NICARAGUA-RUSSIA: Ortega Embraces Kremlin

Global Intelligence News / IPS

José Adán Silva

MANAGUA, Nov 25 (IPS) – The government of Nicaragua is seeking Russia’s support in a strategy that some analysts view as risky for the future diplomatic relations of this Central American nation.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has reestablished friendly relations and economic ties with the Kremlin, after over 16 years of a virtual freeze.

Nicaragua was the second country, after Russia, to recognise last August the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the two breakaway provinces of the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August precipitated the greatest crisis between the West and Moscow since the end of the Cold War, which stretched from the mid-1940s, shortly after World War II, to the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
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Popularity: 32% [?]

U.S.: Hemispheric Group Calls for Major Changes in Americas Policy

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Nov 24 (IPS) – An elite inter-American commission sponsored by a think tank that is considered close to likely key policy-makers in the administration of President-elect Barack Obama is calling for sharp break in U.S. policy toward Latin America, a substantial opening toward Cuba, greater diplomatic engagement with Venezuela, and a major reassessment of its war on drugs.

In a 32-page report entitled ”Rethinking U.S.-Latin American Relations” released by the Brookings Institution Monday, the 20-member ”Partnership for the Americas Commission” is urging Obama, among other things, to lift all restrictions on travel to Cuba by U.S, citizens and take other steps to ease the nearly 50-year-old U.S. embargo against Havana, and to put far greater emphasis on reducing demand for drugs at home and the export of guns to Mexico.

The Commission, which was co-chaired by former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo and Washington’s former ambassador to the United Nations, Thomas Pickering, is also calling on the U.S. Congress to phase out tariffs on ethanol imports from Latin America and subsidies on corn-based ethanol here as part of a larger initiative to develop sustainable energy resources, combat climate change, and foster greater regional integration.
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Popularity: 22% [?]

RIGHTS-COLOMBIA: When Terror Wears a Uniform

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Constanza Vieira

SOACHA, Colombia, Nov 21 (IPS) – Herminia Lizarazo did not know what to respond when her seven-year-old grandson told her ”Grandma, I want to know what the army is for.” The boy, whose two uncles belong to the army in Colombia, wanted to wear a military costume for Halloween.

”My uncles dress like that, and they look really good,” he commented to her, arguing in favour of the costume he had chosen for the Oct. 31 holiday, which originated in the United States and has spread to many Latin American countries.

Lizarazo gave a brief personal account of her life, which she called ”a mother’s story,” at a special hearing on human rights in Ciudad Bolívar, Altos de Cazucá and Soacha — vast slum neighbourhoods that line the hills on the southern edge of Bogotá — held Thursday by the Senate Human Rights Commission.

In 1984, she fled the southern department (province) of Huila because of the leftist guerrillas. ”I had four little ones, and we came to Bogotá to try our luck,” she said. ”But four months later, my husband died, and I became a widow.”
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Popularity: 24% [?]

CLIMATE CHANGE: Hot Days and Nights in Mexico 2090

Global Intel Net / IPS

Stephen Leahy* – Tierramérica

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Nov 20 (IPS) – Climate change will dramatically increase the number of hot, dry days in Mexico in the coming decades, while coastal regions like the Yucatán, in the southeast, will be swamped by sea levels that are half a metre higher than today, a new study has found.

By 2030, Mexico’s average daily temperature is likely to climb 1.4 degrees Celsius above what has been the average for the past 30 years. By 2090, this increase could rocket upwards by 4.1 degrees, virtually guaranteeing hot days and nights for 80 to 90 percent of the year, says the Oxford University study financed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Cold weather will become very rare in Mexico according to data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an umbrella organisation of scientists from around the world and the preeminent authority on climate change.

”Mexico is one area of the world where all the computer climate models agree,” says Carol McSweeney of the School of Geography and Environment at Oxford.
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Popularity: 19% [?]

ECUADOR-COLOMBIA: No Thaw in Sight

Global Intel Net / IPS

Kintto Lucas

QUITO, Nov 19 (IPS) – The cancellation of a meeting between delegates of Ecuador and Colombia aimed at restoring diplomatic ties, which were broken off in March, shows that it will be an uphill battle — especially with the latest round of mutual recriminations this month.

What was to be a two-day meeting Tuesday and Wednesday, sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Organisation of American States (OAS), was to take place in Pasto, the capital of the southern Colombian province of Nariño.

In the cancelled meeting, ”Colombia-Ecuador: Building Bridges”, representatives of the two countries, including Colombian Foreign Minister Jaime Bermúdez and the governors of border provinces, planned to attempt to smooth things out in the areas of politics and cooperation.
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Popularity: 18% [?]

PERU: Army Chief to Appear Before Anti-Corruption Prosecutor

Global Intel Net / IPS

Ángel Páez

LIMA, Nov 18 (IPS) – Peru’s army commander-in-chief, Edwin Donayre, will appear on Nov. 25 before anti-corruption prosecutor Marlene Berrú, who is investigating his alleged responsibility for 80,000 gallons of gasoline that are unaccounted for.

Berrú had already summoned General Donayre six times, but he had not shown up due to ”conflicting appointments,” he said. The prosecutor had to turn to Defence Minister Ántero Flores Aráoz to put pressure on the army chief to appear in her office.

Press reports of the prosecutor’s request unleashed a political scandal, with ministers and judges demanding that the general fulfil his duty to show up.

And on Sunday, the general announced that he would be stepping down on Dec. 5. Both he and Minister Flores Aráoz denied that the announcement had anything to do with the scandal, and argued that his two-year term as army chief was merely coming to an end.
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Popularity: 18% [?]

Latin America’s Response to Narco-Fueled Transnational Crime

Republished on the Global Intel Net – Global Geopolitics Net Sites

Read this article in its original form on the Council for Hemispheric Affairs, COHA, website.

By Tomás Ayuso, COHA Research Asssociate

Intra-Mexican Violence

2008 has proven to be one of the most violent years witnessed by Latin America in decades. A massive crime wave seemingly striking all corners of the region is being recorded in daily horrific figures. Nowhere has this been more painfully obvious than in Mexico, the crime wave’s epicenter. Homegrown drug cartels operating from both within and outside the country are engaging in a vicious turf war to seize control of major trafficking corridors while engaging in almost open warfare against the mobilized forces of the state. These brutal confrontations between rival cartels and those fighting the combined forces of the Mexican police and military have left over 4,300 people dead through November, 2008. By comparison, total deaths due to drug-related violence in all of 2007 were approximately 2700. This confrontation is shaping up to be a war of master proportions. Due to pervasive corruption at the highest levels of the Mexican government, and the almost effortless infiltration of the porous security forces by the cartel, an ultimate victory by the state is far from certain. Finally, and alarmingly, the Mexican citizenry is gripped by a grim debate over whether the death of Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mouriño and drug prosecutor José Luis Santiago in a plane crash on November 4 of this year was an act of murder or a regrettable accident.

President Felipe Calderón’s administration, with renewed aid and expanded support from the United States (the so-called Merida Initiative) has fiercely pursued the local drug barons and their minions since his controversial electoral victory in 2006. Despite these efforts, the cartels’ penetration of Mexico’s anti-drug forces and the stepped up tempo of its violent victories have shown no sign of relenting. Their tactics have, if anything, only grown more sanguinary and their weapons more deadly.
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Popularity: 21% [?]

VENEZUELA: Elections Will Put Chávez to the Test

Global Intel Net / IPS

Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, Nov 14 (IPS) – As if his post were at stake, Venezuela’s left-wing President Hugo Chávez is showing up all over the country at election rallies, caravans, public works inaugurations, nationally televised public events and highly publicised midnight calls to his party’s local offices in remote towns.

But on Nov. 23, the almost 17 million Venezuelans registered to vote will not be going to the polls to elect a new president or decide an issue put to referendum. They will be voting to renew 22 of the country’s 23 state governors and 328 of its 335 mayors.

In the last regional elections, held four years ago, Chávez supporters secured 21 state governments and around 300 city governments, but opinion polls and analysts are forecasting a slightly modified political map after the coming election.

”The opposition has a sure chance of winning four states, including the oil state of Zulia (in the northwest) and the industrial state of Carabobo (in central Venezuela), and it is has strong candidates in four others,” Luis León, director of the Datanálisis polling firm, told IPS.
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Popularity: 12% [?]

LABOUR-ARGENTINA: Major Blow to Union Monopoly

Global Intel Net / IPS

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Nov 13 (IPS) – A Supreme Court ruling has thrown a spanner in the works of the monopolistic model of union representation in Argentina that has prevailed for over 60 years, by upholding the right of a workers’ union that lacks legal recognition to elect its own delegates.

”This is a landmark decision that goes to the heart of the absence of union democracy,” lawmaker Claudio Lozano, a member and adviser of the Central Federation of Argentine Workers (CTA), a centre-left union federation that is fighting for Labour Ministry recognition, told IPS.

The only officially recognised union in the country is the General Confederation of Labour (CGT), with ties to the governing Justicialista (Peronist) Party (PJ).

”In Argentine, anyone can be elected president, governor, senator or parliamentary deputy, but you couldn’t be elected as a union delegate,” he said with irony.
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Popularity: 19% [?]

VENEZUELA-RUSSIA: Business Deals Consolidate Alliance

Global Intel Net / IPS

Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, Nov 13 (IPS) – ”Tovariches! Comrades! Today I feel I must say to you: let us work to find gas and oil under these waters!” said Alexander Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Russian firm Gazprom, when drills on the Escorpión Vigilante marine platform finally perforated the Venezuelan sea bed.

It was Nov. 7, the anniversary of the 1917 Russian Revolution, and Medvedev and the Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, Igor Sechin, were accompanying their host, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, at the inauguration of operations by UrdanetaGazprom, a partnership with Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA to explore for gas in the northwestern Gulf of Venezuela.

Moments earlier, perched on the scaffolding of bars and walkways on the Escorpión Vigilante, a platform rented from the United States, Chávez saluted the ”strategic alliance between two energy giants,” his own country and Russia, ”the homeland of Lenin.”
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Popularity: 29% [?]

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