Rhinocrisy

Or rather, food for cars.

I found it strange a few days ago, in this transcript of a conversation between Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, that the two of them agreed that ethanol was a horrible waste. Their reasoning was one I haven’t heard articulated outside of the disgruntled mumblings of luddites:

Hugo Chávez.- Do you know how many hectares of corn it takes to produce one million barrels of ethanol?Fidel Castro.- Of ethanol, I think you talked about 20 million hectares the other day, something like that (Laughter), but remind me.

Hugo Chávez.- Twenty million. No, you are the one with the exceptional mind.

Fidel Castro.- Ah, 20 million. Well, of course, the idea of using food for producing fuel is tragic, it is dramatic. Nobody is certain about what is going to happen with food prices, when soy is becoming a fuel, with the need there is in the world to produce eggs, to produce milk, to produce meat, and it is one more tragedy of the many that exist at this time.

But then there’s this:

An increase in the cost of tortillas, a staple of the Mexican diet since the Maya ruled 1,000 years ago, has triggered a slump in the peso.

Tortilla prices jumped 5.9 percent in January, the most in eight years, after costs climbed for corn, the main ingredient. That increase fanned inflation and a bond market rout that curbed demand for the currency. The peso has fallen 2.3 percent in the past month, making it the world’s second-worst performer against the dollar among the 70 currencies tracked by Bloomberg…

The peso may fall further in the next several months as corn prices continue to rise. Corn has soared 16 percent in the past eight weeks and 121 percent since late 2005 as demand for the grain grows from ethanol producers.

That’s not to say there’s no debate on the subject. But it’s pretty remarkable. Of all the reasons for corn prices in Mexico to finally rebound from their Nafta-depressed state, this is the most depressing. A need to feed cars.

Note: this blog beat me to the discussion.

Update: Saurabh, in comments, spots the impresarios’ math error. What’s two orders of magnitude when you’re in charge of a whole damn country? The basic point remains — consumption of corn for fuel, or speculation on corn because it’s now trendy to see it as an energy commodity rather than a boring old grocery store item, is screwing up Mexico.

A beast is congealing from the clouds of acrid smoke in Iraq. It is the automaton horror-baby of American policy. Before March 19, 2003, no one was sure which badness would be conjured when the U.S. destroyed Iraq. Now, if the reporters on the ground are to be believed, we can see its shape: Religion-based genocide.

“There are already signs of what technically could be declared ethnic cleansing.” -CNN

“Iraq’s Sunni minority [is] “embroiled in a daily fight for survival,” fearful of “pogroms” by the Shiite majority.” -Washington Post, citing a Marine Corps memo

“These are electric drill-holes… Those accused of supporting this daily carnage are the same people America has put in power to shape the future of Iraq… A group of MPs showed up at one of Saddam’s prisons that should have been closed. But the police had taken it over unofficially. Inside they found several hundred men, all Sunnis. Almost none of them had ever been charged with any crime.” -U.K. Channel 4 (Link to the full video killed by Mr. Google.)

“M., a childhood friend, came to say goodbye before leaving the country. She walked into the house, complaining of the heat and the roads, her brother following closely behind. It took me to the end of the visit for the peculiarity of the situation to hit me. She was getting ready to leave before the sun set, and she picked up the beige headscarf folded neatly by her side. As she told me about one of her neighbors being shot, she opened up the scarf with a flourish, set it on her head like a pro, and pinned it snuggly under her chin with the precision of a seasoned hijab-wearer. All this without a mirror- like she had done it a hundred times over… Which would be fine, except that M. is Christian.” -Riverbend

“In some mixed neighborhoods, Shiites provided shelter to Sunnis targeted by Shiite militiamen, even though they risked being branded as collaborators. Others took care of Sunni children or bought groceries for Sunni neighbors who feared walking to the local market.

Outside their houses, the revenge attacks raged on. Gunmen wearing Iraqi army uniforms rounded up 21 men, including a 12-year-old boy, from two Shiite homes in the village of Balad Ruz, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad in Diyala province. On Saturday morning, their bodies were found, all handcuffed, blindfolded and shot to death, said Bahaa al-Sodani, a provincial police official. The attacks were in apparent retaliation for assaults by Shiite militiamen on Sunni mosques in Baghdad and Baqubah the previous day…

As Sammaraie watched from his front gate, two militiamen stopped a Sunni man who worked in an electrical shop. A local informant looked at him and nodded. One of the gunmen shot him dead and left. Two weeks ago, the electrician had complained loudly when Shiite gunmen attacked a nearby Sunni mosque.” -Washington Post

“Sheathed in powder-blue body bags are the remains of 72 men, many of them bearing signs of terrible torture–holes in the skull made by power drills, mutilated genitals, burns. They are the signature of the shadowy Shi’ite groups that have been kidnapping and murdering hundreds of men and boys, most of them Sunnis, in a campaign that has terrorized Baghdad’s neighborhoods.” -Time

(Later) I was about to update with this word of hope from Nir Rosen:

The only source of hope is that both the Shia militia members and the indigenous Sunni, who constitute the majority of the resistance, are fierce Iraqi nationalists. They have come together before to assert their Iraqi identity, and their leaders are sure to rein their forces in eventually. The best way for the Americans to support this constructive outcome is to withdraw quickly-even to begin the withdrawal now. It is encouragng that the Sunni resistance has shown an increased willingness to negotiate, and former Sunni and Shia rejectionist leaders, observing the government’s composition and the drafting of the new constitution and feeling left out, have decided to participate in politics and the government, even if they have not relinquished their arms. Once the Americans leave and Sunnis are taking part in the government, which they will no longer view as collaborationist, they will have no common cause with foreign mujahideen, only a conflict of interests that will be quickly and violent solved, resulting in no more foreign fighters enjoying Iraqi hospitality.

Then I noticed it was dated from this time last year. His latest interview shows a bit less hope:

AMY GOODMAN: And what would happen if the US just withdrew troops?

NIR ROSEN: The same thing happening now, the civil war would continue. At some point Shias will make a move, a large move against the Sunnis in Baghdad. You’ll find a day when there are no Sunnis left in Baghdad. Saudi Arabia and Jordan are of course panicking about this, and they are hoping that the US will in some way arm or support Sunni militias. It’s hard for me to imagine that Sunni nations in the region will stand by and watch Sunnis pushed out of Baghdad. And Baghdad becoming really a Shia city. Because there is this Sunni terror of the Shia threat. So you’ll see greater support from Saudi Arabia, from Jordan, perhaps from Yemin, from Egypt, for Sunni militias. Funding, things like that. And the civil war will spread and become a regional one. And I think Jordan will cease to exist as it does now. Eventually, because you’ll have the Anbar Province of Iraq joining somehow–you already have one million Iraqi’s in Jordan at least. You walk down the streets of Jordan, you hear Iraqi Arabic as much as any other kind.

Brass band with tubas! Silly parade float. Tumblers! Clowns! Tumbling clowns! Tumbling clowns with tubas! Hooray! The Democrats have saved us from… err.. wait, what’s that? Is that a cloud? Is someone raining on my parade? No! Nooo!! Quick! Cover the crepe-paper flowers decorating the giant bust of Richard Helms! Secure those blue-liveried donkeys! Cover those color guard girls with a plastic tarp! For the love of god, someone get John Kerry off the mic before something terrible happens!

Gosh, isn’t that just awful? Even AFTER losing their majority in the Senate and the House, the Bush Administration has the gall, the nerve, the gumption to refuse the right of Guantanamo prisoners to challenge their detention? And on top of that to further claim that they can arbitrarily detain any non-citizen in the United States without the right to a hearing? Those rat bastards! How do they think they can get away with this? Rubbing their lawlessness in our faces!

Wait… what? What’s that you say, small boy?

[Puts hand to ear.]

You say this is all on the legal-up-and-up? They passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 just at the end of October, stripping away habeas corpus rights for non-citizens and legalizing the detention process? What, even creating legal means for allowing torture to be used as testimony?? Oooh, the nerve! The sheer nerve! Well, their last-minute-Charleying won’t save them, this time! The new Democratic majority will overturn that law, lickety-split. We’ll show them to mess with the will of the American People!

What is it now? Be quiet, small boy, be quiet! No one wants to hear from you. Wait… say that again… are you certain? It passed both the Senate and the House with substantial support from the Democrats? They sold us out? Even when electoral victory was imminent? Why? Why, small boy, why would they do such a thing?

Now what do we do? Who shall save us when our saviors themselves have left us in the mud? Leave me alone, small boy. I’m going to sit in this puddle and weep.

Someone on Wikipedia kicked my memory on this: last we heard, back in 2003, the CIA had Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s kids in custody, and according to this article in The Age were using them to gain leverage on their father. There’s mention of the ambiguity of their status in this Amnesty International letter to Pervez Musharraf, but there’s nothing since then in LexisNexis. One assumes they remain in custody.

1988:

A witness in the trial of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has said her family was “buried alive” by government forces who attacked her village.

She gave evidence as the trial for alleged war crimes and genocide resumed in Baghdad after a two-week break.

1991:

Thousands of Iraqi soldiers, some of them alive and firing their weapons from World War I-style trenches, were buried by plows mounted on Abrams battle tanks. The Abrams flanked the trench lines so that tons of sand from the plows funneled into the trenches. Just behind the tanks, actually straddling the trench line, came Bradleys pumping 7.62mm machine gun bullets into the Iraqi troops.

“I came through right after the lead company,” said Army Col. Anthony Moreno, who commanded the lead brigade during the 1st Mech’s assault. “What you saw was a bunch of buried trenches with people’s arms and land things sticking out of them. For all I know, we could have killed thousands.”

A thinner line of trenches on Moreno’s left flank was attacked by the 1st Brigade commanded by Col. Lon Maggart. He estimated his troops buried about 650 Iraqi soldiers. Darkness halted the attack on the Iraqi trench line. By the next day, the 3rd Brigade joined in the grisly innovation. “A lot of people were killed,” said Col. Davhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifid Weisman, the unit commander.

One reason there was no trace of what happened in the Neutral Zone on those two days was that Armored Combat Earth Movers came behind the armored burial brigade, leveling the ground and smoothing away projecting Iraqi arms, legs and equipment.

Fortunately for Messrs. Powell and Schwartzkopf, memory was banned in the Patriot Act. Or was it the 1996 Counterterrorism Bill. Or maybe the Constitution. I don’t remember.

Update: I forgot to mention that my bothering to compose this post is largely the result of my ongoing amusement with Mr. Schwarz’s liveblogging of the memory hole. He was still gracious enough to give us some hot link action. Hi TinyRevolutionaries!

T to start random searches for bombs.

Now, let’s start off by saying that I recognize the obvious, OBVIOUS constitutional argument doesn’t really hold water, since the T is not a public place – you must pay for the privilege to ride on it, and it is technically private property. That said, it’s quasi-public and a quasi-governmental organisation, and there’s nothing quasi about random bag searches – they undisputably contradict the spirit of the fourth amendment. I imagine most Americans will accept the fear-driven logic that giving up liberties like the right to privacy are necessary in order to ensure public safety. Disproofs of this tomfoolery are difficult or impossible – might-have-beens can’t be demonstrated. All I can do is state my own preference: marginal deterrents to the miniscule risk of terrorism are not worth the sacrifice of very real personal rights. Especially as, being of brown hue and lately prone to sporting the facial hair, I’m disproportionately likely to be “randomly searched”. If this happens to me, I’m going to give someone the finger and get arrested, I think.

Judging by our comment history, some of our readership are sadly underdeveloped in the range of skills required to be evil. This might become a problem for them in a hypothetical post-apocalyptic future where they will need to be willing to backstab comrades for those precious six gallons of 93-octane unleaded, or administer some effective eye-gouges in the middle of a knife-fight. We thus present this (possibly) continuing series, hoping to contribute to your greater degeneracy. No need to thank us! That wouldn’t be evil.

So, a coalition of parents is suing Kellogg’s and Nickelodeon because they are apparently running commercial advertisements for “junk food” targeted at children. Both Nickelodeon and Kellogg’s deny this vehemently:

A Nickelodeon spokesman said the network has led young viewers to be more active and eat healthier–and has pushed sponsors for more balance in their offerings. And a Kellogg spokeswoman declared that the breakfast-staple maker is proud of its contributions to healthy diets, and its efforts to educate people about nutrition and exercise.

Let us learn from this example. First of all, you will note the use of official spokespersons. VERY evil. If you have an official spokesperson, you’re probably already well on your way to being a horrible bastard. Ideally, your official spokesperson should brazenly refuse to apologize for your crimes and conclude their sentences with an appropriate maniacal cackle, like the favored “Muahahaha!” or possibly a clangorous “Wahahahaha!”

If that proves impossible, though, it’s nearly AS evil to insist you’re being good when it’s clear to all and sundry that you are, in fact, some sort of cacodaemon. Observe the picture to the right, which combines the Kellogg’s product “Wild Bubbleberry Pop-Tarts” with the popular Nickelodeon character Sponge-Bob Squarepants. Now, let’s establish some facts. Although I haven’t consulted with a botanist, I am fairly certain that there is no such actual berry known as “bubbleberry”, although I have been able to determine that it is the name of a breed of cannabis plant. (I attribute this to coincidence. But those of you at home, note: marketing cannabis-filled Pop-Tarts to children would be AMAZINGLY evil.) For those of you who only consume Müëslïx, I will tell you that a Pop-Tart is a device containing a fruit-facsimile covered with a thin sheen of petroglaze, possibly studded with radioactive nubbins composed of Strontium, Iridium and the especially flavorful Rubidium. They were created as an emergency mechanism to prevent the stomachs of starving college students from collapsing while the damn cafeteria was closed on weekends.

It should be abundantly clear that encouraging kids to consume such a beast is NOT THE RIGHT THING TO DO. Neither Buddha, Jesus, Sgt. Slaughter, or any of the other Good Guys would approve of such a move. Yet not only did Kellogg’s and Nickelodeon team up to do this, they afterwards insisted that they care about the health of children and are proud of what they have done to contribute to it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is evil you can take to the bank and smoke.