Articles and opinion columns by Latin American analysts who take an unwavering stand for freedom, including members and directors of the IID.
Venezuela’s farce of 2018 is now being replicated in Bolivia. What is criminal, dictatorial, and an usurpation in Venezuela, that without a doubt it is, has been backed by Secretary Almagro in Bolivia as a “human right” with the argument that “it would be discriminatory” to; enforce the law, respect the result of a binding referendum election and all the essential components of democracy. To enable an usurper candidate and then help him -with observers- to legitimize an election that does not meet the minimum of requirements to be a “free, fair election based on universal suffrage concepts, with secret balloting as an expression of the people’s sovereignty” is by far contradictory with the binding contents of the Democratic Charter. What has happened in Bolivia is a “breakdown of the democratic order and the alteration of the constitutional order that have wrecked democracy”. We are left with the hope that democratic governments of OAS’ member states, now threatened by destabilization machinations taken against them by the Castroist Chavist dictatorships, will react and will no longer wait to address Bolivia’s case “in extremis” as has already happened with Venezuela and Nicaragua.
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), who devised the essay as a literary genre, was one of the most erudite and sceptic humanist philosophers of the XVI century. He personified the French Renaissance’s spirit of freely embracing doubts. Montaigne claims that “…no profit whatever can possibly be made but at the expense of another…”. Montaigne dogma fails to recognize that poverty is what results if wealth is not produced. The erroneous Montaigne dogma has misdirected the attention of governments into expensive and ineffectual “Wars on Poverty”, and wealth redistribution policies, rather than on strategies to promote wealth acquisition. If nations are serious about reducing poverty, they must discard the harmful Montaigne dogma and embrace passionately the freedom for citizens to create and keep wealth.
The people of Hong Kong have decided that their land is to be free and that it is worthwhile to give their lives to protect freedom. China thus needs to co-exist with a relatively free Hong Kong if it is to become a world financial power. It could be hard for Hong Kong to keep its independence given that the population mix would change in favor of acceptance of totalitarianism. In Puerto Rico, the people decided that they had had it with corrupt and inept governments. Puerto Ricans have decided to take their destiny in their hands to get rid of bad rulers and clarify the nation’s political status. The road towards achieving such goal will be long and full of obstacles but booming political maturity of the Puerto Rican people is a the greatest asset to achieve the goal of either becoming and independent nation or part of the US.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent visit to Latin America and sent a message that the U.S. will not abandon its goals of getting rid of Maduro’s regime. The role of Cuba is becoming more and more important for the survival of Maduro and his cronies as dissidence and criticism among members of the military and political elite is becoming more and more significant. It is crucial that the Trump sanctions be aimed at hurting the Cuban troops as well as the Venezuelan intelligence services even more than the military. At the same time, it is important to establish contacts with the military to encourage rebellion against their superiors. Sanctions against top security and political elites must be strengthened. Likewise, sanctions against Cuba need to be reinforced. Latin American countries, particularly in the Central American triangle are already in a state of anarchy and suffer from high levels of crime. This problem needs to be addressed urgently regardless of Maduro. The multiplication of narco-states is a threat to the neighborhood where we live.
The 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 historic moon landing was perhaps the most significant collective and worldwide recollection of a human feat ever. The Us also continues to lead in the category of groundbreaking missions to space. China is second and accelerating its spacecraft capabilities. Third comes Russia. Following the big three come Japan, the United Kingdom, India and Canada. From the economic view point the space race has propelled communications and information gathering and processing. This has paved the road to entry by successful private corporations. By 2050 “Asgardia” the first space nation should be in orbit. Asgardia is totally financed by private companies. From the political dimension the world seems to be less fortunate today. Today successful leaders are those that instill in the hearts of their people fear, doubt and opacity. Those that fragment the political body to then ride on the worst sentiments of a faction while freezing through fear the rest of society. On this count we are much worse off than on the night the moon received the first earthlings.
The Forum from Sao Paulo has in fact the function of being an instrument through which; the holders of power in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia are granted the condition of politicians, those who are no longer in power seek impunity, and those who conspire against democratic governments in the Americas gather. It is the political disguise of the Transnational Organized Crime that usurps the political action and power. The Forum from Sao Paulo has been one of the most important instruments so that the criminal, conspirator, and anti-democratic alliance of Chavez and Castro have the look of being political. The Forum from Sao Paulo corroborates that it is the disguise for organized crime and calls to conspire against democracies with the plausible but invalid reasoning that dictatorships and the people’s struggle against their oppression “calls for a practical exercise of mutual internationalism between all leftist powers from Latin America”.
The fight for freedom and democracy in Venezuela has passed from stagnation to a clear lead favoring the dictatorship that has been able to return to “negotiations” as an ingredient of the Castroist Chavist dictatorships to retain power. Dialogue or negotiation has already caused the initial damage of; restoring Nicolas Maduro’s condition as an “international character” even though he was declared an “usurper” of power, and to conceal Cuba’s occupation, all while making Juan Guaido’s position as “President and Head of State” questionable, and who is now only accepted as President of the National Assembly. Negotiations are maneuvered so that Maduro will continue holding power until -with some fine tuning- “elections in a dictatorship” . Venezuela will continue being a narco-state and the criminal groups will become “members” of the legitimized political party of the dictatorship. Negotiations, as an ingredient of the Castroist Chavist system’ strategy and as a good trap, will have accomplished the change so that nothing will change.
For many decades consumers in Latin America were penalized with higher prices for worse products than those that were available in the US and Europe because it was the historical tax that everyone had to pay for the region to enter development. When the debt burden was swept away, the multilaterals, and Private equity funds found that local teams underperformed on almost every count including employment creation, workers compensation; training and innovation. But their environmental record went unnoticed. When the social dimension is affected by poverty hunger and pain those that have the responsibility of administering justice must stand by them so that these conditions do not make them prey of injustice and illegality. The burden of corruption makes in impossible to operate effectively. Taming corruption thus seems to be the unequivocal highest priority in Latin America.
The Asian population is diverse representing over 20 nations in Asia, with China, India, the Philippines, Vietnam, Korea and Japan. From the purely economic perspective Asians are great savers and education achievers. Education is yet another area where the Asian fingerprint is bound to be beneficial. Asians thus have their brains trained in data processing which is the basis of growth in the information era. This gives Asians a competitive edge that other mortals lack. And Asian Americans are depositories of this wealth creating ability. All these dimensions of the Asian American population are at the root of most economic predictions on the greater perspectives the US has to strengthen its economy through exchanges with Asian and to come out primus inter pares in a faceoff with China.
To resist -at any cost- in the absolute control of power. To destabilize democracies through the promotion and fostering of internal conflict, the commission of crime, subversion, terrorist attempts, mass protests with the appearance of social or political protest, and more. To politicize to the maximum -in the international arena- the defense and image of dictators. To “negotiate” by availing themselves of national or international mediators who are manipulated, this is their means of bringing about the easing of tensions and deceive to appear to be ending the regime, when in reality they strengthen it. To end with the usurpation of power, we must avoid falling again into their plan and take the initiative.
