Punishing bloggers in Egypt

The Washington Post has a disturbing story about how the Egyptian government is singling out bloggers for punishment. Given the country's perpetual state of emergency, they can be jailed indefinitely. Apparently bloggers are really beginning to annoy President Mubarak, which may simply mean their political criticisms are accurate. He then uses the following twisted logic to explain that he gets to decide what is free speech:

"Most of what they are writing could be punished according to the law, because it is libel and blasphemy," Mubarak said. Referring to himself as the source of whatever free speech exists in Egypt, he added: "If they think that what they are doing is an expression of their freedom, they should remember who gave them this chance, and who is insisting on its continuity."

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Coffee and the radio

I was on Charlotte Talks this morning with Mariano Ospina, a Colombian whose award-winning coffee company is headquartered here. He very generously gave me some Premier Grand Cru Ospina Estate Coffee, and I am drinking some of it now. Excellent stuff.

The idea of the show was to explain why Americans (and Charlotteans specifically) should care about Latin America. Not surprisingly, the hour went very fast.

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Immigration Op-Ed

Check out today's Charlotte Observer for an Op-Ed piece on immigration that I wrote with my dad.

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Colombian election and the left in Latin America

As predicted by everyone, Uribe won the Colombian presidential election, though he received an even larger share of the vote (62 percent) than generally predicted. The candidate of the left, Carlos Gaviria, won 22 percent, the largest share the left has ever received.

I know I am sounding like a broken record, but I do get tired of the conventional wisdom about the left that keeps getting repeated without analysis. In this case, the Washington Post article argues that Uribe’s election “bucks the trend of leftist leaders taking office across South America in recent years.” It adds:

Recent years have seen left-leaning leaders take office in Bolivia, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile. But the election of the conservative Uribe bucks the leftward trend in South America.

I've said this many times, but it bears repeating: the governments listed there are so diverse that lumping them together makes no sense.

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Padres beat the Cardinals

The Padres come from behind 6-2 to win 10-8 against the Cardinals, to win the rubber game of the series. Not bad at all. Jake Peavy did not pitch that well, but it shows we can score runs in Petco when needed, even against great teams.

And Barry Bonds hit number 715. I find myself totally uninterested.

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Colombian elections

Colombia holds its presidential elections today, with incumbent Alvaro Uribe widely expected to win a majority, and thus avoid a second round. Check out Plan Colombia and Beyond for a good summary of how each candidate views the U.S.-Colombia relationship. On Tuesday I'll be on Charlotte Talks to talk some about Colombia but also about Latin America in general--the other guest is a Colombian in the coffee business, whose father was president just before La Violencia.

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The U.S. Military and Latin America

Interesting stuff. The army general in charge of the U.S. Southern Command is openly questioning U.S. policy toward Cuba, saying it needs to be rethought. In particular, he wants to be able to make contact with Cuban officers. This comes on the heels of the Pentagon publicly saying that it did not like the policy of penalizing countries that refused to provide waivers to U.S. soldiers with regard to the International Criminal Court.

There is both good and bad intertwined in this. The good is that most aspects of our Cuba policy make little sense and at times have precisely the opposite effect intended, so it’s a good idea to rethink them. The bad is that, as Dana Priest has aptly argued in The Mission, the U.S. military is making policy in many parts of the world because the White House is paying no attention and/or is not interested. Civilians should be making coherent policy, but they aren’t.

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Things I Don't Understand, Part I

One thing I don’t understand is why people back into parking spaces. My only guess is that they figure it will be quicker when they want to leave.

I had an example today. I drove into the parking deck here on campus, and pulled forward into a space. There had been a car well ahead of me when I entered, and the person was backing into a space. Back, forward, a little sideways, forward, back, multiple times trying to get straight. I had already parked and was walking well away from him or her before they finished. So the entire effort had wasted a lot of time, and I really doubt they will ultimately get out too much faster than me, even though I will have to back out when I leave.

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Student knowledge of politics

I am teaching Intro to Comparative Politics during this summer session, and yesterday for fun I gave my students a quiz on politics, which they could do anonymously. I just wanted to see how much people knew. Here are the results. N=19

How is the number of electoral votes for each state determined?

Correct: 32%

Who is the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives?

Correct: 5% (one person!)

Identify NC’s two senators:

Dole: 21%
Burr: 16%

Two people correctly identified both of them

Identify the Governor of NC:

Correct: 58%

Identify the Mayor of Charlotte:

Correct 47%

These numbers are quite low, of course, though I don’t know offhand how they compare to national surveys. It does help to underline a point I made in class, which was that it just seems so odd that the U.S. utilizes a system for electing its president that very few people understand. Even more odd is that people realize that they don’t understand it, yet still don’t care.

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Does Chávez really want to break with the U.S.?

In his newly created blog, Andres Oppenheimer argues that, despite Chávez's rhetoric, he is working to increase Venezuela's investment in the U.S. A few weeks ago, though, Camilo gave evidence of what he argued was a concerted effort by Chávez to pull away from the United States, perhaps to break relations entirely.

I'm still in a "we'll have to wait and see" mood.

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Bush's role in passing immigration reform

According to the WP, some House Republicans say that passage of a new immigration law is not possible unless President Bush puts all his energy into it.

One problem is that the last Bush approval rating I saw was 29 percent, just absurdly low (for a very cool graph of his approval ratings over time, check this out, compiled by Steven Ruggles at the University of Minnesota). Given the fact that immigration divides his party, the president has almost no incentive to use up what tiny amount of political capital he might have. There is thus a solid chance that nothing will be passed, though at this point there is pressure for Congress at least to look like it is doing something.

The Senate will likely vote on Thursday, and negotiations with the House will take place in June. Although I will be interested to see the Senate version, I wonder whether it will be relevant--either nothing will be passed or the ultimate law will scarcely resemble it given significant differences with House Republicans.

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Most Useless Newspaper Article I've Read in a While

This AP article has the headline "Mexican migrants heading north" and after reading it, I learned the shocking news that many Mexicans are coming to the United States. Maybe this is what happens to reporters when their deadlines are looming and they don't have anything written.

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Mexican immigration law

Here’s an interesting article in the Miami Herald about how Mexican law treats non-natives. Even if people become naturalized Mexican citizens, they are barred from serving in Congress, national legislatures, the Supreme Court, governorships, and sometimes even town councils. Here is a real shocker:

Recently the Mexican government has gone even further. Since at least 2003, it has encouraged cities to ban non-natives from such local jobs as firefighters, police and judges.

What basis could there possibly be for preventing naturalized citizens from serving in these positions? And why would the federal government make an effort to push for that sort of law at the city level?

Of course, these sorts of stories are getting more attention because the Mexican government has been so vociferous that its citizens should be treated better in the United States. I happen to agree completely with that position, but Mexico’s immigration laws are perhaps even more ridiculous than ours, which is saying something.

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Bacardi, Cuba and Political Science

An honors student of mine just graduated and is currently in Mexico (I will not name names, but his initials are John Hyatt). He emailed me that the label on a bottle of Bacardi in Mexico states that the company was founded in Cuba. He had never seen that mentioned in the U.S., and asked me about it. Being the good political scientist that I am, in the interest of political analysis I went and bought a bottle of Bacardi (I had to go to the store, so happened also to pick up a bottle of Coke). It makes no mention of Cuba at all, but only Puerto Rico, where the majority of production takes place. It says the company was established in 1862, but not the fact that it was in Cuba.

Bacardi is one of the very few companies that has not written off its losses in Cuba. An article in The Guardian (based on a book that was written on the topic—I cannot say I am interested enough to buy it) notes that Bacardi has given money to the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) and to politicians who support anti-Castro legislation. Bacardi’s very glitzy website has a history timeline, which says that the company’s assets were “illegally confiscated by Cubas [sic] totalitarian regime.”

This raises some questions. Why refuse to list the Cuba connection (at least on the bottle) in the U.S., but not in Mexico? Is it because Cuba is not seen with disfavor in Mexico? Why does Bacardi hang on so much when other companies have decided their property in Cuba is long gone? What is now happening on the land and production facilities it once owned? Is this all just a good excuse for me to make a rum and Coke?

When I discuss Cuba in class, I always admit that I cannot see an easy transition taking place, though I hope I’m wrong. Apparently Bacardi will be right in there, demanding back everything it lost when Fidel began nationalizing.

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Hugo Chávez and Latin America

The NYT has an article about some of the negative responses in Latin America to Hugo Chávez. It doesn’t cover anything really new, but does make me wonder whether Chávez’s regional popularity has already peaked. There must be some more pro-Chávez analyses out there that deny this, but I haven’t yet seen them.

One theme the article brings out is the idea that Latin Americans reject the hubris of the United States, but that perhaps now they are doing the same with regard to Chávez. Maybe they will find a political solution that avoids the worst aspects of both.

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Academic blogging

I’ve been reading a few blogs in recent days, written by people who are either ABD or recent Ph.D.s. All are anonymous, and are sometimes surprisingly frank, to the point that at times I feel like a voyeur just reading them. However, I’ve been attracted by their discussions about academic life as graduate school ends, especially in the social sciences. I now have tenure, but I can still relate to many of the same issues they raise, and perhaps reading them provides a good reminder of what recent Ph.D.s have to deal with. In short, academia is a pretty weird profession.

ABDmom is, as her name suggests, ABD at a large university, with an Assistant Professor job lined up in the fall.

Professor Me is revising her dissertation and has a job lined up.

BrightStar is an Assistant Professor in the social sciences.

ArticulateDad finished his Ph.D. in 2005 and is looking for a position.

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U.S.-Venezuelan relations

The public diplomacy of U.S.-Venezuelan relations remains as childish as ever. The U.S. announced it would no longer sell arms to Venezuela because it wasn’t “cooperating” in the “war on terror.” Since we barely sell arms to Venezuela (which has been doing a lot of business with Russia) this seems to be a gratuitous policy meant primarily to rile up Chávez.

In response, Chávez obviously tried to think of what might really make Bush (sorry, I mean “Mr. Danger”) mad, so announced he was thinking of selling his F-16s to Iran. Since the U.S. has the right to deny the sale of its planes, such a sale can never happen. Funny enough, the Iranians even denied they were interested at all, thus showing the entire idea was never based in reality.

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Moving

I am in the process of moving houses, so it'll be a few days until I post much again.

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Airlines & lost luggage

For three trips in a row now involving Charlotte--twice by me, and now once by my parents, on two separate airlines--flight delays have led to rushed connections, then lost (or I should say delayed) luggage. As for national security, the airlines are utterly clueless about where any bag is until it magically shows up somewhere. The stock answer is, "It will be on the next flight" but of the three times, that was only true once.

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Senate immigration deal

Senators Frist and Reid “reached a deal” on immigration. What this seems to mean is that they came up with a plan that can pass the Senate, and have agreed on the composition of a group of senators to hammer out a compromise with the House. It still includes a path of citizenship for people here illegally, though I have yet to see any details.

Everything remains vague. Frist says there will be a “considerable” number of amendments next week when debate starts up again, but no word on what they might look like. The White House wants something passed by Memorial Day. Then the nitty gritty--deal making between the House and Senate--will really begin.

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