Las Malvinas....

son argentinas! así ruge el cielo y ruge el mar

My friends on the Distributist Review whose way of thinking frequently escapes me, which is to be expected when you mix me with Latin teachers. I've never quite understood them. Anyways, they recently posted a passionate post about the need to return the land that is currently Isreal to the Palestinians. I will not pretend to be an expert on this conflict and I realidy admit I have utterly no idea what to do with the region or who is in the right, I would like to point out one point, which to me seems glaringly obvious.

When Britain invaded the Malvinas (referred to in the obscene tongue as the Falklands) and kicked the Argentineans out, Buenos Aires has but once attempted to use force to retrieve the islands in a misled move (te lo agradezco, señor Galtieri, pero no). Not a single British person died in the Argentinean invasion, and the Brits killed numerous Argentinean soldiers in rather shady ways. Regardless, Argentina has kept up a peaceful campaign for sovereignty for hundreds of years. What do we get from everyone? Nothing but apathy and support for the English. While I'm sure Isreal probably isn't exactly a defenseless lamb, the Palestineans wage guerilla warfare (the justice of this I will not dispute) for years and years. What do they get? Passionate cries for the return of Isreal to their hands. Why this inconsitency? Personally I blame it on partisan politics which pretty much consumes everyone is this country, including most "non-partisan" people. As a future member of the Partido Popular Democrático, I have absolutely no stake in the Democratic vs. Republican idiotic war. however, this still does not seem able to explain the entire situation. England and the U.S. have been committed to screwing Latin America since day one, and renewed their resolve in 1810. And no one cares. Surprisingly we Latinos still like the U.S. somewhat, and everyone is still to busy having cat-fights over Isreal vs. Palestine. But that's ok, because unlike everyone else, we always are just absolutely extatic, which is perhaps why everyone hates us so much. q la vida es un carnaval! y es más bello vivir cantando! =)

In Honor of our New President

As long as we are making fun of politicians here, why don't you visit this site:



in honor of our new President?

Let's get it partisan in here

I just had an extremely fascetious conversation with a friend about how we were going to overthrow the U.S. government and elect only celebrities to the entire government. We are convinced that the Rihanna administration backed by the Oprah lead House and Ellen DeGeneres senate with the protection of Britney Spears (Department of National Security), Jessica Simpson (CIA), and Halle Berry (NSA) would do just as good as our government in general. And they might actually get something done, even if it is only painting the White House Bajan Lime green. Anyways, this prompted me to get partisan and systematically insult everyone in America. The following are stereotypes and are meant to be offensive. I imagine that in my Twain immitation today I'm going to tick everyone off. Excellent! We need some hot water - "it keeps us clean."

So...

Libertarians: generally correct but unable to think about anything besides how much fewer taxes they could pay. And screw airport security, I want my Axe spray on my carry on and I want it NOW!

Republican partisans: Generally welmeaning individuals who shun the amazingly un-international American media and vote against whatever is currently popular. Stand up for life and human rights in any circumstance, unless the humans involved are Mexicans from Honduras, Brazil, and Argentina. Classically conditioned to interpret everything as government intervention

Republican Politicians: also generally welmeaning individuals who think that their job is to follow the Democrats off the side of the cliff and be sure to pay lip service to the abortion issue and hard talk those Mexicans from Argentina. Prone to hypocrasy, feeblemindeness, partisanship, corruption and the lot.

Democratic Partisans: Welmeaning people who seem to think that the Democratic party stands for something. Stupider but more reliable than Republicans. Classically conditioned to see inequality in everything, including the alphabet and graphing calculators.

Democratic Politicians - not welmeaning individuals who want to screw everyone to the greatest extent possible. For some unknown reason everybody loves them. Have all of the faults of the Republican party times a couple million.

The American Media - the worst aggregate on earth whose only job is to uneducate the American public by focusing more on Paris Hilton's DUI, Kate Hudson's new golf partner, and Obama's new dog than on international issues. Earth to the media: Africa and Latin America DO exist and it would be nice to hear about them every once in a while. And be sure to do the EXACT OPPOSITE of whatever the financial advisors tell you.


And everyone wonders why I'm moving to Latin America... =P

Sol Y Viento

Do any of you know anything about the movie "Sol y Viento?" I have to watch it sometime in Spanish class and it seems to be of the anti-European sort.

The balanced trade part

I happen to be under the tutelage of one of the founders of the balanced trade movement. As such I feel that I should at least mention it once on this blog.

While my professor works out all of the intellectual kinks of the system, I wanted to address the more common sense part of the problem. Now there are generally considered to be two philosophies of international trade: free trade and protectionism. However, my professor points out that there are actually four. Free trade (U.S.), Protectionism (Argentina, I think), Mercantilism (China), and Balanced trade (which no country has yet been smart enough to adopt). Now, free trade is just if you leave everything alone, everything is just handy dandy. I think the law of entropy can speak for itself. Protectionism is a proven failure and in all reality is not even protectionism, it's political favoritism. Mercantilism purposely creates imbalances in trade, which do help the exporting country, but this system is absolutely doomed to failure in the long run.

Now balanced trade I think is most easily understood with an analogy to the microeconomic level. A household cannot continually but well above it's means, or eventually the creditors will come around. If income signfinies exports and expenditures imports, these two must eventually equal out. While a suplus of income would not be necessarily bad, it's sort of pointless if there are expenditures to match in some way (say putting in savings account, investmnet, rennovations, what have you). similarly a country cannot continually receive from the world more than it gives out. Now I realize that Warren Buffet's importation certificates plan seems like a weird thing for a Distributist, but personally I believe that if there in one instance of govenrment intervention which can help right now, it is importation certificates, not stimulus packages or whatever else the Bush/Obama people can dream up. Furthermore, the government has regulartory power over the economy, and this would be regulation, and the government also wouldn't be able to decide what is imported or not (like tariffs do). All it does is ensure that we have an exchange with the world, and that we're aren't getting stuffed like some spoiled child until we burst.

And of course, Shakespeare put the whole point into 1 line of blank verse
"Neither a lender nor a borrower be"

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Have an amazing 2009!

btw Old Fashioned Liberal, how are plans coming for the M4L???

Applied Distributism: The Music Industry

This is probably preaching to the choir, but here goes. Distributism is rather difficult to practice on many of the basic levels, simply because EVERYTHING is a chain now a days. Food is the easiest one I can think of (clothing is nigh impossible), but even that can be very difficult. One industry which is rather easy to challenge the instutition is music. Now supposing that any of you actually listen to modern music (say, after 1600, just kidding), in my opinion, independent artists are the way to go. Over all popular music is generally mediocre and rather prepackaged (though there are some jewels, and [especially in my case] many people who I would like to save from their current course [Rihanna for one, she's going to waste and it's driving me insane]). Indenpendent music can be hard to get two, but it is generally rewarding. Furthermore, given the Godsend sometimes referred to as youtube, if you can just get one foot into an obscure genre, suddenly you have a variety of artists/albums/songs to get you started.

My personal example was my discovery of the virtually non-existant genre known as Christian Reggaeton. I absolutely love the sound of reggaeton, but I had given up on finding an artist, actually, even one song, that didn't degrade women, praise alcohol and/or drug abuse (not that I mind the substances, but I do mind the abuse), and violence. However, I somehow providentially stumbled on a Christian Reggaeton song on youtube. That song had links to a whole variety of similar songs, and before you know it I was inducted into that genre. (I should say here that I have no problem whatsoever with secular music; however, I do draw the line when lyrics turn to fragments of antisocial personality disorder.) Anyways, this genre is so small that amazon.com has a whopping 2 cds to offer. Yes, 2. This, of course, promps another interesting discussion. Is Amazon.com considered an enemy of Distributism? At first it does seem to be a large corporation, but perhaps it's just a way of conventiently locating a whole variety of producers into an easy to find format (now I have a feeling that Amazon is somehow different from Walmart and chain stores, but I haven't been able to isolate why.) Would it be more Distributist to buy directly from the little known record companies, or are we overreacting to Amazon's sheer size. The true answer to this question most likely needs someone with a knowledge of Amazon's inner workings to truly decide yes or no. But in the mean time, any opinions/information would be most appreciated.