Outis

In the previous post on Spanish-American analogues, I was tempted to include a comparison of Spain’s North African refugees to America’s Mexican and Central American refugees — particularly, after reading a dozen posts on Australia’s own Chinese refugee problem at the Road to Surfdom web site.

The fact is, there’s not a first world country that’s not within shipping distance from a third world country.

In some, this reality inspires the desire to reshape geography: with fences, walls, moats and, even, laser-shooting satellites.

In others, it leads to the conclusion that the best defense is a good offense: proactive measures to invest in the infrastructure and educational systems of developing countries while fostering transparent economic and social policies.

Via Metafilter, the following map from this month’s issue of Foreign Policy magazine:

Bradford Plumer, a writer for the liberal magazine Mother Jones, eloquently and succintly knocks down the trendy campaign to brand “fair trade” an urgent cause:

Arvind Panagariya of Columbia University has found that 33 of the 49 poorest countries are net importers of food. So on balance, those countries would all likely get kneecapped—at least initially—if developed nations were to slash their own agricultural subsidies, since the price of food would rise. Obviously rural farmers in the Third World would do very well, since they could sell their wares for more. But food consumers, especially in urban areas, could suffer from the rise in food prices; and since the poorest of the poor often spend up to a third or more of their income on food, we’re talking about a fair bit of potential hurt here.

So what would help? “Immigration, technology transfers, and capital flows.”

If only there was some way to boil that down to a phrase short enough to fit on the side of a player piano.

Etc.

The Legend of Billie Jean.

To celebrate the semi-anniversary of my return to Madrid, Spain, after living for over a quarter of a century in the U.S., I’ve prepared the following, spur-of-the-moment list of American popular culture icons and their equivalents in Spain.

Because it’s more fun to make everything into a competition (e.g. reality television), I’ve decided to declare a winner in each comparison. However, we’re all winners.

You can’t hang this dj.

By now you’ve probably read about New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer getting all legal on Sony BMG for bribing commercial radio station DJ’s to play such “pop” artists as Franz Ferdinand, Britney Spears, Jeniffer Lopez, Audioslave and Celine Dion.

The evidence against that particular target is available as a PDF document from the State of New York.

But, in case you’re thinking this is the end of business as usual and a new beginning for business as usual, fret not, for according to the Guardian:

The inquiry into other record companies continues. Firms including EMI and Warner Music have handed over documents to Mr Spitzer’s office.

My concern, of course, is for the New York radio station DJ’s who have been exposed as part of Spitzer’s probe. My heart goes out to them.

How will they know what to play? Will they go back to being semi-automatons?

Or, will they replaced by robots, once and for all?

According to the Associated Press via The Guardian:

Mr Rumsfeld urged Iraqis to complete their new constitution on time as he arrived in Baghdad on his unannounced visit.

“Now’s the time to get on with it,” he said, calling for the committee writing it to meet its 15 August deadline.

The BBC:

Iraq’s interim Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari has called for US troops to leave the country soon, but added no timetable had been set for withdrawal.

Mr Jaafari was speaking in a joint press conference with US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who is in Baghdad on a surprise visit.

Only a few weeks ago Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld estimated America’s campaign to transform Iraq from dictatorship to liberal democracy — while preventing a civil war — could take up to a decade. Now, it might only require a few months.

Why the change in strategy?

For starters, abandoning liberating the Iraqis to get on with their own grim future would allow the Bush administration to focus on other fronts. Particularly, Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, Ohio, Texas, Iowa and Pennsylvania.

Incumbent advantages are so widely recognized that it’s sometimes easy to forget: A few House districts really are up for grabs in the 2006 midterm elections.

This select group will draw an outsize share of campaign funds and media attention next year, because it will almost certainly produce whatever partisan shifts emerge in the chamber’s narrow but stable Republican majority. The Democrats’ long-shot hope for recapturing control rests on the chance — slim but not out of the question — that voters’ rising discontent with Washington will expand this tiny circle of genuine competition…

In midterm elections since World War II, the president’s party has lost an average of 24 House seats. Such a showing would be more than enough for Democrats to recapture control of the House. With effectively 203 seats now — including Mr. Sanders, the Independent — Democrats need to pick up just 15 more to become a majority.

Early signs suggest the 2006 elections might be ripe for change considering woes in Iraq, economic fears, protracted Washington infighting and concerns about gas prices. In the Journal/NBC poll, Americans said by 45%-38% that they preferred the election to yield a Democratic- rather than Republican-controlled Congress.

While I would like to say that it’s unlikely the U.S. will relinquish its peacekeeping duties in Iraq anytime in the next five years — given that such a move would probably result in an even more bloody civil war — the current administration (and many before it, Democratic and Republican) have certainly set a precedent for just such irresponsible foreign policy.

Case in point, the no-longer “Great War on Terror”, which appears, in retrospect, to have been a domestic political campaign carried out at the expense of a pragmatic foreign policy.