Eye on the World

U.S. frustration with Mexico may be growing

Mexdata has a detailed summary of the increased level of violence in Mexico as a result of the drug cartel wars

Guerrero Governor Zeferino Torreblanca Galindo is now calling for the Mexican federal government to help him fight back.  Torreblanca has reported that the gangs killed more than 20 people in the resort area over the last year, with four execution-style killings on August 10, 2005, alone.  But it seems the governor is more mindful of tourism implications, as he says that he “wants police, not soldiers” on the streets so as not to scare off some 1.5 million visitors that include many Americans.

Meanwhile, back in Nuevo Laredo the drug war continues without the usual details as journalists have stopped investigating and reporting.  Many of their colleagues have been killed and threatened.  Daniel Rosa, the managing editor of the daily El Mañana in Nuevo Laredo said: “It is the new trend of drug gangs — journalists are warned, paid off, or killed.”  The editor of El Mañana, Roberto Garcia, was stabbed to death on March 19, 2004.

The journalists complain that corruption makes it impossible for them to research their stories accurately.  Yet more serious, the reporters note that Tamaulipas is the most dangerous place to work in Mexico.  Since January there have been at least 108 execution-style murders, whereas over the last year 173 people have disappeared, including 23 still missing Americans.

In February a reporter with the Televisa TV network was gunned down after airing a report on the paramilitary group known as the Zetas.  The Zetas were accused of involvement in the disappearances of both Mexicans and Americans in Nuevo Laredo, but the TV coup-de-grace probably came when the broadcaster said municipal police back the Zetas, and that they have an informant in the Mexican Army.   

Nearly 1,000 soldiers, federal agents and police were sent to the border in Nuevo Laredo in June, a show of force that left a current legacy of 50 new killings, bringing the body count to 110.

Claims of corruption taint Mexican president

Mexidata discusses the recent publication of a book that claims to document unusual deals and benefits received by Mexico's President and his family

The feelings of disgust picked up momentum this month with the launch of the book “The Presidential Family.”

It excoriates the President and his wife, Marta Sahagun, for abusing the perks of office to raise their private living standards and those of their many children and siblings. 

The authors conclude that much of this must have taken place courtesy of the taxpayer or the largesse of wealthy friends who had government contracts.

The authors, Anabel Hernandez and Areli Quintero, are Mexican journalists who have obviously done homework that goes far beyond day-to-day reportage on the presidency.

The book recounts detailed expenditures on Fox’s properties and generous spillovers to relatives and supporters. 25 annexes of documents buttress its allegations.

Internet Community Websites and the Orkut Brazilian Phenomenon

Instapundit recently reported

Last week Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. agreed to pay $580 million for Intermix Media, owner of the popular community website Myspace.com which had 17.7 million visitors in June. The announcement came just days after News Corp. formed its Fox Interactive Media unit.

Which shows that the phenomenon of community websites for social networking is starting to become big business.  This article relates what it calls "Facebook Frenzy" about  Facebook.com, which apparently has become the most popular community website in university campuses.

Facebook is an Internet sensation at campuses across the nation. Constantly updated by its 2.8 million registered users at more than 800 colleges and universities, the Facebook takes the local malt shop social nexus of the 1950s and makes it universal.

Started by three Harvard sophomores in February 2004 as an online directory to connect the higher education world through social networks, the Facebook now registers more than 5,800 new users a day.

Hughes said Facebook turns a profit, mostly from advertising. He refused to disclose the private company's earnings.

Other networking community websites include Friendster.com which claims 19+ million profiles and blogs, meetup.com and hi5.com.  Other differentiated networking sites are linkedin.com and rize.com, which promote professional and business networking as opposed to social networking.  Sites like Flickr.com and Multiply.com emphasize the use of blogs and photologs.

Another community website available is Orkut.com.   However, an interesting phenomenon has ocurred with this site created by Google

As nearly everyone knows, Orkut is Google’s entry in the crowded “social networking” field. Orkut seems to be relying on the combination of the powerful Google brand combined with an invitation-only policy to create interest in a service that otherwise would be regarded as late to the game. Like other social networking services, which are designed to connect people who want to date, make friends, or do business together

However, for reasons that at this point are unclear, Orkut.com has become a site that is for all practical purposes a "Brazilian" site.   As of this date, about 75% of the users state their country of residency as Brazil, and even this understates the number of Brazilian users since Brazilians living all over the world have also joined the site while registering under their country of residency.   The second largest number of users are from the U.S., at about 5%.  Posting in Orkut's forums is now done in Portuguese in most of the communities.

Due to the amount of Brazilian users and communities in the Portuguese language, users from other parts of the world have become upset with the service, which had English as its default language. Some went as far as to start online communities and discussion groups dedicated to complain about this phenomenon.

The reasons for this phenomenon apparently follows the Brazilian Internet Phenomenon. Services such as weblogs and photoblogs are now very popular with Brazilian users as well. For example, it's not hard to see Internet searches within the Brazilian territory returning several results pointing to weblog entries. That is seldom seen in other parts of the world. The popularity of such services in Brazil intrigues many people, making this phenomenon worthy of study.

In order to understand the scale of the Brazilian Internet Phenomenon as it relates to Orkut, I put together the following statistics comparing the numbers of users in Orkut to Brazilian and U.S. internet users

Population of Brazil 181.8 Million
Population of U.S. 296 Million

# of internet users in Brazil 17.9 Million
% of population 9.9%

# of internet users in the U.S. 200.9 Million
% of population 67.8%

# of enrolled college students in Brazil 1.5 Million
% of Population 0.8%

# of enrolled college students in U.S. 15 million
% of Population 5%

% orkut users of college age 18-25 54%

Approximate total of # of orkut users 7.5 Million

% of orkut users from Brazil 73.8%
# of orkut users from Brazil 5.5 Million
# of Brazilian orkut users as % of Brazilian internet users 30%

References
http://www.oncourseworkshop.com/Miscellaneous007.htm
http://www.photius.com/countries/brazil/society/brazil_society_colleges_and_univers~6924.html
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats2.htm
http://www.orkut.com/MembersAll.aspx
http://instapundit.com/archives/024426.php

It is clear that the Brazilian Internet Phenomenon in Orkut is massive as represented by the huge % of Brazilian Internet users that are members of Orkut.  I can understand why Americans have migrated to other forums, but it is still somewhat inexplicable to me why other countries have not claimed stakes in Orkut (i.e. Mexico), or why there is not a similar forum of Brazilian origin, with Brazilian advertising.  I would think that any Brazilian internet company would kill to have anything even close to the success of Orkut and that at the same time had paid advertising.

Distribution of Income in Brazil

Brazil has been a lot in the news lately.   As the largest Latinamerican country, it is often used as an example of the progress or lack thereof in Latinamerican countries standard of living.   Unfortunately, it is difficult to obtain an accurate picture of the human development and needs in a country like Brazil from typical statistics.  When analizing the progress in underdeveloped countries with a very high level of poverty and tremendously unequal distribution of income, using average numbers is irrelevant. Yes, the country as a whole may be rich, but how are the inhabitants benefiting from it?  A. Sullivan had an interesting post 

Here are the differences of income between the poorest 20% of the population and the richest 20% in selected countries according to UNDP Human Development Report 1998:

Over 20 times: Brazil, Guatemala, Guinea-Bissau, Lesotho, Panama


10 to 20 times: Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ivory Coast, Dominica, Guinea, Honduras, Kenya, Malaysia, Mauritania, Mexico, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Seychelles, South Africa, Venezuela, Zambia, Zimbabwe.


5 to 10 times: Algeria, Bolivia, China, Ecuador, Ghana, Hong Kong, India, Jamaica, Jordan, Laos, Madagascar, Morocco, Niger, Singapore, Tanzania, Thailand, Tunisia, Uganda, Vietnam.


3 to 5 times: Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka.

Yes, the distribution of income in Brazil is more skewed than in China, India, Nigeria, Kenia and Mexico. Brazil's distribution of income is one of the most unequal in the world.

And how about the probability that a citizen of a country will be able to advance economically in a country?
To try to answer this question, the Heritage Foundation created the "Index of Economic Freedom" which  states that

"The countries with the most economic freedom also have higher rates of long-term economic growth and are more prosperous than are those with less economic freedom"

Looking at the numbers we see that Brazil is ranked 90 out of 155 countries and just above such economic powerhouses as The Phillipines, Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso.

The graphical format is in my opinion a better descriptor of the huge task at hand for any government to better the lives of the citizens of any country.
The paper in this link shows graphically the change in the distribution of income for several countries over the years.
To note are a couple of things:
+ Are there explicitely distinct peaks of population in the distribution and how separated are they?
+ How wide is the distribution from the lower levels of income to the higher levels?
+ How much is the total income distribution advancing and very importantly, is the lowest end of the distribution advancing (China, India), staying stagnant (Brazil) or even going backwards (Russia, Nigeria).
There are of course issues of currency conversions with graphs like this, but they do convey a point better than any statistic.

Caution: Large pdf file. Keep scrolling until you reach the individual country graphs.