Common Sense and Whiskey

Gee, Nowadays Everybody’s Going to Cuba

Over the weekend there were features on CNN, BBC and in the Financial Times about Cuba, and now MSNBC has a live hour from Cathedral Square in Havana all this week.

A couple of weeks ago our local paper, the Atlanta Journal Constitution ran a story in its sports section about a trip to a baseball game in Havana. Oh, and the Pope is in town.

Here's a banner welcoming the Pope that hangs ouside the Catedral de la Virgen María de la Concepción Inmaculada de La Habana (Cathedral of The Virgin Mary of the Immaculate Conception) in Old Havana.

And below, the Cathedral itself.

Check out the Cuba Gallery at EarthPhotos.com. We're populating it with photos from our trip earlier this month. There are something around forty there now.

 

 

Election Year Politics

"This President has taken a very dangerous course with regards to Cuba, saying we're going to relax relations, we're going to open up travel to Cuba. This is the wrong time for that…."

- Mitt Romney in the NBC Debate, 23 January, 2012

Since anything is liable to be said in an election year, and since this remark was tailored to the Florida Latino community, it remains to be seen how fervently Mr. Romney believes what he said, but a couple of questions:

- What's dangerous? Is Governor Romney concerned that Americans might adopt the Cuban revolution as a model for our politics? The Cuban economic model as ours?  Maybe if we talk to the Castros they'll, what, invade? Or maybe if we just give our sixty year policy of economic sanctions and travel restrictions a little more time, it'll work?

- Why is this the wrong time to open up travel to Cuba? Would it have been better ten years ago? Will it be better ten years from now? (In fact, best I can tell, the current "people to people" program was instituted by President Clinton in March 1998, and later restricted by President Bush. The Cubans were even wary of the program at first.)

Governor Romney said it. I'm just asking.

You'd think denying American business access to the Cuban market would rile up the business wing of Mr. Romney's party. And then there's the matter of denying Americans their freedom to travel, for political reasons.

We're going to take advantage of the President's 'dangerous course' while it's available, with a trip to Cuba in March. Watch for reports here on CS&W.

Now THAT'S Austerity

In an article about the pain of yesterday's rating downgrade, the New York Times reports that, "In Paris, for example, a sparkling light show that illuminated the Eiffel Tower for 10 minutes every hour after dark has been cut to 5 minutes."

Havel, Hitchens & Kim

You've probably seen the tweet, "I'd like to think God let Havel and Hitchens pick the third," attributed to @jstrevino. Got it just right.

And I commend to you this fine blog.

Instructive List of Greek Austerity Measures

If all this were about to happen in your country, you might go out into the street and wave a banner, too.

Tough Call: Conrad Murray or the Drachma

From the Climbing Mt. Kinabalu chapter in the book, Common Sense and Whiskey (Kindle):

"Twice we passed Japanese girls in flip-flops, and the last one was really hobbling, on her boyfriend's arm. Mountain climbing may involve stepping over rocks. Apparently they were not told."

•••••

Reading and writing about travel is fun for some of us, just like for others, Conrad Murray and Kim Kardashian are important. But right now, travel news, news from the popular culture and news about the usual American political disfunction are trifles. I say, read well and deeply into the Eurozone's dilemma.

Do it now and do it urgently. What happens in the Eurozone is far more consequential than all the low brow antics of Herman Cain and the rest of the Republican presidential field combined. It's the most compelling story of 2011/2012, and it's pending right now. You have been told.

Kidnapping Deadly for Victim, Resort

There is news this morning that Marie Dedieu, a 66 year old Frenchwoman kidnapped from Kenya by suspected Somali militants earlier this month has died in captivity. The BBC reports that the Somali kidnappers did not take her wheelchair or medication with them.

Ms. Dedieu was kidnapped from the small island of Manda, part of the Lamu archipelago which, as you can see in this Google map, is about 75 miles south of the Somali border.

There is a resort on Manda called Manda Bay. Perhaps it's more accurate to say there WAS a resort there. The proprietors point out that Ms. Didieu was "believed to be a home owner on the Lamu side of Manda Island," and not resident at their resort. Nevertheless, a kidnapping from your little resort island can't be good for business.

So they've relocated their guests elsewhere and "Manda Bay will remain closed until we are totally confident that sufficient security has been provided for the whole area. "

I'm going to bet that'll be approximately never.

Read the Manda Bay statement.

Jigme Gets Hitched

Congratulations to the Bhutanese people. Looks like they're having a huge party around today's royal wedding.

Have you noticed? Most of the time the tone of news articles about Bhutan is a little bemused, treating the Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon as kind of quaint and not quite of this world. Writers always try to mention that "gross national happiness" thing, which started "as a casual, offhand remark" by the previous King. I admit to having treated Bhutan the same way in my book, quoting a man named Phruba about a  

"Ceremony day after (He meant tomorrow) for weather making. It is big this year because this year we have two Junes." He paused. "Sometimes we have no August."

Excuse me?

He knew he had us and he warmed to the subject. "Oh yes. Today is the ninth. Maybe sometimes we have two ninths and maybe no eleventh. This is decided by the monks and they always agree."

It’s published in Kuensel (the newspaper) every Saturday, so you have to check.

"This is why you cannot know when are the festivals."

•••••

That quote comes from the Bhutan chapter of Common Sense and Whiskey, the book. You can read the entire chapter online.

The photo at the top is from Punakha, the site of the royal wedding. It's at the confluence of the Mo and Pho rivers. See over a hundred photos in the Bhutan Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

And if you ever hear anything, please let me know where I can pick up a pair of these Royal boots.

 

 

Japanese Nuclear Propaganda

An article in the current New Yorker tells us about about the frightening Little Pluto (for plutonium) Boy, a cartoon used to indoctrinate children about the benefits of nuclear power. Here's a clip on You Tube.

Zambian Democracy

Nice to see the peaceful transfer of power to a new President in Zambia. Had a little email chat with the people at Kapani Lodge in the South Luangwa National Park this morning. They said President Banda was gracious in defeat, that it's all very exciting and they're proud. Best of luck to incoming President Sata.

Several years ago we spent a week at Kapani Lodge and other Norman Carr Safaris properties in South Luangwa. They're really great people. Couldn't have been nicer. Here's one of their bush camps. That's the "honeymoon suite" in the background.

Check out some wildlife photos in the Zambia Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

When Money Doesn't Matter #9

Michele Bachmann's in the news for politics, but more importantly, how does she travel?

Ryan Lizza's long biography in the current New Yorker informs us that Bachmann's campaign has traveled in a Dassault Falcon 900, and that she told Lizza, "Isn't this an incredible way to fly? I've never been on a nicer plane in my life."

So let's see.

The Dassalut Falcon is a trijet. Various iterations of the 900 can fly from 4150 to 4750 miles. Here's the web site. I found several used Falcons on sale, ranging from a 1986 model for just $6,700,000 to a nice 1994 for $15,300,000.

 

Watching the Libyan War in Luxury

Here's where the journalists reporting from Tripoli, Libya are staying:

It's the Rixos al-Nasr Hotel. This article says rooms are $435 per night. And it says:

"Some would call it perverse, the idea that journalists are spooning the foam from their cappuccinos in the hotel's outdoor bar while precision bombs rip apart bunkers and probably soldiers just beyond the nearby trees. But life at the Rixos and at Bab al-Aziziya follows its own rules. Gadhafi's people escort the reporters to the hotel, and guards are posted in the driveway to prevent them from setting out on their own."

Photo from the hotel's web site.

Down Down Assad

In 2000 when Hafez al-Assad died, we were in Vietnam, and curtailed a day of tourism to watch the news play out on CNN. Since having read Patrick Seale's definitive Asad: The Struggle for the Millde East, I've had a special appetite for his little eye doctor boy's regime to go. Let the chips fall where they may, and let us hope we can all visit a free Damascus soon. We can hope, can't we?

The Belgravia Dispatch weighs in.

Why El Salvador?

Heather Berkman writes in Foreign Policy that it's mostly about drug interdiction. Plus there's no place much better in Central America for a U.S. president to visit:

"... El Salvador has remained politically stable. Honduras is still regrouping following the ouster of President Manuel Zelaya in 2009. Guatemala's government lacks the resources and the political will to effectively combat drug traffickers. Throw in the likely reelection of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua this year, Washington's ongoing tensions with Panama's mercurial President Ricardo Martinelli, and Costa Rica's lack of regional political weight, and El Salvador begins to look more like Washington's foothold in the region."

Entering El Salvador overland from Guatemala, bananas welcomed us to this republic.

From EarthPhotos.com.

Will They or Won't They?

A survey of North Korea coverage:

A military blog called Information Dissemination, which describes itself as "the intersection of maritime strategy and strategic communication" thinks it's possible. In the post "One Sep from War," it says,

"the last straws have been broken. The US has always been on South Korean time, and it appears the clock is set only a minute until midnight."

Nightwatch for last night agrees that,

"Tension is high and small incidents can lead to large reactions."

They were more sanguine last week, writing,

"A review of diplomacy, international relations and leadership activities confirms that North Korea is not preparing for war. Its volleyball team just advanced to the quarter finals at the Asian Games in Beijing. Senior officials are receiving foreign diplomats as usual. Kim Chong il and his son were reported on 23 November visiting a plant together and Kim visited two others without his son.

The number and detail of the activities show that the North does not expect the shelling incident to escalate. There also are no reports of increased civilian or military alerts in North Korea, which would be mandatory precautions if the North expected or intended an escalation."

And 38 North weighs in about North Korea's motives.

Meanwhile for the traveling public, Wikipedia cites these 2009 statistics:

Aircraft movements: 211,404

Passengers: 30,000,000

Tonnes of cargo: 4,500,000

That's the traffic tip-toeing (whistling past the graveyard, choose your own metaphor) through Incheon International Airport, scarcely 50 kilometers from the Koreas' border.

(Incidentally, since I've just come across it, here's another travelogue from North Korea, from Der Spiegel.

 

Congratulations, and Happy Thanksgiving.

 

Take That!

Click the photo to go to Finnish broadcaster YLE, where you can watch a clip of a statement by North Korea about today's exchange of gunfire with the south. Hard to imagine, but it's actually real.

Save Your $12.95

We seldom delve into political matters here, at least U.S. domestic ones, and let's keep it that way. Yes we'll criticize China and Burma and North Korea, but based on the way they treat their people, they richly deserve it.

But reading the current Foreign Affairs makes me throw up my hands. In a special edition focused on "The World Ahead," a who's who of veterans of the American Thinking Establishment scolds the U.S. for its proflicagy.

Richard Haass, who was for the Iraq war before he was against it contributes a primer on "The Consequences of Fiscal Irresponsibility" as if none of us has been reading the papers and we were all just waiting for him to weigh in. (See also Ken Pollack of the Brookings Institution and Iraq.) Les Gelb explains "The Primacy of Economics" as if he's known it all along, but just waited until now to explain it to us unwashed.

These people make it their paid job to advise the wise and explain it all to the hoi polloi. Some advice to the wise along these lines might have been more useful before the September, 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers, and surely prior to the November/December 2010 edition of Foreign Affairs. Don't you think?

This kind of establishment group-think has gone a long way toward getting us where we are now. It argues for more alternative thinking, sort of like the original thinking of Andrew Bacevich and Chris Hedges, to name two. Ian Bremmer has written a thinking book about the state of relations between states today. This issue of Foreign Affairs, meanwhile, reads like all their leading lights have known about this coming calamity all along, of course, and will now deign to explain what it all means.

Foreign Affairs is published by the Council on Foreign Relations, as establishment an organisation as we have. Its "board of advisors" includes Fouad Ajami, Tom Brokaw, Jim Hoagland and Colin Powell, among others, who represent as establishment a group as there is in this country. They've spent the current issue sagely explaining what, if they were earning their money, they'd have helped to prevent in the first place.

 

Terror, Terror Everywhere

 
Oddest story of the day:

"A suspect package containing a detonator, batteries and a ticking clock was found on a suitcase checked onto a Munich-bound plane, German police have said.

The bag was detected before it could be loaded on the flight from Namibia."

It's always something, ain't it? It's just that this time, it comes from about as far away as it gets. Of course, Namibia was a German colony (hence the flight - Air Berlin AB7377 from Windhoek to Munich) and just now Germany is taut with terror tension.

But note the low-key way the Namibian authorities handled things:

"It was detected at the luggage screening point prior to loading, said the Namibia Airports Company (NAC).

"We are still investigating the suspicious object," a Namibian police spokesman told the BBC. "It's too early to say if it's terrorist-related. We will only pronounce when the investigation is completed."

Further security checks were carried out on passengers, luggage and the plane itself before the LTU/Air Berlin flight was allowed to depart.

No explosives were found in the bag, Air Berlin said.

All passengers had to identify their own bags before they were reloaded.

However, cargo due to be loaded on the flight was kept back for further investigation, said a statement from NAC."

They held the cargo back, put everybody's bags out, had the passengers point to their own, loaded everybody and their bags up and sent them home.

It's fortunate for the Namibian Airports Company that Namibia has no non-stop flights to the USA. The TSA would transform Windhoek airport, a casual, relaxed, shoulders-down kind of place, into a grim, locked-down, angst-laden perpetrator-processing boiler room filled with bins of empty water bottles and toothpaste tubes, brooking no dissent as passengers are manhandled one by one for their own good.

Hang in there, Namibia.

It's much better the way it is.

(Photo from the tarmac at Windhoek Hosea Kutako International Airport from the Namibia Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.)

They Do "Elections" in Burma, Too

Burma's election is this weekend, and right on cue, here come the predictable headlines like "Internet service slowed across Burma." It's attributed to a "faulty connection."

Here's an election overview.

There are exile and dissident web sites, like Burma Election 2010, the Democratic Voice of Burma, and the best known, The Irrawaddy, and they make for pretty depressing reading. About the best you can hope for is that not a lot of people get hurt.

Here's a story from our trip to Burma in 1995, called Hurtling Unwisely Through Burma. There are a few photos in the Burma Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.