Un-planned Sunday Readings

Unregisterering their dissent

Lillie Langtry (Memory in Latin America) on today’s elections in  Chile in which in extremely low turnout among young (only 9.2 percent of 18 tp 29 year olds registered to vote) will be a factor:

… young Chileans will engage with political issues which they feel affected by – but using methods such as public protest, not by voting. This is an interesting legacy of the dictatorship; simplistically, one might expect the population to have an enthusiasm for the democratic process fostered by the length of time it was denied to them, but this is not exactly how it works. Susana Kaiser’s book Postmemories of Terror, for which the author interviewed many young Argentines who were too young to remember the dictatorship personally, revealed a similar reticence to engage with the political system. Aside from activists who had strong personal connections to victims of the regime, such as members of HIJOS, many young Argentines were uninterested in party politics, vague about the exact causes of political repression, and still felt inhibited by the belief of their parents that political involvement could be dangerous.

U.N. – likely bank bailout

Rajeev Syal, The Observer (U.K.):

Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, the United Nations‘ drugs and crime tsar has told the Observer.

Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organised crime were “the only liquid investment capital” available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result.

This will raise questions about crime’s influence on the economic system at times of crisis.

As, say, opposed to crime’s influence on the economic system in good times?

Unplanned discovery

Eddie Edmundson,  director of the Chilean-British Institute in Concepción from 1984-1990, interviewed by the Santiago Times on his book “A History of the British Presence in Chile” (reprinted by MercoPress [may require registration]:

Darwin spent 17 months in what is now modern day Chile. His ‘On The Origin Of The Species’ begins with the quote As naturalist in South America I was much impressed by the peoples that I met. This is what he met in Chile, nowhere else. The Fuegian Indians in Tierra del Fuego made him ponder on the species of mankind. They helped him realize that culture was just a veneer over humanity. He saw for himself that (these savages) could adopt manners and customs, and learn other languages.

Another thing – which if it hadn’t happened there would have been no Galapagos and no circumnavigation of the world – was the earthquake which occurred in Concepcion when he visited. He realized that however despondent and depressed he and the crew of the HMS Beagle were, their lot was extraordinarily good compared to those who had lost everything in the earthquake. The captain decided to have another look at Chiloe and the southern coasts of Chile before they crossed the Pacific. This kept Darwin on board. He would have left otherwise. The earthquake in Concepcion made them stay longer.

Under-capitalized?

With falling numbers of new “unregistered aliens” in the United States, the bureaucrats are considering an alternative way of dealing with the estimated 12 million now in the country.  Katherine McIntire Peters, Government Executive:

Just as U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is digging itself out from under an enormous backlog of citizenship and naturalization applications, a sharp decline in applications — and the processing fees associated with them — threatens the agency’s fiscal future.

In a wide-ranging discussion with reporters on Thursday, Alejandro Mayorkas, director of USCIS since August, said the agency halved the naturalization application processing time from eight months in 2008 to four months in 2009, and cut adjustment-of-status processing times from nearly 14 months to 4.3 months during the same period. It also has eliminated a backlog in an FBI name check program.

But a significant drop in applications this year is creating a budget crunch for the agency. “The challenge for 2010 is to be able to maintain momentum in the face of great fiscal challenges,” Mayorkas said. The agency is predicting a dramatic decline in revenue from application fees in 2010 and 2011, said Chris Bentley, USCIS spokesman. Officials are now conducting an expansive review of agency operations to reduce overhead and spending and they are considering raising application fees as well.

Un-manned flight

While Homeland Security is forced to raise prices for budget reasons, they seem to have a lot of money to spend on enforcement.  From Laura Martinez’s “Mi Blog es tu blog”:

Just in time for this upcoming Season to be Jolly, the U.S. government has unveiled a “super” idea: It will begin using military predator drones to catch illegal immigrants along the U.S.-Mexico border. These babies, which are currently used by the military in Iraq and Afghanistan, cost only $13.5 million each, but can fire two AGM-114 Hellfire missiles… which must be like shit scary stuff.