Davideveryone say hello to mr morales. the new socialist president of bolivia.
who cares? if you live under a rock, he just seized militarily control of natural gas resources in his country. say goodbye to the free market in bolivia. he has even made hints that he is going to seize all privately owned land in the country.
this bodes ill for peace in the region. while a large chunk of the business there to extract and sell natural gas worldwide was owned by exxon, france and great britain, almost a third of recent investment in bolivia has been by brasil.
brasil shares a border with bolivia and may take issue to their investment being seized. something near a billion bucks out of three was placed into the economic infrastructure of bolivia by brasil. now it’s gone.
all part of the Great Bolivarian Revolution being backed by Gus’ old pal Hugo Chavez (whose mentor is Fidel Castro). Chavez has made it his goal to export the Bolivarian Revolution throughout the continent, one of the reasons he bankrolls terorist “revolutionaries” in Columbia. Just a matter of time, assuming Morales gets no real opposition from the rest of the world, before Hugo follows his lead.
I find it interesting that Morales has been talking about this since his election on 18 December. Morales in January promised that foreign companies will be able to recover their investments and make a profit in Bolivia, which undoubtedly is making the foreign companies feel better about the move. How well he hues to his promises remains to be seen.
Bolivia has the 2nd largest reserves of natural gas in South America, and Brazil gets about half of its gas, 24 million cubic meters a day, from Bolivia, furnishing fuel to South America’s biggest industrial center, Sao Paulo. However, the January announcement (in light of Morales’ promises) by Petrobras, Brazil’s state-controlled oil company, was merely to increase offshore exploration to compensate. In other words, no military solution is on the horizon.
Who the hell are you to judge Evo Morales and the future of Bolivia? What do you know about Socialism to prejudge as something detrimental for Bolivia’s people? Free market capitalism has subjected Bolivians to abject poverty and exploitation where foreign companies can come in and loot our resources by bribing politicians into purchasing it for next-to-nothing while Bolivian natives have nothing…it is Bolivia’s natural gas, it should not belong to a private conglomerate. Bolivians have tried free market capitalism and it hasn’t worked for them, as you can see…it is the poorest country in the western hemisphere.
Countrie that can’t make a go of free markets and capitalistic societies love to hide behind Socialism as the panacea for the ills of the “people”. The problem with how this all plays out is this: A despot (Morales or Chavez) takes control of the government to “rescue” the country from the evils of capitalism. The only problem is that he is just another despot. Just like the one that he took over from… This is a never ending circle jerk and who is in the middle? The peones.
It took the USA two hundred years to reach the dominant position that it is in now. The other “successful” nations of South America have made great strides towards economic independence but only after loosing the bands of Socialism. This shows that economic growth and power does not happen overnight and that there is a period of discomfort for the populace. To say that free markets and capitalism engender corruption and greed is to deny the history of the Warsaw Pact nations, Communist/Socialist China, Socialist Vietnam, and North Korea. Of all the above named, only North Korea is still a shit hole. Eastern Europe, China and Vietnam all began to prosper with the introduction of free markets, regardless of the type of government.
Does that mean that capitalism is perfect? Far from it. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, capitalism is the worst economic system on the face of the earth except for all the alternatives. To give the people any chance at bettering their lives, they need to have opportunities. This can not come under socialism or communism.
Yup said: “Brazil gets about half of its gas, 24 million cubic meters a day, from Bolivia, furnishing fuel to South America’s biggest industrial center, Sao Paulo.”
Oh, wait, it was actually a WaPo story where those words originated:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/11/AR2006011102212.html
Yup, didn’t your junior high school social studies teacher show you how not to plagarize? You’re no better than Evo Morales!
Why is it none of you are discussing the effects on America? Yet I bet you are the first ones to bitch at the pump. You’d rather lobby a personal attack than discuss what the long-term affects on us Americans. Sweet Mercy.
Madame B,
What can you tell us about the long-term effects on America? I haven’t seen anybody (who really knows what they’re talking about) freaking out about it. Do you know something we don’t know? US interests there are tiny.
I’d be willing to bet that the ones bitching most and first about gas prices are those with big-ass SUV’s. We liberal weenies are more likely to be driving more efficient vehicles to begin with.
“Lobby” a personal attack?! Did you mean “lob”?
Gus, you act like the consummate academic here. Was I filing some sort of report, either for work or school? Nope, I was cutting and pasting for a reply to Mlah’s post. You require proper citations for such things? Do you have a real life, or is academia your life? I keep wondering whether you truly are that lame-o so-called academician Juan Cole when you act like this.
Oh, I get it. You’re equating my use of an idea with Morales’ seizure of physical property (although we’ll see whether expropriation is the name of his game within the next few months). Very smart of you to work in the global IP debate to this discussion. So that means you are all for the legal punishment of P2P file sharers, right?
And as for not seeing anybody freaking out about the Bolivian Bolivarians, then you should go outside your Brokeback-watching, fab hairstyle wearing metrosexual crowd of middle-aged socialist friends for sources of information. Just got back from London, where there is plenty of worry about it. You can even read some of their angst in the Financial Times. Go ahead, expand your horizons, boy.
“US interests there are tiny.” Hmmmm. Tell me, wise 40-something fat white male-of-questionable-sexuality sage of the Left, what ARE our interests there? Can you give me a concise, yet cogent, explanation of the Bolivarian Revolution and its spread throughout Latin America, including social and economic vectors, and the impact of Morales’ declaration on said? Please, enlighten us all. Oh, please do refrain from citing Wikipedia, for we academics all know it is not a fitting source. Do go on about it, old boy.
Yuppity Pup,
I wasn’t able to find any editorializing in FT about Bolivia’s move, only a passel of factual news articles. Must we read your mind about this, or will you link to whatever it was that you read?
I did find this which explains that the earlier contracts signed were not done according to their constitution, which doesn’t seem to be in dispute:
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/0b5d64fa-dadb-11da-aa09-0000779e2340.html
So Morales’s move is not really an out-of-the-blue act of Revolution but rather a return to the constitutional status quo. We are still in favor of Democracy and the Rule of Law, yes?
Why did you bother plagarizing, Yup? I mean, why not just link? I don’t give a rat’s bumbum about IP/P2P stuff, I just wanted everyone to know what a weasel you were. The “expropriation” connection was a little joke, haha. Many of your posts lately have smelled suspiciously smarter than your older ones. I would go thru them all to find their real sources if I truly didn’t have a life, that could be fun.
My real thought, however, was that you didn’t want to legitimize the WaPo as a recognized credible source here on Mlah’s site, because then I could source any of my arguments to it, too, and we don’t want that! Better to keep bitching about WikiPedia, eh? So, Mlah, is the WaPo in good standing here, or what?
I’ve asked this before and not received an answer: What’s wrong with Juan Cole, pray tell? Precisely what makes him only a “so-called” academic? Have you ever even read any of his scholarship? I didn’t think so. Fuck off.