Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

Archives for 2015

December 24, 2015 By Fausta

Cuba: “Normalization,” the gift that keeps on giving

Obama’s Cuba policy makes life worse for Cubans (h/t Babalu),

Cuba remains the only dictatorship in the Americas, as repressive and hostile to human rights as ever. More repressive, in fact: Over the past 12 months, the government’s harassment of dissidents and democracy activists has ballooned. In November, according to Amnesty International, there were nearly 1,500 political arrests or arbitrary detentions of peaceful human-rights protesters. That was the highest monthly tally in years, more than double the average of 700 political detentions per month recorded in 2014.

On Dec. 10 — International Human Rights Day — Cuban security police arrested between 150 and 200 dissidents, in many cases beating the prisoners they seized. As is usually the case, those attacked by the regime’s goons included members of the respected Ladies in White, an organization of wives, mothers, and sisters of jailed dissidents. The women, dressed in white, attend Mass each week, then walk silently through the streets to protest the government’s lawlessness and brutality. Even the United Nations, which frequently turns a blind eye to the depredations of its member-states, condemned the Cuban government’s “extraordinary disdain” for civil norms, and deplored the “many hundreds” of warrantless arrests in recent weeks.

But from the Obama administration there has been no such condemnation. One might have thought that the White House would make it a priority to give moral support and heightened recognition to the Cubans who most embody the “commitment to liberty and democracy” that the president has invoked. But concern for Cuba’s courageous democrats has plainly not been a priority. Particularly disgraceful was Secretary of State John Kerry’s refusal to invite any dissidents or human-rights advocates to the flag-raising ceremony at the US embassy in August. To exclude them, as The Washington Post observed, was a dishonorable gesture of appeasement to the hemisphere’s nastiest regime — “a sorry tip of the tat to what the Castros so vividly stand for: diktat, statism, control, and rule by fear.”

For all the president’s talk about using engagement and trade to promote the cause of liberty and civil rights in Cuba, his policy of détente has been wholly one-sided. In aninterview with Yahoo! News this month, he was asked what concessions Havana has made over the past year. He couldn’t think of any.

But hey! Supporters of “normalization” justify it because “what we were doing before wasn’t working.”

It wasn’t working because the Communist regime won’t. Instead, it is asking for more.



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Filed Under: Barack Obama, Christmas, Communism Tagged With: Fausta' blog

December 23, 2015 By Fausta

Brazil: All this, and Zika virus, too

The country that imported 4,000 cuban medics two years ago faces another health crisis:

Spreading Virus Adds to Brazil’s Woes. Some health officials link outbreak of mosquito-borne pathogen to rising instances of infant deaths from rare disease

With its introduction into Brazil and other countries in the Americas, including Colombia, El Salvador and Mexico, Zika is following a pattern similar to other mosquito-borne viruses that are riding speedily to new parts of the world.

The virus is carried by the Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus species, the same mosquitoes that transmit dengue and a similar disease, chikungunya. Those mosquitoes populate the southern U.S., Caribbean, Central and South America, Dr. Powers said.

The size of the Brazilian outbreak may be the reason health authorities are finding unusual neurological symptoms and disorders for the first time, she said.

Another reason may be a mutation in the virus, she said, adding that scientists are studying genetic sequences to look at whether changes have occurred that could lead to these disorders.
. . .
The Zika virus first surfaced in Africa in the late 1940s, and has hopscotched to Southeast Asia, the Western Pacific and more recently to Latin America. Exactly how it reached Brazil, why it is spreading so fast and how it became such a threat to developing fetuses isn’t yet understood. Brazilian health officials don’t know the exact number of adults infected with the Zika virus because the vast majority of them don’t receive hospital treatment

Brazil is scheduled to host the 2016 Olympics. Now may be a good time to reconsider DDT.

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Filed Under: Brazil, health, health care Tagged With: DDT, Fausta's blog, Zika virus

December 23, 2015 By Fausta

No, Hillary, you most definitely are #NotMyAbuela

It’s Christmas week, so Hillary’s Hispandering,


7 things Hillary Clinton has in common with your abuela.She isn’t afraid to talk about the importance of el respeto.

With all due R-E-S-P-E-C-T to my Puerto Rican grandmothers, No, Hillary, you most definitely are #NotMyAbuela

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Filed Under: Democrats, Hillary Clinton, politics Tagged With: Da Tech Guy Blog, Fausta's blog

December 22, 2015 By Fausta

Argentina: Former Argentine FM Admits Iran Behind Massive 1994 Terror Attack

Eamonn MacDonagh, reporting at The Tower:
In Secret Recordings, Former Argentine FM Admits Iran Behind Massive 1994 Terror Attack

Former Argentine Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman knew that Iran was responsible for the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires even as he negotiated with the regime in Tehran, secretly-recorded telephone conversations released on Friday reveal.
. . .
There may be others with secrets to reveal, now that they can do so without harassment from Fernández de Kirchner’s government. The mother of Alberto Nisman, the late federal prosecutor investigating the AMIA bombing, told a journalist in recent days that she has a digital copy of “all” of her son’s formal complaint against Timerman and Fernández de Kirchner over their deal with Iran, along with “all” the evidence he collected to support it.

It’s not clear whether Nisman, who was found dead in January 2015 hours before he was to present his complaint, would have had access to the recordings. As Scaliter pointed out in his conversation with Timerman, Nisman was working for the government and not AMIA, and in any case had access to other sources of information about the negotiations with Iran.

The revelation of these recordings confirms Nisman’s thesis that the Memorandum was a sham, designed to protect those guilty of the AMIA Massacre. The Argentine government, despite knowing that Iran’s responsibility was beyond doubt, agreed to let the murderers “investigate” themselves through an Orwellian “Truth Commission,” and led Iran to believe that simply signing the Memorandum would lead to Interpol dropping the arrest warrants against its citizens, which seems to have been Tehran’s initial if not principal motivation in negotiating the pact. As a result, trade relations between the two countries would flourish, allowing enormous sums to be made by Argentine officials in state-body-to-state-body deals free from market pressures or scrutiny, the preferredkirchnerista business model. Elsewhere on the recordings, Timerman speaks of the negotiations being a “great opportunity for Argentina.” It’s not difficult to imagine what kind of opportunity he had in mind and which Argentines he thought might benefit.

Every word spoken by the former Argentine government and its supporters in defense of the Memorandum has now been proven to be a lie – not that there was ever much doubt about that.

Read the whole thing.

RELATED:
Elsewhere, Iran Nuclear Deal Restricts U.S. More Than Congress Knew

U.S. officials confirmed over the weekend that Secretary of State John Kerry sent his Iranian counterpart, Javad Zarif, a letter promising to use executive powers to waive the new restrictions on those who have visited Iran but are citizens of countries in the Visa Waiver Program. These officials also told us that they have told Iranian diplomats that, because they are not specific to Iran, the new visa waiver provisions do not violate the detailed sequence of steps Iran and other countries committed to taking as part of the agreement. Even so, the State Department is promising to sidestep the new rule.

US could start lifting Iran sanctions in January under nuclear deal

What could possibly go wrong?

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Filed Under: Argentina, Iran, terrorism, terrorism. Latin America Tagged With: Alberto Nisman, AMIA, Fausta' blog

December 22, 2015 By Fausta

“Venezuela has become so corrupt that not even Russians are putting up with it.”

Alek Boyd, writing at Tax Justice Network,

explores what happens when oil, offshore financial secrecy and populist politics combine to corrupt the hopes of an entire nation.

in Venezuela’s rampant corruption.

When the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published leaked HSBC data provided by Hervé Falciani in February this year, something rather odd became public: Venezuela had the third largestamount of money ($14.8B) held in HSBC accounts.

When Banca Privada D’Andorra (BPA) was singled out, in March this year, by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) as “a foreign financial institution of primary money laundering concern” Venezuela popped again: FinCEN claims “BPA processed approximately $2 billion in transactions” in relation to a money laundering scheme in which Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) participated.

When the FIFA corruption scandal broke in May, former president of Venezuelan Football Federation, Rafael Esquivel, was among the arrested.

Also in May, the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. authorities were:

“investigating several high-ranking Venezuelan officials, including the president of the country’s congress (Diosdado Cabello), on suspicion that they have turned the country into aglobal hub for cocaine trafficking and money laundering”.

More recently, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration arrested, during a sting operation in Haiti, Efrain Antonio Campo Flores and Franqui Francisco Flores de Freitas for “conspiring to import cocaine into the United States.” In case the names fail to ring bells, these are a nephew, and a godson, of Venezuela’s current First Lady, Cilia Flores.

Then, Reuters informed that U.S. authorities were “preparing to unveil drug trafficking chargesagainst the head of Venezuela’s National Guard…” adding “Nestor Reverol, the former head of Venezuela’s anti-narcotics agency and a long-time ally of late socialist leader Hugo Chavez, is named in a sealed indictment pending in federal court in Brooklyn, New York”.

The above may come as a surprise to some. In the last few years, Venezuela increased media profile had been largely focused on Hugo Chavez’s charisma and his poverty alleviation programs. Alas the gargantuan corruption that his administration brought about, of an unprecedented scale even in a country as corrupt as ours, is hardly played in the world’s media.

Read the whole thing.

RELATED:
Contractor Arrested in U.S. Amid Probe of Venezuelan Oil Giant. Roberto Rincón and another businessman have been charged with violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act



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Filed Under: Communism, corruption, Venezuela Tagged With: Abraham Jose Shiera Bastidas, Alek Boyd, Fausta' blog, PDVSA, Roberto Rincon

December 21, 2015 By Fausta

Colombia: the Miss Universe SNAFU

I don’t watch beauty pageants, but the PowerLine guys do:

Tonight’s Miss Universe pageant concluded with a fiasco, as the announcer apparently misunderstood the final rankings and announced Miss Colombia, Ariadna Gutierrez Arévalo, as the winner. Miss Colombia was crowned, presented with flowers and paraded around the stage for a couple of minutes when, to the astonishment of all, the announcer returned and said that he had made a mistake: the real winner was Miss Philippines, Pia Wurtzbach. They mercifully pulled the plug on the broadcast a few moments later. I don’t think the television audience saw the crown lifted from Miss Colombia’s head.

Here's video of Steve Harvey imitating an NFL ref & totally blowing the call for the Miss Universe Pageant. https://t.co/8fyZ3Eq3Jw

— Jimmy Traina (@JimmyTraina) December 21, 2015

Situation Normal: All Fouled Up,

Beauty contests are a very big deal in LatAm. El Espectador has an entire section on it, and video,

More, way much more, at Twitchy.

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Filed Under: Colombia, entertainment Tagged With: Fausta's blog, Miss Universe

December 21, 2015 By Fausta

Cuba: What the Communist regime is after

Mary O’Grady, in her article, Cuba One Year After Obama’s Olive Branch. Thousands of political arrests, migrants flee, and Russia wants in. Sound familiar?, gets to the core of what the regime is after,

Mr. Obama agrees with Raúl that the U.S. should lift the embargo. But Cuba can already buy food and medicine from the U.S. and, practically speaking, there are few limits on American travel, though such travel is disguised as “cultural exchange.” What’s left of the embargo is a ban on access to bank credit, and legal claims for almost $8 billion in property stolen by the revolution.

The Castros have a solution to the latter. They claim the embargo cost Cuba over $100 billion since 1959, so the U.S. actually owes them.

That’s laughable. What’s not so funny is Cuba’s credit score. Even after the Russian write-down, Havana is still in arrears to the rest of the world—ex-U.S.—on some $85 billion of debt. Countries are not lining up to lend more. The Castros need a new mark. That’s where Mr. Obama comes in.

Cuba’s economy, heavily dependent on Venezuelan oil and China aid, is unable to support the nation. According to Mr. de Salas-del Valle, “the assumption that economic engagement with the Castro regime will spare the U.S. an immigration crisis across the Florida Straits appears to be the underlying if unstated motivation for the White House’s unprecedented courtship of Raúl Castro.” If so, it’s a gross miscalculation. The policy has emboldened the dictator.

$5 says Obama will give them that, and Gitmo, too.

After all, who’s going to stop him? Congress?

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Filed Under: Barack Obama, Communism, Cuba Tagged With: embargo, Fausta' blog

December 21, 2015 By Fausta

The Christmas week Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean

Merry Christmas to all visitors! Here’s the Carnival,

ARGENTINA
Macri’s Promising Start in Argentina. The new president lifts capital controls and moves to stabilize the peso.

Argentina Needs to Leave Tradition Behind

BOLIVIA
Disappearance of Bolivia’s 2nd Largest Lake Declared a Natural Disaster

BRAZIL
Scary signal: Brazil’s worrying change of finance ministers. Joaquim Levy’s resignation is reason for alarm. Calling Capt. Louis Renault,

That change is likely to make a terrible situation worse. It suggests that Mr Levy lost an argument within the government about whether austerity is the right cure for Brazil’s sickly economy, and that he lost it not because his economic remedy was wrong but because it was politically unpalatable.

Market Shudders As Brazil Risks “Succumbing To Fiscal Populism” With New FinMin

CARIBBEAN
Canada’s War on Drugs in the Caribbean Had a Very Good Year

CHILE
Chile and the Southeast Pacific. The South American country has a growing presence in the Asia-Pacific.

COLOMBIA
UAE sending Colombian mercenaries to Yemen: sources

COSTA RICA
Switzerland extradites Costa Rica ex-football chief to US

Mr Li is one of seven officials with Fifa, world football’s governing body, who were arrested in Zurich in May, amid a huge corruption investigation.

CUBA
Must-Watch: What Happens to Cuban ‘Entrepreneurs’ Who Aren’t Subservient

Cuba, U.S. reach agreement to resume direct passenger flights. The accord is a breakthrough, but it would be a few months before Americans could book flights.

ECUADOR
Chevron: surviving in the new world of low oil prices and nuisance law suits

Ecuador Makes History With $650 Million Payment to Bondholders

IMMIGRATION
Open-borders money backs Marco Rubio

LATIN AMERICA
Iran Taking Over Latin America

JAMAICA
The quest for leadership in Jamaica

MEXICO
Mexican Judges Release 9 Cops Convicted of Working with Los Zetas Cartel

U.S. Consulate Warns Americans Traveling to Mexico During Holidays

New traffic laws in the DF,

PANAMA
Wider Panama Canal has Wilmington port dreaming big, But some question port’s plans to attract larger vessels

PERU
Cambridge University graduate killed in psychedelic ceremony in Peruvian Amazon. Unais Gomes, a 26-year-old high-flying London financier, was killed by a friend during ayahuasca ceremony near the jungle city of Iquitos

PUERTO RICO
Inside the Billion-Dollar Battle for Puerto Rico’s Future

Some warn that Puerto Rico could be a test case for the rest of the country, paving the way for troubled states like Illinois to escape unsustainable debts.

Stephen J. Spencer, a restructuring expert representing Puerto Rico bondholders including some hedge funds, said letting the government renege on agreements with hedge funds and other investors would set a dangerous precedent, undermining the integrity of the bond market.

“It’s really a wealth transfer from the bondholders to the municipalities,” Mr. Spencer said.

The bondholders include large numbers of retirees.

VENEZUELA
Roberto Rincon arrested in Houston for money laundering

Roberto Rincón trades his little Woodlands house for a jail cell. Roberto Rincón, the enchufado of Tradequip and Ovarb Industrial fame, is spending tonight in a Houston-area federal jail cell awaiting arrainment [sic] on money laundering charges.



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Filed Under: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Carnival of Latin America, Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, immigration, Iran, Jamaica, Latin America, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico, Venezuela Tagged With: Capt. Louis Renault, Fausta' blog, FIFA (International Association of Federation Football), Lake Poopo, Mauricio Macri, Roberto Rincon, Steven Donziger, Zetas

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