Quick Canal Update

No videos, no pics, but a quick update to let everyone know that there's no swine flu here so far. I am sailing between the Gatun and Miraflores Locks in the Panama Canal. Got a special deal on a ship that went through Jamaica and Cartagena (Colombia) on the way through the locks. But the ship is now barred from all Mexico ports due to swine flu, so I guess I'll just be back in the states soon, more details then. In the meantime, don't believe everything Arnold Scharznegger 0r the CDC tells you about virus transmission vectors, but be careful....

Madoff's Last Straw

It was pretty easy to skip by the stories emerging from Dec. 12 on, regarding Bernard Madoff, former head of NASDAQ, and one of New York's most respected brokers. So he was running his hedge fund as a Ponzi scheme - aren't all hedge funds Ponzis by nature? Pay attention. Madoff lost more than $50 billion for big-name clients like Steven Spielberg and Elie Wieisel, for huge charities that have now seen all their money disappear, and for large international banking conglomerates like Nomura Securities.

European banking officials told PRI's The World Dec. 15 that this single scandal could be the straw that finally freezes up the international movement of currency and commercial paper. Then we can all turn the fingers away from Bush, Paulson, Obama (if you're so inclined), bankers, unions, whomever, and zoom them all in at one pyramid-scheme pusher from Manhattan. While the Securities and Exchange Commission is not tasked with looking at hedge funds, the SEC had two chances to pop Madoff and did nothing.

Three observations: People stupid enough to invest in a pyramid scheme love to blame the victim. Witness the riots against the Colombian government for correctly trying to shut down an outrageous pyramid. Hello dummies, it's your fault. Second, when we hear of children turning in their parents, it's usually with visions of Stalinist Young Pioneers sending mommy and daddy to Siberia. In this case, Madoff's sons did the right thing by busting their father. I wish that we could convince people like the late great civil-war author Shelby Foote that blood should never be thicker than the rule of law. If members of your immediate family are capital criminals, call the cops. Finally, folks usually like to refer back to the crash of 1929 or the post-railroad crashes for similarities to past crashes, but this current financial mess looks surprisingly like the British specie collapse of 1825, and the U.S. real-estate collapse of 1837. See The Birth of the Modern and What Hath God Wrought for more details. See? None of this is new. We just don't learn our lessons very well.

FARC Follies and Ergenekon Eruptions

Forget Seymour Hersh's obsessions with a U.S. invasion of Iran, the real action is going in the peripheries, places like Colombia and Turkey. In Colombia, we can all give loud "huzzahs" that the FARC hostages are free, while realizing the political benefits John McCain will just happen to realize by just happening to be there when a Colombian military commando operation freed 15 hostages held for up to six years by the FARC. Let me say up front that I may not like Alvaro Uribe and I smell the hand of Bush everywhere, but I consider the FARC an illegitimate gang of thugs with no claim to a coherent political agenda. Hell, even Hugo Chavez says he doesn't like them any more. But before we say, "Job well done!" to the Colombian military, we have to ask how this all just happened to coincide with the McCain visit. Uh huh. Right. (Meanwhile, Obama visits Colorado Springs and waxes poetic about faith-based initiatives, even as his supporters chide him for caving in on the NSA-telephone-company-immunity issue. Politics as usual.)

The current Turkish comedy of terrors is harder to decipher. Over the past few days, 21 nationalist militants have been arrested for being members of Ergenekon, yet another secret Turkish fascist society dedicated to preserving secularism and eradicating Muslims. Now, in past coups -- 1960, 1980, 1997 quasi-coup, take your pick -- the CIA has clearly been involved in funding groups like Gray Wolves. Hell, in 1980, even mild-mannered Jimmy Carter was directly involved in supporting the Turkish military in crushing citizen democracy movements.

The AK Party of Recep Erdogan represents a different beast. Many players in the Bush administration, particularly in State and Treasury, see the Muslim party ruling Turkey as one that aids the economy and respects democracy. In fact, the European Union has warned Turkish judicial sources that any attempt to remove AKP will virtually end Turkey's chances of joining the EU. And yet, there seem to be members of the U.S. defense and intelligence community who have secret admiration for the attempts by the Turkish chief prosecutor to bring the AKP before the constitutional court as an illegitimate government. Certainly, US Vice President Dick Cheney does not tolerate the concept of Muslims running democratic governments, and probably admires the Ergenekon efforts to prod the constitutional court with a little organized violence. Where does the CIA stand? The Pentagon? The EU? US Congress? These seem far more interesting questions than ponderings on Iran.

[JULY 6 UPDATE: Two more key generals were arrested over the weekend for Ergenekon involvement. The leader of the Republican People's Party says that those in favor of Kemalist secularism are under attack. Try "those that are opposed to democracy by supporting secularism through fascist systems."]