South American Politics thread - Page 65

On December 17 2023 01:19 Sermokala wrote:
If the protesters are being paid privately it would be their libertarian right to continue. Free market forces are allowing for people to gain employment opportunities like libertarians always tell us is the ideal. Why is government regulation and intervention in the free market being celebrated by libertarians?

On December 17 2023 01:19 Sermokala wrote:
If the protesters are being paid privately it would be their libertarian right to continue. Free market forces are allowing for people to gain employment opportunities like libertarians always tell us is the ideal. Why is government regulation and intervention in the free market being celebrated by libertarians?

On December 18 2023 08:48 GoTuNk! wrote:


No, this is childish strawmanning of libertarian principles. You can't have a hit man market; likewise you can't pay people, or not pay them for that matter, to loot, block streets, burn stuff down and atack civilians and the police. The state exists to provide security and regulate violence, libetarianism is the idea that little beyond that should be done.

You can obviously disagree, but those loaded question are either in bad faith or really ignorant.

On December 18 2023 09:12 Sermokala wrote:

Why can't you pay people to do that? Libertarians are constantly yelling about smaller government and less intervention or regulations on the free market. shouldn't the police be private? Shouldn't the free market decide what is right? This is very clearly a case of government regulation and intervention. If the state exists to provide security and regulate violence than it can be easily corrupted to serve anti-market interests and the tyranny of the state.

On December 18 2023 21:10 GoTuNk! wrote:


Well it seems you are just fully ignorant, this is theory 101 and could easily be solved with a quick google search.
Anarchism = no state. What you are implying and defending here, your last sentence is a popular anarchist argument.
Libertarianism = state protects life, liberty (strictly as in don't steal or harm other people) and property, barely nothing else. In practice that means military (outside threats), police and a judicial system to resolve disputes.

On December 18 2023 21:33 Nebuchad wrote:


I reckon talking about theory to defend libertarianism is not the best move because libertarianism has an incoherent theory. It ignores that the world is organized in social hierarchies, and then it makes prescriptions about how government should work based on this. In the real world we are organized in social hierarchies, and as such the theory falls apart immediately.

If you don't do anything to counter a social hierarchy, and instead the only thing you focus on is fighting the people who try and oppose social hierarchies (by "protecting property" and "maintaining order"), social hierarchies will mechanically be reinforced, and rigid social hierarchies cause the vast majority of humans to experience less liberty, not more liberty.

This is why fascists who are cowardly often pretend to be libertarians: cause they understand that libertarianism is unserious, and will devolve into better conditions for the rise of fascism more or less fluidly if implemented.

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — Despite a boom in conservative populism in various parts of the world, Chileans closed an exhausting constitutional cycle by separating themselves from the extremes.

They voted Sunday to stick with the same constitution, a holdover from the dictatorship, that they had wanted to rewrite four years ago. The decision sent a clear message to the country’s politicians: get to work on the country’s most pressing collective needs within the existing legal framework.

Voters rejected a more conservative proposed constitution drafted by the right with 55.7% of the votes.

Barely a year earlier, 62% of Chilean voters had resoundingly rejected a proposed constitution from the other end of the ideological spectrum. Drafted by leftist sectors and supported by President Gabriel Boric, it was considered one of the most progressive constitutional initiatives in the world.

No one took to the streets to celebrate Sunday’s result. Chile will continue to be ruled by a constitution born of the military regime of dictator Augusto Pinochet, which has been reformed on some 70 occasions.

Analysts saw lost opportunities in which Chileans opted twice for drafting political agendas more so than a durable legal framework with room for diverse democratic options.

Marcelo Mella, a political science professor at the University of Santiago, said there were attempts to leave their own ideological mark and in the end everyone paid the price.

The first proposal “went too far, too fast on issues like plurinationality or unlimited right to abortion,” said Javier Couso, a Chilean constitutional scholar and professor at the University of Utrecht in Holland.

The second, on the other hand, went to the other extreme and opened the door to limiting abortion and intensifying free market policies, reducing the role of the state and its social policies. That would have been the opposite of what thousands of demonstrators demanded in 2019, launching the extended exercise to come up with a new constitution.

Couso said one lesson was that politicians tried to exacerbate a polarization that didn’t really exist among the people, who voted for moderation.

So Chile keeps a constitution from the dictatorship that is “legally valid, but repudiated by the citizenry,” Couso said, adding that the country could try again some day —if there is the necessary political maturity and leadership.

But that does not appear near at this moment.

As soon as the results were known, Boric said he would take up again his proposals on pension reform and laws to redistribute wealth, which have been stalled in Congress. On Monday, his administration was already talking about the need to arrive at broad accords, which will be difficult in a divided legislature.

The president spoke Monday about the need to take up issues related to safety and visited one of the capital’s poorest neighborhoods to speak with residents.

Chileans, however, aren’t interested in more words. They want results.

“I don’t know what’s going on, there’s no action, no greater punishments, we see guys in jail and then the next day they’re out again,” said Johanna Anríquez, a 38-year-old public servant who voted with Boric against the new constitution, but remains critical of his administration.

Boric’s administration this year steered an additional $1.5 billion to security and plans to raise the budget another 5.7% in 2024. But it hasn’t been able to reach agreements with opposition lawmakers on security-related reforms.

He has also taken executive action to send more police to poor neighborhoods, but Chileans continue to feel less safe. Crime rates have risen dramatically, even though they remain well below other Latin American countries.

Sociologist and psychologist Kathya Araujo, who wrote various books about the 2019 popular demonstrations in Chile, says it’s uncertain that Chileans will be able to stage protests similar to those, at least in the short term.

“They thought they had to change, that they were going to change society, that (writing a new constitution) was the place for the revolution,” she said. And because of that, after losing they began to break apart.

Many woke up Monday thinking the social struggle of the past several years had amounted to nothing.

“We’re the same, there’s nothing more to do,” Santiago resident Gustavo Fernández said Monday. “With everything that was done … for nothing.”

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — President Javier Milei announced sweeping initiatives Wednesday to transform Argentina’s struggling economy, including easing government regulation and allowing privatization of state-run industries as a way to boost exports and investment.

The right-wing libertarian announced the moves for South America’s second biggest economy just hours after thousands of Argentines took to the streets of the capital to protest against austerity and deregulation actions taken last week by Milei.

The demonstrations went off relatively peacefully, after a government warning against blocking streets.

Around the start of the protest, which drew thousands of marchers, police briefly scuffled with some demonstrators and two men were arrested. But the event concluded without widespread street blockages that have been frequent in past years.

Undeterred by the protest, Milei afterward announced the measures in a televised address to the nation.

“The goal is start on the road to rebuilding our country, return freedom and autonomy to individuals and start to transform the enormous amount of regulations that have blocked, stalled and stopped economic growth in our country,” Milei said.

The approximately 300 changes would earmark many government companies for privatization, and loosen protections for renters, employees and shoppers.

After the announcement, people in some neighborhoods of Buenos Aires banged pots to show their disapproval. “Cacerolazos” — noisy anti-government protests in which people bang casserole pots — have been symbolic in Argentina in recent years when people want to express their anger.

Milei’s administration had said it will allow protests, but threatened to cut off public aid payments to anyone who blocks thoroughfares. Marchers were also forbidden to carry sticks, cover their faces or bring children to the protest.

Marchers set out toward Buenos Aires’ iconic Plaza de Mayo, the scene of protests dating back to the country’s 1970s dictatorship. Police struggled to keep demonstrators from taking over the entire boulevard, and in the end many kept to the sidewalks and filled about half the plaza.

Eduardo Belliboni, one of the march’s organizers, said demonstrators faced “an enormous repressive apparatus.” Belliboni’s left-wing Polo Obrero group has a long history of leading street blockages.

Toward the end of the demonstration, organizers called on the country’s trade unions to declare a general strike.

Today’s was Milei’s first test of how his administration would respond to demonstrations against economic shock measures, which he says are needed to address Argentina’s severe crisis.

The steps include a 50% devaluation of the Argentine peso, cuts to energy and transportation subsidies, and the closure of some government ministries. They come amid soaring inflation and rising poverty.

Protesters “can demonstrate as many times as they want. They can go to the squares .. but the streets are not going to be closed,” Milei’s security minister, Patricia Bullrich, told local media.

Bullrich announced a new “protocol” to maintain public order that allows federal forces to clear people blocking streets without a judicial order and authorizes the police to identify — through video or digital means — people protesting and obstructing public thoroughfares. It can bill them for the cost of mobilizing security forces.

Some groups say the protocol goes too far and criminalizes the right to protest.

Argentine labor, social and human rights groups on Tuesday signed a petition asking the United Nations and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to intercede against the new public order procedures. The document says the security protocol is “incompatible with the rights to free assembly and association, freedom of expression and social protest” recognized by Argentina’s constitution.

On Monday, the government announced that people who block streets could be removed from the public assistance benefit lists if they are on one.

In Argentina, some people receive social support directly from the government, but others get support through social organizations with direct links to federal offices. Milei’s administration says many of these groups use this as a way to force people to go out to protests in exchange for support

A recent poll by the University of Buenos Aires’ Observatory of Applied Social Psychology said 65% of those surveyed agree with banning street blockages.

Milei, a 53-year-old economist who rose to fame on television with profanity-laden tirades against what he called the political caste, became president with the support of Argentines disillusioned with the economic crisis.

These weren't austerity measures. This was a deregulation executive order.

To give further context, these are some of the regulations it removes:

• The Shelves Law: a law that forced supermarkets to stock their shelves in a particular way. For instance: not stocking more than 30% of a shelf with products from a single company (which, in days of shortages due to high inflation and price controls, meant most shelves looked like this), or stocking them in order based on price.
  
  
• The Law, a law that gave the state power to set prices of goods and control that those prices were met in every supermarket and grocery store, however big or small. This has been used by the government to shut down small businesses before (who don't have the same margins as big store chains and therefore need to sell their goods with higher prices) and gave us postcards such as union men and high-rank officials going through shelves controlling that prices were "correct".
  
  
• It removes the Price Observatory, which was the organization that ran these ridiculous operations
  
  
• The Fire Management Law, a law that was passed in the context of wildfires that went uncontrolled by the government "due to lack of resources" and which were blamed by officials on "land speculators". It banned the sale of land affected by wildfires for 30-60 years or to use it for real estate or farming. This meant that if a wildfire made it to your farm and razed through it you wouldn't be able to raise any crops on it for years and you couldn't even sell it for a loss.
  
  
• Protections for Aerolíneas Argentinas over flight routes in the country. The previous government ran an aggressive campaign against any competitor to the state-run Aerolíneas Argentinas in local flight routes, with only two other airlines operating at the time in the country. Flight prices in Argentina are, therefore, very expensive compared to similar flights elsewhere (and even with all these protections the state-run airline has been running a massive deficit over the last 15 years).
  
  
• Regulations over "obras sociales". In Argentina if your employer wants to pay for your health insurance they can't hire one directly. They have to run it through a union-run "obra social". Even if they choose to offer a different health insurance than the union-run health insurance, they still have to pay the fee to the union as though as they were offering that one (and then pay the other health insurance company they do want to offer their employees). The same runs for contractors: even if you're a contractor you have to pay health insurance fees to a union-run health insurance, even if you don't use it, even if you choose not to pay for health insurance. This decree allows companies, employers and contractors to directly negotiate with health insurance companies bypassing unions' fees.
  
  There were other measures that removed price controls over goods and services that created huge distortions in Argentina. For instance:
  
  
• Caps over health insurance fees. This caused health insurance companies to freeze doctors' fees for the past 2 years in a context of +100% annual inflation, which consequently led to medics either refusing to take appointments from people with health insurance or demanding a co-pay over it
  
  
• Rent control measures. The Rent Law and its modification discouraged renting so bad that at one point there were less than 2000 apartments up for rent in the City of Buenos Aires for a population of +3 million
  

In any case, the decree is many, many pages long and I seriously doubt anyone is done reading it just yet

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Thousands of union members and activists took to the streets of Argentina’s capital Wednesday to protest a decree from President Javier Milei that imposes sweeping deregulation and austerity measures meant to revive the country’s struggling economy.

Unions had asked a court for a prior injunction to block measures lifting some labor protections, but a judge rejected the appeal, noting the decree had not yet entered into effect. It does so on Friday.

Argentine labor activists question whether Milei, a self-described anarcho-capitalist who has long railed against the country’s “political caste,” can impose the measures by way of an emergency decree bypassing the legislature where his party has few seats.

“We do not question the president’s legitimacy ... but we want a president who respects the division of powers, who understands that workers have the need to defend themselves individually and within the framework of justice when there is unconstitutionality,” said Gerardo Martínez, general secretary of Argentina’s construction workers’ union.

The protest went off peacefully, except for a confrontation between a small group of protesters and police. Journalists were caught up in the scuffle as police broke up the group of protesters, and some were beaten by police.

“The country is not for sale!” some protesters chanted, apparently referring to proposals that would allow the privatization of state-run industries.

Since taking office on Dec. 10 following a landslide election victory, Milei has devalued the country’s currency by 50%, cut transport and energy subsidies, said his government won’t renew contracts for more than 5,000 recently hired state employees and proposed repealing or modifying about 300 laws.

He says he wants to transform Argentina’s economy and reduce the size of its state to address rising poverty and annual inflation expected to reach 200% by the end of the year.

The General Labor Confederation read a statement at the march on Wednesday saying Milei’s decree “introduces a ferocious, regressive labor reform whose only purpose is to hamstring union activity, punish workers and benefit business interests.”

Milei’s administration has quickly faced protest. The government had said it will allow demonstrations, but threatened to cut off public aid payments to anyone who blocks thoroughfares. Marchers were also forbidden to carry sticks, cover their faces or bring children to the protest.

Milei, a 53-year-old economist who rose to fame on television with profanity-laden tirades against the political establishment, became president with the support of Argentines disillusioned with the economic crisis.

In a media interview ahead of the protest, he accused those who oppose his reforms of “not being aware of the seriousness of the situation.”

His initiatives have the support of Argentina’s Business Association which called them a “historic opportunity” to fight the “excessive size of the state” and the negative consequences of decades of budget deficits.

CARACAS, Dec 28 (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Thursday said the deployment of a British warship to waters off the coast of Guyana breaches the "spirit" of an agreement reached between Venezuelan and Guyanese authorities.

Guyana and Venezuela agreed earlier this month to avoid the use of force and avoid increasing tensions in the long border dispute over the oil-rich Essequibo territory.

The 160,000-square-km (62,000-square-mile) Essequibo region is generally recognized as part of Guyana, but in recent years Venezuela has revived its claim to the territory and to offshore areas after major oil and gas discoveries.

Royal Navy patrol vessel HMS Trent is visiting Guyana, a British ally and former colony, as part of a series of engagements in the region, the UK's defense ministry said in a statement earlier this month, without referring to Venezuela or the border dispute.

"It is the breaking of the spirit of dialogue, diplomacy and peace of the agreements," Maduro said on Thursday. He said the deployment was "practically a military threat from London."

Maduro has ordered "the activation of a joint defensive action of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces" off the coast of Essequibo, he said in a state televised broadcast, but did not give more information.

Military leaders in Venezuela's east said during the broadcast that 5,600 uniformed personnel were ready for the operation.

In a statement, Venezuela's Foreign Ministry said the country "reserves all actions, within the framework of the Constitution and International Law, to defend its maritime and territorial integrity."

Venezuela is expanding military bases near its border with Guyana and deploying forces to the jungle frontier as President Nicolás Maduro ramps up his threats to annex the country’s oil-rich neighbour, satellite images have revealed.

Maduro pledged at mediation talks in December not to take military action against his neighbour but images shared by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington today suggest a buildup of forces.

Christopher Hernandez-Roy, deputy director of CSIS’s Americas programme, said: “The same day that the Venezuelan foreign minister is meeting with Guyanese diplomats, the Venezuelan military is conducting tank drills just a stone’s throw from Guyana. All of this tells us Maduro is pursuing a duplicitous policy.”

Venezuela has long laid claim to the resource-rich Essequibo region, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana, but Maduro has ramped up the country’s claim to the disputed territory in recent months.

After months of campaigning, the country held a vote in December in which Maduro said the Venezuelan people backed the country to take the vast swathe of jungle by force.

The aerial shots show that while Venezuelan diplomats subsequently met their Guyanese counterparts to calm simmering regional tensions, the Venezuelan military sent tanks and missile-equipped patrol boats to the border.

“This escalatory behavior on the part of Venezuela creates opportunities for miscalculation and loss of control over events on the ground,” CSIS warns in its report on the escalating dispute.

The dispute is being arbitrated in the international court of justice in The Hague but Maduro wants to disregard the UN court and negotiate directly with Guyana.

Analysts had seen Maduro’s sabre-rattling as a means to build support ahead of elections expected this year but have suggested it could also be an attempt to pressure Guayana into sharing revenue from recent oil discoveries.

Venezuela’s economy has collapsed in the last decade despite having some of the largest deposits in the world.

“All of this suggests that Maduro may have originally had domestic reasons for what he is doing, but now the strategy is to compel the Guyanese into some sort of concessions,” Hernandez-Roy said.

Brazil deployed more troops to its border with Guyana and Venezuela this week amid the growing regional tensions and the US agreed to bolster Guyana’s defence with new aircraft, helicopters, military drones and radar technology.

Guyanese officials are to meet with heads of the Caricom political union to discuss their response with their Caribbean allies.

On February 14 2024 05:59 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote:
Had to look up the stats. Guyana looks large on the map but it's tiny compared to Venezuela. 3400 active military personal.

However Venezuela's military is also unimpressive. Brazil alone could probably handle them rather easily. The US would absolutely crush them if they wanted to.

Is there any realistic chance of an actual war?

On February 14 2024 07:41 Sermokala wrote:

As someone said with ukraine you can't say no anymore even as stupid it might be but this is one of the dumber things anyone could do. This invasion isn't something that Guyana has had to prepare for a decade its an invasion that has been expected to happen for two hundred years. There is maybe a dirt road between the two countries because no infrastructure was built in order to make it impossible for a war to happen. The road that could be used goes through brazil first, and they are building up troops on the border to stop that. The Euros have been loitering ships in the area and the EU won't want their space launch facility threatened.

On top of all that its less than two thousand miles from Florida and planes can just fly that on the normal to rearm and sortie out again. America would want nothing more than to collect Venezuela and Guyana to ship all their oil into port Arthur. Between them Canada Mexico and Argentina America could break OPEC once and for all.