Friday, November 19, 2010
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Mosque Madness
If you have been paying attention to the conservative echo chamber of talk radio and Fox News, and I certainly hope everyone does once in a while (it is good for a laugh, scream or an occasional cry), you should be aware that the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" is a serious issue (it isn't).
According to our fearless leaders, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, we have been informed that the mosque is being built by the shifty radical "Muslim Brotherhood operative" Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who harbors a nefarious "secret agenda." The mosque, we are told, is a victory for radical Islam and a slap in the face to the victims of the September 11th attacks.
Or, if you decide to use your brain, probe a little bit and examine the man for yourself, you will learn that Feisal Abdul Rauf has devoted much of his life to fostering better Islamic-U.S. relations. He authored the book, "What's Right With Islam Is What's Right With America," and is the vice-chair of the Interfaith Center of New York. According to Hendrik Hertzberg, who wrote a New Yorker piece on the mosque debate, Rauf has consistently denounced terrorism and the September 11th attacks and has been hired various times by the FBI to conduct sensitivity training for its agents.
Hertzberg also points out that Daisy Khan, Rauf's wife, runs the American Society for Muslim Advancement, which, according to the organization's Web site, "promotes cultural and religious harmony through interfaith collaboration, youth and women's empowerment and arts and cultural exchange."
The center itself, Cordoba House, will also not be located at ground zero, as the media's name suggests, but two blocks north, and will be far more than a mosque. Hungry? Grab a bite to eat there, it will have a restaurant. Wandering around lower Manhattan enjoying the hundred-degree weather and the smell your shoes produce as the rubber melts into the pavement? Go for a swim, there will be a pool! The plans also include a gallery and a memorial to the victims of the 9/11 attacks, and it will be open to all.
But with the November elections looming and an energized base of tea-partiers, the GOP has turned this non-issue into a serious issue. Armed with an extremely influential media arm and GOP wordsmith Frank Luntz, who conducts focus groups to see what the most effective language will be for framing the issue, the "Ground Zero Mosque" has become a hot topic of debate, a mobilization tactic and vote producer.
The jowly Conservative history professor and architect of the 1994 House Takeover, Newt Gingrich, has perhaps been the most vocal opponent of the center. According to Gingrich, the construction is part of an "Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization" by "replacing it with a radical imposition of Sharia." He refers to the construction as part of a larger "stealth jihad," harking back to memories of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's "fifth-column" scares of communists lurking around every corner during the Cold War.
While there is no factual evidence for any of Newt's rants, though plenty of speculation, it does scare people. And when people are scared, they tend to support the national security measures offered up by our Republican brethren. As Lisa Miller pointed out recently in her Newsweek column, terms like Jihad and Sharia freak people out and cause a general distrust of all Muslims. A few weeks ago, a New York City cab driver was stabbed when his passenger found out that he was a Muslim. The hysteria and paranoia clouding this event resemble the political climate that lead to past injustices and atrocities like the mass internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
Words do matter and new media, especially conservative talk radio and news sources, have a huge amount of influence in this country. All of the sudden the percentage of Americans who believe President Barack Obama is a Muslim has risen from 11 percent in March to 18 percent in August. Public opposition to Cordoba House is booming and anti-mosque rallies have popped up in New York City to protest the project. While there is no way to accurately measure prejudice against Muslims, all indicators show that it is growing, and is being fueled by people like Limbaugh, Beck and Gingrich.
The real issue isn't a mosque, or the placement of a mosque or even Islam. The issue is that Republicans are telling blatant lies and using shameless fear tactics to trigger voter anxiety, gain political support and fuel prejudice. So next time you find your remote under a pile of dirty beer stained clothing and switch on that TV, put on Fox, see what they are saying about the mosque, scream at the TV and change the channel.
Stealth Donations Endanger Democracy
It's election season again. The media finally has something more pertinent to talk about than Lindsay Lohan's release from prison or Lady Gaga's meat dress. Now ideologically conflicting pundit's can yell at each other as they try and predict the outcome of November's elections. But who's really going to win? Who knows! We can only be sure that Christine O'Donnell dabbled in witchcraft as a teen.
With election season, however, comes a far more annoying phenomenon: political advertisements. They are omnipresent and obnoxious as hell. Some try to scare the elderly by exposing Obamacare as a Medicare killing behemoth. Others warn of the job slaying effects of any bills that would help wean us off of fossil fuels.
What is more important than the often-misleading messages of these advertisements is the nearly illegible funding groups that pop up at the bottom of the screen during the last few seconds of the ad.
The group often has a pleasant grass-rootsy-sounding name like Americans for Job Security but, too often, turns out to be a front group for wealthy donors or corporations who want to quietly and anonymously funnel large amounts of money toward influencing legislation or political campaigns.
The ads raise the important issue of disclosure. Who is funding these ads? What do they stand to win or lose? Due to loopholes in current campaign finance law, we often don't know.
Americans for Job Security, for example, was founded by Republican business interests in 1997 and because of its non-profit status can raise unlimited funds and is exempt from having to disclose its donors. The group, which sounds like a grassroots job security advocacy organization, is actually a single employee front for conservative interests that funnels money ($6.1 million last year) into politically charged issue advocacy.
Perhaps the most influential and least known corporation, famous for quietly donating astonishing amounts of money to deceivingly titled front groups, is Koch Industries, the $100 billion dollar conglomerate from Kansas.
Koch Industries owns a variety of different companies, from Brawny towels to Dixie cups, but collects the majority of its profits from oil and gas pipelines and refineries around the country. It is the second largest private corporation in the U.S. and has made its owners, the Koch brothers, Charles and David, some of the richest men in America, with a combined wealth of about $35 billion.
The brothers, who have spent an estimated $100 million on issue advocacy, have recently been credited with funding the climate change denial machine. Greenpeace has reported that between 2005 and 2008 the corporation funneled $24.8 million to about 35 distinct groups that have fought to discredit the science behind global climate change.Their political action committee has given about $5.7 million to conservative Congressmen and spent $37.9 million on direct lobbying.
As the Greenpeace report puts it, Koch Industries' "tight knit network of lobbyists, former executives and organizations has created a forceful stream of misinformation that Koch-funded entities produce and disseminate. This campaign propaganda is then replicated, repackaged and echoed many times throughout the Koch-funded web of political front groups and think tanks."
When you see those ads lambasting the "questionable science" behind global climate change or "job killing" government initiatives funded by organizations with names like The Institute for Energy Research, just be aware that much of their funding often comes from greedy billion-dollar corporations who fear a potential threat to their bottom lines.
A functioning democracy requires the transparency that comes from better disclosure laws. Citizens must know just who stands to win or lose on a given issue. Last week Senate Democrats tried to push a bill through Congress that would require corporations and unions to disclose how they spent their money in political campaigns. The bill quietly died when the GOP blocked the bill from coming to a vote and accused the Democrats of ignoring the larger issues. Republicans clearly don't want us to know who pays their bills.
Grand Old White Party
I was rather excited when the Republican Pledge to America was released. Finally, I would glean some insight into the modern Republican Party. The Party of No was about to become the party of ideas. Their great orange leader, Rep. Boehner, was going to pull us out of this economic mess. And how will he do it? Well, I still don't know.
The pledge doesn't propose any solutions. All I can glean from the text is that the GOP is going to magically reduce the deficit through modest reductions in discretionary spending and tax cuts. The document neglects the elephant in the room, defense or entitlement spending, which together eat up the majority of the budget. Only Rep. Paul Ryan has the political cojones to suggest reductions in these political third rails. Even Boehner refused to offer specifics. He instead clarified that the document is not meant to "get to the potential solutions" but to "make sure Americans understand how big the problem is."
Even scarier than Boehner's ridiculous comments are the photographs. The Pledge is 45 pages long and interspersed with lovely color snapshots of hard working Americans: old white people voicing their opinions in a town hall, old white people in cowboy hats, older white people at business meetings, old white people selling red meat and old white people, well, just being old.
It's official; the Republican Party has managed to, through legislation and poisonous rhetoric, repel most minorities from their party. The Grand Old Party can now safely change its name to the Grand Old White Party.
In the past, the GOP has actually tried to project an image of diversity. Remember when Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steel offered "fried chicken and potato salad" as incentives to draw more diversity into the GOP? His gaffes make Joe Biden look like the Dalai Lama.
But the country is changing rapidly. Hispanics now constitute about 15 percent of the population and are on track to be about 30 percent by 2050. Their electoral turnout has increased from 8 percent of the total population in 2006 to 10 percent in 2008. The African-American vote has grown as well, thanks to President Barack Obama's candidacy, and always trends heavily democratic.
Our last Amigo in Chief, George Bush, actually fought to capture the growing Hispanic vote and managed to increase the Republican share of Hispanic voters from 21 percent in 2004 to 40 percent by 2006.
Bush's stance was illustrative of past trends. The Republican Party used to be split internally over immigration. Pro-market conservatives, like Bush, supported expansive reform and border hawks, like Tom Tancredo, rallied for harsher restrictions. This may be changing as moderates shift toward the border hawk category.
The few remaining pro-immigration Republicans are embracing Hispanics as their new political punching bag. John McCain cosponsored an immigration bill in 2007 and now says he wouldn't vote for it if it were to be introduced again.
The GOP is in trouble if it continues to turn against minority voters. Hispanics ensured victory for Obama in a few South Western states and offer a key electoral advantage in some closely divided regions. Also, old white people are going to die soon and dead people have historically had very low voter turnout.
The GOP might be smart in the short run. There is evidence from numerous studies published in leading political science journals to suggest that as the Hispanic community grows and spreads throughout the U.S., white resentment, anxiety and fear will grow along with it.
The Republicans have been very successful in the past at harvesting and promoting racial fear in return for electoral gains. Nixon and Bush Sr. did it successfully. Newt Gingrich and Tom Tancredo are trying it now. But Gov. Pete Wilson also tried it in California in 1994 and he and his party got pummeled.
The potential for a backlash exists. Then again, California has a massive minority population and the nation still doesn't. But when it does, the Hispanics will not forget the old white men who demonized them. Neither will the African-Americans, gays or Muslims.
Carbon Victory, Senate Failure
Common logic would dictate that the Deep Water Horizon oil spill, the worst in U.S. history, would have offered politicians, environmentalists and the public the impetus to pass climate change legislation. In reality, the spill, in addition to poor political decisions by Barack Obama and Harry Reid, nailed the coffin shut on the most serious Senate effort to control U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
The New Yorker recently published an article with an amazingly detailed description of the political maneuvering and missteps that led to the tragic death of the "Cap and Trade" bill drafted by liberal, centrist and conservative senators: Kerry, Lieberman and Graham. The "Cap and Trade" proposal would have placed overall caps on emissions while offering flexible options for polluters to comply. The author of the article, Ryan Lizza, investigated exactly why the bill failed.
Before the tragic oil spill, a perfect storm of factors had steadily chipped away at the legislation. Republicans were already jumping ship. McCain, who had offered Lieberman his vote, had pulled out. He was facing a rare primary challenge from the ultra-conservative J.D. Hayworth in Arizona and he would have to moderate his views to appease the party's base. Throughout the spring, the conservative talking heads had won the framing war by branding the Cap and Trade bill as a "Cap-and-Tax." Trying to justify a new tax to reduce levels of carbon dioxide is a tough sell to voters.
The triumvirate's key political strategy to win back some republican and moderate democratic support for the Cap and Trade legislation was to offer expanded offshore oil drilling in return for a vote. After the "drill, baby drill" demonstrations at GOP conventions, it was clear that the republican base supported the expansion.
But that is where Obama screwed up. On March 31, without conversing with the senators, he announced that the administration was opening up large tracts of U.S. waters to oil drilling. The bargaining chip was off the table. The senators now had nothing to offer to conservatives and moderate democrats for their support. Graham's other possible strategy, offering new large loans to build new nuclear plants in return for votes, had already been destroyed when Obama's budget proposal was released with $54.5 billion for that exact purpose. Obama handed the opposition exactly what they wanted without asking for anything in return.
Then on April 15, the White House drove Graham away from the bargaining table. Somebody in the Obama administration had told a Fox News reporter that the White House was not going to support Graham's proposal in the bill to raise gas taxes to pay for the Cap and Trade bill. This was a blatant lie. Graham had never proposed such a raise. The news quickly spread around the airwaves and Graham's phones rang off the hook with angry calls. The tea-party conservatives were livid that one of their own would propose an increase in taxes. Graham felt the pressure from his home state, lost his temper and walked out on the talks for good.
To make things worst, the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stunned his colleagues when he announced that the Senate would tackle immigration reform before climate change. Immigration was rising to the forefront of the debate in his home state of Nevada and, facing a tough reelection campaign, Reid felt he needed to mollify his home state voters. But it was all a political ploy. The Cap and Trade bill was almost ready for public release and Reid should have thrown all of his support behind it. The Senate Majority leader revealed that he wasn't at all serious about the legislation.
The fate of Cap and Trade was sealed on Earth Day, ironically, when the Deep Water Horizon rig sank to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico and 62,000 barrels of oil a day began mixing with the warm ocean waters. The bill, which would have drastically expanded such drilling, was drowning under media coverage of dead sea birds and oil slicks the size of Rhode Island. With such a disaster on their hands, no senators would ever have supported it. Seven months of negotiations were destroyed. The bill was tossed.
Republicans are poised to take back the House in November and greatly diminish the democratic majority in the Senate. The GOP's "Pledge to America" specifically mentions its opposition to any future Cap-and-Trade bill and the future Speaker of the House John Boehner is unlikely to support any type of climate change legislation.
So, we sit back and watch as dysfunctional Washington continues its partisan sniping and carbon continues to spew into the atmosphere. Perhaps when we reach the peak in global oil production (by conservative estimates in the next 20 or 30 years) and prices begin to spike will our government finally get its act together. In the meantime, however, I suggest looking into purchasing land in Greenland. By the time we retire and the ice recedes, its coasts might offer prime beachfront real estate.
The Electric Fence Solution
Rep. Steve King (R-IA), the new chair of the House Subcommittee on immigration, has grand plans for the future. In 2006 he showed off a model of an electrified U.S-Mexico border fence on the House floor. It would be electrified, he pointed out "with the kind of current that would not kill somebody…We do this with livestock all the time." King's disgusting and shameful rhetoric, and the enforcement-only legislation that he has proposed, is just the beginning of what to expect from the immigration debate for the next two years. As long as Rep. King mans the crucial veto point in the House, liberals can kiss comprehensive immigration reform goodbye.
Immigration reform used to be an issue that cut across traditional partisan divides. The Republican Party was split between pro-business conservatives that lauded the cheap labor that immigrants provided and the socially conservative border hawks, or nativists, who warned that immigrants were a threat to our national identity. On the Democratic side were pro-labor Democrats who believed that new immigrants competed with native workers and lowered wages and cosmopolitans who believed that increased diversity only strengthened the country. But these historic partisan divisions are quickly lining up along strict partisan lines with Republicans opposed to anything but enforcement legislation and Democrats fully behind comprehensive reform.
When President George W. Bush, a friend of Hispanics and selftitled compassionate conservative, made a speech in 2006 in favor of "amnesty" for undocumented immigrants, his popularity was already in the toilet and his party had been running against his presidency in re-election campaigns. Needless to say, the Republican Party didn't jump immediately on board. The 2006 amnesty bill that Bush was advocating passed the Senate but died in the House when Republican leaders refused to bring it up for a vote.
In 2007, with a new Democratic majority in the House, Senator Kennedy (D-MA) teamed up with Senator McCain (R-AZ) to push a comprehensive and bipartisan bill through the Senate. During debate, the bill was weighed down with multiple conservative amendments that shifted the bill so far to the right that many on the left threatened to walk away. But, with hesitant support from many civil rights and pro-immigration advocacy groups, most Democrats stayed on, fearing that total failure would be more devastating than a bad bill. When the conservative bill came up for a cloture vote (which would allow debate to end), most Republicans (with the exception of 12) bailed and withdrew their support. The bill died. Pro-immigrant Republicans have all but disappeared.
With Federal immigration reform officially dead, at least for a while, states like Arizona are taking matters into their own hands. This summer, Arizona's state legislature passed the toughest immigration bill in the country (which was actually written, funded and lobbied by the private prison industry, but that is the topic of another column). The bill, which is now being battled in court, allows local police officers to arrest anybody that looks "suspiciously illegal." All legal immigrants need to carry papers proving their legality. Kind of like how free blacks had to carry papers around proving their "freedom" in the mid 19th century.
The Arizona bill polled well with voters around the country. Some 59 percent of voters approve of law as written and many Republican candidates have built their campaigns around anti-immigrant sentiment. Sharron Angle, the Republican who ran against Majority Leader Harry Reid for Senate in Nevada, ran some of the most negative, xenophobic and blatantly racist ads ever aired against Hispanics. Tom Tancredo, Republican running for governor of Colorado, based his campaign on anti-Hispanic rhetoric and fear mongering. While both Angle and Tancredo lost, they both amassed a solid base of Republican supporters who shared their nativist sentiment and rewarded them in the voting booth.
Many of those Republicans, now in charge of the House, will advocate an enforcement only approach to immigration reform, never mind that President Barack Obama already signed a massive $600 million enforcement-only bill in August. Any attempt at serious reform from Democrats will likely get hung up in Rep. King's committee. But not all hope for reform is lost. The Republican presidential candidate in 2012 will have to appeal to Hispanics to win key battleground states during the general election. Maybe the electric fence idea will get ditched for something less contentious, like border guards with cattle prods.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
What BP Could Have Bought With Its Losses
Friedman Column
Can’t Keep a Bad Idea Down
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
I confess, I find it dispiriting to read the polls and see candidates, mostly Republicans, leading in various midterm races while promoting many of the very same ideas that got us into this mess. Am I hearing right?
Let’s have more tax cuts, unlinked to any specific spending cuts and while we’re still fighting two wars — because that worked so well during the Bush years to make our economy strong and our deficit small. Let’s immediately cut government spending, instead of phasing cuts in gradually, while we’re still mired in a recession — because that worked so well in the Great Depression. Let’s roll back financial regulation — because we’ve learned from experience that Wall Street can police itself and average Americans will never have to bail it out.
Let’s have no limits on corporate campaign spending so oil and coal companies can more easily and anonymously strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its powers to limit pollution in the air our kids breathe. Let’s discriminate against gays and lesbians who want to join the military and fight for their country. Let’s restrict immigration, because, after all, we don’t live in a world where America’s most important competitive advantage is its ability to attract the world’s best brains. Let’s repeal our limited health care reform rather than see what works and then fix it. Let’s oppose the free-trade system that made us rich.
Let’s kowtow even more to public service unions so they’ll make even more money than private sector workers, so they’ll give even more money to Democrats who will give them even more generous pensions, so not only California and New York will go bankrupt but every other state too. Let’s pay for more tax cuts by uncovering waste I can’t identify, fraud I haven’t found and abuse that I’ll get back to you on later.
All that’s missing is any realistic diagnosis of where we are as a country and what we need to get back to sustainable growth. Actually, such a diagnosis has been done. A nonpartisan group of America’s most distinguished engineers, scientists, educators and industrialists unveiled just such a study in the midst of this campaign.
Here is the story: In 2005 our National Academies responded to a call from a bipartisan group of senators to recommend 10 actions the federal government could take to enhance science and technology so America could successfully compete in the 21st century. Their response was published in a study, spearheaded by the industrialist Norman Augustine, titled “Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future.”
Charles M. Vest, the former M.I.T. president, worked on the study and noted in a speech recently that “Gathering Storm,” together with work by the Council on Competitiveness, led to the America Competes Act of 2007, which increased funding for the basic science research that underlies our industrial economy. Other recommendations, like improving K-12 science education, were not substantively addressed.
So, on Sept. 23, the same group released a follow-up report: “Rising Above the Gathering Storm Revisited: Rapidly Approaching Category 5.” “The subtitle, ‘Rapidly Approaching Category 5,’ says it all,” noted Vest. “The committee’s conclusion is that ‘in spite of the efforts of both those in government and the private sector, the outlook for America to compete for quality jobs has further deteriorated over the past five years.’ ”
But I thought: “We’re number 1!”
“Here is a little dose of reality about where we actually rank today,” says Vest: sixth in global innovation-based competitiveness, but 40th in rate of change over the last decade; 11th among industrialized nations in the fraction of 25- to 34-year-olds who have graduated from high school; 16th in college completion rate; 22nd in broadband Internet access; 24th in life expectancy at birth; 27th among developed nations in the proportion of college students receiving degrees in science or engineering; 48th in quality of K-12 math and science education; and 29th in the number of mobile phones per 100 people.
“This is not a pretty picture, and it cannot be wished away,” said Vest. The study recommended a series of steps — some that President Obama has already initiated, some that still need Congress’s support — designed to increase America’s talent pool by vastly improving K-12 science and mathematics education, to reinforce long-term basic research, and to create the right tax and policy incentives so we can develop, recruit and retain the best and brightest students, scientists and engineers in the world. The goal is to make America the premier place to innovate and invest in innovation to create high-paying jobs.
You’ll have to Google it, though. The report hasn’t received 1/100th of the attention given to Juan Williams’s remarks on Muslims.
A dysfunctional political system is one that knows the right answers but can’t even discuss them rationally, let alone act on them, and one that devotes vastly more attention to cable TV preachers than to recommendations by its best scientists and engineers.
Inequality of Wealth
By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
As battle cries go, the Tea Party's "Take our country back" is a pretty good one. It's short and punchy, and it addresses a very widespread sense that the nation that Americans once lived in has changed, and not for the better.
When the Tea Partyers get around to identifying how America has changed and to whose benefit, however, they get it almost all wrong. In the worldview of the American right -- and the polling shows conclusively that that's who the Tea Party is -- the nation, misled by President Obama, has gone down the path to socialism. In fact, far from venturing down that road, we've been stuck on the road to hyper-capitalism for three decades now. The Tea Partyers are right to be wary of income redistribution, but if they had even the slightest openness to empiricism, they'd see that the redistribution of the past 30 years has all been upward -- radically upward. From 1950 through 1980, the share of all income in America going to the bottom 90 percent of Americans -- effectively, all but the rich -- increased from 64 percent to 65 percent, according to an analysis of tax data by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. Because the nation's economy was growing handsomely, that means that the average income of Americans in the bottom 90 percent was growing, too -- from $17,719 in 1950 to $30,941 in 1980 -- a 75 percent increase in income in constant 2008 dollars.
Since 1980, it's been a very different story. The economy has continued to grow handsomely, but for the bottom 90 percent of Americans, it's been a time of stagnation and loss. Since 1980, the share of all income in America going to the bottom 90 percent has declined from 65 percent to 52 percent. In actual dollars, the average income of Americans in the bottom 90 percent flat-lined -- going from the $30,941 of 1980 to $31,244 in 2008.
In short, the economic life and prospects for Americans since the Reagan Revolution have grown dim, while the lives of the rich -- the super-rich in particular -- have never been brighter. The share of income accruing to America's wealthiest 1 percent rose from 9 percent in 1974 to a tidy 23.5 percent in 2007.
Looking at these numbers, it would be reasonable to infer that when the Tea Partyers say that they want to take the country back, they mean back to the period between 1950 and 1980, when the vast majority of Americans encountered more opportunity and security in their economic lives than they had before or since. Reasonable, but wrong. As the right sees it, America's woes are traceable to the New Deal order that Franklin Roosevelt, working in the shadow of the even more sinister Woodrow Wilson, imposed on an unsuspecting people.
In fact, the New Deal order produced the only three decades in American history -- the '50s, '60s and '70s -- when economic security and opportunity were widely shared. It was the only period in the American chronicle when unions were big and powerful enough to ensure that corporate revenue actually trickled down to workers. It marked the only time in American history when, courtesy originally of the GI Bill, the number of Americans going to college surged. It was the only time when taxes on the rich were really significantly higher than taxes on the rest of us. It was the only time that the minimum wage kept pace (almost) with the cost of living. And it was the only time when most Americans felt confident enough about their economic prospects, and those of their nation, to support the taxes that built the postwar American infrastructure.
Since the ascent of Ronald Reagan, though, America's claim to being a land of opportunity has become a sick joke. Unions have dwindled; colleges have become unaffordable; manufacturing has gone abroad; taxes on the rich have plummeted; our infrastructure has decayed.
But the country the right wants to return to isn't the America that the Greatest Generation built. Judging by the statements of many of the Republican and Tea Party-backed candidates on next Tuesday's ballots, it's the America that antedates the New Deal -- a land without Social Security, unions or the minimum wage. It's the land that the Greatest Generation gladly left behind whey they voted for and built the New Deal order. All of us should want our country back, but that country should be the more prosperous and economically egalitarian nation that flourished at the time when America was not only the world's greatest power, but also a beacon to the world.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
The average muslim
Dear America...
This is quick note to clear up some confusion. It seems like lately one cannot watch the news, or read a newspaper without reading about the threat of "the Islamist agenda".
I am a Muslim, and the big agenda on my mind today was if i should get my wife an iPhone or an iPad for her birthday.
It may be hard to believe when you follow the news, but consider this:
- Today, hundreds of thousands more Muslim teenagers woke up worried about their teenage acne, than those who woke up pondering terrorism;
- Today, hundreds of thousands more men woke up pondering if if Liverpool would ever win the Premiership again, than did woke up pondering "the downfall of the west";
- Today, hundreds of thousands more muslims woke up and wanted the new iPhone 4, than did woke up wanting some sort of WMD.
For hundreds of years, we have been happily working side by side in society. We are builders, bankers, students, scientists, janitors, presidents and teachers. We still serve in militaries around the world and we are firemen and policemen and protect and serve. We sing the national anthems of our countries and blew Vuvuzelas when our countries played in the World Cup. We just happen to pray differently.
Sure we feel bad when cartoons insult our revered figures, but we feel even worse when it spurs violent (really un-Islamic) protests. There are more than a billion Muslims in the world today, and a veritable handful who react with violence. Surely you must see that this isn't representative of us all? We don't look at the Abu Ghraib fiasco and assume that all Americans torture people at the drop of a hat. Many of us still serve in the US Armed Forces!
There is a small group amongst the Muslims who are violent extremists, and there are a small group of hawks who need a new bogeyman. Let's not let them define the world for the rest of us.
/Average Muslim..
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
New Posts~!
Monday, August 2, 2010
Lunch and Fireworks
Also, on another random note, they set off fireworks every hour or so of the day here in Cusco, it really blows my mind as to why, but I have come to expect the sound of explosions every now and again. AT first it was startling, now it has just blended into the background of Cusco life. Cheap lunch and fireworks.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Travels!
After the hellish 3 hours in the mine, crawling through spaces just wide enough to fit a single person, breathing in toxic dust, avoiding two ton carts that race around on tracks inside the mine, braving temperatures from 10 to 30 degrees celcius (yes, temperatures reach the 90s in the mine), we reached fresh air, a welcome sight after such a trip. It was, however, an extremely eye opening experience that I would recommend all to do once and then never again. For anybody who wants to know what life is like for the miners, there is a video called The Devil´s Miners about the bolivian silver mines that I heard is very good.
After Potosi we headed to the capital, La Paz to get a taste of city life. La Paz is a wild place. It is build in a massive valley and surrounded by snow capped mountains. The city itself is actually pretty small compared to the Buenos Aires that I am used to. There is a serious lack of good restaurants and the center is very small and tourist heavy. There really was little to do there and I was not impressed with the food. The highlight, however, was biking on death road.
Death Road is a road that winds through the mountains from La Paz to Coroicos and was the only road that connected the two locations up until 2006. It is called death road because during peak traffic years approx. 200 to 300 a year died from falling off the cliffs. The road was build in 1930s during the Bolivian Paraguayan Chaco war by Paraguayan prisoners and descends from 15.260 ft to 3900 ft at the bottom, crossing from high windswept mountainous plains to lush rainforest. The road is so dangerous because it has cliffs that drop nearly 2,000 ft into the valley below and is often never wider than 10 ft. It lacks guard rails and during the rainy season often has cave ins. On the road, the traffic drives on the left, not the right, like the rest of Bolivia, allowing the driver on the outside to see where his outside wheel is in relation to the sharp drop off. However, due to fog, poor visibility, mud, and just plain stupidity, people continue to die each year as they plunge off the cliff into the abyss below. Just a few months ago an Israeli tourist was biking the road, tried to stop as a bus came towards her, lost control, and disappeared below. She died upon impact.
Mountain biking on the death road has become a new tourist attraction for backpackers from around the world. There are probably 15 or 20 competing agencies that exist in La Paz competing for your business. The prices, interestingly enough, range from 30 US to 150 US. I wouldn´t trust the 30 US agencies. They must be cutting corners somewhere, probably on safety measures, and that is something I would rather not do. We settled with Vertigo biking, a comfortable medium price of 70. The most important aspect, in my opinion, was that the bike have good disc brakes because the majority of the trip is spent braking. We left early in the morning, bused for an hour and a half to the cumber, the highest point, at 15,260, and started our ascent. The first 25 km or so are tarred road through the most gorgeous valleys. We reached speeds of 45 km per hour on the bikes as we cruised down to the first checkpoint. It was an adrenaline rush. I could do it all day long. We got to a checkpoint, paid our 25 boliviano entrance fee, hopped back into the van, drove 8 km uphill (because it would obviously be impossible for us to bike that far uphill) and started death road. It was a wild experience. As you descend on the road, not looking over the side, obviously, because you would freak out, the scenery changes so rapidly. The temperature rose quite substantially. The smells changed. We descended through a layer of cloud cover. Stopped every once in a while as a group to take pictures and to explain where each tourist had died as he plummeted over the edge. About 2 tourists die a year doing the trek. So far 18 people have fallen off on bicycles – 15 tourists and 3 Bolivian guides. The trip was amazing, one of the most invigorating and adrenaline filled things I did in South America. We finished up the trip with a single track, steep stone filled little trail to the bottom. I wiped out, however didn´t hurt myself. I got a taste of mountain biking though and would love to do more in the future. It was a lot of fun.
We left La Paz on the way to Copacabana, on Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable salt water lake in the world (at 12,500 ft). The town itself was very charming and very hippy. Lots of vegetarian restaurants. Very tourist centered. We headed out to Isla del Sol, an island in the lake, and the mythical birthplace of the sun for the Incans. The island has various ruins on it that are heavily visited by tourists. I was sick for the majority of the time, so I didn´t terribly enjoy my stay but it was beautiful.
We spent a night on the island, headed back the next day, caught a bus to Puno, Peru, on the other side of Lake Titicaca, stayed a night, and saw the floating islands the next day. The floating islands are made of woven reeds and are literally islands with houses on them where people fish and subsist largely on the tourists that visit the islands. It was terribly exploitative, over priced, and generally not very enjoyable. After the islands we took a late bus to Cusco to search for a Machu Picchu trek.
Cusco is a very modern city and very heavily tourist oriented. Our search for a Salkantay Trek (not the Inca trail, which is prohibitively expensive (600 plus dollars)) led us to various agencies that all gave us the same exact pitch. Competitive prices. Okay. We chose one agency for 155 dollars, 5 day, 4 nights, that took us up over the Salkantay pass. The next morning we left at 430. The trek was unorganized. The agency had lied to us about our group. We didn´t have one. We were bunched in with other groups from other agencies and had a rather dull tour guide named Edy who was more interested in hitting on the French girl on our trek than on explaining what we were seeing. There were too many people in our group too. 10 Israelis, 2 Brazilians, 3 Americans and a French girl. I never need to hear Hebrew again. Ugly language. The first night we climbed to the base of a massive snow capped peaks and camped in freezing cold tents on a hard ground. Needless to say, I didn´t sleep much. In the 5 days we covered about 15 to 25 km a day hiking. The second day we had to climb up through a steep mountain pass next to the gorgeous snow capped Salkantay. It was tough going, as the air was thin and the climbing was steep. But, luckily, we had horses that lugged 5 kilos of our gear on their backs the entire trip. The third and fourth day were spend mainly descending from the mountain pass into jungle until Aguas Calientes, the town at the base of Machu Picchu. The town is ugly, smelly, overpriced, and overall a huge disappointment. However, Machu Picchu made up for it.
Day 5, Machu Picchu. We got up at 240 after a few hours of sleep and booked it to the entrance to Machu Picchu. They had changed the rules and now made tourists wait at the base of the mountain before their ascend at 5 oclock. Apparently a girl had died the day before during the mad rush to the top so they changed the rules. We waited at the bottom as tourists poured in. By 430 there were probably 500 or so people in line. The reason we were there so early is because only the first 400 get to ascend to the top of Wayna Picchu, the mountain that rises nearly 1000 ft higher than Machu Picchu and was the location of a guard tower to protect Machu Picchu. People were anxious, as everybody wanted to make it to the top first. At about 445, the gates were opened and everybody made a mad dash towards the steps. The steps that rise to Machu Picchu were laid in the incan days and were the main entrance to the mountain. They have recently built a road that helps to bus fat lazy tourists up for 14 US dollars (which could get you transportation, housing, and food for a day in Peru). Adam, Joe, Maud (the French girl) and I raced up the steps, passing people every few minutes or so. We climbed for 45 minutes vertical, no breaks, no rest, at about 6000 ft above sealevel. What a work out. But, it paid off. We were in the first 10 to reach the top.
Machu Picchu was gorgeous, even though we lost our guide and just wandered by ourselves. The architecture is amazing. They had advanced irrigation systems, terraced farms, guard houses, churches, astrology stations, and many many llamas. At 10 we ascended probably the scariest mountain I have ever hiked, Wayna Picchu to give us some of the most spectacular and breathtaking views of the valleys below. Amazing day. Amazing trip.
I am spending my last few days in Cuzco now, wasting time and waiting for my flight home. I am ready to leave and enjoy a few weeks of Maine summer before I head back to school! Amazing trip. Never though I would make it to Machu Picchu, or Bolivia, or Peru for that matter. But now, I have done it all and am extremely glad I have.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Futbol and Bolivia
On a different note, I leave tomorrow for Bolivia. I don´t know how much internet access I am going to have, but I am hoping that I will be in touch every few days or so. Buenos Aires has been a hell of a good time, but I am ready to tackle some real South America. Bolivia or bust.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Byrd
Excellent for a good laugh about Robert Byrd. A bit on the harsh and critical side...there are some great comments from readers to balance the negativity. However, I thought it was worth passing along.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Futbol y Diarios
As for the other commentary of the day...I was reading el Clarin this morning. Clarin is the most widely circulated newspaper in Argentina. It is based here in Buenos Aires, is a corporate sponsor for everything, and its owner, Herrera Noble, also owns most of the TV channels, radio stations, and magazines in the country. Therefore, she is one powerful woman. Now, an Argentine, one of the coordinators at FLACSO, came up to me one day when I was reading this newspaper and asked me why I was reading "such conservative bullshit." I reacted that I had no idea what the ideological tilt of the paper was, that I read it because it is the most accessible for me, and that since my knowledge of the country and its politics is so limited, that I cannot spot a lie when I see one. He assured me that even though I couldn´t spot it, the newspaper was all lied. I asked him what else I should get, and he said that La Nacion is good, however fascist and Pagina 12 is okay but so far skewed to the left for its own good. Well, facist, too liberal or too conservative and all lies...what does that leave me for choices? Anyways, now that I know a little bit about Argentina and its history, I found an article in Clarin today that perfectly illustrates the point that Juan was making. A little background. During the last military dictatorship, many female political prisoners were captured while they were pregnant. They were tortured and detained just like the rest of the prisoners until the last few weeks of their pregnancy when they were transfered to a special ward to recieve medical attention and deliver their children. Of course, what happened, most of the time, when they delivered their children is that the kids were taken from them and they were killed. The kids ended up in adoption agencies or gifted to people in high places with lots of power, money, and connections with the military. Just recently, with all the human rights politicization that has come out of the Kirchner regimes, DNA tests have been taking place of orphans that were adopted during the military dictatorship to see if they were indeed children of these murdered political prisoners. Well, the media mogul and owner of Clarin, Herrera de Noble, happens to have two children that were adopted during the military dictatorship and the current administration seems to think that her kids were children of "desaparecidos" (what they called the disappeared prisoners - disappeared because they never found their bodies). So, Herrera got her crack team of lawyers together to stop the DNA test of her kids, because, for whatever reason, she didnt want the truth known. She succeeded in stopping the test, however, Argentine Truth Laws dictate that even if the children refuse DNA tests, the police have the right to enter in their house and take tooth brushes or any other personal effects to do testing on. Well, apparently, the police entered her children´s houses (who are now in their 30s) and tested their goods and have now concluded that they are in fact children of los desaparecidos. So, Clarin, which clearly has an unbiased hand in the whole affair, considering its owners children are the subject of this investigation, put out an interview today with the head of operations of a DNA base that retired a few years back. The report made clear Clarins non biased reporting on the subject. The subtitle of the article: "The presigious geneticist speaks of the possibility that none of the DNA tests are valid". Here are some of the very un biased questions asked to her: "They talk about the failure of DNA tests. Is that possible? When you were director, did any of the tests fail?" and "What do you think is the possibility of these tests being done inaccurately?" and "Is it posssible that the results from the entrance in their homes have been tainted and therefore have no value?" Thank you Clarin for your crack reporting.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Winding Down
If all goes as planned, next Thursday we will be taking off (we, meaning, Adam, Joe, and I) from Buenos Aires on a semi cama bus (boo, uncomfortable) for a hefty 27 hour bus ride, without food service, mind you, to the Bolivian border. We will then have an hour to hang out in Villazon, get our visas, and hop on a train to Uyuni where we start a 4 day salt flat expedition. Not really sure what it entails, but I have been told that it is awesome. WE then head to Potosi, possibly, for some mine adventures and make our way up to La Paz to see the big capital city. From La Paz we bus over to Lake Titicaca (or as it is affectionately called in my group of friends: Lake Boobshit) for some amazing sights and a hop over to Cuzco for our 4 day hike to Macchu Picchu. If all goes well, we can hop on a non Inca Trail company (since those are all booked up now until November) and do an alternate route to the top. Plus, I hear, the non inca trail company offer tours for about half the price of the Inca Trail companies. Lets hope they aren´t full! After Macchu Picchu, I hang out in Cuzco for 4 or 5 days, looks like by myself, until I fly back to Lima, Buenos Aires, New York, and Boston, and then hop on a bus and make my way to Portland, so I can hop in a car and be driven to Damariscotta. Woof. Long trip.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Futbol (don´t call it soccer)
Futbol, the official religion of Argentina (other than the state sponsored, a.k.a. tax payer funded, Catholicism), is widely celebrated and played by 100 percent of Argentine men. To have some idea: take american football fans and make them lose some weight and get in shape. Then have them play the game 3 times a week with their best buddies at the indoor american football stadium after work. That is your average Argentine male. Buenos Aires, the capital area, with 3 million people (not counting the area of the suburbs and the conurbano where the other 10 million live) has 17 soccer teams each with their own stadium! In contrast, Barcelona, a city not quite as large but an important metropolitcan center none the less, has one team and one stadium.
Hopefully every knows this already, but for those who don´t, the world cup is currently taking place in South Africa. Now, us Americans don´t really watch the world cup, or care, for the most part, about it. However, the rest of the world does, and Argentina, whose team has recently made it to the final four, is no exception. You can´t walk 3 feet in this city without seeing a newspaper with soccer on the cover, a magazine with the face of Diego "The Hand of God" Maradona, the current Argentine selection coach and best soccer player to ever walk the face of this earth (in the 70s and 80s), or a TV showing games or replays of goals. It is absolutely insane. And even more insane has to be the city when Argentina plays....
For anybody that has seen 28 Days Later and remembers the opening scene when the main character is walking through the streets of London and it is deserted completely. There is not a person to be seen. Store fronts are closed. Taxis and buses stop running. Sidewalks empty. Well, that is Buenos Aires when their team plays. The city shuts down and cafes fill up.
As Argentina advances to the quarterfinals, they face Germany this saturday, the 3rd, at 10 AM, US time. I urge everybody to watch the game. While I fear that Germany will slaughter Argentina, I am hoping for the best. And if not. Since the US is out...Spain, let´s go all the way, baby.
Window Shopping
Monday, June 14, 2010
Long overdue
The end of May I traveled to Patagonia, Argentina with a friend of mine here at Flacso. I wasn't going to go because you need a good 4 to 5 days there, it is pretty far away, and rather expensive for a trip in Argentina. I am so glad, however, that I finally did.
We arrived in El Calafate airport on a tuesday. Looking out the windows of the plane would lead one to believe that they were looking at Mars. The place is deserted. There appear to be no homes, no trees, no people and few roads. The dull brown landscape is studded with pock marks, wind swept low shrubs, and shallow valleys formed by trickling rivers and streams. I realize that we are truly in the middle of nowhere.
The plane disembarks at the Calafate one gate airport. The wind is whipping across the runway, inflating the airsock that helps flight crews tell the wind direction and it is cold. It is quite clear that we are near antartica. The air, however, is fresh and clean, far nicer than the dirty polluted air I am used to dealing with in Buenos Aires.
In the airport we gather around the luggage belt with the other couple dozen passengers, grab our bags, and look for transport north around two large lakes to El Chalten, the trekking capital of Argentina. We first inquire about a taxi just for the hell of it. 700 pesos. Never mind. The bus is 80 pesos a person. The man that is sitting behind the bus information booth tells us to sit tight for about 15 minutes and the bus will leave then. He sits at the desk fiddling with him phone staring out the window for a few minutes and then tells us we can go. We are the only two passengers and he is the driver. How intimate. It is quite obviously off season for Patagonia. However, we don't realize how truly out of season it is until we arrive at El Chalten but I will discuss that in a second.
The ride is beatiful. The wind, which typically blows with outstanding strength for 3/4 of the year is actually rather tame. The sky is bright blue and cloud free for as far as I can see. Off on the horizon snow capped peaks rise from the flat plains, their white peaks reflecting the sun with a blinding brightness. We pass hundreds of llamas (guanacos) on the route often having to dodge them as the crossed the road to graze on the other side. Small groups of cows feed on whatever small shrubbery dot the plains. We pass condors circling up above looking for carrion and at one point pass one on the side of the road. The van startles it and it takes off. Its wings open up and it takes off. The wing span has to be about 10 feet wide.
As we get closer and closer to el Chalten, Cerro Fitzroy (http://www.treklens.com/gallery/South_America/Argentina/photo72656.htm) and Cerro Torre come into view. In the photo, Fitzroy is on the right and cerro torre on the right. Fitzroy is the tallest peak in Patagonia. Its sheer granite walls rise above the surrounding mountains to a height of 11,073 ft. The mountain range is breathtaking.
The mountain is called El Chalten by locals (now the name of the town) which means “smoking mountain” due to the fact that clouds usually surround the peak. Its more common name, FitzRoy was given to it by the explorer, Francisco Moreno, when he first explored the area in 1877. He named it after the Robert FitzRoy, the captain of Darwin’s HMS Beagle, who charted large parts of the Patagonian coast in the early 1800s (thank you wikipedia, I hope your information is correct).
The small town of El Chalten sits at the foot of the mountain range on the eastern side of glacier national park, the third most important body of glaciers in the world behind Antarctica and Greenland, and is occupied by about 600 people who moved there in the late 1980s to claim the land for Argentina (after a long standing land dispute with Chile) and create a base for climbers and trekkers of all sorts.
We pull into Chalten around 3 PM and the shuttle driver asks us where we are staying. We had no idea because we did little research before arriving. We had heard of a few places that were good hostels and mentioned the names to him. He told us that they were all closed for the season. So, he drops us off at the first place that he sees, a small bunk attached to a restaurant that has beds for 25 pesos (6 dollars) a night. We agree to stay, thinking that the rest of El Chalten had to be closed down. We unpack our gear into the room. There is nobody at the front desk, the beds are uncomfortable, and the place is freezing cold. The kitchen in the hostel is the size of my bathroom here in Buenos Aires and has absolutely no room to cook. The accommodations were hardly worth the 6 dollars a day we were going to pay. We throw our stuff down, bundle up in winter gear and head out. The town is abandoned. Nobody is in the streets. Store shops are plastered with newspaper to block out the sun. What do people do for work when all of the tourists leave? It is a ghost town. On our adventures we find a bigger hostel with computer access and warmer rooms. They are ten dollars a night but well worth the switch. We go back to the old hostel, pack our stuff up, and sneak out the front hoping that they don’t see us leave. The change of hostel was the best choice we had made. The new hostel had a large warm lounge area, clean bathrooms, plenty of showers with hot water, food, and large kitchens to cook in. On top of it all, they have a very friendly staff.
Before hitting up the supermarket to buy food to cook for the night we head to an outdoor rental shop to try and find shoes. Some friends of mine had previously made the trek to El Chalten and had no trouble finding nice shoes to rent for their hikes. I, foolishly, just assumed they would have size 13 shoes for me. We stop in the one open rental place in town that isn’t closed down for the season and they don’t have anything bigger than a 12. Damn. I try them on and cant even get my foot in the boot. The co owner hears our commotion and comes in. He walks into the back room and brings back a pair of broken, smelly, and overall horrible hiking boots, size 13. They tell me that they weren’t going to rent them anymore, their next destination was the garbage, but that if I really need a pair that I can try them. I do, they fit and are horribly uncomfortable but I had no other choice. I take them. We walk 5 minutes to the supermarket and my feet are burning in pain from the shoes. We had an 8 hour hike ahead of us in the morning. I planned on experiencing intense foot pain by the end of it all.
Day 2.
We get up at 8:30. The sun isn’t up. It turns out that it comes up around 9 AM in May and even later during the height of winter. Bummer. Shower, breakfast, pack up a lunch, grab a map, and hire a remise (taxi of sorts) to take us to the alternate trail head for the FitzRoy hike. We bomb along a gravel road for 15 km until we reach a closed gate that marks a trail leading to a small summer hotel that has been closed for the season. The trail will lead us along the riverbed for about 2 miles until we reach up with the more popular main trail that will lead to the summit. The 2 mile hike is pretty surreal. We don’t ascend at all but rather hike along the side of the river through these ethereal forests. The trees no longer have leaves on them and are twisted and mangled trunks of wood. The whole trek reminded me of a Tim Burton film. On our right we see a panorama of the Fitzroy peak catching the sun’s rays. It is one of the most beautiful things I have seen in my life. When we join the main trail we pass through two campgrounds. They are obviously abandoned, as nobody is hiking or camping this time of year. But we take advantage of the streams nearby to fill up our waterbottles with glacial melt water. The taste reminded me of my childhood and eating snow. After all, glaciers are just made of heavily compacted snow..I guess it makes sense.
There are warning signs about the last ascent to Lago de los Tres at the base of Fitzroy. 500 meters of nearly vertical climb. Professional gear and expert climbing skills are recommended. The trail, I can imagine, would be hairy enough during the summer. The ascent is switchbacks up a very steep hill. However, seeing as how it is winter, the trail is covered in snow and the switchbacks are slick with ice. The water, naturally, finds the trail as the easiest route down the mountain and covered the steps with solid thick slabs of extremely slippery ice. The climb is slow and treacherous. I cannot even imagine how it would be if it were windy. I think we would have had to turn back. But we slowly and carefully made it up to the top, stopping occasionally to catch our breaths and pray that we wouldn’t fall and slip down to our deaths. It was well worth it. At the top, there is a small lake formed by the glacial melt water from the glacier that encircles Fitzroy. It is dead silent and sunny. The view is amazing. We eat our cold salami and cheese sandwiches and take in the sights. This moment alone made the trip completely worth it.
We hike down, about 4 hours, and make it back to the hostel in time to eat, drink a beer, and crash early.
Day 3.
Recovery. We do a small and easy hike to a nearby waterfall and eat lunch at the top of the falls. The view is once again beautiful. We return to the hostel, I send some emails and relax in the hostel preparing for another tough hike the next day. I find another rental shop that is open for the evening, rent a better pair of boots and return the old ones. The new pair, although they aren’t comfortable, are far superior to first days. Good choice.
Day 4.
We decided to try the other big hike to Lago Torre for good views of the other large peak in Patagonia and the lage at its base which is fed by an even larger blue glacier. Luckily, apart from the first 30 minutes of hiking, this trail is easy in comparison to the first. The trail is flat and accessible. The peak we hike to see, unfortunately, was shrouded in clouds the whole do but the views we saw during the hike made it worth it. The most fascinating part of this day’s hike was the lake at the end. The lake is filled with little chunks of glacier ice that calve off of the face and fall in. These mini icebergs join with regular broken ice to form a chorus of clinking and chimes as they bang into eachother in the water. Natures symphony.
We return tired and hungry, load onto the bus, and book it back to El Calafate.
Day 5.
Perito Moreno, the most accessible glacier in the park. It is extremely cold today. We prepare for the cold but not for rain. The park, where the glacier is, we are told is a micro climate. Moisture sweeps down across the pacific, rises through the mountain range where it condenses, and dumps, in the form of snow, usually, across the Andean range. The park receives, on average, about 10,000 mm of precipitation annually, making it one of most humid and wet places on the planet. Only 80 km east, in the town of El Calafate, the annual precipitation is only about 250 mm.
We get to the park, hop on a boat which brings us along the face of the glacier. It is starting to spit cold rain. We are not wearing waterproof clothing. The wind picks up and the rain hammers us sideways. Oh well, hopefully it won’t get too bad. We hike through the woods to the side of the glacier, which is massive. They tell us that it is the height, roughly, of a 20 – 25 story building, formed over many years, as snow falls, compacts itself under its immense weight, and compresses into ice that is much heavier and denser than ice formed from melt water. While Perito Moreno is not the largest glacier in the park, it is the most accessible and is the only glacier in South America that is not retreating. During the summer it actually advances and quickly. It can move upward of 2 meters a day. This process of rapid acceleration causes the glacier to consistently break off in massive chunks that crash into the water below causing huge waves and a spectacular explosion sound. From time to time the glacier advances until it crashes into land and blocks off water from both ends of the lake. One of the of lake will rise, as it has no natural drainage, and create a huge difference in the height of water on either side of the glacier which eventually gets so great that the water causes the massive glacier to collapse as the water rushes from one side to the other in search of better equilibrium. It happens infrequently but is supposed to be an amazing sight to see.
We strap cramp-ons to our shoes and, with the help of guides, trek up the side of the glacier. We get to look down amazing melt water holes, some of them meters wide and up to 160 feet deep, and massive crevices formed by the glacier’s motion. Unfortunately, by the end of the trek it was pouring rain and freezing cold, so I didn’t get to enjoy my whiskey treat with glacier ice, provided at the end, as much as I would have liked to.
All in all, it was an expensive trip and I had to miss some class to do it but it was well worth the money and the extra make up work. I would return in a heartbeat.
Pictures, thanks to Monica, http://picasaweb.google.com/Monica.Scheid/ElChaltenYElCalafate#5482292284480708146
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Gran Quilombo
Saturday, May 22, 2010
CongratulationS
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Iguazu
We hopped on a bus on Thursday night in Retiro, made the 16.5 hour ride up to Iguazu, forced to watch crappy pirated movies with loud volume for about the entire ride. My favorite was From Paris with Love, a real crapper from our favorite Scientologist, John Travolta. He really has gone down hill since Pulp Fiction.
We got to our huge hostel on Friday afternoon, around 1 PM, unpacked, changed, brushed our teeth, and headed to the falls. We blew 50 bucks, US, on a touristy boat ride up under the falls which essentially consisted of a 10 minute ride up 5 kilometers of rapids, some jerky steering and sudden turns that made the tourists scream out in joy and clap, and then 3 or 4 quick insertions into the stinging water of the falls which completely, and I mean completely, soaked us. The tour operators stopped before entering the falls and put on complete wet suits so they wouldn´t get wet while we just sat there and watched in wonder of how soaked we were going to get. We then returned and made our way back to the hostel, soggy and dripping, looking forward to a cheaper day of walks around the falls.
The next day we headed over early, by our standards, around 10. Did the upper and lower circuits of hikes. The first brings you over the falls up top. A collection of ramps and walkways wind along the edge of the falls allowing you to get some pretty amazing views of the falls from up above. The next set of trails winded down below the falls, and got us pretty wet, again, from the spray. After that we headed to the Macuco trail, a nature trail, where we saw tons of golden web spiders, Coatis, white faced monkeys, and toucans. The highlight, though, was getting to the end of the trail where you can hike down to the bottom of a small fall and swim in the pond below. Since I dont have a camera I couldn´t get any shots of us in the falls, but once my friend Sasha posts her pictures, I will be sure to provide a link. It was a very cool experience. The ride back, Adam and I made alone, as the girls took a different bus. The return trip ended up being a little over 20 hours. But, all in all, the traveling and 50 dollar baths were worth the trip. The falls were beautiful. I would love to go back some day when we can see the devil´s throat, the biggest fall, over on the brazilian side.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Dogs
Anyways, I am off to Iguazu. I am preparing my thermos and mate for the trip. Cannot wait to sit for almost an entire day in a chair. Actually, to tell the truth, I am kind of excited about such a long bus ride. It will give me a good chance to get to know the people I am going with a little better. After all, since I no longer have an iPod, the only thing I really have to do is chat!
I will update the blog once I return from the trip. And even though I don´t have a camera, I will be sure to steal somebody else´s pictures before I leave!
Monday, April 26, 2010
Trip
This weekend I am traveling to Iguazu Falls, the famous Iguazu that Eleanor Roosevelt once saw and exclaimed "Poor Niagara". It is a pleasant, hop, skip, and 16.5 hour busride to the north of Buenos Aires. We are leaving thursday, traveling all night, arriving Friday midday, seeing the falls midday, going back to our hostel, sleeping, seeing the falls again on Saturday, all day, and then leaving Saturday night, or Sunday morning, depending on our mood. Either way, it is a long trip for such a short visit. However, the waterfalls are supposed to be stunning, AND, it is going to be like mid 80s up there, seeing as how it shares a border with Brasil! Woohoo.
And for an even grander trip, here are my post Buenos Aires plans. Leave the city around the 8th of July with a big hiking bag and some nice hiking shoes. Meet up with Adam, bus to Bolivia. Spend two weeks in Bolivia. Key places to see. Lake Titicaca, about 22,400 square miles, and located at about 12,500 feet of altitude, is apparently a sight to behold. We will also hit the salt flats and La Paz. Then, we bus to Cuzco, Peru, where we meet up with a guide and take the 5 day hike up to Machu Picchu, the lost city of the Incan empire. From Cusco, a bus saddles us up the coast to Ecuador, where, after a week or so, I catch a flight to Guadalajara, Mexico to see Marlie, then fly to see Mom wherever she is on the West Coast, and fly home for a week or so before school starts. How is that for a trip?