Via the BBC: Farc ‘co-ordinator’ held in Spain

Spanish police say they have arrested the representative of the left-wing Colombian rebel group Farc in Spain.

Maria Remedios Garcia Albert, a Spanish national, was detained near Madrid, as part of a joint operation by the Spanish and Colombian authorities.

[...]

It is claimed that Ms Garcia helped co-ordinate the group’s wider activities in Europe – allegedly liaising with counterparts in Switzerland and Sweden.

It is possible that Garcia was tracked down from information captured from the laptop of Raúl Reyes, who was killed in combat in March. The avalanche of woes that have been visited upon the FARC in the last year or so has been remarkable.

The most recent example was the highly publicized rescue of Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other hostages (including three Americans). Not only were Betancourt and the three Americans perhaps the most valuable assets that the FARC had, the rescue operation utterly embarrassed them.

Additionally there has been the following:

• The death of the FARC’s founder, Ivan Marulanda.
• The surrender of top level leader Karina.
• The capture of another top leader, Santiago.
• The aforementioned death of Reyes in the raid over the Colombian-Ecuador border that sparked off a diplomatic row in the region (and Ecuador still remains hacked off at Colombia). The raid that killed Reyes led to acquisition of the aforementioned laptop.
• The death of Ivan Rios at the hands of a reward-seeking fellow member of the FARC, who had been (like Reyes) a member of the FARC’s seven-man secretariat. He was Karina’s immediate boss and his death appears to have set off a chain of events that led to her surrender.

A casual perusal of that list would lead one to believe that the FARC must be on its last legs and while I would like to think that as well, I remain cautious in rendering any conclusions at this point in time. It should be noted that the FARC has been in constant operation since the mid-1960s and has been, to use a word, resilient. At the moment they exist in a number of cells across the country, which makes direct destruction difficult (indeed, it was the fragmented nature of the group that the Colombian government exploited in its rescue of Betancourt). Further, their participation in the cocaine trade gives them a remarkable revenue source. As such, while the FARC has clearly been reduced in size, it is easy to see them continuing their operations for the foreseeable future, if anything because the money is available for them to do so.

There is the chance that there will be some internal divisions with the group, as the more ideologically oriented portions seek to continue armed struggle (it is thought that the current leader whose nom de guerre is El Mono Jojoy is more ideologically minded than some of the commanders) and those who simply want to pursue their criminal activities. Indeed, there are reports that some FARC fronts have teamed up with right-wing paramilitary groups (their alleged enemies) to engage in drug related activities.

There is no doubt that the armed conflict is evolving at the moment, and that the Colombian state is making strides, but I would caution against any assumptions that we are on the verge of violence ceasing. There is still the question of the ELN (the National Liberation Army, Colombia’s second largest guerrilla group) and the paramilitaries. In fact, I fear that as long at there is money to be made from drugs that there will be some sort of serious violence problem in Colombia.

The daring rescue of Ingrid Betancourt from FARC terrorists misused the Red Cross symbol in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

A member of the military mission that tricked Colombian rebels into freeing 15 hostages wore the insignia of the International Red Cross during the operation, President Alvaro Uribe said Wednesday.

Mr. Uribe said his government had apologized to the Red Cross for the incident, which he called an unauthorized error by a nervous soldier. “An officer mistakenly and contrary to orders … put a piece of cloth on his vest that carried the symbol of the International Committee of the Red Cross,” Mr. Uribe said in a speech in Bogota.

A fleeting image of a portion of the cloth is visible in video taken of the operation by an agent posing as a cameraman that was officially released.

Use of the Red Cross symbol in such a military operation would appear to violate the Geneva Conventions that protect the relief organization’s reputation for neutrality in conflicts.

There’s no “appear” to it.

One hesitates to overstate matters given the stakes involved.  The rescue of these hostages is an unmitigated good.   Further, I believe Uribe when he says it was done contrary to orders.

Still, this is a serious matter.   Having soldiers pose as relief workers or journalists is illegal because, otherwise, no one would recognize the sanctity of those people and they would be in danger.  Using the Red Cross is particularly egregious because it could deny captured soldiers and their families the benefits of visits to ensure humane treatment.

Recall Clara Barton’s words from 1878:

A confederation of Relief Societies in different countries, acting under the Geneva Convention, carries on its work under the sign of the Red Cross. The aim of these societies is to ameliorate the condition of wounded soldiers in the armies in campaign on land or sea, and to furnish relief in cases of great national calamity.

The societies had their rise in the conviction of certain philanthropic men, that the official sanitary service in wars is usually insufficient, and that the charity of the people, which at such times exhibits itself munificently, should be organized for the best possible utilization. An International Public Conference was called at Geneva, Switzerland, in 1863, which, though it had not an official character, brought together representatives from a number of governments. At this conference a treaty was drawn up, afterwards remodeled and improved, which twenty-five governments have signed.

The treaty provides for the neutrality of all sanitary supplies, ambulances, surgeons, nurses, attendants, and the sick or wounded men, and their safe conduct, when they bear the sign of the organization, viz: the Red Cross.

This only works if people trust that only legitimate relief workers seek sanctuary behind the Red Cross symbol.

Woodrow Wilson Red Cross Poster:  Sparacus Education:  Red Cross

Íngrid Betancourt Pulecio was freed yesterday in a daring rescue by the Colombian National Army after more than five years of captivity by FARC narco-terrorists.

[S]he and 14 other hostages — including three U.S. military contractors held since 2003 — were airlifted to freedom in an audaciously “perfect” operation involving military spies who tricked the rebels into handing over their prize hostages without firing a shot.

The stunning caper involved months of intelligence gathering, dozens of helicopters on standby and a strong dose of deceit: The rebels shoved the captives, their hands bound, onto a white unmarked MI-17 helicopter, believing they were being transferred to another guerrilla camp.

Looking at helicopter’s crew, some wearing Che Guevara shirts, Betancourt reasoned they weren’t aid workers, as she’d expected — but rebels. This was just another indignity — the helicopter “had no flag, no insignia.” Angry and upset, she refused a coat they offered as they told her she was going to a colder climate. But not long after the group was airborne, Betancourt turned around and saw the local commander, alias Cesar, a man who had tormented her for four years, blindfolded and stripped naked on the floor.

Then came the unbelievable words. “We’re the national army,” said one of the crewman. “You’re free.”

The helicopter crew were soldiers in disguise. Cesar and the other guerrilla aboard had been persuaded to hand over their pistols, then overpowered. Not a single shot was fired in Wednesday’s rescue mission, which snatched from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the four foreigners who were its greatest bargaining chips.

“The helicopter almost fell from the sky because we were jumping up and down, yelling, crying, hugging one another,” Betancourt later said.

The operation, which also freed 11 Colombian soldiers and police, “will go into history for its audacity and effectiveness,” Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said. It was the most serious blow ever dealt to the 44-year-old FARC, which is already reeling from the recent deaths of key commanders and thousands of defections after withering pressure from Colombia’s U.S.-trained and advised armed forces.

Military intelligence agents had infiltrated the FARC’s top ranks — not one but many — in an operation that began last year and developed slowly and with meticulous care, Colombia’s top generals said.

Amazingly good news. Steven Taylor, who studies Colombian politics for a living, has roundups here and here.

Thomas Barnett damns John McCain with faint praise saying, essentially, that his foreign policy would be reckless but not as bad as the alternatives.

Both Clinton and Obama, if elected, present the frightening spectacle of a pandering Democratic White House looking for easy wins with an angry citizenry on protectionism because getting such wins on Iraq will be almost impossible. Both Clinton and Obama now bash NAFTA, China and oppose the free trade pact proposed with Colombia, the rejection of which would constitute one big F.U. to Uribe and the magnificent effort he’s put in despite our still foolish, supply-side-focus on the drug “war.”

McCain would scare me on many levels, but a Dem prez plus strengthened Dem majorities in both houses? Yikes, that’s got Smoot-Hawley written all over it, and that would be significantly more damaging to world stability than even nuking Iran–I kid you not.

Barnett is at the point I was at months ago, before the first primary, in proclaiming McCain my “least unfavorite” of the Republican alternatives. My best guess — and really, it’s no more than that and never is with these things — is that none of these candidates is as bad as Barnett suggests.

He’s absolutely right on the dangers of radical protectionism and China bashing but I simply don’t believe a President Obama (or, much less plausibly, a President Hillary Clinton) would actually push forward with the policies they’re now campaigning on. Once enmeshed in the interagency process and taking advice from more than a handful of idealists, presidents tend to morph out of their candidate mode and conform to their new role as chief executive. And even if they’re stubborn, they’ve got to deal with the checks and balances the Framers put in their path.

Similarly, however deserved McCain’s reputation as a hothead may be, his course of action vis-a-vis Iran would be similarly constrained. While there’s a consensus that a nuclear Iran is “unacceptable” and even the likes of JCS Chairman Mullen is saying we “will have to deal with Iran in the very near future,” I’ve come across precisely zero people who simultaneously 1) know what they’re talking about and 2) think there are any good military options.

Barnett’s right, though, at a basic level: few of us are going to have our ideal candidate on the ballot in November. As always, we’ll have to weigh the options and decide which of the expressed candidate policy preferences we dislike we can either most live with or think least likely to be enacted.

Here’s a follow-up to a story I noted yesterday: (via the BBC), Ecuadorean death report confirmed

Colombia has confirmed that an Ecuadorean was killed when its troops attacked a rebel camp inside the neighbouring state three weeks ago.

Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos said his body was taken to Colombia after the raid along with that of top leftist Colombian rebel Raul Reyes.

[...]

News that Bogota has confirmed killing an Ecuadorean threatens to plunge the two countries back into diplomatic crisis, and perhaps again put the entire Andean region on a war footing, the BBC’s Jeremy McDermott reports from Colombia.

Confirming that an Ecuadorean citizen had been killed, Colombia’s defence ministry said the dead man appeared to have been a member of the Farc who specialised in helping rebels cross into Ecuador to hide.

At a minimum, this will increase tensions with Ecuador and allow President Correa a reason to continue to desist from reestablishing diplomatic relations with Colombia. No doubt the next step will be for Ecuador to dispute the role of the dead Ecuadoran.

Via the LAT: Peru sees cocaine making a comeback

Peru’s cocaine industry, the world’s largest and most violent in the late 1980s and early 1990s, is again on the upswing. Plots of coca bushes, whose leaves yield cocaine, have increased by about one-third since 1999, to about 127,000 acres, according to Peruvian and United Nations estimates.

And this time, the traffickers may be more difficult to combat because the flashy kingpins from Colombia have been replaced by a piecemeal network, a sort of gold rush of international entrepreneurs.

Production is still well below the record highs of the early 1990s, and neighboring Colombia has surpassed Peru as the global cocaine leader, supplying 90% of the U.S. market, according to the State Department. Moreover, President Alan Garcia is a staunch foe of the drug.

[...]

But Peru, the world’s No. 2 supplier, feeds a booming demand in Brazil, Europe, East Asia and as far away as Australia, authorities say. The density of coca plantings has doubled in some cases, experts say, and the fertilizer-nourished leaf now yields a greater proportion of cocaine alkaloid, the active ingredient in cocaine.

And the basic narrative on coca production continues:

During the 1990s, U.S.-backed enforcement efforts chased much of the coca trade to Colombia. Now, some say, the wheel is turning: Pressure in Colombia is shifting production here.

The new twist (although not as new as the story makes it out to be) is that instead of large drug organization like the Medellin or Cali cartels being the main managerial components of the trade, there are now a large number of small, basically independent operators who much be combated.

Of course, the basic story will remain the same: as long as there are a mounds of money to be made trafficking in cocaine, the US government can spend as much as it likes trying to stop it, the effort will be in vain. So instead of actually diminishing the amount of coca under cultivation, all the US essentially does is move the cultivation around (even incentivizing cultivators to grow in new areas).

Via the BBC: Ecuador warns Colombia over raid

Ecuador President Rafael Correa has warned of diplomatic tension if an Ecuadorean is found among the victims of a Colombian raid inside Ecuador.

Mr Correa said Ecuador would not forgive the murder of Franklin Aisalia, if he had indeed died during the raid on Farc rebels inside Ecuador.

But he said he hoped Colombia would prove this was not the case.

Ecuador has ordered a probe after the man’s family said he died in the raid in which a senior Farc boss was killed.

[...]

“It would be extremely grave if it is proven that a Ecuadorean died,” the president said on Ecuadorean radio. “We will not let this murder go unpunished.”

Correa left the meeting in Santo Domingo over the entire affair with an obvious reluctance to move on. It may well be that the the Aisalia situation is an excuse to find a way to continue to confrontation. However, if the Colombians killed an innocent Ecuadoran that would reignite the crisis in a new guise. At a minimum, it is clear that relations between these two Andean states are hardly warm at the moment.

A few days ago, Aaron Brazell announced that his popular Web 2.0 blog, Technosailor, would start featuring regular Spanish-language posts in the niche by Carlos Granier-Phelps. I found the idea odd at first and then remarkably annoying once implemented.

It’s not especially hard, frankly, to skip past the odd Spanish language post in Google Reader, yet I find their presence surprisingly grating. Aaron has added an Espanol tab atop his site which allows readers to read just the Spanish language content but has thus far not created an English-only variant for either the site itself or its feed.

Granier is undoubtedly providing some fine insights into the Technosailor niche yet they’re completely useless to me and, I presume, the vast majority of the site’s readers. Presumably, some will be annoyed and stop reading. Almost certainly, he’ll also bring in new readers.

I wonder, though, about the implications of this. Years ago, the rise of group blogs looked to be destroying the very thing that made blogging unique: The voice and perspective of a single author. Many good blogs were rendered not worth reading by the addition of multiple authors and the resulting dilution of the brand. Others, though, managed to bring together the right combination of voices and create interesting synergies. Now, group blogs — and blog networks — have become all the rage.

As the Internet becomes more mainstream around the globe, there will surely be a demand for content in more languages and an incentive to try to capitalize on that. Will multi-language sites become the norm? Or will sites clone themselves into linguistic variants?

One would think the latter model more likely to succeed. It makes sense to bring together complementary expertise, in whatever language, to leverage it. My guess, though, is that it will be more efficient to segregate it into multiple, networked sites — or at least distinct pages within the same site — rather than create a blog of Babel.

Steven Taylor has taken a mixed approach with La Política Colombiana, an offshoot of PoliBlog. He’s taken his Columbian politics niche content and placed it on a separate site, figuring most of that information would be uninteresting to his regular readers, and has both English- and Spanish-language content. In that particular case, though, the audience is presumed to be bilingual.

There’s so much good content out there that most of us are constantly adding RSS feeds to our readers and looking for reasons to pare down the list (indeed, Aaron has written about that process several times). Sites where significant numbers of the posts are quite literally unintelligible will probably be prime targets.

UC San Diego’s Barbara F. Walter has a piece in today’s LAT entitled, “You can’t win with civil wars: History teaches that conflicts like Iraq drag on and rarely produce peace deals.” If the title weren’t depressing enough, the inside is even more stark.

Civil wars don’t end quickly. The average length of all civil wars since 1945 is 10 years. Conflicts in Burma, Angola, India, the Philippines, Chad and Colombia have lasted more than 30 years. Wars in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Lebanon, Sudan and Peru have lasted more than 15 years. Even Iraq’s previous civil war, fought against the Kurds, lasted 14 years.

[...]

Another lesson from history is that the greater the number of factions involved in a civil war, the longer it is likely to persist. Iraq simply has too many factions, with too much outside support, to come to a compromise settlement now. Not only is there no Shiite or Sunni who can speak for all of his side’s factions, but the parliament seems incapable of stopping the violence between these groups.

[...]

Civil wars rarely end in negotiated settlements. In research for a book on the topic, I found that 76% of civil wars between 1945 and 2005 ended only after one side had defeated all others. Only 24% ended in some form of negotiated solution. This suggests that the war in Iraq will not end at the bargaining table but on the battlefield.

[...]

One of the things learned over the last 60 years is that peace settlements in civil wars only work when backed by a third party willing to enforce the terms and to protect the weaker side from exploitation. This is why 40,000 NATO troops were stationed in Bosnia after the 1995 Dayton accords were signed, and why the accords in Rwanda eventually fell apart.

The problem in Iraq is that no third party is likely to be willing to guarantee any settlement that is reached. Nobody believes that the United States will stay in Iraq much beyond 2009, or that the Europeans or the United Nations will step in when the United States leaves.

Kevin Drum picks up on that last point and wonders, “Does anybody seriously think that we’re going to keep 100,000 troops in Iraq for the next 10 or 20 years? And if we’re not, is there any point in staying for one or two?”

While I would note that there is not even an expert consensus that “civil war” is even the right paradigm for analyzing Iraq at this point, let’s presume it is for the sake of argument. In a widely cited 1997 article for International Organization, “The Critical Barrier to Civil War Settlement,” Walter concluded that:

Between 1940 and 1990, enemies in civil wars have almost always failed to reach successful negotiated solutions to their conflicts unless an outside power guaranteed their safety during the ensuing transition period. I argue that civil war opponents avoid negotiated settlements because this requires them to relinquish important fall-back defenses at a time when no neutral police force and no legitimate government exist to help them enforce the peace. Knowing they will enter a period of intense vulnerability, neither side can credibly commit to an agreement that becomes less attractive once implemented. Evidence from forty-one civil wars between 1940 and 1990 shows that civil war adversaries do, in fact, require the added reassurance of outside security guarantees before they willfully implement peace treaties. This suggests that resolving the underlying issues over which civil wars are fought is not enough to bring peace to war-torn states. Both short-term security guarantees and long-term institutional arrangements seem necessary to ensure stable and durable settlements.

So, certainly, Walter would agree that the Iraqi mess is unlikely to solve itself. If the EU and the UN aren’t going to step in anytime soon — and they’re not — that pretty much means the US and NATO. Which, in any case, essentially means the US (NATO isn’t going to do it without the US providing the lion’s share of the manpower).

The Iraqis are, reasonably enough, skeptical of our long term commitment. Then again, none of the serious Democratic contenders for the presidency will commit to getting out by 2013. By which point, incidentally, we’ll have been in Iraq for 10 years. Which, I’m given to understand, is the average length it takes to end one of these things.

An obsolete language dies every two weeks, a new study reports.

When every known speaker of the language Amurdag gets together, there’s still no one to talk to. Native Australian Charlie Mungulda is the only person alive known to speak that language, one of thousands around the world on the brink of extinction. From rural Australia to Siberia to Oklahoma, languages that embody the history and traditions of people are dying, researchers said Tuesday. While there are an estimated 7,000 languages spoken around the world today, one of them dies out about every two weeks, according to linguistic experts struggling to save at least some of them.

Five hotspots where languages are most endangered were listed Tuesday in a briefing by the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages and the National Geographic Society. In addition to northern Australia, eastern Siberia and Oklahoma and the U.S. Southwest, many native languages are endangered in South America — Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Brazil and Bolivia — as well as the area including British Columbia, and the states of Washington and Oregon.

Losing languages means losing knowledge, says K. David Harrison, an assistant professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College. “When we lose a language, we lose centuries of human thinking about time, seasons, sea creatures, reindeer, edible flowers, mathematics, landscapes, myths, music, the unknown and the everyday.”

That sure seems like a stretch. How much scientific knowledge will we really lose if Charlie Mungulda is unable to pass on Amurdag? Aren’t languages which are being lost almost by definition those of illiterate peoples? Do they really have a lot to teach us about mathematics and the space-time continuum?

Further, doesn’t the death of a language represent cultural assimilation? Presumably, the South American and Canadian tribes who are no longer speaking the ancient tongues of their forebears are now speaking Spanish, Portuguese, English, or French? Don’t they thereby gain some modicum of cultural knowledge by thus gaining access to the learnings of advanced societies? And why, because they now speak a more common language, would they forget what they used to know about reindeer and edible flowers?

Also, one would think with linguistic assimilation would come a breakdown in tribalism. The ability to communicate with neighboring peoples would presumably increase the ability to resolve misunderstandings and avoid bloodshed.

Cross-posted from La Política Colombiana:

Shockingly, the AP reports that the number of hectares of coca under cultivation has risen, despite the increased eradication effort: Colombia’s president says White House survey shows 8 percent rise in coca

Despite record drug eradication efforts, a White House survey found production of coca in Colombia rose for the third consecutive year in 2006, President Alvaro Uribe said.

Uribe, who travels to Washington on Wednesday to secure the continued flow of U.S. anti-drug aid, revealed the findings of the still unreleased report at the end of a long speech Friday. A transcript was posted Sunday on the president’s Web site.

Uribe said the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy survey, which is based on satellite imagery, found that production rose 8 percent last year, to 156,000 hectares (385,484 acres) — an area twice the size of New York City.

I mean, really, who could’ve seen that coming?

This also contradicts statements from the US government from about a month ago.

Certainly when compared to the stated goals, the current policy is an abject failure:

One of Plan Colombia’s main goals was to halve production of coca within five years, but the latest estimate indicates 27 percent more coca is being produced than in 1999, the year before the anti-drug effort went into effect. A recent dip in the U.S. street price of cocaine, and rise in purity, also points to abundant supply.

Despite this: the response is predictable: there will be a call for more money to be spent to try and eradicate more hectares and yet regardless of how much money we spend we are going to be in the same place a few years from now, looking back and saying “well, we just need a few more million, and then we’ll get ‘em”–and meanwhile the cultivation of the coca plant with continue as will the consumption of the drug.

One wonders at what point we stop and actually reassess if this is a smart way to spend the taxpayers’ money.

Cross-posted from La Política Colombiana:

Via the BBC: Colombia releases top Farc rebel

The Colombian government has released a jailed guerrilla leader in the hope he will encourage the rebels to release the 56 hostages they hold.

Rodrigo Granda, known as the Farc rebel group’s “foreign minister”, was freed as the authorities prepare to release up to 200 guerrillas from prison.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe said French President Nicolas Sarkozy had pushed for Mr Granda’s release.

Among the hostages is French-Colombian politician, Ingrid Betancourt.

While it may well be that Uribe has chosen now to engage in this prisoner release as a way to deflect attention from the para-politics scandal, the bottom line is that ny including Granda, this cannot be characterized as a release of only scrubs.

Cross-posted from La Política Colombiana:

Via the BBC: Colombian rebels spurn jail deal

Colombia’s biggest rebel group insists it will not release any hostages even though the government has announced plans to free some 200 jailed rebels.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc, said the gesture by President Alvaro Uribe was a “farce”.

A Farc statement said the government must first create a safe haven for talks – a move Mr Uribe has ruled out.

Of course, the problem is that the last time the Colombian government granted the FARC a safe haven for the purpose of negotiations (back in the administration of Andres Pastrana (1998-2002)) it didn’t lead to anything aside from a handful of symbolic meetings and a nice place to keep hostages. Indeed, it was the kidnapping of several prominent politicians, including then-presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt (who was seeking a meeting with the FARC in the demilitarized zone) that lead to Pastrana sending in the military and ending the zone.

As such, the idea that the FARC is going to get another demilitarized zone strikes me as sheer fantasy–especially from the Uribe administration. Of course, they likely know this and may be making such demands simply so that they can try and blame the government on the lack of peace talks when, in fact, they are the ones who don’t want to talk.

I will say that the FARC may have a point when they say that Uribe has decided to engage in the prisoner release at this time to generate positive press in the face of the para-politics scandal:

The plan was merely an attempt by the president to divert attention from a scandal linking some of his political allies to illegal paramilitary groups, the statement said.

To this point I have been fulfilling my guestblogging duties here at OTB by mostly cross-posting stuff from my blog, PoliBlog. So to remedy that to some degree, I thought that I would try to do a little true value-added blogging and recommend some blogs that are perhaps not well known to OTB readers.

The following are blogs written by political scientists that are well written, thought provoking and/or educational and are worth a look even if they might not necessarily fall into the ideological or partisan worldview of all of OTB’s readership.

Going alphabetically:

Arms and Influence. A&I is written by a Ph.D. in political science who focuses primarily on the political use of violence. While he is not an active academic these days, he has an excellent insight that is worth reading. He blogs under the pseudonym “Kingdaddy” although his real name can be found on the site if you look hard enough. Indeed, I have known Herr Dr. Kingdaddy since his days as a graduate student at the University of California, Irvine where I was a polisci undergraduate and he was both a TA in at least one of my classes, and taught another (”War: Theory and Practice”). He also was an usher in my wedding.

I would also recommend his podcasts, which are available on the right-hand column of his site. Some good stuff if you are interested in the politics of violence/international relations in general.

Fruits and Votes: Fruits and Votes is the blog of Matthew Shugart, Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. Like the author of A&I noted above, Matthew was a grad student at UCI when I was an undergrad and taught two courses that I took (”Regime Change” and one the name of which I forget). He was also, oddly enough, an usher at my wedding (I swear, however, that UCI and wedding links have nothing to do with my recommendations of these blogs).

The name of the blog is a play on the title of a book that Shugart co-authored with Rein Taagepera (also a professor of mine at UCI in two classes) called Seats and Votes and the fact that Matthew has a passion for growing fruit, and indeed owns an orchard.

Matthew is one of the leading experts in the field of comparative politics on the subject of electoral systems and he blogs primarily on that topic. His work has been a substantial influence on my own and I would note that it was he who originally stoked my interest in Colombia, which has become the major focus of my own work.

If you are interested in elections, electoral rules, political institutions or comparative politics (or fruit growing, for that matter) you should add F&V to your list of reads.

Political Arithmetik is the blog of Charles Franklin, Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin. Charles was neither in my wedding nor, to my knowledge, ever at UCI. However, he does do a great job of blogging on polling. Lots of nice graphs and numbers for the empirically minded.

Also worth checking out: Abu Aardvark (IR and the Middle East), the Duck of Minerva (group blog focusing on IR), La Profesora Abstraída (Mexican Politics) and Two Weeks Notice (Latin American Politics).

If you are dying for more bloggin’ polisci types, you can check out the Blogging Political Scientist Census I did over a year ago (and that really needs to be updated).

In terms of pure entertainment, if you like daily comics and have an odd (some might say “refined” or, perhaps, “twisted” depending on one’s POV) sense of humor, check out
The Comics Curmudgeon. Along the same lines, but for comic books, I highly recommend:
Dave’s Long Box.

Cross-posted from PoliBlog:

WaPo has a piece on the political fallout from the move by Hugo Chávez to take broadcast rights away from RCTV: Protests in Venezuela Reinvigorate Opposition. The piece notes a number of groups and governments which have protested the move:

Spain’s Socialist government, in a joint declaration with the United States, called Friday for Chávez to renew RCTV’s license. The European Parliament voiced concern, and Brazil’s Senate passed a resolution calling on Chávez to reconsider, drawing a sharp rebuke from the Venezuelan leader.

“A head of state who doesn’t know how to live with democratic manifestation, such as that of the Brazilian Senate, is probably against democracy,” the president of that body, Renan Calheiros, said in response.

Reporters Without Borders, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, the Chilean Senate and the Atlanta-based Carter Center have said freedom of expression could be in peril in Venezuela. “I think this weakens the Chávez government’s argument that it furthers free expression,” said Carlos Lauria, who has studied the case for the Committee to Protect Journalists. “It debilitates that argument.”

And along the lines of some behaviors that I noted earlier, here is a rather strained “argument” by a former Venezuelan Minister about the threat posed by RCTV:

In an interview with Colombia’s Caracol Radio on Thursday, Roy Chaderton, a former Venezuelan foreign minister who serves as a special envoy, argued that RCTV remained a danger to Chávez’s government.

Noting that the station recently aired “Feast of the Goat,” a film based on the novel by Mario Vargas Llosa about a tyrannical dictator and the uprising against him, Chaderton said the intention was to “cultivate” the idea of assassinating Chávez as a solution to Venezuela’s problems.

Well, there you have it. What democracy could survive if it allows such heinous propaganda to hit the TV screens of its citizens?

Indeed, there is a bit of paranoia emanating from Chávez in general:

Chávez, speaking Thursday, warned that “international rightist, extreme-rightist and fascist movements are attacking Venezuela from everywhere — from Europe, the United States, Brasilia.” That theme — that Chávez is in mortal danger — is constant in Venezuela, and political analysts say it is used to manipulate public opinion.

The danger of such talk from the President is that he will then try and use the need to protect himself, and by extension the nation, by further consolidating power and further curtailing free expression and independent political activity. You see, the opposition will force him to do so. He will have no choice. (Another example of paranoia and TV was noted here).

Hopefully this following evaluation is correct, but I have my doubts:

Michael Shifter, a senior analyst for the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington policy group that closely follows Venezuela, said he didn’t think it would get much traction this time.

“All of his previous attacks were on the corrupt capitalists, but this goes way beyond that and it touches on Venezuela’s cultural identity,” Shifter said of Chávez. “It’s very hard for him to talk of the rancid oligarchy here. These are university students protesting, not part of the old order.”