Economies in Latin America Race Ahead

Under this jolly headline on June 30, 2010, the New York Times deployed a joyful panaorama of “economic” news from Latin America.

While the United States and Europe fret over huge deficits and threats to a fragile recovery, this region has a surprise in store. Latin America, beset in the past by debt defaults, currency devaluations and the need for bailouts from rich countries, is experiencing robust economic growth that is the envy of its northern counterparts.

Robust economic growth! Hurrah!

The World Bank forecasts that the region’s economy will grow 4.5 percent this year.

Hurrah! Brazil up 9 percent! Mexico up 5 percent! Peru up 9.3 percent!

The top political story today at the New York Times was adorned with a promising headline…

“Harsh Words for G.O.P. From Obama”

Okay! Tell it like it is, Barry! Sock it to those torture-pigs and perverts!

Liars! Cowards! Whores!

Satanic ministers of violence and greed!

What is their foreign policy?

Violence!

What is their domestic policy?

Greed!

Who is their master?

Satan!

But instead of an accurate identification of “conservatism” with the Satanic agenda of greed and violence…

And a radical re-alignment of the Democratic Party in accord with the defining Christian principles of peace and charity…

What kind of “harsh words” did Barack Obama apply the the Republicans?

“I just want everyone to remember – we’ve tried the other side’s theories,” he said at a town-hall-style meeting. “We know what their ideas are. We know where they led us. So now we’ve got a choice: We can return to what we know did not work, or we can build a stronger future. We can go backwards or we can go forward. And I don’t know about you, but I want to move forward in this country.”

“I don’t know about you, but I want to move forward in this country.”

You can’t argue with that!

 Zimbabwe

Rotting food scraps picked out of the dirt and the bins of the backstreets of Harare are piled together in a slimy heap on the ground with torn cardboard as a serving plate. Elias, 15, squats and pushes both hands into the pile, scooping out a chunk of something pink. He gnaws on it, then shouts: “Dinner! Come and eat.”

At the Makumbi children’s home, half an hour’s drive from the city, Sister Alois is upset to report she has had to turn away three abandoned babies brought in by social workers in the last week. “More and more children abandoned, it’s not the African way. There are so many now. They are being left in the bush, some are eaten by the ants.”

Niger

“When you walk through the markets, you can see that there is food here. The problem is that the ability to buy it has disappeared. People here depend on livestock to support themselves, but animals are being killed on the edge of exhaustion, and that means they are being sold for far less money. And on top of that, the cost of food basics has risen,” explained Gluck.

“Yesterday I saw women sifting through gravel at the side of the road, trying to find some grains that may have been blown from aid trucks.”

What a beautiful headline in the Guardian!

Afghanistan withdrawal before 2015, says David Cameron

David Cameron yesterday gave the first clear indication of the timing for a full withdrawal of British soldiers from Afghanistan, saying that he wanted troops home within five years.

During the election campaign, he said he wanted to see UK troops start to come home by 2015. But this was the first time as prime minister that he has indicated a timetable for withdrawal.

Obama has committed himself to a review of the US counter-insurgency strategy next year.

Okay, there’s some good news for you! The Prime Minister of England “wants” his troops out of Afghanistan before 2015…

…only 14 years after they invaded that God-forsaken wasteland.

And for any of you beyond-the-fringe leftist radicals who doubt that Barack Obama is capable of making a real commitment to anything…

How about that commitment to… review our counter-insurgency strategy next year?

Pound that into your pointy little negativism, you pin-heads!

And meanwhile, in Afghanistan…

Only nine out of Afghanistan’s 364 districts are considered safe, with the rest under some degree of security threat, Mohammad Munir Mangal, the Acting Interior Minister said on Wednesday.

Nine safe districts after almost nine years of military occupation!

At that rate it would take another 355 years to pacify the other 355 districts of Afghanistan, and David Cameron’s goal of withdrawing by 2015 would have to be pushed back to 2365!

 This week the President of the United States watched cluelessly while what was already the worst environmental disaster in American history somehow got even worse, winked while a Democratic Congress refused to extend unemployment benefits for millions of desperate citizens, and fired his battlefield commander because of… opinions which the general’s assistants expressed in a bar.

It gets worse.

As the Senate scrambles to scale back a $140-billion recession relief bill, the poor, the elderly and the unemployed are bearing the brunt of the squeeze. But NASCAR track developers, movie producers and other special interests are likely to escape unscathed.

In the hunt for ways to cut costs, neither party has proposed curbing the panoply of narrow tax preferences, which Congress has routinely extended each year.

Instead, Senate leaders have proposed a $25 cut in weekly unemployment benefits; temporarily allowed a 21% cut in Medicare fees for doctors; and are planning to withhold or scale back $24 billion in payments many states expected to help pay for Medicaid for the poor.

Tax-breaks for NASCAR developers!

Cuts in Medicaid for the poor!

You gotta love those Democrats!

US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates delivered a very optimistic report about Afghanistan to Congress last Wednesday, June 16.

“I think we are regaining the initiative; I think we are making headway.”

But on Saturday a different assessment was published by the United Nations.

Violence in Afghanistan has continued to increase in recent months, as has the use of improvised explosive devices and suicide attacks, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a new report.

And “anti-government” violence isn’t just more intense, it’s also better organized.

There are also an average of two more complex suicide attacks per month — bigger operations involving more assailants — double the average for 2009, the report said.

“The shift to more complex suicide attacks demonstrates a growing capability of the local terrorist networks linked to al Qaeda,” it said.

Meanwhile “collateral damage” continues to make blood enemies for the United States and its puppet-government in Kabul.

Ten civilians, including at least five women and children, were killed in NATO airstrikes in Khost Province, the provincial police chief said Saturday.

But there’s always good news for somebody in the Global War on Terror!

The United States Embassy here said Saturday that the company once known as Blackwater Worldwide has been awarded a contract worth more than $120 million to protect new United States consulates in the Afghan cities of Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif, The Associated Press reported.

40 people were killed in an explosion at a wedding party June 9th, 2010, in the Afghan village of Nadahan. Both the Taliban and NATO immediately denied responsibility.

This story never made the headlines on my desktop RSS feeds of world news from Google or Reuters or the Guardian or the Washington Post or the New York Times, and after I finally noticed it on IPS and began looking for some background, my search results for “Nadahan” on Google also produced a surreal collection of hits for the Spanish phrase “nada han…” including “como nada han occurido.”

As if nothing had happened.

The blast hit in an area that is largely considered a Taliban haven, and village residents said they thought they were attacked in an air bombardment. Mohammad Rassool, a cousin of the groom, said helicopters were circling above the compound before the explosion.

From the Washington Post…

Beneath its commitment to soft-spoken diplomacy and beyond the combat zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Obama administration has significantly expanded a largely secret U.S. war against al-Qaeda and other radical groups, according to senior military and administration officials.

Special Operations forces have grown both in number and budget, and are deployed in 75 countries, compared with about 60 at the beginning of last year. In addition to units that have spent years in the Philippines and Colombia, teams are operating in Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the The Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.