An clip from Chávez’ weekend talk show “Alo Presidente” show’s Chávez ordering the expropriation of businesses around Plaza Bolívar in Caracas:
Apparently he would like to turn the area into a “historic center.” This afternoon, shortly after the clip was broadcast, the mayor of Caracas declared that the buildings were of “public use,” which is apparently enough to take them over. No word yet on whether the businesses will have a shot at due process.
Former Argentine President (and husband of the current president) Néstor Kirchner was rushed to the hospital this morning for surgery after he… fainted? (Descompensación… and here I was thinking I would never need to translate medical documents.) It sounds like he’s having circulatory problems and doctors will be operating on his right carotid artery.
Can a 7-year-old be Rio’s Carnival Queen? A Brazilian judge is thinking about saying “no,” on the grounds that it sexualizes children. Her father, on the other hand, said, ”Any man who looks at a 7-year-old child and feels any sort of excitement should go see a doctor.”
He kind of has a point. Just let the kid be a kid, and I bet everyone will have a great time. On the other hand, while I’ve never been to Carnival, I have the impression that sexual debauchery is kind of the whole point. On the other other hand, can a 7-year-old really dance samba for eighty minutes? Try doing it for 10 minutes. I dare you.
Apparently the Brazilians are pretty hardcore about introducing controversy to their celebration:
The competition among the 12 top-tier samba groups is fierce, and the winners are hailed by fans across Brazil. Viradouro, which won the title in 1997, is no stranger to controversy. In 2008, a judge blocked the group’s use of a dancer dressed as Hitler on a float loaded with naked people representing Holocaust victims after the display caused an international outcry.
Here’s a nice problem to have: You’re the third richest man in Chile, and then you get elected president. How, oh how, will you possibly avoid conflicts of interest? The man confronted with this agonizing real-life dilemma is Sebastian Piñera, who is a billionaire.
Piñera was elected Chile’s new president last month, and now he’s got to figure out what to do with his vast, diversified business holdings before he gets sworn in on March 11.
Wrote the Financial Times:
The silver-haired magnate, who introduced credit cards into Chile and built a reputed $1.2bn fortune with assets including interests in flagship airline Lan, a television channel and Chile’s most popular football team, has already put some money into blind trusts to head off conflict of interest charges.
The latest is that today, he committed to selling off his 26% stake in Lan, part or all of which will be picked up by the Cueto family, according to Reuters.
Mexico City is experiencing the worst floods in two decades after 48 straight hours of rain.The government has declared a state of emergency, and the sheer volume of water has completely overwhelmed the city’s underground drainage system. Thousands have been effected.
This video is a couple days old, but still worth posting. It shows excerpts from a heated debate between Uribe and several academic luminaries that took place on Wednesday at Jorge Tadeo Lozano University. Via Semana:
I’m impressed that Uribe would subject himself to such a public dressing-down. Ten points for academia. Most noteworthy and generally creepy is Uribe’s insistence that there exists such a thing as an “estado de opinión” (loosely translated “rule of public opinion”). More on that later.
There was some downtime in Honduras’ National Congress (CN) the other day, so MP Nora de Melgar got to thinking about how small the CN’s facilities were for her and her 127 fellow MPs. She spoke up:
In a verbal motion, she proposed to the CN chair that they begin studying the possibility of moving the National Congress building to a piece of state land in the Támara Valley, stituated between the National Penitentiary and the Santa Rosita psychiatric hospital.
I highly recommend that all legislatures of the world consider something similar, as it significantly shortens everyone’s morning commute. In the end, however, the Hondurans decided to just build a footbridge connecting their headquarters with the Central Bank, which is more what you would expect from Congress.
Remember that Mexican lawmaker who made horribly racist comments about Haitians because he was forced to “donate” part of his government salary to the relief effort? Turns out, he offended some people, and now his party has kicked him out.
Also, a Haitian with a fine understanding of public relations disasters dropped by “El Chunko’s” office to pay him back the $2,400 of his salary that had been sent to Haiti.
I’m guessing the money was accepted with mixed feelings.
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe’s aspirations to trash constitutional term limits and win a third consecutive term in office suffered a setback in the Supreme Constitutional Court yesterday. The judge in charge of preliminary analysis recommended that the court rule against holding a national referendum to eliminate term limits.
La Silla Vacíareports that the judge – Humberto Sierra Porto – made his recommendation strictly on procedural grounds, not on the merits, though this is impossible to verify since the document has not been made public. La Silla Vacía says the recommendation is not binding, but according to Semana a majority of the court would have to vote against it to change it. In any case, the full court has 60 days to issue a final ruling, though it has indicated that it will not take the full 60 days.
Uribe is up against the calender. The presidential elections are scheduled for May 30, and his party has yet to put forward a candidate. One assumes they’re crossing their fingers hoping for a favorable ruling from the Constitutional Court, but even if the Constitutional Court expedites its ruling, it’s not clear there would be enough time to hold a referendum before the elections.
Semana says the referendum is basically Uribe’s last chance for a third consecutive term, since by this point a constitutional amendment and a majority null vote are out of the question. Besides that, his party still has to put up a candidate, and the longer they wait, the more difficult it will be to win on May 30.
Cuba would not top anyone’s list of go-to countries in matters of successful and efficient industrialization. So why is Venezuela enlisting the help of Cuba’s technology minister, Ramiro Valdés, as an energy consultant? Supposedly, this representative of the impoverished, oppressive nation is going to help Venezuela with its roving power outages.
But think about it: What is Cuba really good at? From the BBC:
Communications expert Antonio Pasqualli pointed out the role that Valdés has played in controlling communication and the Internet.
…
“Two years ago, this man stated before Congress that ‘the Internet is an invention of the West for the extermination of humanity,’” the expert said, recalling the restrictions to Internet access that reign in Cuba.
According to a source in Semana, he’s also one of the founders of Cuba’s G2 domestic spy agency. Curious that Chávez would hire a guy like this just a few days after calling Twitter “an instrument of terrorism.”
UPDATE:More on Valdés: “To sum up, a military officer, with a talent for repression and censorship, is to advise the Venezuelan government on electricity. Let there be light.”
The Nation has a long, wonky, wonderful article on Mexican maize cultivation, the effects of NAFTA, and the dangers of genetically-modified seeds. Author Peter Canby backs up his excellent writing with piles and piles of meticulous research. Not to be missed. [link, via SM] (Image from Joel Penner.)
Cuban dissident Guillermo Farinas ended his hunger strike yesterday after 134 days. Farinas decided to end his strike after the Cuban government said it would release political prisoners rounded up in the "Black Spring" crackdown of 2003. Get well soon. [link]
The Uruguayan selection, which has made it to the quarter finals of the World Cup, just received a shipment of half a ton of fine cuts of beef for the mother of all asados in preparation for a contest against Ghana on Friday: "450 kilos of lomo, 200 of entrecot, 75 of vacío, 75 of colita de cuadril, 150 of ojo de bife and 50 kg of picaña." [link]
Hitmen have assassinated the PRI candidate for governor of Tamaulipas State, Rodolfo Torre Cantú. Torre was gunned down along with six others at about 10:30 this morning on a highway on the way to a campaign event. Drug mafias are assumed to be responsible. [link]
From the days when coups were something of a regional sport, new documents detail a famous British ballerina's role in a plot to topple the government of Panama. The plan was to use her yacht to gather men and arms, then "land somewhere and collect in the hills." It didn't work. [link]
Mexico's Attorney General's Office has posted on its web site irrefutable evidence that gold-plated AR-15s and diamond-studded pistol grips are not nearly as cool-looking as they sound. The deadly knick-knack collection is said to belong to Valencia Cartel leader El Lobo. [link]
Two Brazilian ranchers were sentenced to 30 years in prison apiece for ordering the killing of an environmentalist nun: "Prosecutors said the pair offered to pay a gunman $25,000 to kill the 73-year-old [Dorothy] Stang because she had prevented them from stealing a piece of land that the government had granted to a group of poor farmers." [link]
This video of a kidnapping and car chase in Mexico is notable mainly for the bad-assitude of the TV journalists who were on this like white on rice. Well done, gentlemen.
The Economist takes a peak at the Mockus phenomenon in Colombia: "His moustacheless beard gives him the air of a Baltic pastor... He is financing his campaign with a bank overdraft. His supporters rely on Facebook and make their own posters; street vendors sell unofficial campaign T-shirts." [link]
Some cruise lines will cease traveling to Antarctica after this cruise season, as a ban on the use and carriage of heavy fuel oil goes into effect next year. The ban came after a 2007 incident when a Gap Adventures ship got punctured by ice and sank, causing a mess. [link]
The Nation has a long, wonky, wonderful article on Mexican maize cultivation, the effects of NAFTA, and the dangers of genetically-modified seeds. Author Peter Canby backs up his excellent writing with piles and piles of meticulous research. Not to be missed. [
Hitmen have assassinated the PRI candidate for governor of Tamaulipas State, Rodolfo Torre Cantú. Torre was gunned down along with six others at about 10:30 this morning on a highway on the way to a campaign event. Drug mafias are assumed to be responsible. [
“Expropriate it”
An clip from Chávez’ weekend talk show “Alo Presidente” show’s Chávez ordering the expropriation of businesses around Plaza Bolívar in Caracas:
Apparently he would like to turn the area into a “historic center.” This afternoon, shortly after the clip was broadcast, the mayor of Caracas declared that the buildings were of “public use,” which is apparently enough to take them over. No word yet on whether the businesses will have a shot at due process.
Earlier this year, Reuters published a nice list of Venezuela’s state takeovers under Chávez. All this might go some ways toward explaining why, despite strict foreign exchange controls, $93 billion in capital has fled the country since 2005.