follow this article).

We extend this understanding of terrorist organizations and turn it on the likes of its paymasters; transforming it into a knife to dissect the conspiracies used to maintain authoritarian power structures.

We will use connected graphs as a way to apply our spatial reasoning abilities to political relationships. These graphs are very easy to visualize. First take some nails (“conspirators”) and hammer them into a board at random. Then take twine (“communication”) and loop it from nail to nail without breaking.

Call the twine connecting two nails a link. Unbroken twine means it is possible to travel from any nail to any other nail via twine and intermediary nails. Mathematicians say that this type of graph is connected.

Information flows from conspirator to conspirator. Not every conspirator trusts or knows every other conspirator even though all are connected. Some are on the fringe of the conspiracy, others are central and communicate with many conspirators and others still may know only two conspirators but be a bridge between important sections or groupings of the conspiracy.

Separating a conspiracy

If all conspirators are assassinated or all the links between them are destroyed, then a conspiracy no longer exists. This is usually requires more resources than we can deploy, so we ask our first question: What is the minimum number of links that must be cut to separate the conspiracy into two groups of equal number? (divide and conquer). The answer depends on the structure of the conspiracy. Sometimes there are no alternative paths for conspiratorial information to flow between conspirators, othertimes there are many. This is a useful and interesting characteristic of a conspiracy. For instance, by assassinating one “bridge” conspirator, it may be possible to split a conspiracy. But we want to say something about all conspiracies.

Some conspirators dance closer than others

Conspirators are often discerning, for some trust and depend each other, while others say little. Important information flows frequently through some links, trivial information through others. So we expand our simple connected graph model to include not only links, but their “importance”.

Return to our board-and-nails analogy. Imagine a thick heavy cord between some nails and fine light thread between others. Call the importance, thickness or heaviness of a link its weight. Between conspirators that never communicate the weight is zero. The “importance” of communication passing through a link is difficult to evaluate apriori, since its true value depends on the outcome of the conspiracy. We simply say that the “importance” of communication contributes to the weight of a link in the most obvious way; the weight of a link is proportional to the amount of important communication flowing across it. Questions about conspiracies in general won’t require us to know the weight of any link, since that changes from conspiracy to conspiracy.

Conspiracies are cognitive devices. They are able to out-
think the same group of individuals acting alone

Conspiracies take information about the world in which they operate (the conspiratorial environment), pass through the conspirators and then act on the result. We can see conspiracies as a type of device that has inputs (information about the environment), a computational network (the conspirators and their links to each other) and outputs (actions intending to change or maintain the environment).

Deceiving conspiracies

Since a conspiracy is a type of cognitive device that acts on information acquired from its environment, distorting or restricting these inputs means acts based on them are likely to be misplaced. Programmers call this effect garbage in, garbage out.

Usually the effect runs the other way; it is conspiracy that is the agent of deception and information restriction. In the US, the programmer’s aphorism is sometimes called “the Fox News effect”.

What does a conspiracy compute? It computes the next action of the conspiracy

Now we ask the question: how effective is this device? Can we compare it to itself at different times? Is the conspiracy growing stronger or is it weakening? This question asks us to compare two values over time.

Can we find a value that describes the power of a conspiracy?

We could count the number of conspirators, but that would not capture the key difference between a conspiracy and the individuals which comprise it. How do they differ? In a conspiracy, individuals conspire, while when isolated they do not. We can show most of this difference by adding up all the important communication (weights) between all the conspirators. Call this total conspiratorial power.

Total conspiratorial power

This number is an abstraction. The pattern of connections in a conspiracy is usually unique. But by looking at a value that is independent of the arrangement of connections between conspirators we can say something about conspiracies in general.

If total conspiratorial power is zero, there is no conspiracy

If total conspiratorial power is zero, then clearly there is no information flow between the conspirators and hence no conspiracy.

A substantial increase or decrease in total conspiratorial power almost always means what we expect it to mean; an increase or decrease in the ability of the conspiracy to think, act and adapt.

Separating weighted conspiracies

We now return to our earlier idea about cleaving a conspiracy into halves. Then we looked at dividing a conspiracy into two groups of equal numbers by cutting the links between conspirators. Now we see that a more interesting idea is to split the total conspiratorial power in half. Since any isolated half can be viewed as a conspiracy in its own right we can continue separating indefinitely.

Throttling weighted conspiracies

Instead of cutting links between conspirators so as to separate a weighted conspiracy we can achieve a similar effect by throttling the conspiracy — constricting (reducing the weight of ) those high weight links which bridge regions of equal total conspiratorial power.

Attacks on conspiratorial cognitive ability

A man in chains knows he should have acted sooner for his ability to influence the actions of the state is near its end. To deal with powerful conspiratorial actions we must think ahead and attack the process that leads to them since the actions themselves can not be dealt with.

We can deceive or blind a conspiracy by distorting or restricting the information available to it.

We can reduce total conspiratorial power via unstructured attacks on links
or through throttling and separating.

A conspiracy sufficiently engaged in this manner is no longer able to comprehend its environment and plan robust action.

Traditional vs. modern conspiracies

Traditional attacks on conspiratorial power groupings, such as assassination, cut many high weight links. The act of assassination — the targeting of visible individuals, is the result of mental inclinations honed for the pre-literate societies in which our species evolved.

Literacy and the communications revolution have empowered conspirators with new means to conspire, increasing the speed of accuracy of the their interactions and thereby the maximum size a conspiracy may achieve before it breaks down.

Conspirators who have this technology are able to out conspire conspirators without it. For the same costs they are able to achieve a higher total conspiratorial power. That is why they adopt it.

For example, remembering Lord Halifax’s words, let us consider two closely balanced and broadly conspiratorial power groupings, the US Democratic and Republican parties.

Consider what would happen if one of these parties gave up their mobile phones, fax and email correspondence — let alone the computer systems which manage their subscribes (sic), donors, budgets, polling, call centres and direct mail campaigns?

They would immediately fall into an organizational stupor and lose to the other.

An authoritarian conspiracy that cannot think is powerless to preserve itself against the opponents it induces

When we look at an authoritarian conspiracy as a whole, we see a system of interacting organs, a beast with arteries and veins whose blood may be thickened and slowed until it falls, stupefied; unable to sufficiently comprehend and control the forces in its environment.

Later we will see how new technology and insights into the psychological motivations of conspirators can give us practical methods for preventing or reducing important communication between authoritarian conspirators, foment strong resistance to authoritarian planning and create powerful incentives for more humane forms of governance.

Quantum physics in Six Feet Under

2010-11-28T22:23:00.004-03:00

An essay by Leigh Teresi analyzing the brilliant first episode of season three:

The HBO series Six Feet Under is an ironic repudiation of the media’s condescension toward its viewers. It combines complex storytelling, fully developed flawed characters and psychological realism in an organic setting. In the premier episode of Season 3, creator Alan Ball, who wrote American Beauty, portrayed the hero’s fate through the dramatic lens of quantum mechanics. The Uncertainty Principle, the Copenhagen Interpretation, Schrödinger’s Cat, Fisher’s Theory, and the Many-Worlds Interpretation are implemented creatively throughout the script, providing exposure to advanced theories rarely explored by weekend couch potatoes.

At the end of Season 2, Nate Fisher (prodigal son, vibrant lover, tortured soul, sexy stoner) counted-down from ten on the operating table prior to brain surgery. As he became anesthetized, he faced the symbolic "bus" that took his father's life in Season 1. Fans were forced to wait months before discovering if Nate would return among the living cast or join his father in a recurring ghost role. Dead or alive, Nate is the hero, and the hero must live on.

What happened to Nate in the premier episode was a dramatization of "Many-Worlds" --a radical theory referred to by many physicists as, "An accurate description of the way the world really is." According to Hugh Everett's "Many-Worlds Interpretation," whenever numerous possibilities exist, the world splits into many worlds, one for each possibility. In each of these worlds, everything is identical except for that one choice; from that point on they develop independently and the world branches endlessly. Everything that can happen, does, somewhere (Zukav).

Although pertaining to quantum events, this has implications for macroscopic systems, too. You think there are choices you'd never make, but there are infinite versions of you, to whom certain choices are not so unthinkable, split-off at some point from the path you were traveling. This implies that we have infinite duplicates in infinitely replicating universes, enjoying or suffering a different life of alternate choices.

At the beginning of Season 3, we loom above the operating table where we were left hanging at the end of Season 2. Poignant moments from Nate's life flash before him in what appears to be a traditional television death scene. The screen fades to white, as it has in the opening scene of every prior episode, but this time the deceased character is Nate: Nathaniel Samuel Fisher, Jr. 1965-2002.

Next, we loom above the Fisher home and family funeral business where the flag waves at half-mast. Nate's mother, Ruth, irons a black dress and his brother, David, sobs uncontrollably ...all traditional symbols of death in our three-dimensional world. Then we cut to a dark restaurant scene in which Nate watches his dead father, Nate Sr., devour a platter of Fenugreek drenched in maple syrup. Nate is disgusted and refuses an offer to taste it.

"I don't want to be late for my funeral," Nate tells his father.

"You've got plenty of time. Hell, you've got nothing but time --which doesn't exist anyway," Nate Sr. replies, mocking the linear concept of time. According to quantum mechanics, time as we perceive it does not exist. The illusion of events in our lives developing in time is due to our state of awareness, which only allows us to see narrow strips of the total space-and-time picture. (Nate was not impressed.)

Nate leaves his father and enters his home to the sound of his own funeral music. He passes his mourning family and approaches his open casket. He curses David for not having him cremated. Unlike typical interactions with the dead on Six Feet Under, Nate's family is unaware of his presence. Although ghosts typically entangle with the living on the show, Alan Ball calls the ghosts "literary devices to articulate what's going on in the living characters' minds." In this scene, Nate does not represent the traditional ghost. His family is unable to interact with an alternate, branched reality ...as indicated by the Many-Worlds Interpretation.

Nate hears his own voice in a nearby room. As he enters, he sees David teaching him how to pronounce simple words on an index card. The Nate he sees is sitting in a wheelchair and has suffered brain damage during the surgery. He can barely speak and his face is disfigured. This scene depicts one of infinite potential realities that exist for Nate, known as alternate universes, which coexist completely unaware of each other. Nate watches in horror until he hears himself in a different room talking about his newborn daughter, Maya.

He enters the room to see himself with his ex-girlfriend, Lisa, and their child. They are sitting comfortably together admiring Maya's features. Coldplay's "A Rush of Blood to the Head" plays softly in the background as he eavesdrops on a conversation between them about the sensation of falling just before sleep. This scene depicts an alternate world in which Nate has chosen fatherhood and marriage with Lisa.

"We lose so much," Lisa says, as the door springs open and Nate's ex-fiancée, Brenda, walks in casually clutching their son on one arm, speaking brashly about his hiccups. Nate sees himself following her into the house and suggesting that she scare him.

"The world is a hostile and terrifying place, he needs to learn that," the alternate Nate tells Brenda.

"Thank God we got high before we came, " Brenda replies.

Nate smiles as the opposing worlds pass, unaware of each other, as Many-Worlds indicates.

Nate enters the dining room where his entire family is having Christmas dinner. This is unusual because Nate's father died on Christmas the year before. They are in a heated debate over the Bush election debacle. Nate declares he "doesn't eat red meat" which is also unusual. Peggy Lee sings, "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." In this reality, every circumstance mirrors the first season, except for the fact that Nate Sr. is alive and Nate is a screaming liberal vegetarian. His sister, Claire, is still high on drugs and pretending not to be, David is still in the closet, and Ruth is still uptight and hiding her affair. Nate resists the impulse to laugh at their secrets.

Richard Marvin's version of the same Christmas song overlaps Peggy Lee's in the next room as Nate gladly accepts a large slab of red meat in an alternate Christmas dinner scene that depicts a conservative mutation of his family. He has the same father, but a different mother and sister (...victim of an alternate choice made by his father). Nate sees himself as a somewhat familiar, daddy's-boy in a family of four, instead of five. The mother, an incredibly sarcastic platinum blonde, is the antitheses of his mother Ruth. He watches in awe until he hears himself yelling on the sun porch.

Before we examine the following scene, it is important to understand the Copenhagen Interpretation and Schrödinger's Cat. Traditionally accepted, Copenhagen is a rejection of Newtonian physics [ordinary sense perceptions and absolute truths]. It rejects rational society's presumption that nature can be understood in terms of traditional space-and-time realities. We simply cannot observe something without changing it. Period.

"Schrödinger's Cat" is a paradox that sums-up the differences between the Copenhagen and Many-Worlds interpretations (Zukav). A cat is placed inside a box with a device that can release a lethal gas, capable of instantly killing the cat. A random event determines whether the gas will be released or not, so there is no way of knowing what happens inside. The box is sealed, the experiment is activated, and the gas is either released, or not. The question is: without looking, what has happened inside the box? Schrödinger's wave equation generates an endlessly proliferating number of branched realities (Zukav). What you think will happen, does.

According to classical physics, the cat is either dead or alive and all we have to do is look inside to see which is true. All of the things that could possibly happen unfold, but once we look in the box (once we observe) only one possibility actualizes and the others cease to exist (collapse). The traditionally-accepted Copenhagen Interpretation says that the cat is in a kind of limbo (represented by a wave function), which contains the possibility of both life and death. When you look in the box and not before, one possibility collapses and the other actualizes. The act of observing changes a system.

But with the Many-Worlds Interpretation, the cat is both alive and dead. When we look into the box, we split into two branches. In one branch of reality, the cat is alive and in an alternate branch of reality, the cat is dead. Both possibilities inhabit simultaneous, non-interacting, equally "real" worlds.

Nate hears himself yelling on the sun porch: "Shit, I've seen this one before!" He enters to see himself slumped on the couch in a blue-collar work shirt with a huge beer-gut and a trashy young girlfriend. The windows show an unknown rural locale. Nate is horrified by the alternate reality that clearly depicts a poor choice made during his life.

The couple watches a television show that depicts a classic soap opera scene, punctuated with canned sitcom laughter. Alternate Nate lights up a cigarette as the girlfriend inquires, "Why are we watching this for?" To which he as eloquently replies, "Because it's what's on... Quit flappin' yer trap... I like this show."

The actress on the television show inside the television show announces:

"That was Dr. Schrödinger. Kitty didn't make it."

Her lover replies, "The universe has split in two."

"Two? Try two billion!" She laughs, trailing into a tone of concern, "What's going to happen to us?" [Will we collapse and cease to exist?]

He comforts her and says, "There, there, ...we always end-up in a universe in which we exist... Remember Copenhagen?"

The actress smiles and replies, "Ah yes, the Eigenvalues in bloom." [Eigenvalues are associated with a matrix equation, also known as characteristic roots.]

The alternate Nate laughs along with emphatic canned laughter. The couple in the show states not only that Schrödinger's Cat is dead, but that they [as if part of an experiment] sense they are being observed and are concerned with the outcome. Without a basic understanding of quantum theory, the scene is meaningless.

The man in the show says, "Just keep telling yourself that everything that can happen does somewhere..." stating the fundamentals of Many-Worlds.

Alternate Nate says, again: "Shit, I've seen this one before!"

Nate runs out of the room, distraught. A man crosses his path and smashes the family clock with a sledgehammer. After all, time does not exist. He runs into the funeral parlor where his father stands with a clipboard, telling him he just needs him to answer a few questions:

Do you believe your consciousness affects the behavior of subatomic particles?

Do you believe that particles move backwards and forward in time and appear in all possible places at once?

Do you believe that the universe is constantly splitting into billions of parallel universes?

To which Nate replies, "What the fuck do I care?!"

His father says, "You only get one choice, so you may want to think about it" ...as Irma Thomas sings, "Time is on my Side."

"Just tell me: Am I dead?: Yes or no?" Nate pleads.

"Yes... and no... Some places you're dead; some places you're alive; some places you never even existed; Possibly; Theoretically; Or who knows? This could just be the anesthesia talking." He laughs in Nate's face, "Go ahead! Open the box!"

Nate approaches his own casket on the bier in a surreal funeral setting. Countless versions of him line the funeral chairs in matching 3D welding goggles like bald atomic test scientists in matching suits, bracing for the moment he will open the box. Mirroring the paradox Schrödinger's Cat, Nate stands before his own casket and prepares to choose which branch of infinite potential realities he will occupy.

"Fuck it."

Nate opens the casket and the scene floods with white. His name appears again above his birth date, but this time the "2002" dissolves, indicating that he has chosen the reality in which he is alive. Any physicists transfixed to HBO that night may have anticipated a white cat leaping from the casket in true Hollywood form.

In the following scene, a fluffy white cat [Schrödinger's, we presume] walks across the yard where Nate is holding his daughter, Maya. It is seven months later and Nate has branched into a world resulting from one, specific life choice. Previous episodes focused on Nate's inability to take responsibility for the cause and effect of his actions, but in Season 3, Nate has taken the quantum leap from free spirit to devoted father and husband ...much to the dismay of Nate groupies everywhere.

Nate explains the events of his surgery to unfamiliar friends at a barbecue as Lisa justifies their abrupt marriage. Doctors told Nate he should have died or suffered lasting brain damage (one of the alternate worlds witnessed), but he survived the surgery and everything was fine. Nate did not get on the proverbial bus, nor did he determine that he [the cat] would be dead inside the casket [box].

We know many worlds exist for Nate and have branched-off simultaneously. We also know from Many-Worlds that those worlds do not interact. So when Lisa explains casually over lunch that she's been taking Fenugreek and that it makes her sweat smell like maple syrup, Nate senses he's heard it before, but the image of his father devouring Fenugreek with syrup is a mere flash, like déjà vu, that passes eerily. Schrödinger's cat howls in the background as his friend yells at another young child: "Put. The Kitty. Down!"

Nate is plagued by brief communications between parallel universes, something Many-Worlds says does not occur. These interactions are perceived as "déjà vu." Parapsychologists believe déjà vu is related to "past lives." Some psychiatrists call it a mismatching in the brain that mistakes the present for the past.

In physics, what is known as the "present" lies in the past of an uncountable number of alternate futures. Physicists entertain notions of time loops, tachyons [particles that can travel backwards in time] and multiple universes, so the idea that our unconscious is able to present precognitive knowledge via dreams or visions is actually quite plausible.

The final scene depicts a simplified discussion of quantum theory and a demonstration of Nate's precognitive knowledge of an alternate universe. The Coldplay song that was playing in the alternate world Nate witnessed with Lisa and Maya earlier, plays throughout this scene too. Nate has just learned that he was an "accident" and that his father married Ruth because of him, just as he married Lisa because of Maya.

"It's just always weird when you find stuff like that out... I had no idea I wasn't planned." Nate said, as they exchanged ideas in a calm moment.

"I don't like knowing that my whole existence is an accident. It's just too fucking random."

"But that's the way it happened. Things happen the way they're meant to, Nate." Lisa says, defending Copenhagen, as if to imply that all other possibilities have collapsed due to an "outside observer."

"That's the kind of fatalism that I just don't buy," Nate replies.

"What's the alternative?" Lisa asks, no pun intended.

"We make choices," Nate replies, subconsciously aware that every choice renders a potential, branching, alternate reality that suffers of or benefits from that choice.

Nate is also embracing Fisher's Theory, which demonstrates that the universe is binary, black and white. There is no gray area. According to Fisher (and Nate Fisher) either we know something or we do not. Fisher also presented a mathematical treatment of evolution and proved that even small differences could produce significant changes in the history of species (Box). The actions of a whole can be determined by the actions of a sample: like father, like son.

Lisa responds to Nate's assumption that free will is possible by saying, "But then maybe your parents wouldn't have chosen to get married if you didn't [accidentally] happen, and then not only would you not exist, but Claire and David wouldn't either," ...unaware of the world Nate has glimpsed in which Claire and David don't exist.

"But surely we're more than just things that happen," Nate asserts, resisting the quantum theory that individual events are chance happenings.

"Maybe we are, maybe we're not." Lisa says, comfortable with the language of mythos rather than logos. After all, there is no classical logic for the quantum world. We have to learn to live with experience and accept that it is not bound by the same rules as language or mathematics. Experience follows a much more exciting set of rules, more real than classical logic. Quantum logic is based upon the way we experience things, not the way that we think of things. We cannot explain experience with traditional symbols. Experience acquires a life of its own (Zukav).

At the end of the final scene, Nate re-experiences the exact dialogue he witnessed between them earlier and is able to finish Lisa's sentences with her. [Déjà vu.]

"I think I dreamed this moment," he says. The three of them huddle into the shape of a heart.

Coldplay sings, "...and I know the mistakes that I've made."

Fade to white.

The quantum leap is from a reality of infinite numbers of dimensions into a reality of only three. We cannot fully grasp the concept of infinite potentiality from our single actuality because we are prisoners of our three-dimensional perspective. An example would be the commonly accepted belief that something is either there or it isn't, whether we look at it or not. Quantum mechanics says this just isn't true.

The Uncertainty Principle says we can only determine the probability of an action happening, to which Einstein replied; "God does not play dice." However, God does play dice and She played it with the late Mr. Fisher and a sharp-dressed man called Death in Season 1. She let Death win, and then mounted his lap and had sex with Him. This demonstrates the assertion that to understand quantum mechanics "we must let go of our preconceptions about the world derived from our experiences." (Currie)

The exploration of quantum theory is just one example of countless visual and intellectual rewards Six Feet Under fans enjoy. From physics to Freud, tragedy to comedy, death to life, Six Feet Under is an evocative summation of what the medium can accomplish when it strives for higher ground than The Anna Nicole Show.

The Best Thing I Read This Week: C. Wright Mills's 'wobbly freedom'

2010-11-11T22:16:00.004-03:00

The sociologist C. Wright Mills, in a letter to his imaginary Russian friend Tovarich, explains that he didn't fit in with either Marxists or liberals:

You've asked me, 'What might you be?' Now I answer you: 'I am a Wobbly.' I mean this spiritually and politically. In saying this I refer less to political orientation than to political ethos, and I take Wobbly to mean one thing: the opposite of bureaucrat. … I am a Wobbly, personally, down deep, and for good. I am outside the whale, and I got that way through social isolation and self-help. But do you know what a Wobbly is? It's a kind of spiritual condition. Don't be afraid of the word, Tovarich. A Wobbly is not only a man who takes orders from himself. He's also a man who's often in the situation where there are no regulations to fall back upon that he hasn't made up himself. He doesn't like bosses –capitalistic or communistic – they are all the same to him. He wants to be, and he wants everyone else to be, his own boss at all times under all conditions and for any purposes they may want to follow up. This kind of spiritual condition, and only this, is Wobbly freedom.

You Say Tomado, I Say Tomato

2010-10-03T23:03:00.006-03:00

Facultad tomateada:

Parque tomateado, tambien:

How to Sometimes Be a Vegetarian in Argentina: Peanut butter and strawberry sandwich

2010-09-23T20:27:00.003-03:00

Self-explanatory:

Stepping Into The Fire trailer

2010-09-03T00:08:00.001-03:00

Documentary about ayahuasca:

Stepping Into The Fire Trailer from Ross Evison on Vimeo.

War escalation does not make the US safer

2010-08-14T11:06:00.008-03:00

This might seem obvious to many, yet US wars in the Middle East continue.

A 2004 report from the Pentagon that is still valid today documents the "underlying sources of threats to America's national security" (from page 40):

The report is from Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon, not from the America-hating left.

The website Iraq Body Count estimates the civilian death toll in Iraq to be around 100,000 people (see the methodology on the website).

Wikileaks's recent release of classified documents reveals government cover-ups of civilian deaths and the truth about the pointless war in Afghanistan. Nobody says it better than Glenn Greenwald (see here and here).

How to sometimes be a vegetarian in Argentina: Hummus-stuffed portobello burgers

2010-07-29T13:34:00.007-03:00

1) Make hummus using your favorite hummus recipe:

2) Coat some portobellos with olive oil and bake for about 15 minutes:

3) Stuff portobello "bottom" with hummus. Add cheese to the top, if you like. (Cheddar, in this case.)

4) Top and sandwich between toasted buns:

5) Enjoy. : /

Don't forget to breath

2010-06-12T14:07:00.001-03:00

Ever find yourself wondering how your body turns oxygen into carbon dioxide? Well, today is your lucky day. Watch this video:

Bill Clinton on Argentina...

2010-06-11T11:16:00.001-03:00

Black Swan, Brown Pelicans

2010-05-25T14:07:00.014-03:00

One month from the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, the oil continues to spew into the Gulf of Mexico with no end in sight. The following was written by Santiago O'Donnell, and first appeared in Pagina 12 on May 16. It has been translated to English by the author of this blog.

You’re one of the 126 operators that work on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, in the Macondo oilfield in the Gulf of Mexico, 40 miles from the coast of Louisiana. A few days ago your company, Transocean LTD., finished drilling a well 5,000 feet under the sea. You installed a safety device called a BOP – or blowout preventer – to cover the well in case of a fire. Now you’re on maintenance duty, while the Halliburton people seal the oil duct with a layer of cement, in the hope that British Petroleum, the owner of the oilfield, can soon start extracting oil.

You’re there in the middle of the Gulf on a 396 by 256 foot platform above a pipeline stretching a mile to the bottom of the sea and suddenly a bubble of methane gas enters the pipe and the whole platform catches fire. The explosion kills 11 workers, but you’re not one of them. You spend five hours on a lifeboat in such high temperatures that the paint on the boat starts to melt. You get to shore but it’s not your family waiting for you, it’s a group of lawyers and executives, and they put you on a bus and take you to a hotel. You spend five hours there, making statements and signing documents. Then you go home, thinking the worst has passed.

You think, OK, the famous fire rangers must have already arrived – those intrepid movie personality-types that run around the globe putting out oil fires. You know that in the last ten years there were more than a dozen platform fires in the Gulf of Mexico, without much incident. Someone just has to activate the BOP to close the mouth of the well and clean up what has already spilled. But this time the valve doesn’t work. Then, you wonder about the other valve, the one that’s activated automatically by sensors. But no, it was never installed here – even though it’s required on Brazilian and Norwegian deep-sea wells, the U.S. doesn’t require it and the oil companies argue that it’s too expensive. You turn on the TV. The platform burns for more than a day before crumbling and sinking into the sea. You see that the robots sent to the disaster site aren’t able to stop the spill, and that it’s leaking 210,000 gallons of oil per day [some say more]. At this point you realize the true scope of the problem: the worst oil spill in history, except for when Saddam Hussein’s thugs set fire to the oil fields of Kuwait during the first Gulf War.

But this time you can’t blame a dictator, or a drunk captain, like the one that caused the 1989 Exxon Valdes spill in Alaska, whose ecological effects are still being studied.

There are no flesh and blood villains, only a multinational company that needed a well, British Petroleum, your company that drilled the well, Transocean, and another that sealed it, Halliburton. Wall Street punishes them without mercy and the Capital parades company executives past congressional committees so their faces appear on television and the citizenry has someone on which to relieve their anger.

But there's also the government itself, which in this case didn’t demand the backup valve and exempted BP from a thorough environmental impact review, as designated by law, because an initial report said the possibility that a spill from the Macondo oilfield could reach the shore was minimal. And there's the president that just lifted a moratorium on new offshore drilling – implemented 30 years ago precisely to avoid spills like the one that just occurred. But part of the Gulf of Mexico was left out of the moratorium because oil companies have been drilling there for 80 years. A few months ago Obama allowed for new drilling in Alaska and Florida. Alaska had already suffered through Exxon Valdez and Florida had never allowed offshore drilling. So what will Obama say now? You change the channel just in time to see him changing course: With a solemn tone, the president announces a new moratorium until the security risks of all offshore operations are examined. But it’s too late: a giant black stain is advancing toward the Mississippi delta.

Meanwhile, you find out they’re trying to cover the spill with a giant containment dome, connected by tube to a tanker. It had been done before, but never in such deep water. This time it doesn’t work. Gas particulates are crystallizing in the dome and clogging the opening through which the oil was to be funneled to the surface. So they go for plan B, which consists of drilling another well next to the spill to drain the reservoir, expected to take 40 days. And the oil keeps spewing. Obama and BP throw in everything they’ve got: 5,000 ships, 50 planes, 10,000 volunteers, tons of dispersant, and miles of booms and sponges.

You’re in your house on the coast, near the spill, while meteorologists and oceanographers try to decipher which way the oil will go. The wind is changing, will it move toward Mexico? Will it go around Florida in the Gulf Stream? The only certainty now is that the big black stain has already arrived at the Mississippi delta, and you’re one of the 200,000 inhabitants of New Orleans. When you arrived ten years ago, New Orleans was the capital of jazz, of carnival and partying, and had twice the population it does now. The birthplace of Louis Armstrong, Tennessee Williams, and the Marsalis brothers, the city even has it’s own trademarked drink, the Hurricane: cocktail umbrella, alcohol, Hawaiian punch. Like a Manhattan but much zanier. Like dancing Zydeco, drunk, in the middle of Bourbon Street. A party. Until one day Katrina turned New Orleans into Chernobyl. And now the black stain is advancing, as if it were the second plague of a biblical punishment.

But you know there’s nothing supernatural about this catastrophe. And you’re sure the oil companies, the insurers, the regulators and congress people, the lobbyists and ecologists all know it too. The destruction of the planet is easy to explain. You don’t have to work at Transocean to know that offshore drilling is extremely risky. It’s something we’ve known since the days of the caveman: If you play with fire, you might get burned.

1 part bank, 1 part money, stir

2010-05-14T12:31:00.012-03:00

A recent Gallup poll on bank access in Sub-Saharan Africa reveals that only 19% of the overall population have bank accounts. Here's what the country spread looks like:

The number one reason why people in Sub-Saharan Africa don't have bank accounts: they don't have any or enough money. The number two reason: there aren't any banks. On the tragicomic scale between 1 and 10, 1 representing pure tragedy, this gets a rating of 3.

In which Creedence Clearwater Revival is a tongue twister

2010-05-09T23:33:00.009-03:00

The neighbor woman, Mirta, is an elementary school teacher. She leaves early in the morning and comes back around 5pm on weekdays, then typically goes to the gym or to walk in the park or grocery shopping. I know because I often see her as we're coming and going and she voluntarily tells me what she's up to. That seems to be a thing.

She's one of the very few people in Argentina who met my mother and grandmother when they were here. As we were leaving the apartment one afternoon, we happened upon Mirta in the hallway. I introduced them in Spanish, Mirta gave them both a big hug and kiss on the cheek, which is also a thing, and began speaking to them enthusiastically in Spanish. They gazed back, wide-eyed.

Mirta was Agustina's kindergarten teacher. According to Agustina, she doesn't allow her students to dip their cookies in milk or tea, something that Agustina enjoys. So for all of kindergarten, Agustina devised a system in which she would take a bite of her cookie and then drink a sip of tea with the cookie still in her mouth, a sign of iconoclasm to come.

On Sundays, and exclusively Sundays, Mirta listens to Creedence Clearwater Revival at high volume. We can hear it through the wall. Sometimes she listens to some steamy operas and tangos. But high volume only on Sundays.

I realize it's a long walk, all of this, but what I'm getting to is: Imagine you're having dinner, you're speaking in Spanish. In fact, you're plowing through with surprising speed the aforementioned details about your neighbor Mirta, and the argentinos at the table are looking at you with relative interest. Then at the very end, you have to stop and enunciate "Creedence Clearwater Revival" in English. It's a pretty serious tongue twister.

Anatomy of a bonaerense media bonanza

2010-04-08T11:33:00.011-03:00

On the morning of April 1st, Argentine supermodel Nicole Neumann called the radio station La Red and related the following:

The previous evening, at about 9:30pm, she was in her 4x4 heading to a club in Quilmes with her representative and bodyguard. Stopped at a traffic light, they were approached by two young men, about 16 - 17 years old, who began hitting the windows of the vehicle with a weapon and yelling for them to lower the windows.

The bodyguard, a former policeman, instructed the representative to open the passenger window. The bodyguard then put his gun out the window to scare the would-be assailants. A struggle (forcejeo) ensued, and the gun went off into the air, injuring no one, according to Neumann. The auto then left the scene without further incident.

Neumann went on to say, "It's terrible, it's no-man's land. I can't believe the authorities don't do anything ... You can't live like this. Yesterday I was thinking: What should I do, leave the country?"

The incident was not initially reported to the police. The Quilmes authorities became aware only as the media outlets picked up the story, and they asked publicly and made repeated calls for Neumann to contact them so they could begin an investigation.

The story first appeared in the online version of La Nacion at 12:50pm, and later in Clarin, Critica, and infobae.com, and also the print versions of several newspapers, including Pagina 12.

After the matter was reported as fact by these news agencies – they used language such as "the model was a victim of a violent assault" and "Neumann suffered an attempted robbery" – a worker at the Quilmes nightclub, who was in a separate vehicle leading Neumann to the club, said the attempted assault never happened. "I received a call from Neumann's agent," he said, "and he asked me how to get back on the freeway. He apologized and told me Neumann wouldn't be going to the nightclub because 'she was tired.'"

Because of Neumann's strong condemnation of the Quilmes police and her failure to report the incident with the same before she went to the media, the episode evoked a response from such high places as the Cabinet Chief of the federal government, Anibal Fernandez, who happens to be from Quilmes. Fernandez said Neumann's statements were "lies that don't make sense."

Neumann later went to Quilmes and was interviewed for three hours by authorities.

It's still not clear what happened on the evening of March 31st. What we do know is that for the last week the model's face and figure have been splashed around the various media outlets, along with her denouncements of the Quilmes police and general safety of Buenos Aires. A Google search of Nicole Neumann (from Argentina) generates 256 news stories.

BREAKING NEWS: A bus I'm glad I wasn't on

2010-03-31T22:01:00.011-03:00

This bus decided to explode in front of my apartment last week.
The television cameraman beat the firetrucks to the scene by about 15 minutes.
Update: No one was injured in the fire.

Disney psychedelia latinoamericana

2010-03-26T11:12:00.016-03:00

In 1941, Walt Disney and a team of animators were commissioned by the US State Department to complete a goodwill tour of Latin America. Some Latin American countries' connections with Nazi Germany caused worry amongst US State Department officials, so they sent the creator of Mickey Mouse, one of the most popular figures in Latin America at the time, to shore up ties. They toured Brazil, Argentina, Peru, and Chile and made four short animated films related to each country, released as Saludos Amigos in 1943 in the US. It is the only US film in history to premiere in Latin America before its release in the US.

A 2008 documentary called Walt & El Grupo relates the experience.

Gaucho Goofy, Pedro, Lake Titicaca, and Aquarela do Brazil are posted here. The best and most accurate, in my opinion, is Aquarela do Brazil. I could only find a subtitled version because Disney seems to have a tight hold on its YouTube economy, so hopefully they won't disallow embedding of these:
Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Also, Chile's discontent with its portrayal in Saludos Amigos inspired cartoon artist René Ríos Boettiger to create what would eventually become one of Latin America's most popular animated characters, Condorito:

Astounding fact of the century

2010-03-10T13:30:00.006-03:00

Buenos Aires and other South American cities shifted to the West after the earthquake in Chile. Check it out:

Bolivia's new constitution

2010-01-30T17:59:00.001-03:00

Bolivia adopted a new constitution on January 25, 2009. According to Amnesty International, the constitution represents "the most significant advancement of economic, social and cultural rights the country has seen in many decades."

Read the full constitution here.
Photo: JOAO PADUA/AFP/Getty Images

Bolivision

2010-01-29T11:07:00.039-03:00

For those of you who have never traveled in Bolivia, and never will, allow me to describe it to you in the following way:

Inside Camp Snoopy (to me it will be forever called as such even though it is regrettably now called Nickelodeon Universe) at the Mall of America in Minnesota, there's a ride called Paul Bunyan's Log Shoot. After waiting in line and presenting your Snoopy Points (or whatever they're called) you're ushered to the platform where the log comes bobbing down the shoot.

You go to step into the log and – oh, hey, a bit wobbly there. Then you notice the seat is wet, try to wipe it clean in vain, and finally figure, what the heck, a little water never hurt anybody. You sit down and feel the water soak through your pants.

The flowing current takes you forward slowly, bouncing off the side of the shoot, until the log catches on the chain apparatus and jerks you up ... up ... up ... with a mild whiplash effect. This is when you try to fasten the seat belt and realize there are none.

You finally get to the top, turn a corner, and see you have a spectacular view of Camp Snoopy. It takes your breath away. Then you look down – you're only a few feet from falling to your death, and at that instant, the log cascades downwards unexpectedly and lifts you off the seat, leaving you startled and clutching the sides. You think to yourself, hey, this is terrifying, I’m never coming here again.

You catch your breath and now you're weaving through some kind of rocky landscape. There are workers scattered about, looking at the funny faces of the passengers passing through. You turn a corner and the log plunges into blackness – a tunnel. There are more workers there, appearing to you in the darkness only after your eyes adjust. Things get psychedelic when you think you may have seen a giant blue ox, but you're not completely sure.

You slowly make your way to the end of the tunnel, and, grateful to be back out in the free air and light, you suddenly realize there’s a precipice ahead. You know it’s coming, you’re ready for it, and there’s nothing you can do.

The log falls downwards and as it levels out at the bottom the inertia carries you forward, splashing you with water. You step out onto the platform and say, hey, that wasn’t so bad after all, I even enjoyed myself, but I’m still never coming here again.

Now, instead of a Paul Bunyan log, imagine a chicken bus. And instead of Camp Snoopy, imagine you're traveling inside of a hot, voluminous vacuum cleaner bag. That’s what it’s like to travel in Bolivia.

Photos by Agustina Caferri (except for the first one).

There's an important story behind this photo. On our way to catch a bus in Potosi, we purchased a small bag of peanuts from this woman. Under my arm was a copy of Le Monde Diplomatique, a monthly current events periodical. The woman recognized the man on the cover, Barack Obama, and she read the headline "Nada Nuevo Con Obama" (Nothing New With Obama). She gave me a thumbs up and a big denture smile, so I stopped and held the front cover out to her. She proceeded to read out loud, in broken Spanish – presumably because Spanish is not her first language – the sub-headline:

Al año de la asunción de Barack Obama a la presidencia de Estados Unidos, las exorbitantes expectativas que había despertado su elección van siendo reemplazadas por el desconcierto y la decepción. Salvo la reforma –descafeinada– del sistema de salud, muy pocos han sido los cambios que produjo. La política hacia América Latina no ha variado; la inacabable guerra de Afganistán se refuerza con más tropas; la situación de los estadounidenses azotados por la crisis no ha conocido aún ningún alivio. Es que en política no existen los milagros, y ningún líder puede transformar por sí solo y de golpe las estructuras de poder hegemónicas.

One year after the rise of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States, the exorbitant expectations that accompanied his election are being replaced by disconcertion and deception. Except for the watered down reform of the health system, very few changes have been produced. The US's policy toward Latin America has not changed; more troops are being sent to the interminable war in Afghanistan; Americans most affected by the economic crisis are seeing no abatement. It's because in politics, miracles don't exist, and no leader can transform by himself the structures of hegemonic power.

She said that she liked that newspaper, and I said I like it too. She asked where she could buy it, but we thought she was so awesome that we left her our copy. Taxi drivers usually have the reputation of wanting to be urban chums and talk politics. In Bolivia, it's apparently the peanut ladies.

Sidewalk Chronicles: Part 2

2010-01-02T16:44:00.005-03:00

Our neighborhood seems to be a popular place for studios to film. We see crews and trucks and professional equipment around the 'hood on a regular basis. San Telmo has a unique aesthetic, and our block of Avenida Caseros especially retains a lot of the original architecture. The other day they were filming what we're guessing is a commercial for a new Chevrolet compact car.

Argentina As A Grizzled Beard Grower: A Hairy Allegory

2009-12-30T04:28:00.019-03:00

Once upon a time in the Southern Hemisphere, there was a grizzled old man who grew a plush beard. The man – let’s call him Ezekiel – was the son of Spanish and Italian immigrants. Although he identified strongly with his forefathers, his upbringing under the conditions in the New World had created in him a truly unique panache and flair. He had seen a lot in his life: corruption, assassinations, death squads, countless economic crises, oppressive military dictatorships, and so on and so forth. He loved to dance the tango and drink wine. He was passionate about futbol and politics and expressed his feelings with dramatic and affective gestures. And, as mentioned, he grew a vast and delicious sterling silver beard.

It wasn’t just any beard, this one. It was an incredibly rich and fertile beard, and Ezekiel believed that if he cared for and cultivated it wisely, he could eliminate moments of uneven growth and never go hungry. So he grew his beard as he pleased, and there were good moments, like when he was young and rich and his beard was plentiful. But mostly there were terrible and terrifying moments, like when military generals took over and subjected Ezekiel to torture and death, and they chopped and splayed and exploited his beard to wrack up precarious amounts of debt while padding their personal bank accounts.

Ezekiel was left hurt from that episode – deeply hurt. It would take him decades to recover from the military takeover. Even the return to democracy didn’t allow him to grow his beard enough to repay all of his debt. After several years he experienced a terrible hyperinflation crisis. One day, representatives from the International Beardgrower Fund magically appeared from the distant North. They offered loans to Ezekiel if he would just follow their advice on how he should grow a sumptuous beard. Ezekiel, hands essentially tied, said yes.

Soon his beard was growing again, but – following the policies of the International Beardgrower Fund – it was twisted and combed over and big parts of it were sold off to foreign investors. It was braided and spiked with contorted policies and infested with parasites. The complexity of it all confused Ezekiel somewhat, but he still took advantage – he was renting convertibles in Miami and working on his suntan, traveling to Europe and the like with his newfound riches. But all the while he knew something wasn’t quite right. His beard was itchy and uncomfortable, and he wondered how much longer he could live like that.

The day of reckoning came eventually. The policies of the International Beardgrower Fund, and Ezekiel's lack of capacity in such matters, made Ezekiel extremely vulnerable. At the first sign of weakness, the foreigners who had invested so much in Ezekiel took flight. Ezekiel was left in crisis. His government didn't allow him to take out money from his bank accounts for several months, and he took to the street in protest. His country's political system was in crisis – his economy, in tatters.

In the end, his beard was a twisted mess of unkempt and kinked gray hair. Ezekiel decided to shave it, start over, go in a new direction.

But it hurt. His gummy beard didn’t go easily. He cut his face in several places, he bled from the chin and from the neck, and the sting of the aftershave left him reeling. He was destitute and out of work, and his beard would be worth only a third of what it had been. But worst of all was the psychological shock – Ezekiel knew he had all of the resources to grow an abundant beard, but achieving it always remained frustratingly out of reach. So he spent his days stumbling about the city and country, looking for scraps in garbage cans and fulminating against regimes new and old.

Eventually, Ezekiel went cautiously back to work on his beard. He began going about town with a hood on and his head down so as to protect his beard. It began to grow, slowly at first, then more rapidly. Ezekiel realized he could grow soybeans in his beard and sell them to the Chinese for a lot of money. He was eating again, and more stable. Most importantly, for the first time in a long while he felt he was in control of his own future, and although there were occasional hiccups and constant adjustments to be made on his beard, he was content.

Several years passed. Ezekiel was still trying to find a way to pay off the loans to the International Beardgrower Fund and other creditors, but his beard was growing smoothly and he was making progress, thanks to strong demand for the commodities he grew. Then one day a representative from the distant North came to meet with some of Ezekiel’s elected representatives about the state of his beard. The representative made public remarks about how Ezekiel wasn’t providing enough judicial security and about how the previous decade provided a much more favorable environment for foreign investors. Ezekiel was shocked. His political representatives thought the time had passed when representatives from the North could come and tell him how he should manage his beard and make statements that were out of touch with reality. He had flashbacks of torture regimes and piles of debt and tan lines and garbage dumps and his once-mangled beard.

And Ezekiel protested, saying: “I am providing judicial security,” and, “even a cursory reading of history will tell you that the favorable conditions for foreign investors in the previous decade led to disaster for Argentina, and insinuating a return to that is lunacy." Regaining his composure, he put his head down and his hood up, and looked to his neighbors for support. Then he went back to work, stroking his beard, walking clumsily with his own worn two-shoes, cursing empires and destiny.

Sidewalk Chronicles: Part 1

2009-12-08T16:27:00.004-03:00

The first part in what will hopefully be an ongoing series, I'm presenting here photos and anecdotes about what the view is like from our balcony on a typical day. I think this experiment will be a good reflection of what it's like to live in San Telmo, and maybe even Buenos Aires in general.

To begin with, this man regularly walks his dog through the neighborhood and never cleans up afterward. He sometimes even obliges his dog to step down from the curb onto the street to do his business, as if he were doing us all a favor by allowing cars to smear the shit along the boulevard.

The picture above is rubble where a sidewalk used to be. It was a good sidewalk, too. It hadn’t been chopped or slashed for any municipal project. It was a trim, neat, brick-red mosaic tile – not like the other sidewalks in the city (if you can call them that). There were trees too, which flowered and gave shade. It was a comfortable place for the dogs of the ‘hood to take their morning shit (see above).

It’s a good gig, if you can get it – jack hammering, that is. It’s especially good, apparently, if you’re from Bolivia, Peru, or Paraguay.

They've been starting at about 7:30 in the morning with the jack-hammering and the dropping of large chunks of concrete into metal dumpsters. And it seems as though some of the workers – or someone – has taken up residence within the construction site. If you look closely at the next one, through the tree, you can see our new neighbors are airing out their laundry.

Sometimes, we hear noises coming from there in the middle of the night. Not regular household noises, but construction-type noises, like they sometimes decide to put in a few hours when they get back from the pool hall. You know, for extra credit.

This one, tragically, is a man sleeping on the same slice of sidewalk frequented by the neighborhood dogs (see above, again). It was 4:30 in the afternoon – time to get started for the day, don't you think?

Looking the other way, there is a building that used to be a casa tomada, where squatters had moved in. Presumably, the owner wanted to reclaim his/her property, so some authority came to remove the squatters and they started refurbishing the building. They're currently painting the exterior. You can see the left side (behind the tree) has not been painted yet and still wears the building's former color.

And, of course, cherry tomatoes !!

Argentine child-snatchers

2009-11-30T11:41:00.001-03:00

You have to see it to believe it. (from Al Jazeera)

A gem from the Travel Film Archive

2009-11-24T20:18:00.010-03:00

1932 Travel Video

The river at 1:28 where the people are swimming no longer reaches that point. Sometime between then and now, the Argentines decided it would be a good idea to turn that area into a landfill. The landfill was later allowed to grow over and is now an ecological reserve.

You’ll notice the cow at 3:28 is not being force-fed with a tube or injected with hormones, and has plenty of space to range freely. Cows of course are not treated like that anymore – nearly half of the famous beef produced in Argentina comes from cows raised in feedlots.

Tricky Linguistics

2009-10-03T02:41:00.005-03:00

Hold the newsreaders nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers.
- Stephen Fry

I think I’m getting the hang of this whole Spanish language thing. The other day I successfully explained the double meaning behind the title of the film Synecdoche. (It wasn’t easy.) But then again, maybe not: I went to the vegetable stand and forgot the word for plums (ciruela) so I ended up asking for “three of these” (they were delicious). ‘Tis a constant struggle, this language thing.

I’ve moved beyond the phase of grammar learning, for the most part. There are always new words and ways of expressing ideas, but as far as understanding syntax and creating sentences compatible with the grammar, I’m good to go (put me in, coach).

Most of my learning these days comes from interaction with people. And since most of the people I interact with are native speakers, opportunities abound for me to observe conversational rhythm and the idiosyncrasies of Argentine Spanish. (I also read the brilliant Argentine satirical newspaper Barcelona to better understand what’s happening politically and learn the words that go well with irony.) The tricky part, now, is jumping into those conversations without interrupting the native rhythm, and of course not making a grammatical mistake. I, for one (and surely there are other second language learners who feel the same), am so hyper-aware of making a mistake when I speak that it often keeps me from saying anything at all, which is a pretty big personality shift. But when I do speak, there’s nothing more gratifying than an understanding nod or a reply in kind to what I’ve said.

(If I knew more about linguistics and the psychology of learning, I would say my experience is constructivist–behaviorist. Constructivist because of learning through social interaction, and Behaviorist because of the positive and negative feedback I receive in conversation, i.e. argentinos shooting red wine out their noses as I rain down hilarious jokes, or people telling me directly they have no idea what in the hell I’m trying to say. But since I don't really know what I'm talking about, I'll leave this part in parentheses.)

Of course, knowing how to say something is not the same as having something to say. When you engage in conversation you can’t just say – in the language of the Argentines – cualquier pelotudez – ideally you should add a coherent idea. That goes for any medium (blogs :0).

So, the struggle continues. On my way back from the vegetable stand I was greeted by Hector The Doorman (see: Sonic The Hedgehog), who takes care of our building. He said something in the most unintelligible Spanish I’ve ever heard, and I looked at him emptily. Then I remembered: according to several sources, no one understands what this man is saying. I motioned to the grocery bag overflowing with fruits and vegetables. “Tengo para hacer ensalada,” I said. “I’m making a salad. It’s important to eat healthily, right?”

He laughed. But, now that I think about it, it might have been because he didn't understand what I was saying.