The Big Blow

It seemed like just another rainstorm last night, until my little house started to shake and water streamed across the floor. Later I learned that the first major event of the storm season, Hurricane Alma, had passed close by on its way to landfall near the city of Leon, 200 kilometres to the north. San Juan del Sur suffered only high winds and heavy rain, but in the area hit hardest roofs were torn off homes and there has been severe flooding. A reported 25,000 people had to be evacuated as a safety measure.

This morning brought bright sunshine and a chance to survey the wreckage. The beach is completely strewn with driftwood washed up by two metre waves that pounded the usually tranquil bay and will take time to clear. A fishing boat that was torn from its moorings and thrown ashore sits forlornly within a few metres of the waterfront restaurants. Alma was only a Category I storm, with winds of 100 kph by the time it struck Leon and its strength is quickly dissipating as it moves inland, but it is early yet in the season and over the next few months we can expect more opportunities to throw a hurricane party.

Active Retirement

After being in San Juan del Sur for a while, it becomes easy to recognize the other foreigners who live here, with their deep tans and locally licensed vehicles, who turn up regularly at local bars for Happy Hour.

The town hosts one of the largest expatriate communities in Nicaragua, many of them retirees, and its popularity is easy to understand. Beautiful beaches, a rock bottom cost of living and friendly local people, along with all the amenities offered by a burgeoning tourism industry, make the place a great alternative to a condo in Florida. That is not to say that San Juan does not present its own issues; blackouts, water shortages, spine rattling roads and access to a much smaller range of goods and services that the average big city dweller is used to expecting.

Some of the immigrants are looking for somewhere more exotic than Fort Lauderdale to retire where their dollars go further, others are travelers who simply fell in love with the place and never moved on. With perseverance, many have been able to create businesses for themselves.

In fact, some of the people who supposedly came here to retire are among the most active, with property holdings, development projects and service businesses. With salable assets at home and pension income, retirees have resources. They are the ones typically seen talking on a cell phone as they walk, with a sheaf of papers under their arm. The younger crowd is divided between the go-getters who have come to make their fortune in real estate speculation and others who spend most of their time surfing and work merely to pay their bar tab.

Then, there are the grey-haired expat men often seen escorting their attractive, twenty-something Nicaraguan girlfriends. They are in a separate category of their own and tend to keep to themselves.

Pyrrhic Victory

Political activism is Nicaragua's national pastime, with rallies and protests a regular part of daily life. Even by these standards, the past two weeks have been especially busy. Yesterday, a twelve day nationwide transportation strike came to an end when the central government agreed to provide a fuel subsidy equal to CDN$1.30 per gallon to taxis, busses and transport trucks, bringing an end to roadblocks and sporadic violence by strikers. Recent increases in fuel prices had made it impossible for transport operators to survive on the low, regulated fees they are allowed to charge.

The questions being asked now are about where the money is going to come from to pay the subsidy. Venezuela provides Nicaragua with financial aid and discounted oil, but none of this is publicly accounted for and it is estimated that some $800 million has gone into the private holdings of president Daniel Ortega.

For its oil Venezuela receives 60% of the current world price two years after delivery, with the rest, plus interest, payable after ten years. This should be a great boon for Nicaraguans, but the worst kept secret in the country is that large amounts of this oil is being shipped directly to Honduras and El Salvador, where it can be sold at higher prices. Ortega has a stake in the privately owned company that imports the oil and he refuses to open the books to auditors or the government's revenue ministry, even though the law dictates he must.

The immediate result of the subsidy has been taxis filling their tanks with subsidized fuel and then selling it at just below pump prices, a process they can repeat several times a day. It is difficult to blame the taxi drivers. After all, they can make more money this way than they could carrying fares.

The Anti-Procrastination Workout

Self-motivation can be the biggest obstacle to maintaining your fitness. Stress, other demands on your time, boredom or just pure laziness can make a visit to the gym as appealing as a trip to the dentist. Working out with a partner is one solution, but if that is not possible, Crossfit may be the answer. Created by a gymnast, Crossfit started as an Internet phenomenon and is now infiltrating weight rooms everywhere. Its regimen of high-octane, twenty-minute workouts against the clock employs a combination of body weight exercises, running, free-weights and gymnastic moves that emphasize full range of motion and perfect form.

At www.crossfit.com and you will find all the information that you need to get started, along with the Workout of the Day, each one a new combination of exercises, with instructions and video demonstrations of proper form. Check out the video of an exercise called 'The Bear'. Just to give the guys a little competitive incentive, the demonstrator is a girl. You will be out of the gym in half an hour and a fresh challenge every day will have you looking forward to your next workout.

Among its enthusiastic adherents are many policemen, soldiers and firefighters who swear by the programme. Crossfit gyms are sprouting all across North America and personal trainers by the thousands are taking the certification course in Crossfit techniques. It's fun, it's fast and it works. What more could you ask?

The Decline of the American Empire

A recent post here reviewed Naomi Klein's book, The Shock Doctrine, that documents the United States' systematic pillaging of dozens of national economies around the world over the past thirty-five years. The ease with which the US achieved this and the inability of the targeted nations to defend themselves makes for a depressing read, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I believe that the end of the American Empire is in sight.

Back in 1914 Britain was the world's unquestioned superpower, although historians now recognize that year as the beginning of the end for Britain's supremacy. Few in England at the time would have even entertained the idea that their empire on which the sun never set was on the verge of decline. The First World War shattered the economy and the faith of the public in its leaders. The Depression, followed by the Second World War, bankrupted the country and left it without the power to hold onto its colonies.

When historians look back fifty years from now, they will probably point to 1989 as a similar turning point for the United States. By that time, the appalling mismanagement of the Reagan years had already taken the US from the world's biggest creditor nation to its greatest debtor. Education and social programmes were being decimated, huge government budget deficits paid for a massive military buildup and deregulation of various industries had transformed the US into a casino economy. The collapse of the Soviet Union left the United States without a excuse for its aggressive actions and the Cold War was shown to have been based on wildly exaggerated CIA estimates of the largely fictional Soviet threat.

Today, the United States has a standard of living surpassed by several western European nations and the European Union has displaced it as the world's largest economy. China will soon push it out of second place. Washington has forsaken even the pretense of leadership in the world by invading Iraq over the protests of virtually the entire world community. The mounting human and economic costs of occupying Iraq, a conflict that the American people now realize they were duped into, will eventually bring about a national political crisis and demands from the public for reform. Opinion polls already show that eight out of ten Americans feel their country is on the wrong course and trust in government has fallen beneath the previous lows that followed Watergate.

The Project for a New American Century is the ideological blueprint that Bush Jr and company expect to ensure global US dominance for the next hundred years, but it is out of step with current realities. At the end of the Second World War, the United States was the only major power that had not been devastated and it assumed a position of supremacy almost by default. The US represented half of the entire world economy in 1945, but today it is less than a quarter and the growth of China, a resurgent Russia and Europe will continue to diminish its importance. Twenty years ago, the American market was essential to all of the other trading nations, today it is of minor significance and in twenty more years it will give Washington little leverage at all. America will need friends and allies. Unilateralism will no longer be an option.

Contrary to claims that we have reached the end of history, the international power structure continues to evolve. The election of social-democratic, nationalist governments throughout Latin American precedes a coming revolt against the Monroe Doctrine that, for almost two hundred years, has presumed a US right to interfere in the internal affairs of any country in the Western Hemisphere to enforce its economic interests. Japan, Korea and the other East Asian trading nations are turning away from the US and towards China. Europe, excepting Britain, is also disengaging itself and moving to a more arms length relationship with the United Sates.

As economic power shifts from the US to other nations and groups of nations, the day comes closer when the United States will attempt to coerce other countries and fail utterly, suddenly encountering the foreshortened limits of its influence. The Suez Crisis of 1956 was such a humiliating moment for Britain and sounded the final death knell for its empire.

This change will happen because other nations, like China with its current $1.5 trillion in US dollar currency reserves and Japan with its massive holdings of US government securities, will tell Washington to go pound sand. It will be a watershed that profoundly alters the perception of the United States among the world's nations. The US government may find itself under tremendous economic pressure to reduce its military spending and withdraw from many of its hundreds of foreign bases to help balance the books at home. Strong arm tactics will no longer be acceptable. American leaders will need to develop new skills in diplomacy and consensus building.

When that time comes, the people of the United States will have to adjust their own perceptions, just as the British were forced to do. American exceptionalism will be exposed for what it is, a myth. The US is just another country, better than some and worse than others, that has enjoyed an historically brief period of extraordinary success through a combination of larceny and luck. The big question is: what kind of new power alignment will follow the inevitable decline of the American empire?

Hand-me-down World

Yesterday, a middle-aged local woman walked through the market in San Juan del Sur carrying an infant and wearing a t-shirt with the words "VOTE FOR PEDRO" printed on the front in large red letters. It is fairly certain that she has never seen, or heard of, the film Napoleon Dynamite and likely believes that Pedro is just a candidate in the upcoming civic elections.

You may never have wondered where the extra t-shirts went that were printed for the charity event you attended, or what happened to the horrible plaid shirt you never wore and eventually gave to Goodwill, but it is very likely that they were bought by a jobber, bundled into a huge bail of similar items and shipped to Nicaragua, or somewhere much like it.

New clothes are too expensive for the vast majority of people here, so used clothing, discarded items, those that even the deepest discounts could not sell and factory seconds dress most Nicaraguans, an entire nation in first world hand-me-downs.

The Rain in Nicaragua Falls Mainly in the Summer

Rain fell last night for the first time in over four months, bringing an end to the dry season in Central America. For the past week heavy laden clouds had skimmed over the desiccated hills surrounding San Juan del Sur and distant lightning has lit up the nighttime skies, all without result until the showers last evening

Now begins months of ever increasing precipitation until the annual deluge in October, by which time the countryside will have recovered a lush green cover. Tourism slows down as humidity rises and the dampness penetrates everywhere.

The town will be much quieter, visited by just a few hard core surfistas who come for the summer waves that can reach ten metres. Then, in November the rains will come to an abrupt halt and the cycle begins again.

Oil Slick

I cannot say that I was surprised when I awoke this morning to find that there was no electricity. It is too common an event here to warrant more than a resigned sigh. I learned later that an oil shortage has necessitated gasoline rationing and power outages from 7 AM to 2 PM daily.

Nicaragua receives its oil through a treaty with Venezuela, but something appears to be amiss. The explanation that I am hearing comes from too many independent sources to ignore and alleges that a tanker of Venezuelan oil has gone missing, its contents sold in El Salvador and the enormous profit pocketed by none other than president Daniel Ortega. Unfortunately, this too warrants no more than a resigned sigh.