Categories
Economics Politics & government Society

[690] Of Bolivia, coca and cocaine

Very soon, the Bush administration might have another source of headache. Bolivians have just elected a socialist and an ally of Venezuelan Chavez as President. Some have gone farther and declared that this is Washington’s nightmare.

Bolivia Elects a President Who Supports Coca Farming

By JUAN FORERO
Published: December 19, 2005

LA PAZ, Bolivia, Dec. 18 – Evo Morales, a candidate for president who has pledged to reverse a campaign financed by the United States to wipe out coca growing, scored a decisive victory in general elections in Bolivia on Sunday.

What interest me the most about Morales is that he’s a former coca farmer.

Coca could be processed into cocaine. During the US War on Drug, the US had aggressively conducted coca eradication in Bolivia. Coca eradication continues even today. But not for long it seems.

Furthermore, Morales’ party, Movement to Socialism – scary name by the way – has its origin as a coca interest group. Given the US hostility towards coca farming, it won’t take a rocket scientist to predict what Bolivia’s foreign policy will look like.

But what will happen to coca plantation? Will there be an expansion? If yes, would there be an increase of cocaine in the world market?

I think yes.

p/s – Boris tagged me but I’m being rather uncreative at the moment. But I’ve thought of one. I love old weird nationalistic songs. Currently, I can’t get Ca-na-da, a song popular in 1967 celebrating 100 years of confederation, out of my head. The song could be heard at Expo 67. Found it while looking for Malaysia Forever, another nationalistic song sung in 1963 in Malaysian Singapore if I’m not mistaken.

So, one down, four to go.

Categories
Sports

[689] Of from seventh to fourth and on fire

Ajax won 2-0 against NAC. That’s three consecutive victories in the Eredivisie. At the same time, excessive good luck brought Ajax from the seventh place to four.

On the same day Ajax faced NAC, all Ajax’s nearest competitors ate too much grass and hence, allowing Ajax to march on. The sweetest is, of course, Feyenoord’s loss to ADO Den Haag! Seeing Feyenoord losing to a team that sticks at the bottom is even better than seeing Manchester United failing to progress beyond Champions League’s group stage.

Another much needed good news is Rosenborg. He seems to have found his form, scoring three goals in the last five matches. It might be too soon to celebrate but if Ajax has found its striker, the world will tremble.

Currently, AZ Alkmaar sits on top of the table, sharing points with second placed PSV. Feyenoord’s third and Ajax, as mentioned earlier, up in fourth.

All in all, this revival looks good. w00t!

Categories
Pop culture

[688] Of a tribute to Leo McGarry, to John Spencer

A tribute to Leo McGarry, a great character in a great TV series. A tribute to a great actor, John Spencer.

According to Wikipedia further:

During the episode The Portland Trip, it is strongly suggested by a conversation between the President and Leo that Leo attended the University of Michigan, at least for undergraduate work.

Fair Use. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:John_Spencer.jpg

You will be missed.

‘West Wing’ Actor John Spencer Dies at 58
By LYNN ELBER, AP Television Writer

LOS ANGELES – Actor John Spencer, who played the role of Leo McGarry in “The West Wing,” mirrored his character in several ways: Both were recovering alcoholics and both were driven.

“Like Leo, I’ve always been a workaholic, too,” he told The Associated Press in a 2000 interview. “Through good times and bad, acting has been my escape, my joy, my nourishment. The drug for me, even better than alcohol, was acting.”

Spencer died of a heart attack Friday. In a sad parallel to life, his character on the show had earlier suffered a heart attack that forced him to give up his White House job.

Spencer died after being admitted to a Los Angeles hospital during the night, said his publicist, Ron Hofmann. He would have been 59 on Tuesday.

I’ll be sacrificing my Wikipedia user page for him for a few days.

Go Blue. And God bless.

Categories
Sports

[687] Of ABTFI!

In the next round of Champions League, Ajax will be up against – guest who? Hint: Italian team. Hint 2: Familiar faces. Drumroll please – Inter f-Milan!

Goddamned f-again! For the love of everything sensible in this world, why must Ajax face Italian teams and Arsenal every time there’s a Champions League season at hand?

I’d have prefer anyone by the f-Italian. Somebody must’ve cursed Ajax over something: thy shall play the Italian (and Arsenal) forever and ever. Bah!

I don’t believe Ajax has a chance to progress further beyond the last 16 stage. All seven possible teams that Ajax could have gone up against, namely f-Juventus, Barcelona, Villareal, AC f-Milan, Inter f-Milan, Lyon and Liverpool are too huge to handle given Ajax’s current sorry state. Ajax’s currently stand at sixth in the Eredivisie, under team such as NEC and RKC. Most embarrassing. Luckily, in the last few match, Ajax’s bucking up.

Right now however, knowing that Ajax will be up against an Italian team again, Ajax must win. A Dutch win will show the crybaby in Milan how to differentiate between the beauty and the beast.

Categories
Economics Liberty

[686] Of levy on CD-R

I had wanted to blog about the Music Council of Malaysia’s call for a levy on blank CD-R earlier. For some reason however, it slipped off my mind. Thanks to an article in The Star today, it came back to me. I think, if you’ve been reading enough of my stuff, you know what I’ve to say. For those that don’t, I’m don’t share the same table with the Music Council.

The Music Council, according to an article in The Star, states that:

…it had asked for the levy because it is concerned over the loss in revenue to the music industry whenever customers make copies of music CDs (see In.Tech, Dec 8). It believes that two out of three CD-Rs sold in the country are used for copying audio-visual material.

The Recording Industry Association of Malaysia claimed that such ‘home recordings’ are a serious problem for the industry.

The nature of the issue is almost similar to protectionism. Yet, this case isn’t quite about competition because the music and CD-R aren’t very comparable. But the bottomline is, an industry is trying to make their product relatively more competitive to some other good not by increasing the quality of their good but instead by forcing the other good’s cost to go up. In the end, it’s nothing more than an interest group with protectionism in mind.

Earlier, Malaysian telcos dealers and distributors have requested the certain Malaysian authority to restrict competition because competition hurts their profit.

By saying that I disagree with the levy, I’m not saying I accept piracy. Duplicating copyrighted media without permission, as much as I hate to admit it, is plain stealing. Still, accussing everybody that uses CD-R is involved in piracy is unfair. Imposing blanket levy is even more unfair.

What the music industry needs is a stronger anti-piracy enforcement, not protectionism. In fact, I’d rather see stakeholders in the music industry to initiate legal actions against those involved in piracy, like what the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been doing against illegal file sharers for the past few years in the US. Legal actions won’t introduce market frictions, unlike levying. At least in the long term.

p/s – for the whole morning, I couldn’t access my own site. I couldn’t access a few other sites like Screenshots either.

pp/s – turned out it wasn’t just me. There was a network outage near Putrajaya yesterday. (via)