Archives for August 2017

August 31, 2017 By Fausta

Mexico: AMLO hates NAFTA

Ever-hopeful of the presidency Andrés Manuel López Obrador wants NAFTA negotiationd suspended until after next year’s election

Currently,

[Foreign Minister Luis] Videgaray told reporters that Mexico would leave the talks if the U.S. began formal proceedings to withdraw from Nafta. Mr. Trump has the authority to unilaterally withdraw from the deal by giving a six-month notice.

AMLO is not happy, and says that he would renegotiate any deal that harms Mexico’s interests if he wins the vote. What are the odds of his win?

Polls show Mr. López Obrador, a 63-year-old former mayor of Mexico City, is the early front-runner among possible candidates for next July’s presidential election. Although he lost two previous votes for president in 2006 and 2012 and is a divisive figure, he has gotten a boost from the country’s repeated corruption scandals, as well as a nationalist surge in response to Mr. Trump’s repeated criticism of Mexico. Mr. Trump has shocked Mexicans with his administration’s efforts to build a border wall, its crackdown on undocumented migration, as well as his threats to terminate Nafta.

AMLO has praised Fidel Castro as a “great figure of history”, and claims Castro’s human rights record has been misunderstood. Let’s hope he is defeated for a third time.

August 30, 2017 By Fausta

A call for sanity in the wake of #Harvey

It’s time for A call for sanity in the wake of Harvey.

While you’re at it, also please read Ace, Is America Now Officially Crazy?

August 29, 2017 By Fausta

#MelaniasShoes

At first I was exasperated, like Juliette,

Retweeted Stefan Molyneux (@StefanMolyneux):

North Korea fired a missile over Japan, Houston is underwater, free… https://t.co/1Ca0rJX0Xd

— baldilocks (@JulietteAkinyi) August 29, 2017

Later I decided to do a Public Service Announcement:

Melania wore Adidas,

<br />

August 29, 2017 By Fausta

Argentina: Did Iran poison Nisman?

The WSJ editorial board asks,
Nisman and the Iranians: Did the Islamic Republic poison an Argentine prosecutor? (emphasis added)

Monday that a new toxicology analysis on the body of the late Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman has discovered the drug ketamine, an anesthetic mostly used on animals. It is highly unlikely Nisman would have voluntarily ingested such a drug. He had been investigating Iran’s role in the 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish community center when he was found dead in his apartment with a gunshot wound to the head in January 2015.

“There is a mountain of evidence in the case that indicates that it is a homicide; this would be one more,” said Mr. Sáenz, who worked to get the case moved to federal court last year so he could take over the probe.

In 2006 Nisman indicted seven Iranians and one Lebanese-born member of Hezbollah for the bombing, which killed 85. At the time of his death Nisman was a day away from testifying before the Argentine Congress about his more recent findings. He alleged that then-President Cristina Kirchner and her foreign minister Héctor Timerman had made a deal with Tehran to bury the matter in return for Iranian oil and Iranian purchases of Argentine grain.

Read the whole article.

I’ve been posting on this story for years: read the files here.

August 29, 2017 By Fausta

Colombia: FARC’s listed assets fall short

The declared inventory included broomsticks, orange squeezers, mugs, talcum powder, dentistry equipment and industrial tools, but The FARC’s Riches: List of Assets Fails to Reveal Guerrillas’ Total Wealth.

InSight Crime reports, that, for instance,

Much of the real estate listed by the FARC, which amounts to around half of all its assets, lacks any official registration, “which frankly makes it useless and inadmissible” to the inventory, Martínez wrote. As the ownership of these properties cannot be legally identified, the Attorney General’s Office has stated that “for now, none of the FARC’s real estate is immune to being seized” by authorities.

In the inventory, the FARC also “accepted as [their] own” any assets that state prosecutors may have uncovered in their investigations into the rebel group, without actually identifying these themselves. Authorities have already started seizing FARC assets worth nearly $580 million dollars, according to Martínez’s letter.

The term smoke screen comes to mind.

Looks like the Colombian authorities could use several independent forensic accountants: Estimates published by The Economist in 2016 suggested that the FARC’s total assets could surpass $11 billion, but the list only declared some $332 million (Datawrapper version of the summarized inventory here).

If you go by the inventory, the FARC has a measly US$450,000 cash on hand.

Walter White would put them to shame.

The FARC will be laughing all the way to the bank while the Colombian government spends $39+ billion pesos (US$13+ million) to finance the FARC’s political party.

Estado destinará más de $39 mil millones para financiar el partido político de Farc https://t.co/iwYdCP5Rbx via @BluRadioCo

— MaryAnastasiaO'Grady (@MaryAnastasiaOG) August 24, 2017

But don’t worry; Santos gets to keep his Nobel Prize.

Cross-posted at WoW! Magazine.

August 28, 2017 By Fausta

Venezuela: Maduro cancels Dudamel’s tour

The Venezuelan dictator cancelled the National Youth Orchestra tour after conductor Dudamel spoke against the murder of one of its members, and against the new Constituent Assembly:

US tour of Gustavo de Dudamel’s Venezuelan youth orchestra canceled. President Nicolás Maduro punishes famed music director for “sticking his nose into politics”

Here come the consequences. Youth orchestra conductor Gustavo de Dudamel’s questioning of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro has cost him a tour. When Dudamel spoke out against the murder of 17-year-old Armando Cañizales, a violinist in the orchestra, he knew his words would burn deep. Cañizales was shot dead during a revolt against the president. But the matter did not end there.

Dudamel went even further, by publishing an article in EL PAÍS further critiquing the country’s controversial new Constituent Assembly, a body Maduro says will help bring peace to the crisis-hit country but which many believe is a veiled attempt by the leader to cling to power at all costs.

Contrary to the propaganda meme of the youth orchestra system being created by dictator Hugo Chávez, El País points out that

Venezuelan musician, educator and polymath José Antonio Abreu, now ill and retired from public life, created the system more than 40 years ago.

Dudamel said the cancellation, which came just days after President Nicolás Maduro publicly criticised him, was “heartbreaking”.

Dudamel’s schedule as director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic is unaffected.

August 27, 2017 By Fausta

Sunday palate cleanser: La Fanciulla del West

La Fanciulla del West,

Nina Stemme – Minnie
Tomasz Konieczny – Sheriff Jack Rance
Jonas Kaufmann – Dick Johnson (Ramerrez)
Norbert Ernst – Nick
Paolo Rumetz – Ashby
Boaz Daniel – Sonora
Michael Roider – Trin
Hans Peter Kammerer – Sid
Tae-Joong Yang – Bello
Peter Jelosits – Harry
Carlos Osuna – Joe
Clemens Unterreiner – Happy
Il Hong – Larkens
Jongmin Park – Billy Jackrabbit
Juliette Mars – Wowkle
Alessio Arduini – Jake Wallace
Alessio Arduini – José Castro
Wolfram Igor Derntl – Postillion