Articles and opinion columns by Latin American analysts who take an unwavering stand for freedom, including members and directors of the IID.
Psychologists tell us that one reason we desire expert predictions is because we have a “need for closure.” That is, we want an answer to a question. Even if that answer is wrong, we find a wrong answer preferable to enduring a state of confusion and ambiguity. But, then again, if experts are almost always wrong, why should we listen to these psychological experts? Our world is complex and messy. Forecasting requires intellectual teamwork, and the gathering of evidence from different sources. Forecasting involves incalculable contingencies and variables, not just one big idea. People and environments are full of surprises.
The Secretary Almagro built and sustains an implicit reality that is very different to the objective reality the people, the public opinion, the press, the leaders and any honest observer perceive. It is most evident the General Secretary’s efforts to present Castroist Chavist dictatorships as separate and independent processes, unrelated between each other. It is shameful that for a very same matter in which the subjects, the objectives, the criminal methodologies, the acts of reciprocal cooperation, the cover ups and the common crimes, are all identical the Secretary Almagro to present and impose his distorted reality of separating, giving a different treatment to, and thus applying the strategy of the Castroist Chavist system. The OAS’ 49th General Assembly has failed on the most important matters of democracy and human rights, repeating statements regarding Venezuela and Nicaragua, while ignoring Cuba’s dictatorship, and not dealing with Bolivia’s case.
As China pushes its Belt and Road Initiative to promote infrastructure development and through these means enhance trade flows with emerging markets, the world will enter into a new development phase with two engines: the US and China. While for China this will be a debut into international economic supremacy, for the US is a sequel to the post-world war period. For those that fear that the current Trump induced tantrum with China will lead to a world economic crisis, please relax as physicists have found out the dark matter is indestructible!!!!
The Organization of American States is avoiding to apply the Interamerican Democratic Charter (IDC) to Bolivia’s “vote-catching dictatorship”. I have imagined the “vote-catching dictatorship” as “a political regime that by force or violence; concentrates the whole of political power in one person or in one group, represses human rights and basic freedoms, and uses elections as a means of simulation and propaganda in order to keep itself indefinitely in power”. The OAS’ 49th General Assembly, will be stigmatized by “Almagro’s double standard” in the application of principles and regulations and will be known as the one that covered up Bolivia’s dictatorship.
The world will soon see at full play a generation of leaders that is hacking savvy. This is to say a generation that understands systemic failures and weaknesses and aptly exploit them to their gain. This is precisely what hackers do in cyberspace. These leaders have in common their keen knowledge of the weakness of their national systems and those of the world order. They then chose to aggravate those weaknesses and to push their interests through in the midst of the confusion that their behavior generates. They are thus unleashing worldwide forces that are shaping the future of the world economic and political order in manners that nobody expected.
The Organization of American States (OAS) General Secretary gave his backing to a disqualified Evo Morales endorsing his fourth consecutive candidacy to Bolivia’s presidency as a “human right”, the condemnation to Luis Almagro’s actions and arguments for committing and holding up such a felony is massive. People, journalists, organizations, academicians, parliamentarians, and diplomats, point out perplexed the General Secretary’s opposite position dealing with the same facts elsewhere and ask the OAS for concrete actions. The OAS, however, has not addressed the issue and up to now covers up “Almagro’s double standard”.The OAS is a political entity of 35 States represented by their governments where each government’s interests and ideology define their position and therefore the Organizations’ course. The General Secretary is the OAS’ legal representative, elected by the General Assembly for a 5-year term, and can only be reelected once. If the OAS at its 49th General Assembly does not deal with Almagro’s deplorable conduct to benefit Bolivia’s dictatorship and applies the IDC to Bolivia, just as it did to Venezuela, besides covering it up, the OAS will be enabling the fourth Castroist Chavist dictatorship to have a firm foothold in Bolivia and will add a new violation of its principles and objectives, taking this institution back to the days of Insulza’s Organization.
American power companies have created in their country a contention wall to prevent renewables from gaining too much ground while the country continues to exploit its oil and natural gas wells. And these policies have percolated to Latin America where a regulatory cum public policies wall has created a virtual fossil fuels monopoly that hinders competition from renewables in a very effective way. In exchange for the policy created monopolies these companies agree to mix their gasoline and diesel with biofuels extracted from sugar cane or recycled waste such as used cooking oil. Most capital is now in the hands of private concerns known as hedge funds the revamp of the Latin American energy grid will most probably be affected through public-private partnerships. And these will not only introduce new and cleaner sources but will blowup the public policy created fossil fuel monopoly.
Social justice looks at how a society chooses to distribute the things that we value, among them income, wealth, powers, and more. Social justice is not about maximizing happiness. Social justice is about respecting people as ends in themselves. Let’s be careful, if democratic consent validates the appropriation of property, does it also justify the taking of freedom?
With his backing to Evo Morales’ fourth consecutive candidacy, The General Secretary of the Organization of American States (OAS), annihilated his credibility, places the Organization in a crisis, and affects the region’s security. The General Secretary violates the Interamerican Democratic Charter and the Interamerican System in Bolivia’s case. The General Secretary stating: “My position remains the same, the reelection is not a human right, but I don’t have any institutional means to oppose a judgement, a ruling from the Bolivian Supreme Court, moreover because the Interamerican System never said anything regarding this”. The Secretary has never mentioned Article 32.2 of the American Convention on Human Rights that mandates “The rights of every individual are limited by the rights of the others, by the security of all, and by the just demands of the common good in a democratic society”.
“Add poor or inexistent infrastructure, a distributive economic policy which penalizes middle class growth, rampant corruption and wrong ideology and guess what Latin America is going to look like in the world of the Belt Road Initiative,” “Something to give us all insomnia!!!!!”
