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A polo retreat
Argentina is the world polo industry’s leading supplier of high-handicap players (who play on well-heeled Northern Hemisphere and Asian teams during our winter months), and even more numerous excellent horses (which help those players, and many other, less talented ones, win tournaments at home and abroad). Many 10-goal-ers make even more money abroad selling horses than playing.
Thus it is not surprising that the Argentine Open, held the first two weeks in December in Palermo, is considered the most prestigious and exciting polo tournament in the world. From October through December, polo fans flock to Argentina to watch the Open’s qualifying and final matches, as well as tournaments at other clubs. And players and breeders come through-out the year to buy horses.
Argentines learned polo from British immigrants in the 19th century and achieved preeminence in the sport thanks to topographical and cultural factors that reduced (for them) the cost of a sport that is even greater elsewhere in the world. Out on the pampas around the city of Buenos Aires there is plenty of space to stick-and-ball and play a few chukkers even in the winter.
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A revisionist tale: why a poor China seems richer
HONG KONG — Should China be treated differently because it may not be so rich after all? That is one of the central questions raised by new calculations from the World Bank that suggest the Chinese economy may not be as large as previously thought
To be sure, some economists question whether the new figures are more accurate than the old ones, but others argue that they paint a picture of a poorer China that warrants reconsideration of the West’s efforts to change Chinese currency policies.
The World Bank issued preliminary figures on Monday that recalculated the economic output of 146 countries, including China, after excluding differences in domestic prices and currencies.
The calculations of so-called purchasing-power parity, which compare the buying power of citizens around the world, put China’s output at roughly 40 percent less than the bank’s previous estimates.
The calculations help explain how Chinese workers can make ends meet by earning $100 to $250 a month in export-goods factories in Shenzhen. Food, for one thing, is cheap; a large plate of fried rice at a Shenzhen diner can cost just 50 cents.
Fashionable streets even in interior cities like Chongqing now have stores selling Burberry raincoats and other luxury items to an emerging industrial elite. But the new World Bank calculations underline the extent to which China remains a poor nation overall.
The average Chinese has economic output — gross domestic product per capita — worth US$1,721 at China’s low market prices. That works out to the buying power of someone consuming US$4,091 worth of goods and services valued at the prices in an industrial economy _ a level of consumption that would represent poverty to an American.
The World Bank cautioned that it did not calculate its figures as a guide to currency values. But the new figures somewhat strengthen China’s contention that its currency, the yuan, is not seriously undervalued and does not need to be allowed to rise sharply against Western currencies.
Jeffrey Frankel, the James W. Harpel professor of capital formation and growth at Harvard, has been one of the most outspoken advocates of yuan appreciation. He has cited the World Bank’s previous purchasing-power calculations to justify his position.
Frankel acknowledged in a telephone interview on Thursday that the new World Bank figures badly damaged that argument. ‘‘I would have to retract that based on these latest numbers,’’ he said.
But Frankel said that many other economic indicators showed that the yuan was undervalued and should be allowed to rise.
He cited China’s huge and growing trade surplus, its ever-rising foreign exchange reserves, market speculation on a further appreciation of the yuan _ it has already risen 5.9 percent this year _ and signs that the Chinese economy might be overheating as exports soared.
Some economists, including the former head of the China division at the International Monetary Fund, question whether the World Bank has now gone too far in the other direction and overstated prices in China. While describing the estimates as an important step toward making international comparisons of economies, they point out that the bank looked mainly at affluent Chinese cities in coastal provinces with big export industries.
China’s economic output in 2005 was worth US$2.24 trillion at prevailing prices and actual market exchange rates. That is the calculation most commonly used by economists and the best indicator of a country’s ability to buy and sell a diverse range of internationally traded products, like oil, steel and computers.
The World Bank had previously calculated that China’s output was worth US$8.8 trillion in 2005 if the goods and services produced in the country were valued at American prices. That figure was revised this week down to US$5.3 trillion.
The bank found that prices in China were closer to world levels than it previously assumed. So World Bank economists calculated that the purchasing-power parity of China’s economy was also closer to the market exchange value. Even with the revision, China is still the world’s second-largest economy in purchasing-power-parity terms, after the United States. At market exchange rates, China also trails Japan.
Eswar Prasad, who was the China division chief at the IMF until January and is now a senior professor of trade policy at Cornell, described the World Bank calculations as a ‘‘heroic effort.’’
But he voiced misgivings about how the bank accounted for price differences between urban and rural areas and among regions of China.
The bank used data that the Asian Development Bank had obtained from the China’s National Bureau of Statistics, which in turn gathered data in the administrative regions of 11 large, mostly prosperous cities.
The World Bank calculated prices for the three-fifths of the population who live in rural areas by using prevailing prices in agricultural areas at the fringes of the 11 cities and administered by those cities.
While the bank made some adjustments, Prasad questioned whether the final figures still overstated average rural prices across the country. This would understate the true size of the Chinese economy.
‘‘The notion that China is suddenly a much smaller part of the world economy should be taken with a huge degree of caution,’’ he said.
But Prasad acknowledged that the World Bank needed to update its figures on purchasing-power parity for China. The bank’s figures had previously been based on prices first calculated by two Chinese economists in 1986 and only crudely updated for inflation since then.
Frederic A. Vogel, a World Bank economist who oversaw the purchasing-power-parity estimates, said that the calculation ‘‘depends on a basic assumption that prices from the rural areas of the 11 administrative areas are representative of rural China.’’
But he noted that most countries, including the United States, mainly measure prices in urban areas, so international comparisons are still valid.
Vogel also said that the World Bank was fully aware that regional differences in prices in China are wider than in many other countries. He noted that the figures released on Monday were preliminary and could be subject to further revision this winter. Still, he added, ‘‘the data we provided this time really form a benchmark.’’
The best-known calculations of purchasing-power parity other than the World Bank’s are performed at the University of Pennsylvania. Alan Heston, a professor emeritus of economics at the university and co-director of the group that assembles the statistics, said that the university’s figures for China were slightly below the old World Bank estimates and far above the new figures.
But Heston cautioned that the university was reviewing its figures and was likely to lower them. The revised estimate will show the Chinese economy to be at least as large as the new World Bank calculation and quite possibly larger, he said.
China’s National Bureau of Statistics declined Thursday to comment on the World Bank calculations. But the government has contended for years that China is poorer and economically weaker than many Western analysts have suggested.
(NY Times)
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A Sputnik moment in Beijing for the US
NEW YORK
August 8, 2008, may someday be remembered as the first day of the post-American era. Or it could be remembered as another “Sputnik moment,” when, as with the Soviet foray into outer space in 1957, the American people realized that the country had lost its footing and decided it was time for the United States to get its act together.
There was no mistaking the power and symbolism of the opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympic Games on August 8. That multimedia spectacular did far more than trace China’s 5,000-year history; it was a statement that China is a major civilization that demands and deserves its rightful place in the global hierarchy.
There was also no mistaking the symbolism of seeing President Bush, waving cheerfully from his spot in the bleachers while Chinese President Hu Jintao sat behind what looked more like a throne. It is hard to imagine that China’s government, which obsesses over every minute issue of diplomatic protocol, had not orchestrated this stark image of America’s decline relative to the country to which it owes $1.4 trillion. It would be hard to imagine Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan accepting a similar relative position.
At the very same time that Bush was waving from the stands, Russia was invading Georgia, America’s closest partner in the Caucasus. Russia’s message to other West-leaning countries in the former Soviet world was clear: America cannot protect you.
Frighteningly, the Russians were likely correct. While the Iraq quagmire has made it difficult for America to project force around the world, America’s growing debt, conflicts with friends and enemies alike, absence of any perceivable strategy for changing times, and its political system’s seeming inability to take action to address these challenges have combined to turn America into a struggling giant.
Today, from Iran to Darfur to Zimbabwe to Georgia, the world is witnessing the effects of a budding post-American world, and the picture does not look pretty. As much as we all value the rise of new powers like China and India, it remains to be seen whether these countries will become as benevolent a power as America, however flawed, has been over the past half-century.
Neo-colonialism is returning to Africa, the global project of human rights is in retreat, and the world trade system is becoming far less open. Brutal dictators go unpunished because their interests are protected by large powers with stakes in their natural resources. Reversing this trend is not only in America’s interest, but also in the world’s interest.
To do so, Americans must identify and address the great challenges the United States faces, starting from the ground up. Fixing America’s campaign finance structure, which leads to massive misallocations of government funds, resuscitating America’s wildly uneven and often moribund education system, building an immigration system that actively recruits the most talented people from around the world via a fast track to US citizenship, and developing a national energy policy that moves the US far more quickly toward energy independence would all be important steps in this direction.
Working to rebuild the traditional bipartisan foreign-policy consensus would also make the US a far more predictable partner to friends and allies around the world. And America must be a respectful partner in order to encourage rising powers like India and China to play more constructive roles in international affairs.
The world is not ready for the post-American era, and countries like China and India must play a far greater role in strengthening the existing institutions of world peace and, where appropriate, building new ones that can promote a positive agenda of security, dignity, rights, and prosperity across the globe.
The world community is not there yet, and until it is, the world needs a new kind of American leader – a leader able to inspire Americans to fix their problems at home and work with partners across the globe in promoting a common agenda as bold and progressive as the order built from the ashes of World War II 60 years ago.
The Beijing Olympics could be remembered as a new “Sputnik moment” for the US, inspiring the country to meaningfully face the music of a changing world. But America can make it so only by recognizing the great challenges it faces and taking bold steps towards addressing them, at home and with allies abroad.
Jamie Metzl is the Executive Vice President of the Asia Society and a former member of the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton.
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Furnished. Fully equipped. Day, week, month, year. Palermo, Recoleta, Downtown. No commission. (54-11)4822-5912, 4829-2268. www.4rentargentina.com
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Member World Association psychoanalysis. Short/long term treatment. Rapid therapeutic effect. Prepagas. susanatillet@fibertel.com.ar
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After the raid
An Iowa town faced the largest immigration bust in US history — how is it coping?
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Anxiety/ Depression
Laura Elizabeth Turner. M.D. Psychiatrist/ Psychotherapist. (English/ French/ German). (54-11)4806-6903. Mobile: 15-5102-4288. leturnermd@yahoo.com
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Apartment for rent
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Are Clintons leaving the national scene?
by steve holland
Reuters
DENVER — This week at Barack Obama’s big party in Denver, the US electorate is watching Democrats Bill and Hillary Clinton pass from the national stage, at least for now, and all indications are that it is a difficult departure.
It has been a long time at the top, 16 years in which they dominated Democratic national politics, first from his perch at the White House with her as first lady, then her seven years as a senator from New York and Democratic presidential candidate.
They are receding from the limelight to give way to Obama’s historic run for president, but they are not going quietly. She was the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night, and Bill had the prime-time address last night.
All eyes were on the couple this week to see how far they go in their praise of Obama in the name of unity, to repair the rift that erupted between the Obama and Clinton camps after their tough Democratic primary battle and his decision not to select her as his vice-presidential running mate.
Clinton advisers are putting out word that it is Bill Clinton who is having the most trouble warming up to Obama.
A two-term president himself, Bill Clinton was accused of injecting racial politics into the campaign by Obama, who would be the first US black president, and Clinton was livid about the charge.
“There is still work to do on the Bill Clinton front. He feels like the Obama campaign ran against and systematically dismissed his administration’s accomplishments. And he feels like he was painted as a racist during the primary process,” Howard Wolfson, former Hillary Clinton senior campaign strategist, wrote in The New Republic this week.
Hillary Clinton has shown a greater ability to put the past behind her, quickly attacking a television advertisement by Republican opponent John McCain that sought to use her words against Obama.
PARTY UNITY. Some Democrats say she is all in favour of party unity, and in any event does not want to be blamed if Obama does not win the Nov. 4 election against McCain.
“I think everybody’s best interests are in patching it up,” said Democratic strategist Bud Jackson.
Some Clinton believers think that should Obama stumble in November, then maybe she could again rise as the go-to Democrat to run in 2012, when she would be 64.
“You can just never count these two out,” said a former Clinton White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Nonetheless, this Democrat said, their back-to-back appearances this week has the feel of “sort of a capstone” on the Clinton era, a passing of the torch to Obama.
But many Clinton supporters are reluctant to let go and represent a possible threat to Obama should they vote for McCain in battleground states likely to make the difference as to who wins the election.
One of those fence-straddlers is Lynn Forester, a Clinton fundraiser.
She told the Fox News Channel’s “Neil Cavuto” on Tuesday that Obama still has work to do to win over her and other people like her.
“Everybody who believes, ‘I’ll vote Democrat no matter who it is,’ this is easy for them. People who say, ‘I want the best candidate, I want the person who has the best character,’ they’re having some question about this, and that’s legitimate,” Forester said.
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BA province teachers strike again
The Teachers Union Front, which unites the five main teaching unions in the province of Buenos Aires, yesterday launched a 48 hour province-wide strike to support a demand for improved pay and after rejecting a government pay proposal.
Alberto Pérez, the province’s Cabinet chief, warned that “the strike does no more than offend millions of people throughout the province who will have their children’s classes cancelled for a third successive week.”
He also said that “we really thought that we were going to be able to reach an agreement with the 10.4 percent offer we made but the unions just got up and left the table.”
Roberto Baradel, the leader of the Suteba union, contradicted him saying that in fact the pay offer only amounted to “an increment of 4.5 percent from August and another 4.5 percent from November.
The strike is affecting the majority of private and state schools and it enjoys the support of non-teaching staff such as porters and cooks, who are members of the UPCN public sector union.
Union leaders stated that the main problem was that “the government of the province doesn’t have the authority of the national state to give new pay rises this year.”
Mario Oporto, the Director General of Culture and Education, said that he hoped for a rapid end to the conflict and that “we must fight against illiteracy with the unions.”
Asked, in the city of La Plata, about the state of the conflict he said that “I am aware of my responsibility to end the conflict and that teachers, parents and that the government must together fight against their real enemies which are poor learning, illiteracy,dropouts and the lack of future prospects for young people. That’s the reason why we need teachers with lots of energy, happy and satisfied with their lot and who feel valued professionally.”
In spite of the strike he praised the attitude of the teachers’ unions and described them as being well led, and added, “when we get stuck in pay negotiations we end up wasting a lot of time and energy on a subject which, despite its importance, is not one’s favourite.”
Buenos Aires governor Daniel Scioli reacted to the strike by focusing on what he said was his administration’s high level of investment in education “This province is the one that has invested most in education, we have doubled investment in student infrastructure. We’ve improved teacher training and also improved equipment in technical and agricultural schools,” he told the press in the city of La Plata.
In related news Buenos Aires city students have occupied a number of schools in protest against the city government’s plans to make alterations to the system for granting scholarships.
“We’ve occupied the Mariano Acosta to call for public education. The same thing is happening in the Falcone, Fader, Cerámica, Normal 1 and 5, Liceo 3, Mariano Moreno, Pellegrini, Belgrano Esnaola and Avellaneda (all city schools)” said Franca of the Student Centre of the Mariano Acosta high school.
The city government reacted to the occupations by putting out a circular which specifies that school directors are obliged to suspend classes in the event of an occupation and that they must attempt to identify the students involved.
With Télam, DyN
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BA urges more private cultural sponsorship
The administration of Buenos Aires Mayor Mauricio Macri is urging private companies to further invest in cultural sponsorship in a city that many consider a cultural Mecca.
“There is still a long way to go regarding private sponsorship in the cultural sector,” the City’s Culture Minister Hernán Lombardi told the Herald in an interview on Tuesday night.
“The City has just started to walk along this path with the enforcement of the sponsorship law. Companies must associate their brands to culture,” he added after attending a private performance of modern ballet at the City-run San Martín Theatre, whose artistic director is Mauricio Wainrot, one of the world’s most renowned choreographers.
Lombardi said that “there is always the fear that by opening up to private sponsorship or trusteeships there could be some interference in the cultural field, but Argentine society is mature enough and nobody is so tribal. We are very happy with this atmosphere of freedom the City is enjoying today.”
Tuesday’s performance was presented by Eva Soldati, head of the Foundation Friends of the San Martín Theatre who told the Herald that performances were world-class but attained only after great efforts.
She also called for more private commitment to redress, for example, the fact that the rehearsal room at the theatre has a beam as low as 1.80 metres, with the subsequent danger for artists.
Without giving figures, she described the contribution by the Foundation as “small” but Lombardi said that it was of the “utmost importance” and that the City expected to have a new rehearsing room inaugurated next year at a cost of less than one million pesos.
Eva Soldati is the wife of Santiago Soldati, one of Argentina’s leading businessmen.
Lombardi said that with 2.8 percent of its budget of about 10 billion pesos, the City was close to abiding by the three-percent figure that the UN’s UNESCO cultural arm recommends for cultural investment by world cities.
Lombardi, who heads the City’s Tourism agency, highlighted culture as an important factor in fostering tourism.
“The fact that under the new structure the Tourism agency reports to the Culture Ministry allows us to articulate performances such as the one we have seen tonight (Tuesday night), the Tango festival (ended last Sunday), or the independent theatre performances, both for residents and visitors.
The articulation of tourism and culture is bearing good fruit as shown in the tango festival, with 30 percent of visitors having been foreigners, or the tango championship (started last Sunday) in which 50 foreign couples are participating, Lombardi said.
“When a City has such a strong cultural identity as Buenos Aires has, there is no fear of being seduced by transcultural phenomenon. Tango was born here but also developed, for instance, in France, as seen by the lyrics of El Choclo: “In a Pernod drink he mixed Paris with Puente Alsina.” Also, we had Gardel filming Blondes of New York.
Lombardi said that the centre-right Macri administration was seeking to leave political differences aside when discussing cultural issues with the centre-left administration of President Cristina Kirchner.
“We are trying to have the most mature dialogue possible. We always try to leave aside political differences. We will jointly stage an interesting cultural congress in Tucumán in November.”
The government of the nation and of the city have been at odds on a range of issues.
On the strictly artistic field, Lombardi praised Tuesday’s performances, which included the moving Anna Frank, with choreography by Wainrot, and music by Bela Bartok, and Tangos Golpeados, with choreography by Alejandro Cervera and music by Juan José Castro and Jorge Grela. Also performed was El Escote, with choreography by Roxana Grinstein and Music by Martín Pavlosvsky.
“They are both allegations against authoritarianism any time and anywhere in world history,” Lombardi said.
Among the many personalities attending the performance were Egyptian ambassador Youssef Shawqi and Russian ambassador Yuri Korchagin.
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Back in the danger zone
The outside world is watching Argentina closely and it is distinctly alarmed by what it sees. Wall Street crystal-gazers suspect that yet another default is on its way and warn whoever may be tempted to invest here to think again. Spain’s Central Bank is if anything even more worried: a couple of days ago, it put Argentina alongside Bolivia, Iran, Ukraine and Venezuela on a short list of countries it thinks are liable to go to the dogs in the near future.
That hurt. Bolivia is in danger of falling apart, Iran’s president is a genocidal maniac who dreams of nuclear warheads, Ukraine is threatened by Russia and Venezuela belongs to Hugo Chávez. Back home, most economists, including some who evidently dislike Mr and Mrs Kirchner, are upbeat. They point out that “the fundamentals” are pretty sound, so providing the government behaves sensibly there is no reason why Argentina should manage to stay afloat. The opposition leader Elisa Carrió, who is not an economist, is less sanguine: she believes that unless there are some major changes soon, “we won’t reach December.”
The local consensus, then, is that Argentina is still in fairly good shape but that for it to remain that way the government will have to make radical changes in its economic policy. Among other things, the country will have to get back in the good graces of those who are in a position to lend it large sums of money at a tolerable interest rate, thereby saving it from having to depend on loan-sharks like Chávez. Though some say they have detected signs that Cristina really would like to make friends with the members of the Paris Club and even with the holdouts among the creditors who were nasty enough to turn down the draconian deal they were offered by her belligerent husband, so far nothing definite has been done. Equally unimpressive has been her performance on the inflation front: Guillermo Moreno’s wings may have been clipped slightly, but as Néstor’s alter ego he still calls most of the shots.
Unfortunately for Cristina’s government, and for the country, changing course is likely to prove an extremely difficult operation. It cannot come clean on the inflation rate because if it did it would have to hand billions of dollars to bond-holders. Were it to let the market fix energy prices, the cost of living for a huge number of people would zoom, and it would rise still more if the government stopped subsidizing transport companies. Having made many crass errors when Néstor Kirchner assumed that thanks to his “model” hell-for-leather growth would continue for many decades to come, we must now live with the consequences. They could well be dire.
One barrier that stands in the way of change is the Mr and Mrs Kirchner’s belief that they are defending an economic “model” and not just a set of economic policies. The very use of the word “model” reflects their dogmatism. While common-and-garden economic policies can be modified to take new circumstances into account, a “model” is supposed to be something far more rigid. From the Kirchners’ point of view, almost any change will be taken for evidence that they are caving in to critics who want Argentina to return to the bad old days of the “Menemist model” and so should be resisted with the utmost vigour. This being the case, they would rather drive straight into a brick wall than try to avoid it as other, in their view less principled, governments would do.
Who, then, has it right, sceptical foreigners who are convinced that for the umpteenth time Argentina is heading for an inglorious crash, or upstanding local citizens who say the disturbing forecasts being made abroad are greatly exaggerated because reserves are high, the trade balance is still in surplus and the economic slowdown that is making itself felt will prevent inflation from running amok? The former have the advantage of being able to see the big picture more clearly, but the latter can take into account a host of minor details that, in theory, could enable them to get things right.
However, while outsiders are no doubt influenced by their prejudice against anything that smacks of populism or leftwingery, insiders have their vision blurred by the hope that Argentina will once again contrive to surprise the rest of the world as it did after the 2002 meltdown. They also take it for granted that commodity prices will remain higher than in the past, though not so high as they were during the first half of the current year when Cristina and her advisers made the mistake of trying to take advantage of the soybean boom by sticking it to the farmers.
Had it not been for the Kirchner’s conviction that flexibility is a euphemism for weakness, by now the government would surely have taken the measures necessary to keep the country’s economy on an even keel even if the coming months and years prove stormy for the entire world. But, committed as they were and are to the rickety “model” Eduardo Duhalde gave them, they refused to do anything much even when their political power was at height. Instead, they allowed inflation to take hold and government spending to go through the roof, creating a wide range of problems they would have to confront after they had finished squandering the political capital they accumulated when the going was good. This being so, their chances of avoiding the worst and thereby making the pessimists in New York, Madrid, and many other places look foolish are decidedly slim.
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Back to the atom
The United States reaction is moderate but it calls the move a step backward and repeats that North Korea must disable its facilities before it is removed from a terrorism blacklist that restricts investment.
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Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson sunny about his CD
BEVERLY HILLS, CA — Brian Wilson sits on a plush couch in his living room, smiling nervously.
On the Beach Boys visionary’s back porch, his family’s 15 pooches yip and scramble over each other. Inside, photos of his children with wife Melinda Ledbetter — 11-year-old Daria, 10-year-old Delanie and four-year-old Dylan — lace the walls.
The two-story house, snuggled deep into a gated hillside community in Beverly Hills, is immaculately clean, with beige carpeting and marble floors. Housekeepers tidy up downstairs. A swimming pool overlooks the sun-drenched valley below. It all resembles a postcard.
“I’m happier now than I was a year ago,” Wilson says in a recent interview. “I started exercising and I started eating more of the right food and I started feeling better. I just get up in the morning and say my prayers.”
Gangly and tall in a pinstriped dress shirt, his graying hair swept back into waves, the wizard songwriter and composer behind such ’60s Beach Boys hits as Good Vibrations and California Girls stares with sharp blue eyes, frequently fidgeting.
A lot has changed for the historically reclusive Southern California native, who speaks with a slight slur, a result of his drug-abuse past and medicated journey through mental illness.
He is a second-round father at the age of 66 (musician daughters Wendy, 38, and Carnie, 40, from his first marriage, tour as The Wilsons). Following 2004’s long-awaited rock opera Smile, and a 2005 Christmas release, he has a new, ambitious solo album, That Lucky Old Sun, due out on September 2 in the United States. He is touring behind the material, pushing through years of stage fright.
“I think the new album is just as good as anything the Beach Boys ever recorded,” says Wilson.
“Playing these songs live, I feel proud. You know that funny feeling you get in your stomach, like, ‘Oh my God, this is sounding great!”’
Two years ago, he says, he recorded 18 songs then chose 10 last year for Capitol Records/EMI. He came up with the album’s lush orchestration and music, while 43-year-old bandmate Scott Bennett scribed the lyrics, with colourful narrative interludes by Wilson’s longtime collaborator Van Dyke Parks.
The outcome is a blend of uptempo pop and piano-based ballads. The title track, a cover of Louis Armstrong’s That Lucky Old Sun, flows into the bouncy anthem Morning Beat, setting the album’s tone.
“Van Dyke Parks, Brian and Melinda thought this should be a love letter to Los Angeles. At this point, Brian was 65-years-old and it just felt right to embrace his legend and be a bit nostalgic,” Bennett says.
Songs such as Forever She’ll Be My Surfer Girl touch on Beach Boys melodies while Mexican Girl adds a dash of salsa flavour. Midnight’s Another Day and Oxygen to the Brain reference Wilson’s dark days in the ’70s and ’80s, when he receded from the spotlight into isolation, drugs and weight gain.
Wilson calls Midnight’s Another Day, which skirts on a solitary piano melody, his favourite song, “kind of introspective, kind of how I feel around people.”
The album’s last song, Southern California, reminisces about co-founding the Beach Boys in 1961 with his late brothers Carl and Dennis, and ends the album on an uplifting note. Wilson sings, “It’s magical/ Living your dream.”
“Yes, Brian had a rough time of it, with his mental health, but I would kill to have the kind of catalog he does, and tour everywhere with his brothers like he did,” says Bennett, who confirms that Wilson “is on a heavy dose of antidepressants.”
Regardless, Wilson has hit a creative stride in his life.
Inspiration comes at night when he sits down alone at his Yamaha synthesizer and grand piano in his purple-curtained music room.
“When I go to the keyboard, I feel holy, like an angel over my head. I feel very holy. When we did (the Beach Boys hit) God Only Knows, I felt holy about that too. A godly something comes through me,” Wilson says, motioning with his hands.
“I’m always thinking about melodies. The melodies come from my brain, and my keyboards. I play a really pleasant keyboard. It sounds so pleasant it makes me want to write melodies.”
But life as a busy dad and touring musician can be overwhelming. Wilson describes a house full of kids and dogs as “very loud” and “a madhouse.” He frequently goes to a nearby park and takes walks.
“The kids make me feel a little jumpy,” he says. “Sometimes I want to get out of the house to get away from my kids but I love my kids a lot. I love my kids. ... Quiet time comes around 10 at night when I go to sleep. It’s peace of mind. Things run smoothly at night. During the day, things are more rough.”
Later on, when Ledbetter comes home with their small son Dylan — floppy-haired, barefoot and wearing a Hawaiian shirt — Wilson brightens. He’s quieter when it comes to daughters Wendy and Carnie, who both live less than 16 kilometres away.
“I don’t talk to them very much. I used to. I recorded with them at one time, but I don’t talk to them a lot,” he says, explaining that the women are “really busy.”
Questions about the Beach Boys’ current status get lukewarm response as well. Wilson, who also formed the band with cousin Mike Love and then-school friend Al Jardine, split with most of the group’s surviving members years ago amid lee has his own Endless Summer Band. Wilson stresses the subject’s touchiness.
“We don’t want any publicity about me getting back with the Beach Boys, cause I don’t want to. They’re not my group anymore. That’s Mike and Bruce’s group now. I’m on my own, and I would rather do that than go back to the Beach Boys,” he says.
Wilson, though, clearly loves performing Beach Boys tunes as well as his own solo work, even with nightly stage fright, which he says he works through by getting neck and shoulder rubs, and praying.
At a taping days later for Yahoo! Music’s Live Sets, Wilson is joined onstage by his nine-piece band, including Bennett and members of the Wondermints, who have played with him for 10 years.
Tentatively at first, Wilson claps his hands and directs the group in rousing, harmony-filled versions of such Beach Boys classics as Help Me Rhonda and I Get Around. Wilson later sings from the new album.
When asked during a Q&A session his biggest regret, he doesn’t mince words.
“The drugs I took which kind of messed up my mind. The LSD, the marijuana, the cocaine,” he says, to audience laughter.
Wilson isn’t letting his past stop him from throwing his ambitions forward.
After That Lucky Old Sun, Wilson says the unreleased songs he recorded, including a slow, smooth version of Proud Mary, will form another album. He gushes that “the only person I really want to work with is Paul McCartney.” He would also like to record “a rock ’n’ roll album inspired by Phil Spector’s type records, a really hard rock album that really rocks, with big orchestration, the whole bit.”
Yet, he also views his future gingerly, as day to day.
“I look forward to today,” he tells The AP.
“I never look forward to the future because I think to myself, ‘What if there’s an earthquake, what if I die or someone I love dies?’ I get those kind of thoughts all the time. It’s ’oof’ to my head,” he said.
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Beijing prepares for venues’ future
BEIJING — Where Olympians ran, swam and slept, Chinese organizers see pop concerts, a public pool, football games and luxury apartments.
Authorities are scrambling to make sure the 91,000-seat Bird’s Nest stadium and other venues are put to good use after the Olympics and September’s Paralympics. They want to avoid the fate of other Olympic hosts that were left with empty, debt-burdened facilities.
Private developers have been signed up to run stadiums and arenas. The Water Cube swimming centre, due to become a public pool, raised money by licensing its name for a bottled water brand. The Bird’s Nest is taking bids from companies for naming rights.
“We believe that post games and for a long period of time, these venues will be used pretty well,” Du Wei, vice president of the Beijing Olympic Economy Research Association, a group linked to the Beijing organizers, told reporters. “The management companies will immediately open them up for public use.”
Still, Du and others say it could take decades for the Bird’s Nest and other venues to pay for themselves.
“We can’t expect in the short term all the investment will be regained right away,” Du said.
Beijing built 12 permanent and eight temporary new venues and refurbished 11 others at a cost of 1.9 billion dollars (1.29 billion euros), according to the city government.
The Bird’s Nest will be the highest-profile test case for the city’s ability to make them financially viable.
It has the advantage that it is the first big, modern stadium in a city where the main venue for rock concerts and sports has been the drab Workers Stadium, a 58,000-seat hulk built in 1959. But the new facility’s huge size and potentially high user fees could put it beyond the reach of many events.
The stadium’s deputy general manager, Zhang Hengli, declined to give financial details or information on planned events. But he told the newspaper China Business News it could take 30 years for the Bird’s Nest to repay its 220 million dollars cost. Zhang said it needs at least 19 million dollars in annual revenue to cover maintenance and debt payments.
Beijing is relying in part on a timeworn strategy of forcing state companies to share the cost of public facilities.
CITIC Group, a government-owned investment company, put up 48 percent of the money to build the Bird’s Nest and the CITIC-owned Beijing Guoan football club will make the stadium its home field.
Zhang, the stadium official, declined to discuss naming rights. But China Business News said as many as seven companies are bidding. It said they include non-Chinese bidders, though attaching a foreign brand name to a national symbol that appears on China’s 10-yuan note might be judged politically unacceptable.
The stadium has raised 14.5 million dollars by selling sponsorships to companies including US conglomerate 3M Corp. and German drug company Bayer AG. Their names appear on seats and other facilities.
The Water Cube was paid for by donations from ethnic Chinese abroad, making it cheaper to convert to public use. But in a city where the average income per person is 4,100 dollars a year, managers say ticket prices will be kept low, which leaves less for upkeep of its pool and its futuristic bubble-wrap exterior.
The Water Cube raised money by licensing its name for use on swimsuits and on bottled water made from Canadian icebergs.
Beijing began charting the venues’ future almost as soon as it was awarded the games in 2001.
Athlete housing was designed from the start as luxury apartments, with swimming pools, tennis courts, coffee shops and shopping. Chinese media say units sold out ahead of the games for prices of 2,900-4,400 dollars per square metre, high even for Beijing’s booming real estate market.
AP
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Big brother’s bear-hug
Who says that Balkanization should be limited to the Balkans? Certainly not Moscow, which has just recognized the independence of the Georgian Russian-speaking enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia (in typical Kremlin fashion, without consulting the territories in question because while Abkhazia does aspire to independence, the 70,000 South Ossetians would probably prefer reunification with their North Ossetian brethren).
So Russia has now globalized Balkanization and the West finds itself hoist by its own Kosovo petard. Having established the principle of ethic self-determination on Kosovo’s behalf at Serbia’s expense, Western countries can only splutter as Moscow formalizes a secessionism with implications all around the Black Sea — not only Moldova but (far more menacingly) the Crimea and the entire Russian-speaking east of the Ukraine (whose Russophone population is approximately a third of its 50 million people).
Every time that Henry Kissinger has visited Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union, he has come away impressed by the innate inability of Russians to accept separation from the Ukraine in particular. And with reason because the cradle of “Rus” in the 9th century was not Moscow or St. Petersburg but the principality of Kiev, where the Russian Orthodox Church was born over 1,000 years ago. When a 1995 Belarus referendum voted for integration with Russia, it left Moscow relatively cold because they are always looking to the Ukraine and beyond it to the Black Sea.
The Kremlin might be using the principle of self-determination and the rash Georgian crackdown on secessionism at the start of this month to claim the moral high ground here but there has been nothing very spontaneous about the Russian response. On the contrary, Moscow has been working toward this situation for years, pumping in funds, arms and finally (as from this month) its own troops.
Anyway Balkanization is now in the process of being well and truly globalized. And not just in former Soviet republics (thus a third speak Russian in Latvia, just like the Ukraine, and fully 47 percent in Kazakhstan). The briefest glimpse of an ethnic map of Africa, for example, would show that the implications are endless.
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Blue Jays beat Rays to cut back their division lead
The Toronto Blue Jays sliced Tampa Bay’s lead atop the American League East division with a 6-2 win over the Rays on Tuesday.
Consecutive losses have cut Tampa Bay’s advantage over Boston in the East to 3-1/2 games. Toronto starter Roy Halladay beat Tampa Bay for the first time this season after three previous defeats. He gave up only two runs in six innings.
Vernon Wells had two run-scoring singles and added a solo homer in the ninth. He has four homers and nine RBIs in his past three games.
REDS SOX 7 YANKEES 3. Boston moved a step closer to squashing the playoff hopes of arch rival Yankees with a comfortable win in New York.
The Yankees fell six games behind the Red Sox in the wildcard race.
Boston’s 42-year-old knuckleballer Tim Wakefield won in his return from a shoulder injury, allowing three runs in five innings in the opener of a three-game series.
NATIONAL LEAGUE. Chris Coste’s RBI single in the bottom of the 13th capped Philadelphia’s comeback from a 7-0 deficit and allowed the Phillies to retake the lead in the NL East in Philadelphia.
Fernando Tatis hit a three-run homer and the Mets staked Pedro Martínez to the seven-run lead. But the Phillies chipped away against Martínez and rallied against a New York bullpen that has blown 10 leads in the ninth inning, according to Stats LLC.
Ryan Howard hit his league-leading 35th homer and Jimmy Rollins was 5-for-7 with a two-run shot for Philadelphia, which moved a half-game ahead of the Mets with their ninth win in 11 games.
SAN DIEGO 9 ARIZONA 2. Brian Giles and Kevin Kouzmanoff both drove in three runs as San Diego denied Brandon Webb his 20th victory with a 9-2 win over Arizona.
Webb (19-5) lost in his first bid to become the NL’s first 20-game winner since 2005, allowing six runs and nine hits in 4 2-3 innings.
The Diamondbacks retained their three-game lead over the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL West.
AP
Results
Tuesday’s games
(home team in CAPS)
American League: Chicago White Sox 8 BALTIMORE 3; Boston 7 NY YANKEES 3; Cleveland 10 DETROIT 4; Toronto 6 TAMPA BAY 2; Texas 2 KANSAS CITY 1; LA ANGELS 5 Oakland 1; SEATTLE 3 Minnesota 2.
National League: ATLANTA 10 Florida 9; PHILADELPHIA 8 NY Mets 7 (13 innings); Chicago Cubs 14 PITTSBURGH 9; WASHINGTON 2 LA Dodgers 1; Cincinnati 2 HOUSTON 1; Milwaukee 12 ST. LOUIS 0; SAN DIEGO 9 Arizona 2; Colorado 7 SAN FRANCISCO 2.
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Boca draw and win South American Recopa
Boca Juniors took the South American Recopa, in spite of tying 2-2 against Sarandí’s Arsenal, in the second leg match last night at the Bombonera stadium.
Boca had won 3-1 in the first leg. Therefore the Sarandí team needed, at least, the same score to force a playoff.
Rodrigo Palacio put Boca in the lead, in the sixth minute, but Sebastián Carrera tied for Arsenal, in the 14th, while Mauro Matos gave Arsenal a 2-1 advantage, in the 24th minute.
Arsenal’s goalie, Cristián Campestrini, scored an own goal in injury time to give Boca a 2-2 draw.
It was Boca’s 18th International Cup and tied record held by Italy’s Milan.
Arsenal finished with nine men when Paraguayan Carlos Báez and Cristián Díaz where shown the red card in the 65th and 80th minutes, respectively.
DEBUTANTS WIN. Five-time European champion Liverpool struggled to advance past Standard Liege 1-0 with a goal late into extra time to reach the lucrative Champions League group stage yesterday.
Dirk Kuyt scored the only goal of the two legs in the 28th minute of added time, just two minutes before the game would have headed to penalties.
Meanwhile, Greek champion Olympiakos suffered a shock exit from the third qualifying round, beating Anorthosis Famugusta 1-0 but losing 3-1 on aggregate.
Among the teams also advancing to the group stage was Arsenal, Atletico Madrid, Fiorentina and Marseille.
Arsenal, already leading 2-0, dispatched FC Twente 4-0, while Marseille beat Brann 2-1 to round off a 3-1 aggregate victory over the Norwegian club. Atletico overcame a 1-0 first-leg deficit to rout Schalke 4-0, and Fiorentina relied on their 2-0 first-leg victory to advance as it was held 0-0 at Slavia Prague.
Liverpool were again saved by goalkeeper Pepe Reina, who turned back a penalty in the goalless first leg at Liege.
Reina dove in the seventh minute to repel Dieumerci Mbokani’s effort from 20 metres, and the Spaniard was the only reliable piece in Rafa Benitez’s team as Liverpool looked in danger of missing out on Europe’s top club competition.
On an anxious night at Anfield, Fabio Aurelio had a free kick punched away by Liege goalkeeper Aragon Espinoza while Yossi Benayoun squandered an opportunity after Steven Gerrard’s neat pass, and it was the unintimidated Belgians who looked more dangerous.
Marouane Fellaini’s wayward shooting and Reina’s firm hands denied the Belgium midfielder a valuable away goal.
Liverpool was outplayed and lacked guile as new signing Robbie Keane looked ineffective in his striking partnership with Fernando Torres.
Xabi Alonso was unlucky not to put the 2005 champion ahead in the 40th with a 25-metre effort shaving the post, while United States defender Oguchi Onyewu blocked Keane’s advance on the stroke of halftime.
Nabil El Zhar had a penalty claim dismissed when he was fouled by Onyewu with seven minutes remaining, but Ryan Babel was able to produce a spectacular cross that found Kuyt at the far post.
ENGLISH LEAGUE CUP. Premier League sides West Ham United, Fulham and Sunderland narrowly avoided upsets in the second round of the League Cup yesterday.
West Ham went through after League Two (fourth division) Macclesfield, without a point this season, fought bravely to try to deny the home side victory.
Fulham conceded two goals in two minutes after the restart against League One (third division) Leicester but then scored twice in the final 10 minutes, Danny Murphy netting the winner in injury time for a 3-2 victory.
Sunderland fell behind to Championship (second division) side Nottingham Forest on 60 minutes after a stunning Rob Earnshaw free kick but rallied four minutes from time. They sealed the win in extra time through Northern Ireland international David Healy.
Fellow Premier League club Blackburn Rovers, playing fourth-tier Grimsby, went behind early on but a Matt Derbyshire double saw them through 4-1.
League One Huddersfield Town beat Sheffield United 2-1.
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BOCA recopa champs
Boca Juniors tied Arsenal 2-2 last night to win the South Americ a Recopa Cup after winning the first leg 3-1.
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Bolivia: businesses take on the green challenge
LA PAZ
What do Bolivia's largest textile mill, an organic cacao cooperative and an indigenous-run tourist hostel in the Amazon have in common? The answer lies in the path, shaky but inspiring, that they are all taking towards sustainable production.
In the factories of the Bolivian corporation América Textil S.A. (Ametex), even the light switches invite you to "Save Energy".
The company says it is committed to optimising its production processes, reducing pollutants, saving resources and recycling inputs and materials.
Based in La Paz, Ametex is Bolivia's largest textile factory. More than 3,000 workers produce 150 to 190 tons of textiles per month — 85 percent of it for the U.S. market.
All of its factories are oriented towards sustainable production, in compliance with the Environment Act.
But in addition, Ametex has its own regulatory framework, the Manual on the Environment, with compliance supervised by its department for the environment, industrial safety and occupational health.
The corporation is involved in the entire chain of production, save the cultivation of the raw material, cotton.
Hilasa, a factory that processes the cotton to produce thread, has a recycling system that makes use of even the shortest fibres, Marcelo Gorriti, chief of the environmental department, told Tierramérica.
At Universaltex, dedicated to knits and finishing of cotton fabrics, an automatic machine for chemicals and dyes was installed that saves on inputs. "We work with 100 percent organic dyes," said Gorriti.
Other factories run by the corporation, involved in garment confection and exports, are Matex and Mex, which have experimented with reutilising water in their air-conditioning systems.
Scraps of fabric from cutting and confection are also re-used. They go to the Seltex factory, which uses them as raw material for the approximately 80,000 bedspreads it produces monthly.
These processes are the result of an investment that the corporation does not discuss, but which is evident in the machinery. There is the Goler system, which optimises water usage, fuel and chemicals, and reduces the volume of polluting emissions. And there is the application of EP3 technologies (Environmental Pollution Prevention Project), to curb energy consumption.
EP3 is a technology transfer programme of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), initially implemented in Bolivia by the National Chamber of Industries.
CHEMICAL-FREE CACAO. The organic cacao cooperative El Ceibo offers a variety of products made from this ancestral product of the Americas, cultivated with no more intervention than the human hand, water and soil.
El Ceibo created the Agro-ecology and Forestry Implementation Programme (PIAF) in order to take care of the environment, the president of the company's administrative council, Mario Choque, said.
PIAF aims to avoid soil degradation and ensure the high biological quality of the raw material. It also promotes values such as respect for life, equality, solidarity and colleague support as fundamental for developing the potential of the producers.
El Ceibo began operations in 1977 with 12 small-farming families. Now it has some 800 families in the Alto Beni and Yungas regions in the western province of La Paz.
The cooperative takes pride in exporting 500 tons of organic cacao and products like chocolate-covered sweets and energy bars to Germany, New Zealand, Switzerland and Japan.
El Ceibo drove the creation of the National Committee of Cacao Producers, with members from several of the country's provinces. Together they hope to inculcate the values of sustainable production.
"In the 1960s and 1970s, cacao production associations were subject to exploitation by chocolate trade intermediaries. The producers depended on them, on whatever price they wanted to pay, whatever treatment they wanted to give," says Choque.
Today, the families involved in El Ceibo are in charge of sustainable production, starting with planting, and on through the harvest, fermentation, drying and delivery to the cooperative, and including pruning and pest control.
HOSTEL IN THE JUNGLE. In San José de Uchupiamonas, in the Bolivian Amazon, ecotourism has an indigenous face. The Josesanos, of the Quechua-Tacana people, have found an economic vein that is richer than petroleum. They have built the Chalalán Ecological Hostel on the shores of the lagoon of the same name.
Each year, more than 1,000 tourists visit this "island" in the middle of a sea of vegetation in Madidi National Park, which is home to 1,000 species of birds, 6,000 types of plants, 300 kinds of mammals and at least 200 species of amphibians.
The visitors are attracted by the adventure of a five-hour boat trip on the Beni and Tuichi rivers that brings them to the hostel, where they stay in bamboo and palm cabins.
The company, which is incorporated, was promoted in the 1990s as an alternative source of income for 100 local families that were otherwise dedicated to hunting and logging. At the time, most young people thought only of moving to the city.
Taking the name from the Chalalán lagoon, the founders invested all of their savings and effort in the project, with the aim of equitably distributing the shares among local families and institutions.
The ecotourism package includes lodging, with a capacity of 24 beds, in the middle of the Madidi (Bolivia's most biodiverse protected area), bilingual guides, transportation, and meals made from food produced by the local community.
The initiative improved the incomes of the families involved, as well as their access to education and to official documentation of their landownership, Guido Mamani, one of the founders, said.
Other benefits were the installation of water, sanitation and telephone systems in each household; solar panels and computers for the school; expansion of formal secondary-level education; and the outfitting of a health centre.
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Bollywood in trouble
MUMBAI, India — Let’s see Hari Puttar get out of this one.
Bollywood producers set to release a film called Hari Puttar: A Comedy of Terrors are working to fend off a lawsuit filed by Warner Bros. that claims the movie title hews too closely to their mega-famous boy wizard franchise.
While Bollywood films often borrow liberally from Western movies, producers of Hari Puttar: A Comedy of Terrors say their movie bears no resemblance to any film in the Harry Potter series.
“There is absolutely nothing to link Hari Puttar with Harry Potter,” said Munish Purii, chief executive officer of Mumbai-based producer Mirchi Movies. Hari is a common name in India and “puttar” is Punabji for son, he said.
“Even if it does rhyme with Harry Potter, surely there is a limit to cases?” said Tarun Adarsh, editor of Trade Guide magazine.
The film is not a tale of wizard spells or flying broomsticks, but rather a story of an Indian boy left home alone, who fights off burglars when his parents go away on vacation — a plot more reminiscent of the film Home Alone, starring Macaulay Culkin.
Warner Bros. is seeking an injunction against the film, which is set for release on September 12. Hearings began on Monday and the next is scheduled for September 2.
Warner Bros. spokeswoman Deborah Lincoln confirmed that the company has filed a lawsuit against the producers of Hari Puttar.
“Warner Bros. values and protects intellectual property rights. However, it is our policy not to discuss publicly the details of any ongoing litigation,” Lincoln said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
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Brazil anti-dumping tariffs rise sharply
BRASILIA — The Brazilian government has sharply increased the use of anti-dumping tariffs, mostly on Chinese and Indian products, as the country’s manufacturers struggle with rising imports fueled by a strong currency.
Brazil is one of the world’s fastest-growing consumer markets and one of the largest for automobile and television manufacturers. But a currency that has gained more than 30 percent in the past two years and more than 100 percent since 2002 has eroded the international competitiveness of some domestic industries.
In the 12 months through July, Brazil imposed anti-dumping taxes in 20 cases, up from only five during the previous period, according to data from the Ministry for Industry and Trade obtained by Reuters.
“With such a currency appreciation, companies are desperate and will look for any means possible to halt the flood of imports,” Mario Marconini, head of international trade negotiations with the influential Sao Paulo state industry federation, told Reuters.
Trade and Industry Minister Miguel Jorge said in an interview earlier this month that Brazil’s entrepreneurs were becoming more knowledgeable of international trade regulations.
Under rules of the World Trade Organization, a country can apply anti-dumping import tariffs when it can prove imported goods were sold at below-market prices and caused damage to domestic industry.
The government has imposed import duties on Chinese hair combs, drill bits and a $3.56 duty on each padlock imported from China. From March this year, and for the next five years, industrial dye imports from Germany have a $502 surcharge per tonne.
Most of the safeguards are against imports from low-cost manufacturers India and China, which are Brazil’s allies in the Doha round of global trade negotiations. The round foundered last month on a proposal for a safeguard to help farmers in poor countries withstand a flood of imports.
Brazil’s government has also targeted countries in Latin America and imposed tariffs on cement from Mexico and Venezuela as well as minerals from Argentina.
The trend for more safeguards looks set to continue. The ministry received 52 requests for anti-dumping tariffs from industries over the past year, up from 17 in the 12 months through July 2007.
Brazil has also become more active in bringing trade disputes to the WTO and won high-profile cases, including one over US cotton subsidies.
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Brazil to look to retaliate against US over cotton
BRASILIA — Brazil is resuming action at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to take retaliatory trade measures against the United States over subsidies it pays its cotton farmers, the foreign minister said on Friday.
“We are sending a petition to Geneva (WTO headquarters) to request the resumption of the arbitration process which had been interrupted in relation to cotton,” Celso Amorim told reporters.
The World Trade Organization cleared the way in June for Brazil to seek up to US$4 billion in trade sanctions on United States imports but the Brazilian government had not pursued applying the sanctions in the hope of hammering out a deal through the DOHA round of trade talks, which have since collapsed.
Amorim said the country would also look more closely at possible action over US tariffs on imports of the Latin American nation’s sugar-cane derived ethanol biofuel.
“We also have to examine the ethanol question. A consensus is mounting that we should go down this road (a trade dispute) but we’re still working with lawyers and checking the law,” he said.
Brazil has already mounted a joint challenge together with Canada over the United States’ agriculture subsidies.
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C4 hatchback unveiled
The French group PSA Peugeot-Citroën officially began industrially producing the new “pride of the nation,” the Citroën C4 hatchback. The ceremony took place at the Industrial Park in El Palomar last Tuesday, and it was attended by Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner; Buenos Aires Governor Daniel Scioli; together with federal and provincial authorities, businessmen and journalists.
Sixteen months after the launch of the C4 sedan, the El Palomar production centre once again celebrated the industrial launch of the new Citroën C4 hatchback, which required a 125-million-dollar investment, and will be sold as from November.
The new model is part of the regional strategy which Vincent Rambaud, Mercosur managing director for the group, had announced last year in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and is one of the pillars of the international development strategy that aims at speeding up PSA Peugeot-Citroën’s presence in this region.
President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner thanked “the trust placed by foreign businessmen in Argentina” and warned that “some of our fellow citizens still don’t believe in this country.” Cristina highlighted the “chance to grow this economic model that is under way gives us.”
The President underlined that “not only is the support of a government important for a carmaker to develop, but the important thing is the adoption of an economic, political, social and cultural model that focuses on work and production, applying such added value to the development and growth of the population.”
Fernández also stressed the recent passing of the Auto-Parts Act and pointed out that such regulation “was requested to us by automakers.” She added that “when we were at the launch of the other C4 model we were able to attest that this successful model’s auto-parts were 70 percent locally-made.”
This vehicle – to be marketed in Argentina starting in November – is an addition to the French make’s product range currently produced in this country, including the Berlingo (Multispace and Van) and the C4 Sedan, among others.
“Laying down clear rules, avoiding distortive taxes, applying active industrial policy, to have stability in labour and supplies costs, and an improvement in fuel quality for 2009 allow us to maintain this fortunate present with active policy that includes this launch (the Citroën C4) which is a pride we expect to keep in the future,” as convincingly put by Osvaldo Baños, head of PSA Peugeot-Citroën in Argentina.
Vincent Rambaud said: “When I arrived in Mercosur to give this region a boost we estimated a growth to 300,000 units in volume by 2010, a figure we’ll already be reaching in 2009. The second goal we set ourselves was quality, which was improved like never before with this model we’re releasing today.”
This progress in sales and regional presence is coupled with a strong industrial plan – announced in 2007 – which contemplates a 500-million-dollar investment in Mercosur (700 million pesos for Argentina, an addition to the 1.2 billion pesos they have been spending since 2003).
“We’re not even halfway there yet,” stated Rimbaud concerning the regional investment plan. As for Argentina in 2009, the El Palomar will receive a 300-million-peso injection (part of the 700 million pesos in the plan).
“We estimate that 50 percent will be allocated to new products (for both brands, Peugeot and Citroën) and the rest to enhance productivity,” said Baños, though he once again avoided defining what is up their sleeve as far as models are concerned.
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Canada PM says election is close
TORONTO — Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said yesterday he might call an early election before opposition parties get a chance to topple his minority government, an indication he thinks he has better odds of winning an election sooner rather than later.
To do so, Harper will have to maneouvre around a law he helped get enacted after he came to power in 2006, a law that sets a fixed date for an election in October 2009.
“The country must have a government that can function during a time of economic uncertainty, and if it’s not this government, or not this Parliament, the public will have an opportunity to decide whom,” he said.
Three federal by-elections are slated for September 8 to fill three vacant seats in Parliament, and opposition parties are favored to win at least two of those races. That could bolster the political outlook for the opposition parties ahead of a national election.
Harper wants the national election called before that day to deny the opposition Liberals any momentum.
AP
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CFK — more superwoman without superpowers
There have always been impeccable institutional and ethical arguments against the so-called “superpowers” permitting the executive branch to reallocate budgetary spending at will via the Cabinet Chief’s office (arguments sometimes recognized by President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner when she was a member of the legislative branch) but waiving the “superpowers” in many ways also seems the politically smart thing to do in the current context. While the “superpowers” allow a government to do pretty much anything it likes, they have to be extended annually by Congress at the start of each budgetary year (i.e. September 15, which is approaching fast) and there seems no chance of a newly assertive Congress assenting to such a gross invasion by the executive branch after coming of age with last month’s defeat of the government’s export duty bill. And in the extremely unlikely event of extension of the “superpowers” somehow being coerced out of Congress this year, the government seems doomed to a heavy midterm legislative defeat next year, thus making budgetary juggling unsustainable as a long-term instrument of policy. CFK would thus be extremely wise to spare herself further defeats by making a virtue out of necessity.
Of course, the “superpowers” are so vital to the highly centralized Kirchner style of government that one wonders how the CFK administration could ever function without them — how could the government ever augment the 2009 budget by 33 billion pesos, as it has this year? Waiving the “superpowers” might thus seem an acceleration of the crisis. Nevertheless, the government has never relied entirely on the “superpowers” for fiscal flexibility — Roberto Lavagna (economy minister from 2002 to 2005) invented a strategy of deliberately undershooting growth (and hence revenue) projections, thus resulting in billions of extra pesos which were completely unaccountable to the budget. Waiving “superpowers” might thus be cynically suspected of falling back on this source of reserve funds. Nevertheless, this could prove a hazardous strategy because real growth is widely expected to fall off by at least a couple of percent (even to be halved according to the harshest estimates) whereas CFK continues to stick to the inherited growth rate of eight percent in her official pronouncements — if the latter figure is enshrined in the budget, there would then be revenue shortfalls to be plugged, not excess funds to be squandered at will.
Yet if the new Cabinet Chief Sergio Massa waives the “superpowers” enjoyed by his predecessor Alberto Fernández and if President Cristina Fernández continues not to sign emergency decrees (even if export duties were arbitrarily increased last March by other channels), both these developments rate objectively as institutional improvements, whatever the motives or circumstances, and both deserve to be hailed and supported.
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CFK meets Shannon, regional issues on the agenda
During the seminar, Shannon highlighted that “this is an era when ideologies are over in the Americas, we no longer discuss ideology, now we join our shared interests and values.” He also said that after the military dictatorships, Latin America is recovering democracy and added that although US President George Bush’s administration is coming to an end, the current US policy toward Argentina will continue, said Shannon.
Shannon explained that US officials aim at achieving strategic trade associations, despite the fact that at the Doha Round — a ministers’ meeting organized by the World Trade Organization (WTO) regarding free global transactions — did not succeed.
Shannon admitted that Doha multilateral negotiations failed and added that “we must strengthen commercial relations.” He said the region’s countries should move forward to settle free commerce accords to build “bridges” with the future US authorities.
United States Ambassador to Argentina E. Anthony Wayne yesterday said that the relation between Argentina and the US are benefited from “dialogue” and “cooperation.” However, the visit of US officials took place after last year the local and the US government clashed on several occasions over the controversial issue of the so-called “suitcase scandal,” concerning the 800,000 dollars found in Venezuelan-US resident Antonini Wilson luggage in August, 2007. According to the FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation, the money in Wilson’s suitcase was destined for Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s presidential campaign. US Court authorities agreed and said that unknown foreign agents were spies in the US, who were allegedly related to Wilson. Afterwards, Argentine government reacted badly to the US statements as president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner regarded the accusations as “garbage” politics against her administration.
Several officials took part in yesterday’s forum, such as Cabinet Chief Sergio Massa, Economy Minister Carlos Fernández, Science and Technology Minister Lino Barañao, Central Bank President Martín Redrado and Argentine Ambassador to the US Héctor Timerman, among others.
Herald staff with Télam
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CFK, Shannon review the region
Shannon told reporters that he intended to talk with the President about “regional issues and the next summit of the Americas, to take place in Trinidad and Tobago.”
At the Council of the Americas seminar, local and foreign officials and businessmen yesterday debated trade problems, including “the challenges faced by the US economy as well as that of other nations,” the Council’s director, Susan Segal, said.
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Chequebooks find a mafia message?
The discovery yesterday of 165 cheque books in the name of “Unifarma” a business owned by Ariel Vilán, who fell to his death from a ninth floor balcony on Sunday night, has led investigators to speculate about a possible mafia message.
Vilán was believed to be an associate of Sebastián Forza, one of the three young businessmen slain in a mafia-style execution near the Buenos Aires province town of General Rodríguez on August 7.
The main hypothesis of investigators at the moment is that the cheques constitute “a challenge, a provocation or a message”.
They were discovered by chance yesterday morning by a motorist who found them under his car at Bolivia 1200, only two blocks from where the burned out jeep of Damián Ferrón, another of the victims of the General Rodríguez slaying was found earlier.
The premises of Unifarma had been searched only the night before the finding of the cheque books by order of Judge Federico Salvá at the request of prosecutor Marcelo Solimne.
The search came up with nothing of significance. However, computers found in the Unifarm laboratory are still being analyzed.
Judge Salvá and Prosecutor Solimne are working in collaboration with Judge Rodrigo Pagano Mata and Prosecutor Ana Yacobucci, who are investigating the triple murder in General Rodríguez.
Legal sources have stated that “there are indications that connect Vilán with Sebastián Forza but none to suggest that the latter was a front man for the former.”
Definite evidence of a connection between Forza and Vilán was found in a search of the latter’s apartment, in the shape of the registration papers of a Mini Cooper in the name of the former.
“We knew that he used a car that belonged to Forza and these papers prove it.”, said one police source.
The same source said that the most significant find produced by the search was a large number of mobile phones and mobile phone chips. An exhaustive study will now begin of all the phones found and the calls made from them in an attempt to throw more light on the triple murder and, possibly, the death of Vilán, currently being treated as as a case of suspected induced suicide. A laptop computer was also found in Vilán’s apartment and will also be subject to detailed analysis.
Herald staff with DyN, Télam
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Chile: exhibit to celebrate indigenous art
SANTIAGO
More than 100 artists from Chile’s nine indigenous groups will take part in the second biennial exhibition of indigenous art in the capital Oct. 17-Nov. 2, which hopes to draw at least 30,000 visitors.
"It is important for society to become familiar with the culture, customs and day-to-day lives of native people, because they generally only receive attention when they are involved in conflicts" and protests, Paula Pilquinao Painenao, the director of the exhibition, said.
In 2006, 120 artists participated in the first edition of the event, which was visited by 15,000 people. The theme of the second edition, to be held at the governmental Cultural Centre of the La Moneda Palace (CCPLM), is "women and the power of speech in indigenous communities".
"In the different oral accounts of indigenous groups in Chile and the rest of the Americas, woman is the creator of the universe, unlike in western, Christian belief systems," said Pilquinao, a Mapuche instrument maker who has a degree in education.
"Women are associated with nature, with reproduction. They also transmit the native languages" from generation to generation, she added.
The exhibition is organised by the Programa Orígenes, an initiative for the integral development of indigenous communities financed by the Chilean state and a loan from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and run by the National Indigenous Development Board (CONADI) — the government agency responsible for indigenous affairs — and the Planning Ministry.
Other sponsors of the event include the Education Ministry, the National Council on Culture and the Arts, the Library of the National Congress and the Bicentennial Commission.
The nine native ethnic groups officially recognised by the Chilean state are the Atacameña, Colla, Diaguita, Quechua, Rapa Nui, Kawhaskar, Yagán, Aymara and Mapuche. The Mapuche make up 87 percent of the country’s indigenous people, who comprise 6.6 percent of the population of 15.6 million.
The call for works, which was open from Jun. 10 to Aug. 11, received 100 submissions from artists who signed up over the Internet or in offices of the Programa Orígenes or CONADI.
In addition, a group of indigenous experts has been touring the country to invite the participation of outstanding artists who have not submitted works for whatever reason.
A panel presided over by Mapuche architect Eliseo Huencho, director of the first biennial exhibition, will make the final selection on Sept. 2-3.
The exhibit encompasses the visual arts, both traditional and modern, as well as scenic arts, audiovisual arts and writing, especially short stories, poetry and history.
Pilquinao said that one of the main issues focused on by participating artists is the "defence of nature," which is represented by a woman. The works presented also protest the discrimination and marginalisation faced on a daily basis by indigenous people in Chile, she said.
She acknowledged that the event has also been criticised by several communities that are demanding autonomy from the Chilean state, especially some factions of the Mapuche people, whose ancestral territory is in the southern regions of Bío-Bío, Araucanía and Los Lagos.
In some Mapuche areas, a long history of conflicts over what native communities claim as their ancestral land continues today, and prominent human rights groups have reported abuses suffered by indigenous villagers at the hands of the security forces.
"They have told me that they cannot accept this because it comes from the state. It is a position that we respect. We cannot force everyone to see this as a good thing. There will always be people who don't agree," said Pilquinao.
She underlined that the exhibition is open to all artistic expressions and that there is no censorship of works of protest.
"This is an opportunity for artists to show and sell their work," she said. However, indigenous artists do not find it easy to participate in the event.
"The artists see the biennial as something very important, to which time and work must be dedicated," and that means they do not want to merely select one of their existing pieces of work, said Pilquinao. "They want to create something special, which fits the exhibit’s theme," she explained.
"In some cases, the installations involve expensive audiovisual supports and materials. We have been asked for financing for artistic projects, but we don't have funds for that," she said.
The only solution the organisers have come up with for now is letters of support for the selected artists, to help them in their quest for private sector funds, said Pilquinao.
This year’s exhibit will pay homage to the late renowned Ecuadorean painter and sculptor Oswaldo Guayasamín, born to an indigenous father and a mother of mixed-race descent. Visitors will be able to view around 20 of his works, which will be brought in from Ecuador.
In addition, several museums in the capital will hold parallel exhibits on the country’s indigenous heritage, and a series of seminars and forums on indigenous issues will begin on Sept. 5, International Indigenous Women's Day.
Pilquinao also announced the first edition of the new annual Santos Chávez (a Mapuche artist) prize for indigenous artists, to be awarded by the National Council on Culture and the Arts, the CCPLM and CONADI.
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China becomes net food importer
GENEVA — China became a net food importer in cash terms in the first half of this year, as soaring food prices ate into its traditional surplus in agricultural goods.
The swing into deficit largely reflects the surge in prices of commodity staples such as grain and soybeans.
But it also sheds an interesting light on China’s stance in last month’s abortive global trade talks when Beijing, increasingly concerned about food security, sided with India and against the United States in pushing for a safeguard to protect developing-country farmers from a surge in imports.
According to data from Global Trade Information Services Inc, Geneva, (GTIS), China had a deficit of US$5.78 billion on its trade in agricultural products in the first half of this year, against a surplus of US$2.45 billion a year earlier, as the value of imports rose 72 percent while exports rose 12 percent.
GTIS supplies and analyses international merchandise data. The figures show trade in categories 1-24 of the harmonised system (HS) used internationally to classify products, covering animal products, vegetable products and foodstuffs, and including products for animal feeds as well as food for people.
In that period imports from the United States, China’s biggest farm supplier, almost doubled. They rose 95 percent from Brazil and 132 percent from Argentina, the next biggest suppliers. But exports to Japan, China’s biggest food customer, fell 12 percent, while rising 13 percent to the United States.
World Trade Organisation (WTO) data, measuring trade in food on a slightly different basis, show China was a net food exporter every year from 2000 to 2007, except for 2004 when it ran a small deficit of US$0.2 billion.
Its surplus in food peaked at US$6.4 billion in 2002, and was only US$0.9 billion in 2007, as food prices started to climb.
The sheer size of China’s food trade meant that in 2006, when it still ran a surplus of US$5.0 billion, it was both the world’s fourth biggest exporter, behind the European Union, United States and Brazil, and fourth biggest importer, behind the European Union, United States and Japan, WTO data show.
Since then it has suffered a classic deterioration in its terms of trade, with the price of its food imports rising much faster than the price of its food exports.
In terms of value, China’s main agricultural imports are grains and cereals, soybeans, and edible oils, while its major exports include fish and fish products, vegetables, grains including rice, and fruit and fruit juice.
The value of imports of soybeans in the first seven months of this year rose 118.6 percent to US$12.3 billion, but in volume terms the rise was only 22.8 percent, to 20.7 million tonnes, according to official data in Chinese Customs Statistics.
The value of fish exports rose only 9.5 percent to US$2.88 billion, but they fell 4.0 percent in volume terms to 1.0 million tons, the data show.
The rising food bill will have put pressure on Beijing to adopt a more protectionist stance in farm trade, even though it has benefited from the free-trade system umpired by the WTO, which China joined in 2001.
China is now the world’s second biggest overall exporter, after Germany.
In last month’s WTO talks, India and other developing countries insisted on a safeguard that would allow poor nations to raise tariffs temporarily above current levels to withstand a flood of imports threatening subsistence farmers’ livelihoods.
The proposal was of particular interest to China, which cut its tariffs sharply as the price of admission to the WTO.
“On those important issues... which affect millions of poor farmers, that is an area we can’t really make further concessions,” China’s WTO ambassador Sun Zhenyu told WTO members after the collapse of the talks.
The safeguard was the point in which the countries negotiating a World Deal couldn’t reach an agreement, puting end to a nine-days meeting that was supposed to be the breakthrough to reach was was launched in the so called Doha round in 2001.
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Clinton takes the spotlight at convention
DENVER — Hillary Clinton prepared for a highly anticipated turn in the spotlight at the Democratic convention yesterday, and in advance she asked supporters to help her put Barack Obama in the White House.
“I ask all of you who worked so hard for me, who knocked on doors and made those phone calls, who got in arguments from time to time ... to work as hard for Barack Obama as you did for me,” Clinton told a luncheon crowd of about 2,500 who also heard from Obama’s wife, Michelle.
“Let’s work our hearts out to elect Barack Obama and Joe Biden our next president and vice-president,” she said at an event sponsored by Emily’s List, a group that backs Democratic supporters of abortion rights.
Both camps predicted Clinton would make an enthusiastic pitch for Obama during her evening appearance and end a rift that has clouded the convention to nominate the first-term Illinois senator to face Republican John McCain in the November 4 election.
The second day of the convention focused on economic themes and began to lay out Obama’s plans to aid lower- and middle-class voters suffering in a faltering US economy, which polls show is the top issue in the final months of President George W. Bush’s term.
But the continued drama around Clinton and the lingering anger of her supporters after their bruising nominating fight meant her speech would be watched closely for her level of enthusiasm.
“She will thank her supporters and lay out the case for why they need to support Barack Obama,” Terry McAuliffe, Clinton’s campaign chairman, told reporters outside the convention hall. “She does it all. It’s a good speech.“
Obama, 47, had tried to ease the lingering tension by giving Clinton, a New York senator, and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, major roles at the convention. Bill Clinton will address the Democrats today.
Hillary Clinton visited the convention podium yesterday afternoon to scout out the arrangements. Asked if she was excited about the speech, she said: “You bet.“
Some of yesterday’s speakers cranked up the criticism of McCain at the urging of Democrats who wanted a tougher approach to the Arizona senator. The first night focused on presenting a softer, more personal side of the candidate.
“It’s clear: the only thing green in John McCain’s energy plan is the billions of dollars he’s promising in tax cuts for oil companies. And the only thing he’ll recycle is the same failed Bush approach to energy policy,” said Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Clinton supporter.
Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, at one time considered a possible vice president for Obama, used a reference from the “Wizard of Oz” to bring up McCain’s seven homes.
“I’m sure you remember a girl from Kansas who said there’s no place like home. Well, in John McCain’s version, there’s no place like home. And home. And home. And home,” she said.
Clinton, 60, is expected to free her delegates to back Obama today. She will be formally nominated although a roll call vote by state could be cut short and Obama nominated by acclamation under a deal being negotiated by the two camps.
A daily Gallup tracking poll on Tuesday gave McCain a 2-point edge over Obama, 46 percent to 44 percent, within the margin of error but his first lead since Obama clinched the Democratic nomination in June.
Republicans say Obama is too inexperienced to take on the presidency and they sought to play up the Democratic divisions, releasing a new ad that repeated Clinton’s criticism of Obama mad | |
