Archive for the 'Latin America' Category

While we readily admit that today we’re taking a sarcastic sort of swipe at the pretty dumb practice of stating the sodding obvious, we ourselves wish to make it perfectly obvious that we are in no way “having a go” at Ireland’s excellent ex President, Mary Robinson.

Since the sad truth is that there are still millions of westerners convinced that bums like George Bush and Tony Blair, to mention just a pair, always told us all the truth.

Just take a look at this.

GENEVA (Reuters)

Washington’s “war on terror” after the September 11 attacks has eroded human rights worldwide, creating lingering cynicism that the United Nations must now combat, international law experts said on Monday.

Mary Robinson, who was the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights when al Qaeda militants flew hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001, said the United States caused harm with some of the ways it responded.

“Seven years after 9/11 it is time to take stock and repeal abusive laws and policies,” the former Irish president said, warning that harsh U.S. detentions and interrogations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba gave a dangerous signal to other countries that could easily follow suit.

While new U.S. President Barack Obama has announced he will close Guantanamo to break from the practices of his predecessor George W. Bush, Robinson said sweeping changes needed to take place to ensure Washington abandons its “war paradigm.”

“There has been severe damage and it needs to be addressed,” she told a news conference in Geneva. “We are not more secure. We are more divided, and people are more cynical about the operation of laws.”

Arthur Chaskalson, former chief justice of South Africa, said that the United States should launch an inquiry into its counter-terrorism practices, including acts of torture by individual security and intelligence agents.

Although counter-terrorism issues have faded from the front pages since the change of government in Washington, Chaskalson said such practices have shifted around the world and could keep restricting liberties if they are not confronted head-on.

“We all have less rights today than we had five or 10 years ago, and if nothing happens, we will have even less,”

So here’s to you, Mrs Robinson, we have to say that we like your style. Like it a lot, in fact. Truth be told, maybe we even love it.

Now read the rest of this Reuters’report.

(Cross posted from How This Old Brit Sees It)

Venezuela’s Chavez welcomes Russian warships

LA GUAIRA, Venezuela – Russian warships sailed into port in Venezuela on Tuesday in a show of strength as Moscow seeks to counter U.S. influence in Latin America.

Russia’s first such deployment in the Caribbean since the Cold War is
timed to coincide with President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to Venezuela, the first ever by a Russian president.

Surprised?

You shouldn’t be. (What’s the betting Mr Biden isn’t?)

Surely you’ve heard similar sorts of stories before.

You know, such as the old seafarers’ old saying re: stranger things happening at sea.

Read a bit more about it right here.

(Cross posted from How This Old Brit Sees It)

Now, please read some of these seriously salient messages being sent from the wider world.

(Cross posted from How This Old Brit Sees It)

Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez

Since Fidel Castro stepped down as head of the Cuban government, a lot of changes have taken place (link link). Dissidents have been released, Cubans are blogging, and for the first time Cubans are allowed to buy DVDs and cell phones. So that means that we’ll see an end to the American trade sanction on Cuba, right?

Wrong:

Everything we hear is that it is the same exact repression, fear, brutality that has existed over 49 years. We believe the people deserve to know, and we believe that the political prisoners in those dungeons deserve to know that the international community is paying attention to them.

–Carlos Gutierrez, May 18, 2008

Well, if there haven’t been any changes in 49 years, that means the embargo has been unsuccessful and will be lifted, right? RIGHT???

Wrong:

The purpose of the embargo is to deny resources to a regime who is clearly anti-American, who doesn’t like our country, and in that regard the embargo has been extremely successful.

–Carlos Gutierrez, May 22, 2008

So, that means that regime change and human rights in Cuba weren’t the reasons we were boycotting trade with Cuba?

No:

The policy in Cuba is designed to create changes, and anything that strengthens the regime is something (Bush) is not in favor of. We think what really needs to happen in Cuba is for that system to change.

–Carlos Gutierrez, May 22, 2008

Huh? So the embargo wasn’t meant to bring about change, but change is what we want, and it’s not what the embargo has produced, so we’re going to stick with the embargo. I wonder if Carlos can make that any more clear for us:

Gutierrez said the embargo, imposed in 1962 to undermine the government of Fidel Castro, deprived Cuban leaders of resources they would have used for “ill-focused goals.”

(emphasis added, idiocy in original)

(cross posted at Liberal Avenger and This Old Brit)

Luis Posada Carilles is wanted for bombing an airliner in 1976, an act which killed 73 people

Luis Posada was released on $350,000 bail, and will have to wear an ankle bracelet until he goes to court in May on immigration charges. Giving him bail is a puzzling decision, because Carilles has escaped from prison in the past, and should be thought of as a flight risk. Also, he's the most notorious terrorist in the western hemisphere:

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If I didn’t know better, I’d say Hugo Chavez is trying to prove Hayek right. For years he managed to ram through economic reforms while maintaining the integrity of Venezuelan democracy. But democracy appears to be too inconvenient for him now.

Venezuela’s congress approved a request by President Hugo Chavez for the power to make law by decree for 18 months, opening the way for an overhaul of the country’s economic and political life.

Lawmakers unanimously approved the request in a televised vote.

Chavez has pledged to use his new power to nationalize “strategic” companies in the telephone, electricity and oil industries, establish new taxes on second houses, boats and luxury goods, and eliminate more than 100 municipalities.

The more time passes, the more Chavez looks like a mongrel hybrid of John Birch, George W. Bush, and Rudy Giuliani. He has Birch’s paranoia, Giuliani’s autocratic personality, and Bush’s respect for democratic institutions. A long time ago, I was disturbed enough by his rhetoric alone to compare him to Argentina’s Juan Perón. At the time, the people I was talking to told me it was nonsense because Perón was never a democrat, while Chavez was. My record of being right on Iraq in 2003, Lebanon in 2006, and now Venezuela in 2007 makes me scared that I’m also right about the entire world in 2020-21.

Study on Nicotine Levels Stirs Calls for New Controls

A Harvard study concluding that cigarette makers have for years deliberately increased nicotine levels in cigarettes to make them more addictive led to renewed calls Thursday for greater federal oversight of the industry.

“Given the harm that tobacco causes, it shouldn’t be a game of cat-and-mouse to figure out what the industry is doing to cigarettes,” said Dr. Josh Sharfstein, commissioner of health for the City of Baltimore.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who is now chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, promised to reintroduce within weeks a bill that would allow the Food and Drug Administration to regulate cigarettes.

North Korea Reports Progress In Talks With U.S. Envoy

North Korea said Friday that progress had been made during talks with the United States this week on its nuclear program, and the top U.S. nuclear envoy suggested the foundation had been laid for more progress when six-nation nuclear negotiations resume.

North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said three days of talks in Berlin between U.S. envoy Christopher R. Hill and North Korea’s main nuclear negotiator, Kim Gye Gwan, had been held “in a positive and sincere atmosphere and a certain agreement was reached there.” No further details were given.

This makes it - what - the four hundredth such negotiation? I’m not sure who’s being more irrational here - North Korea, which keeps spending whatever money it has on the military instead of on making sure people stop starving, or the US, which keeps botching negotiations with North Korea. -Alon.

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Stroessner……………….Mengele

Alfredo Stroessner, the fascist dictator who ruled Paraguay from 1954 to 1989, died of a stroke. Stroessner was one of several Latin American mass murderers supported by President Eisenhower, whose presidency was a watershed in the history of American foreign policy.

During Eisenhower’s presidency, the US began actively encouraging fascist coups d’etat throughout the “American sphere” of the developing world, preferring dictatorships to democracies. This policy continued, to a greater or lesser extent, through the rest of the 20th century, and it continues today. It is the primary reason that democracy has been so late in coming to non-communist East Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa.

Among other crimes, Stroessner granted asylum to Josef Mengele, the “Auschwitz Angel of Death.” Wherever Stroessner is today, I’m sure his buddy Mengele is close by.

Right now, I’m at my dad’s condo in San Carlos. Yesterday, we got a visit from Sylvia, a 40-50 year old woman from Guaymas, and her daughter America.

For a couple of decades, Sylvia has sustained herself and America by giving haircuts, manicures, and massages to a high-end clientelle. Even today, after building her client list over a period of 2 decades, she will happily spend 4-5 hours of travel and work time to earn $25.

America grew up in Sylvia’s world, but she will live in another. This winter, she will graduate with a degree in marine biology, and will begin a life of economic self-sufficiency. In many ways, the transition that Sylvia’s family made is the transition that all of Mexico will have to make. Unfortunately, for most Mexicans the transition from an economy based on extraction, tourism, and farming to a knowledge-based economy will be much more difficult than it was for America and her mother.

Sylvia understands this, and she understands that her daughter would have very little opportunity if it weren’t for her publicly-financed college education. America’s generation of salon workers, miners, and farmers will fare poorly compared to those of Sylvia’s generation. Sylvia also understands that Mexico’s economy is being forced into a transition for which it is unready.

Unlike most people in this region, Sylvia is opposed to the PAN prescription of forcing an uneducated populace into an economy that rewards only inherited wealth and education. To be truly successful, she realizes, Mexico must make the transition to the new economy the same way that she and America did: first provide the food, education, and health care to the next generation, then transform the economy to make the best use of the Mexicans’ skills and talents.
The US, Western Europe, Japan, and a few other economies were able to make the transition to the modern economy because the national infrastructure and workforce were devoloped and educated enough to sieze the opportunity. But elsewhere — in Africa, East Europe, and most of Latin America — attempts to force the transition prematurely has brought only misery and instability.

This is not to say that expanding trade and direct investment in economies like Mexico’s should be halted or discouraged. But the transition to the modern economy is one that must be tempered until the population is made ready, in order to prevent the forces of anti-modernity and reaction from derailing the process entirely.

If some of our key institutions — the WTO, the IMF, USAID, and others — act in good faith to bring about a sustainable transition to a new economy, then the transition need not take very long. In Taiwan and South Korea, the transition took only a single generation, once those nations were ready to make the leap. In Mexico, the physical and financial infrastructure are nearly present, and great strides toward sufficiency in the area of literacy are being made in many regions.

But a premature leap forward threatens to undermine the entire enterprise.

Felipe Calderon, the candidate of the conservative National Action Party (PAN), has taken a slight lead as ballots are recounted in Mexico’s presidential election. The initial count had favored Calderon, but 2.5 million ballots had not been included in that total.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, running for the liberal Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), won most of those ballots, and led through most of the recount. But late in the recount, Calderon surged ahead. Calderon’s supporters say that the votes from regions in which their candidate was most popular are being counted last. Officials from the PRD have demanded a recount of all votes cast, but federal election officials refuse to recount ballots that have been certified by local election supervisors.

In the past, Mexican elections were tainted by massive fraud, and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) ensured that its candidates won virtually every election. In fact, the PRI presidential candidate this year, Roberto Madrazo, stole an election for governor of Tabasco from Lopez Obrador in 1994. But this year, much of the election machinery was in the hands of the PAN, and international observers have been supervising the elections.

Even so, a lot of fraud has occurred, especially in areas still controlled by the PRI. Obrador’s supporters claim that in 18,000 polling places, more votes were counted than there were ballots provided. And at nearly 800 locations, more votes were cast than there were registered voters. Most of the ballots from those places will not be included in the recount.

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