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Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Argentina Law Makers Now Have Tow Years To Turn The Economy Around

https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/argentina-lawmakers-now-have-2-years-turn-economy-around?id=743c2bc617&e=1bd154cf7d&uuid=9eace7ef-46c8-418b-9547-63873414cac2&utm_source=Topics%2C+Themes+and+Regions&utm_campaign=e0e3c4bdf9-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_10_31&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_743c2bc617-e0e3c4bdf9-53655957&mc_cid=e0e3c4bdf9&mc_eid=1bd154cf7d

Without US Aid,Venezuela Will Collapse

https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/c05f8fb4-7bca-35a2-82e6-c6836c2fd896/ss_if-the-trump-white-house.html

Monday, October 30, 2017

The virtue of equatorial Leninism

BelloThe virtue of Ecuador’s Leninism

Ecuador shows that presidents from populist parties do not always mess things up
IN FEBRUARY Rafael Correa, Ecuador’s then-president, compared the country’s run-off election to the battle of Stalingrad. “We are going to fight the worldwide right wing,” he said. His man, Lenín Moreno, duly scored a narrow victory against Guillermo Lasso, a conservative banker. Yet with Mr Moreno in office for less than five months, Mr Correa has now turned his rhetorical fire against his former ally, calling him “a hypocrite” and a “compulsive liar” who has achieved “what the opposition didn’t manage in ten years, to discredit our revolution”.
Mr Correa is alarmed because, to the surprise of many, Mr Moreno has turned out to be his own man with his own ideas. And that has implications beyond Ecuador, a country of 17m people that was notorious for political instability before Mr Correa took charge in 2007 as part of a wave of populist leftist leaders in South America. Benefiting from an oil windfall, he ruled as a paternalist autocrat. In what he called a “citizens’ revolution”, he invested in schools, hospitals and motorways. He was intolerant of criticism, persecuting opponents and imposing restrictions on the media.

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When the oil price fell in 2014, the economy weakened and opposition to Mr Correa grew. He pushed through a constitutional change abolishing presidential term limits, but only from 2021, opting to step back rather than risk defeat. Trusting in his grip on the ruling Alianza PAIS (AP) party and in Jorge Glas, a close collaborator who was Mr Moreno’s running-mate, Mr Correa moved to Belgium, his wife’s country.
In Mr Moreno, his vice-president in 2007-13, Mr Correa chose an electorally effective successor—but not a pliant placeholder. “Correa knew that on many things I disagreed with him,” Mr Moreno told the BBC recently. By acting on those differences, Mr Moreno, who has used a wheelchair since he was shot in an attempted robbery in 1998, has swiftly established his own leadership.
Where Mr Correa was a tub-thumping polariser, Mr Moreno is a soft-spoken consensus-maker. He has built bridges with the opposition, businessmen and civic groups. He has turned Ecuadoreans’ anger over corruption to his political advantage. He stripped Mr Glas of most of his powers and authorised prosecutors to proceed against him. This month Mr Glas was detained on suspicion of taking bribes from Odebrecht, a Brazilian construction firm (which he denies). In all, two dozen officials who had served in Mr Correa’s governments face corruption charges.
All this has made Mr Moreno wildly popular. His approval rating is 77%, according to Cedatos, a pollster. That, in turn, has allowed him to start to wrest control of the AP party, which holds a majority in congress. Mr Moreno is seeking to press his advantage with a referendum on constitutional changes to be held early next year. One would restrict presidents to two terms, thus barring Mr Correa from running again. Another would replace the seven members of a body set up by Mr Correa’s constitution, which controls appointments to the judiciary, the electoral authority and the prosecutor’s office. Eventually, they would be elected by popular vote. Much rides on the result.
Contrary to Mr Correa’s claims, Mr Moreno is not leading a counter-revolution or a right-wing government. He has kept several left-wingers and Correa allies in his cabinet. He has moved cautiously on the economy and in foreign policy: Ecuador remains, nominally at least, a member of ALBA, an alliance led by Venezuela and Cuba; Julian Assange, the fugitive founder of WikiLeaks, still lives in the Ecuadorean embassy in London. Things may change after the referendum. Mr Moreno faces a big fiscal deficit, low growth and the dollarised economy’s lack of competitiveness. To deal with them, he may need different policies and allies.
Ecuador shows that transitions from populist rule can potentially be constructive and consensual. In that, it is a counterpoint to Venezuela, where Nicolás Maduro took Hugo Chávez’s populist caudillo socialism and turned it into dictatorship. Perhaps nobody will be watching Ecuador more closely than Evo Morales, Bolivia’s president since 2006. Mr Morales is an autocratic socialist who both leads and is constrained by powerful social movements. His rule has been more similar to Mr Correa’s than to that of Venezuela’s chavistas. In 2016 he lost a referendum that would have abolished term limits. Now his supporters are seeking to achieve the same goal through the courts.
The longer populists remain in power, the more likely they are to mess up. But as Mr Moreno shows, a country can pull back from the brink.
This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline "The virt

What Lies Beneath Guyana's Petroleum Future?

https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/what-lies-beneath-guyanas-petroleum-future?id=743c2bc617&e=1bd154cf7d&uuid=7718046f-6ccb-4904-bbb9-5115b7e7c73c&utm_source=Topics%2C+Themes+and+Regions&utm_campaign=37c347d66d-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_10_30&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_743c2bc617-37c347d66d-53655957&mc_cid=37c347d66d&mc_eid=1bd154cf7d

Friday, October 27, 2017

Argentina And Chile Take The High Road

https://www.stratfor.com/article/argentina-and-chile-take-high-road

Brasil: Black Gold

BRAZIL

Black Gold

Brazil is rolling out the red carpet for global oil companies as they gather in Rio de Janeiro to bid on deep sea drilling rights, the goal being to stave off competition from Mexico as oil majors retreat from large-scale offshore projects.
Brazil offers high-cost, but prolific deep-water reserves, while Mexico’s lower-cost oilfields come with greater political risk, Reuters reported.
In a dramatic change from the days of high prices and resource nationalism, countries across Latin America are relaxing terms and accelerating auctions to lure back oil investment.
Brazil, for example, has scrapped a rule requiring state-owned Petrobras to operate deep-sea projects in the country’s pre-salt province, and loosened local content requirements on equipment and supplies. Mexico, too, has made the qualification process to bid in auctions easier and local content requirements more flexible.
However, Mexico’s looming presidential election in 2018 and deteriorating US-Mexico relation under President Donald Trump present some risks for investors – especially as Trump’s rhetoric has boosted leftist opposition firebrand Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in opinion polls.

Thursday, October 26, 2017

Brasil: Still Standing

BRAZIL

Still Standing

Brazilian President Michel Temer avoided a corruption trial for the second time, narrowly winning a vote in the lower house that will likely allow him to serve out his term to Dec. 2018.
Temer allies defeated a motion to initiate a trial before the Supreme Court by a margin of 251 to 233 on Wednesday, Bloomberg reported. But the smaller margin in this vote compared with the previous one and a delay in the vote hint at some discontent among his supporters.
Many members of the ruling coalition were hesitant to show open support for Temer, so it took the government around seven hours to reach a quorum. Earlier, the Supreme Court suspended Temer’s move to narrow Brazil’s definition of slavery in a bid to please the farm lobby.
Nevertheless, the victory should allow Temer to put the corruption charges behind him for now and deliver at least some of his planned reforms, which include pension cuts and simplifying the tax code, Bloomberg said.

Brasil Anticipates A Freer Economy And More Growth!

https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/brazil-anticipates-freer-economy-and-growth-comes-it?id=743c2bc617&e=1bd154cf7d&uuid=561ef9a6-10cf-4523-8030-81800c7588b6&utm_source=Topics%2C+Themes+and+Regions&utm_campaign=d9b2ff45e9-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_10_26&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_743c2bc617-d9b2ff45e9-53655957&mc_cid=d9b2ff45e9&mc_eid=1bd154cf7d#/entry/jsconnect?client_id=644347316&target=%2Fdiscussion%2Fembed%3Fp%3D%252Fdiscussion%252Fembed%252F%26vanilla_identifier%3D284769%26vanilla_url%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fworldview.stratfor.com%252Farticle%252Fbrazil-anticipates-freer-economy-and-growth-comes-it%253Fid%253D743c2bc617%2526e%253D1bd154cf7d%2526uuid%253D561ef9a6-10cf-4523-8030-81800c7588b6%2526utm_source%253DTopics%25252C%252BThemes%252Band%252BRegions%2526utm_campaign%253Dd9b2ff45e9-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_10_26%2526utm_medium%253Demail%2526utm_term%253D0_743c2bc617-d9b2ff45e9-53655957%2526mc_cid%253Dd9b2ff45e9%2526mc_eid%253D1bd154cf7d%26vanilla_category_id%3D1%26title%3DBrazil%2BAnticipates%2Ba%2BFreer%2BEconomy%2Band%2Bthe%2BGrowth%2BThat%2BComes%2BWith%2BIt

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Brasil: Code Switch

BRAZIL

Code Switch

Brazil’s Supreme Court suspended a controversial change to the definition of slavery issued by President Michel Temer’s government in a concession to the nation’s powerful farm lobby.
Justice Rosa Weber said the decree’s reduction of the scope of what is considered slave labor violated the constitution, Reuters reported. She also argued that the measure could hurt Brazil’s trade relations since other countries could complain that slave labor was a form of unfair competition.
Human rights campaigners said the decree issued by the labor ministry on Monday limited the definition of slavery to restrictions on freedom of movement, disregarding other abuses such as debt bondage, degrading work conditions, and long work hours that pose a risk to a worker’s health.
Opposition critics pointed out Temer’s decree would have derailed enforcement efforts that have freed 50,000 workers from slavery-like conditions since 1995, just as Temer needs farm lobby votes in Congress on Wednesday to block corruption charges against him.

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Brasil: Unfriendly Fire

BRAZIL

Unfriendly Fire

Brazil’s militarized approach to policing Rio de Janeiro’s sprawling slums has again come under scrutiny, after police shot dead a Spanish tourist in the Rocinha favela, near the city’s famous beaches.
Police said they opened fire because the car in which 67-year-old victim María Esperanza Ruiz Jiménez was traveling failed to stop at a police roadblock, the Guardian reported. She is the third tourist to have been shot dead in Rio’s favelas in less than a year.
A month earlier, Brazil sent military troops into the favela in a failed attempt to control violence between warring drug gangs. Shootouts between gang members and police have continued on a daily basis, according to residents.
Launched in 2008, Brazil’s once-lauded efforts to take back the favelas from drug gangs by installing police bases inside them has collapsed: The state’s coffers have run dry and it’s unable to pay police salaries.
“Police used to patrol the streets, but they don’t anymore. They stick to the main roads,” CBC quoted a local resident as saying, alluding to budget cuts resulting from a financial crisis that was aggravated by spending for the 2016 Olympics.

Monday, October 23, 2017

President Macri Wins Big-Timed In Argentina!!

Dear Jack,

Remember what I told you? : ) 

Macri won throughout the county, first time in 32 years that the same party/coalition wins in the 5 biggest districts in the country.

Even Urtubey, Salta’s current governor lost against Cambiemos/Macri by 10 points! Incredible, Salta has been peronist since day one, and no other party has governed it.

I am not a fanatic. Yesterday I drove 600 kms (with my 3 little kids) to vote where my legal address is, that is where my wife was born and where her family lives. Conditions are terrible there, worst than you can imagine. These people have destroyed everything they’ve touched.

It’s time to fix it. And I’m playing my part.

BTW, see the picture attached with my new friend.

image1.jpeg

Sunday, October 22, 2017

Havana Lector: The People Who Read TO Cuban Cigar Factory Workers

Havana lectorThe people who read to Cuban cigar-factory workers

Hearing The Count of Monte Cristo, while rolling Montecristos
EVERY morning at 8:30 Gricel Valdés-Lombillo mounts a platform at the H. Upmann cigar factory and starts the first of her 30-minute shifts reading to an audience of 150 torcedores, or cigar rollers. Throughout the day she will divert them with snippets of news, horoscopes, recipes and, most important, dramatic readings of literature. In a career that began in 1992 she has read “The Count of Monte Cristo”, a longstanding favourite among torcedores, three times. The popularity of this tale of revenge is the origin of Cuba’s Montecristo brand. Another 250 workers—despalilladoras (leaf strippers), rezagadores (wrapper selectors) and escojedores (colour graders)—hear Ms Valdés-Lombillo’s readings through the public-address system.
Lectores have been reading at cigar factories since 1865, when Nicolás Azcárate, a leader of a movement for political reform, proposed the practice as a way to educate workers and relieve tedium. Perhaps influenced by the texts they heard, cigar workers helped win Cuba’s independence from Spain and later founded trade unions.

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Around 200 lectores are still at work in Cuba and, despite television and the internet, they show no signs of disappearing. Cigars are one of the few export industries that is thriving. While Cuba’s merchandise exports fell by 33% in 2016, worldwide sales of cigars rose by 5% to $445m. UNESCO is considering whether to designate la lectura as a form of “intangible cultural heritage”, which should help keep it going.
The workers themselves choose the lectores. “This is the only job in Cuba that is democratically decided,” says an employee. The audience is demanding. Torcedores signal approval by tapping chavetas, oyster-shaped knives, on their worktables; slamming them on the floor shows displeasure. They vote on reading material: Ms Valdés-Lombillo recently finished “A Time to Die” by Wilbur Smith, a South African novelist, and “Semana Santa en San Francisco”, by Agustín García Marrero, a Cuban. When the readings get steamy, torcedores provide an accompaniment of suggestive sound effects. They laugh when a horoscope suggests that someone might inherit a fortune.
Like many lectores Ms Valdés-Lombillo has moved beyond her official role to become a counsellor, confidante and community leader. She has been an announcer at factory baseball games and a eulogist at funerals. If the cafeteria food is too salty or the tobacco leaves become too damp to roll, she will tell the managers.
But lectores no longer act as spurs to dissent. Granma, the Communist Party’s newspaper, is part of Ms Valdés-Lombillo’s daily literary fare. She describes the thoughts and deeds of Raúl Castro, Cuba’s president, and will do the same for his successor. The opinions of exiles and dissidents will not get a hearing. Unlike the cigar workers and the lectores, the party seldom turns over a new leaf.
This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline "Havana lector"

Time To Bury Che Guevara For Good

BelloTime to bury Che Guevara for good

The left needs a more democratic icon
ON OCTOBER 9th 1967 the Bolivian army, with the CIA in attendance, shot Ernesto “Che” Guevara in cold blood, on the orders of Bolivia’s president. Thus ended his short-lived attempt to ignite a guerrilla war in the heart of the Andes. Fifty years on, Bolivia’s current president, Evo Morales, and several thousand activists assembled there this week to honour Guevara’s memory.
In death Che, with his flowing hair and beret, has become one of the world’s favourite revolutionary icons. His fans span the globe. Youthful rebels wear T-shirts emblazoned with his image. Ireland this month issued a commemorative stamp. But it is in Latin America where his influence has been greatest, and where his legacy—for the left in particular—has been most damaging.

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The ascetic, asthmatic Argentine doctor first fought alongside Fidel Castro in the mountains of Cuba’s Sierra Maestra. After the Cuban revolution had imposed communism on the island, Guevara left to try to “liberate” first Congo and then Bolivia. Those who idolise Che do so because they see him as an idealist who laid down his life for a cause. An aura of Christian sacrifice surrounds him.
That cause was “anti-imperialism” and ending exploitation by replacing it with “socialism” (ie, communism), Mr Morales declared this week. In this, Guevara was a man of the 1960s—he fomented revolution as yanqui bombers were napalming Vietnamese peasants and when it was still possible for many people to believe that only violence and communism could defeat expansionary American imperialism.
For the Latin American left, that vision has congealed into archaism. In Colombia it contributed to the destructive insurgency of the FARC, which ended only last year, and that of the ELN, an avowedly guevarist group, which declared a ceasefire last month. Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s president, justifies the crushing of opposition as an act of anti-imperialism. Mr Morales, who after 11 years in power shows no sign of being prepared to relinquish it, may yet try to do the same.
So occluded is the lens of anti-imperialism that much of the Latin American left has failed to detect that American meddling in the region largely ended with the cold war, and that most younger Latin Americans see the United States as a source of investment, opportunity and technological progress (or at least did so before the arrival of President Donald Trump). But old dogmas die hard. “La Cordillera”, a newly released Argentine film, portrays an American diplomat offering a massive bribe to a fictional Argentine president (played by Ricardo Darín of the Oscar-winning “The Secret in Their Eyes”). The inducement is to vote against a regional oil cartel proposed by a left-wing Brazilian leader. The film seems oblivious to the fact that Latin America has just seen something that is almost the reverse: companies close to a left-wing president in Brazil showering money to get friendly candidates elected in other countries and then paying bribes to win public contracts.
In Guevara’s view, equality was to be achieved by levelling down. As minister of industries in Cuba, he wanted to expropriate every farm and shop. True, Cuba offers its people reasonable health care and education, and helps them through hurricanes, but those achievements have come at the cost of miserable wages, the denial of opportunity and the brutal suppression of dissent. In Venezuela’s pastiche of the Cuban revolution, installed by the late Hugo Chávez, another Che fan, the masses have been impoverished while insiders have become fabulously and corruptly rich.
Guevara’s mistake was to deny the possibility of democracy, or the social progress it could bring, in Latin America. Most countries in the region are no longer controlled by a narrow oligarchy, nor under the yanqui thumb. Whatever their mistakes and failings, reformist governments in countries like Chile, Brazil and Colombia have shown that inequality, while still high, can be reduced by good policies. When Che first set foot in Cuba, it was one of the most developed countries in Latin America. Despite its investment in health and education, freer countries have now caught up and in some cases surpassed it.
By erecting anti-imperialism and equality as supreme values, too many leftists have been complicit in tyranny and corruption. They have shamefully refused to condemn Mr Maduro’s dictatorship in Venezuela. Not only does democracy offer the best hope of progress for the masses, it also protects the left against its own mistakes. It is long past time to bury Che and find a better icon.
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