[Tailgunner Joe]

A New Axis of Evil

The Southern Threat

Jesse Jackson compares Brazil candidate to Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela

Colombia's Struggle and Its Enemies

[backhoe]

Cross-link:

Castro, the Carribean, and Terrorism

[Cicero]

It's dangerous. I don't know what it is about Latin America, but they seem incapable of governing themselves. Everything goes to extremes. For two hundred years virtually every country in Central and South America has swung between right-wing tyrants and left-wing tyrants, with short-lived periods of unstable and corrupt democracy.

Joseph Conrad got it right a hundred years ago in his greatest novel, "Nostromo."

[marron]

Gutierrez in Ecuador is a Chavist, rather literally. The coup against Mahuad was encouraged by Chavez, and the officers involved were paid a stipend by Chavez after they were cashiered from the army.

Alvaro Noboa, the other candidate is considered more pro-business than Gutierrez, but that is not very inspiring. He is also a populist, who in his last attempt at the presidency ran ads in the paper promising a new house to any voter who wanted on (just fill out this form and send it in). He is close personal friends with a former president who was impeached for being mentally unstable, who openly robbed millions from the national till (and boasted about it on camera). Noboa has promised to pardon him and bring him home from exile.

So our choice is Noboa, the banana tycoon, who is pretty openly corrupt, or Gutierrez, who is Chavist, a military populist. If Noboa wins, he will be such a disaster that people will beg for the Chavists to take over. So, we are probably better off for Gutierrez to win now and go from there.

The indigenous organizations are very political and very active. They all have political advisors who are European leftists. The people themselves are populists, poor people who just want the government to pay attention to them. But their leaders and advisors have bigger game in mind, and have their sights set on power at whatever cost. They are allied with the environmental groups, who are determined to stop any effort at private industrial investment. The country is bankrupt, the only hope is to free up the economy, but any kind of private investment is met with determined opposition by a combination of indigenous and enviro groups. Their tactics include demostrations and strikes that stop projects, sealing off highways, and filing lawsuits in US and EU courts, again, to stop projects in Ecuador. And demonstrating in Europe against EU banks that finance the projects. Astonishing in a country that is dying for want of investment and employment.

[Dallas]

barf......

[BureaucratusMaximus]

After that read...the whole "Nukem all and let God sort'em out" argument sounds pretty good here.

[Free the USA]

http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/bump-list

[ConservativeNewsNetwork]

Bump for tomorrow.

[Frances_Marion]

How long before FARC or some other leftist goons gain control of the canal that the Clintonistas and Carter gave away? They'll have this whole hemisphere by the balls....the legacy continues.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

***In Venezuela, Mr Chávez, for all his confrontational rhetoric, has shied away from the nationalisation and socialist planning introduced by Mr Castro in Cuba in the 1960s. Economic decline - Venezuela's economy will contract by more than 6 per cent this year - has resulted from incompetence and inefficiency rather than ideology. Mr Shifter says Mr Chávez "is running the country into the ground but it is not because he knows what he is doing".***

The Southern Situation

[Risa]

One wonders about the United States' commitment to open borders to trade within the hemisphere by 2005, (Free Trade Area of the Americas). Are these really the kind of governments with whom we would want to enter such an arrangement?