Quote of the Day

"While publicly supporting Palin, McCain's top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family—clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent "tens of thousands" more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast," and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books."
Newsweek on the tag hag from Alaska

Who can you trust in Guatemala?

A study published in Prensa Libre reveals the low levels of trust across a variety of important institutions in Guatemalan society. Colom does comparatively well though:

• 39% President Álvaro Colom
• 23% Guatemalan Army
• 25% Policía Nacional Civil
• 15% The Supreme Court of Justice
  
• 22% Private enterprises
• 21% Banks
• 13% Unions

No habla claro y no esta contigo...

Headlines here today reported that President Colom "will call" Barack Obama to congratulate him.

What's he waiting for? Triple Saldo on Movistar?

Quiko of the Day

The Greatest Nation on Earth

As a formal speech-maker Obama is a heady mix of post-modern and pre-modern, his discourse full of textual and gestural quotes from earlier American discourse, whilst harking back to the days where no political statement could be made without first embedding it within one or other prevailing mythology.

Maybe Simon Schama was right that he represents a self-conscious reinvention of 'American fervour' It's this aspect of his appeal that fosters reservations in my father's mind. He's in no doubt that the right man won on Tuesday, it's just that what others find inspiring he finds comparatively flimsy.

McCain's speech outside a Phoenix hotel on Tuesday night reminded me how much respect I used to have for him before he picked Sarah Palin as his pitbull companion. And the boos that accompanied every mention of the name of his future President reminded me why he has been ill-served by the GOP's unprincipled use of him as a way of distancing themselves from the discredited good ol'boy in the White House.

I'd have to agree that McCain's valedictory address was the more powerful of the two speeches. I felt a shiver of unease when Obama began to borrow from the Gettysburg address before re-mixing his "Yes we can" refrain. The positive visual image of a little puppy dozing on a chair in the oval office was a welcome one though.

It has to be said that my father stopped understanding modern communications back in the 60s. When an ad doesn't state the benefits clearly and concisely, he shrugs his shoulders with visible irritation.

Maybe my generation of westerners really needs an America with a strong and credible brand, whose champions speak in the kind of fervent idiom that our own politicians un-learned a long time ago. Perhaps we too need the USA to be the 'greatest nation on Earth,' but in innocent, not cynical guise.

Unfortunately we have recent memories of fervour-lite in the form of Tony Blair. So much was anticipated, so little delivered. It may help Obama however that he's going to have to play defense from the get-go. Just avoiding economic catastrophe will be a significant achievement.

A last thought on the clearly very controversial question of whether Palin cost McCain the centre. Perhaps she is taking some of the blame that he himself might shoulder. For her role was clearly to 'shore up the base', Republican voters of the God-fearing sort who might not initially have warmed to the old maverick. He was more or less level with Obama in the polls back then, so all he had to do was reach out to the centre himself. But then came the Lehman Bros collapse and McCain's response was to shift his own discourse to the right and maybe it was that, and not that loose cannonette from Alaska, which ultimately doomed his campaign. The economy - and the real prospect of a complete meltdown in early October - undoubtedly created strong head winds for McCain-Palin, but the particular manner of his navigation through them undermined any sense that the Senator from Arizona's age was an advantage.

CNN exit polls showed that ageism played a much bigger role in this election than racism, but nobody really wants to talk about that now...

Watching from the cheap seats

The skies over La Antigua were lit up by rockets at 10pm local time, already Guy Fawkes morning back home in London, but over here it was the moment when the networks projected victory for Obama.

I'd been walking Jin and had aimed to get back by the 'top of the hour' but he'd decided to change our route spontaneously, and so I missed the announcement by some seven minutes in the end. It seems that the panel on CNN were only just recovering from a collective, choked silence. The first to speak referred emotionally to those who had kept faith with the Constitution even when it excluded them.

"Este fue una goleada," they observed over on TVe.

On the night it was the BBC who had the most impressive touch-screen technology - though Jeremy Vine could have done with some more practice with it - and the most lively studio guests, among them Simon Schama and Christopher Hitchens.

Around 10pm DC time Schama accused David Dimbleby of being a "wuss' for not calling it for Obama when the projections were already giving him 200 college votes (and Ohio). Dimbleby retorted that he couldn't be much of a historian if he goes about writing history before it happens!

And then, next to Schama, there was the undiplomatic presence of Dubya's former UN Ambassador John R. Bolton, who suggested the BBC should fire its reporter in Colorado and called another one "ignorant" to her face when she dared to suggest that the choice of Governor Palin had lost McCain the centre. (Simple maths shows she was probably right though- that the centre and the left together make up more than 50% of the country).

Bolton then pointedly noted that the BBC - and by implication all of us good for nothing limey election obsessives- "are guests here". Schama then bated him a bit more by stating that it appears that the Republican Party has been left with the old South and not much else.

Obama-Biden voters celebrating in New York and Florida spoke of the feeling of "closure" after the nightmare eight years ago. I loved the stock broker in Sarasota who said "I'd rather have a better country and a better world and pay some more taxes for that."

Back over on CNN Alex Castellanos admitted that the GOP had trashed its brand. That they certainly did, and their nation's brand as well. The new President-elect has an unprecedented opportunity to mend it.

Elizabeth Dole....epic fail.

Kenya has declared a national holiday.

Please to remember the 5th of November...

Random Argie humour

WTF?

Quote of the Day

"The fact that Barack Obama would also be the first black president has obscured the significance of his political colouring. If he wins, he will be the first northern, urban liberal to win the presidency since the culture wars broke out in the US in the 1960s...the one point in the 2008 campaign when the momentum switched to the Republicans was when Mr McCain nominated Ms Palin and chucked some red meat to red America. The cultural card was working for the Republicans until Lehman Brothers collapsed."
Gideon Rachman, FT

[She was a big juicy hunk of red meat to the Blue America and the centrists too though, wasn't she? If you agree with the FT that America is a country of about 40 per cent conservatives, 40 per cent moderates and 20 per cent liberals, and you consider where McCain was in the polls prior to picking Palin....FAIL."]

Possible essay question for the next generation of historians:

Could Bush have avoided the Crash of 2008 and saved the Republican Party by bailing out Lehman Bros?

E Pluribus Unum

From many, one is America's motto, as well as a compact summary of how it has gone about shrinking a multitude of different cultural perspectives and outlooks into one - its own; the self-styled force for global development and freedom - while it effectively closes itself off to any contending mythologies from outside.

A remark by Simon Schama in The American Future caught my attention: he noted that the first settlers had made the Atlantic crossing in order to escape the stifling parochialism of the old world. He did not however go on to make the seemingly obvious further observation that the society that they helped to create has itself become one of the most stiflingly parochial in the modern world.

Of the changes that an Obama Presidency might bring, an end to American self-absorption would be one of the most welcome. On the face of it the Democrats, with their protectionist inclinations, don't much look like party to deliver it, but this is in part because they have tended to occupy a middle position between the two poles presumptously straddled by the Republicans since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

There's no better example of this unholy alliance between smart liberal economics and moronic social conservatism - America at its most enterprising, fluid and global and America at its most doggedly self-contained and rednecky - than the Faux News channel.

Obama may represent a chance to reverse the trend towards staggering inequality within the US, but what of the rest of the world? Will Americans continue to consume most of the world's resources as if they belonged to them alone?

"Only in America could a man declare that history is bunk", declared William Fowler. Yet while 'Joe the Gringo' is often justly censured for his sub-prime grasp of history, it is perhaps his persistent wrongheadedness about the future that sets him apart from the rest of us. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century Americans have sold themselves an over-optimistic view of the human future and their likely role in it. One might even say that those who have bought into this, have acted as if it were their solemn duty to free themselves from the mental constraints of time and geography that apply to every other nation on earth.

Moments of economic crisis such as this throw this aspect of the gringo outlook into even sharper relief; after all, financial bubbles - such as those provoked by railways and the Internet - are most often the consequence of a misapprehension of chronological scale: in a word, overanticipation.

In 1929 it was said that markets had been "discounting not only the future, but the hearafter", and they've been chewing up everyone's future again over the past couple of decades.

Right now citizens of the USA are reportedly more downbeat about what once looked like an ever-improving American future than they been have for many decades. And yet, as this election enters its final hours and an Obama victory seems assured, it's thought-provoking that many are finding shreds of optimism in the sensation that their lives are passing through a definingly positive moment of 'history'. Let's hope they're right....

Quote of the Day

"No le estamos pidiendo que sea un revolucionario, que sea socialista..sólo queremos que el negro que está a punto de ser presidente de los EE UU tenga suficiente estatura para los tiempos que al mundo le ha tocado vivir."
Hugo Chávez



Every Prez needs a nodder in a red baseball cap 'colocado' next to him.

Banks and Bonuses

The UK media suspect that the decision of Barclays to spurn the bail-out in favour of Abu Dhabi dosh can largely be put down to the bank's unwillingness to curtail dividends and bonuses, along with the other restrictions that Gordon Brown's government would have imposed.

But Barclays Bank has deeper ties with the Middle East than say Manchester City FC. 

When my uncle served with Montgomery's 8th Army in North Africa during WWII, he would use branches of Barclays to pick up money and communications from my grandfather. In theory the exact whereabouts of my uncle and his tank was supposed to be a closely guarded military secret, but my grandfather would get phone calls from his local Barclays branch informing him that his eldest son had just picked up a cheque in Cairo for example! 

I'd have to agree that financial sector discretionary bonuses had been getting out of control in the last few years. Lehman Brothers paid out nearly $9bn in bonuses during its final two years of operation. But many of those who are now calling for a curb on such remuneration forget that it was City bonuses more than anything that was driving up the value of London properties before the Crunch - and that, along with access to easy credit, was really what was making most ordinary Londoners feel prosperous.)

Our concern for the imposition of more equitable pay structures certainly appears more lukewarm when the rising tide is seen to be lifting our boat too. And we can't exactly blame overpaid bankers and TV presenters for the fact that the UK has half of the total credit card debt in the EU....can we? 

Avoiding a repeat of what has just happened to our economies will require us to consider the problem 'in the round' from now on. Prioritising the persecution of the more obvious scapegoats - whilst indulging in the holier-than-thou sensibilities of belated economic austerity - may actually be counter-productive right now. 

Cacos and Cuques

There was a shoot-out in Antigua on Thursday- in the Plaza Mayor according to the Prensa Libre, but closer to La Merced according to our own sources. Four people were wounded and at least one of those responsible was captured and taken to the police station in our street.

On Friday morning we awoke to find the whole area crawling will all kinds of armed men (and women) belonging to the army and various different divisions of the Police. 

A recent wave of attacks on tourists in Antigua has been blamed, in part at least, on leadership problems within Comisaría 73 and the fact that organised delincuentes have been studying common patterns of tourist movement in the city. 

Worst case scenario...

Quote of the Day

"What the millions are really complaining about is Brand's success with women, and Ross's extraordinary salary. They're fed up with how good Brand looks in his skinny jeans with his crazy hair, how his life seems such effortless good fun, a whirlwind of humour and debauchery, how he managed to sleep with Andrew Sachs's grand-daughter. I mean, have you seen her? And I don't know anyone who isn't incredibly jealous of Ross's 6 million a year."
Adrian Edmondson AKA Vivian from The Young Ones on the crisis rocking British society

The 9-11 Re-enaction Society

Obama is Beautiful World

(As well as being the next President of the United States of America, Obama is a small fishing village in Japan.)

Glodforsaken

I'm sure I never used to have any serious prejudices against Balkan gypsies, but after watching Pieter van Huystee's When Borat Came to Town I've acquired a full set. 

On one level it's the story of Ionela Carmen, a Romanian 17-year old who has taught herself Spanish from watching television soaps and dreams of one day emigrating to Spain - while her father is already fretting that she is two years on the wrong side of the average age for brides in her village. 

This is Glod - a God-forsaken spot 85 miles north west of Bucharest which pretty much embodies the term shithole (V says it makes La Limonada look like Belgravia), which is undoubtedly why Sascha Baron-Cohen and co selected it as Borat's home town. They paid a bunch of Glodites around $4 each to serve as 'Khazakh' extras in the movie, and - critically - got them all to sign release forms.

Van Huystee's cameras are in the local bar when Borat is shown on Romanian TV for the first time and a handful of village low-lifes suddenly realise that they hadn't been participating in yet another documentary. Soon Glod has some more visitors from the outside world: a gang of ambulance-chasing lawyers who stoke up the gypsies' avarice and feelings of humiliation. Quite a dangerous thing to do in a region historically famous for its blood feuds. 

One, an American, suggests that Baron-Cohen has amassed a personal fortune of $130m at the expense of Carmen's grandfather; depicted in the film as an abortionist who uses a welder's kit. He invites three of them to come with him to LA to importune the comic outside the Academy Awards, but in the end fails to get the visas sorted out, so the best the pathetic little delegation can achieve is a minor security incident at the Soho Square offices of 20th Century Fox in London. 

It might have been possible to portray the plight of the inhabitants of this unfortunate hamlet in a wrenchingly compassionate light...but this isn't that movie. If anything When Borat Came to Town is more wickedly ironic than Baron-Cohen's blockbuster comedy, described by its producers to the petitioners of Glod as "a message of tolerance through satire"(!)

There's no voiceover here, so one has a sense that the Dutch director is standing back, observing without intervening as the lawyers sink their teeth into the villagers, just as the makers of a nature documentary might shoot footage of lions enthusiastically tucking into wilderbeest...except that the people of Glod are perhaps a bit more like hyenas. 

In April this year a US judge threw out the villagers' petition on the grounds that they need to come up with some more substantial allegations. It seems that they are still trying. 

If Sascha Baron-Cohen really has made a vast personal fortune from Borat he might consider contributing to the installation of running water in Glod; it would be a noble gesture. But judging from this film he has in no way misrepresented this place as stupefyingly backward.

Witnessing the lives and general outlook of its inhabitants, I had sudden recollections of the aggressively uncouth types who would invade my compartment when I was Interailing through Yugoslavia in the 80s. Perhaps I was already prejudiced after all...

Níspero time

We've been gorging ourselves on nísperos this morning!

This little yellow fruit, also known as a loquat and as a Japanese medlar, is an extreme rarity back in London, though V and I have located a nisperal at the back of the Fellows' Garden at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich.

It was originally native to South-eastern China.

The pips look a bit like roasted coffee beans.

Here in La Antigua, the nisperales of San Juan de Obispo, up on the faldas of the volcano, are said to give the most succulent fruit. Their pears are great too.

Quote of the Day

"Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents."
Arthur Schopenhauer

Quote of the Day

"Equality, which is the primary value of the left, is a European value, not an American value. Let me tell you that right now. I know this sounds offensive to half of my fellow Americans, because they have been Europeanized in their values. The French Revolution is not the American Revolution. The French Revolution said Liberty, Fraternity, Equality. The American Revolution said Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. We have lost touch with what our distinctive American values are. We have distinctive American values...We have a better value system, and this is being protected by one of the two parties: the Republican party."
Dennis Prager, Talk show host

See also:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..."(US Constitution) and "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."(Gettysburg Address)