Biden scrambles to avoid Americas Summit flop in Los Angeles

INVITED BUT WILL NOT ATTEND

AMLO AND BIDEN

NOT INVITED 

Cuba ALBA SummitVenezuela's President Nicolas Maduro, left, and Cuba's President Miguel Diaz Canel, flash V-signs as they pose for a group photo during the XXI ALBA Summit at the Palace of the Revolution, in Havana, Cuba, Friday, May 27, 2022. (Yamil Lage/Pool Photo via AP)Less


ELLIOT SPAGAT, JOSHUA GOODMAN and CHRIS MEGERIAN
Sun, June 5, 2022, 8:03 AM·6 min read

LOS ANGELES (AP) — When leaders gather this week in Los Angeles at the Summit of the Americas, the focus is likely to veer from common policy changes — migration, climate change and galloping inflation — and instead shift to something Hollywood thrives on: the drama of the red carpet.

With Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador topping a list of leaders threatening to stay home to protest the U.S.’ exclusion of authoritarian leaders from Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, experts say the event could turn into a embarrassment for U.S. President Joe Biden. Even some progressive Democrats have criticized the administration for bowing to pressure from exiles in the swing state of Florida and barring communist Cuba, which attended the last two summits.

“The real question is why the Biden administration didn’t do its homework,” said Jorge Castañeda, a former Mexican foreign minister who now teaches at New York University.

While the Biden administration insists the president in Los Angeles will outline his vision for a "sustainable, resilient, and equitable future” for the hemisphere, Castañeda said it's clear from the last-minute wrangling over the guest list that Latin America is not a priority for the U.S. president.

“This ambitious agenda, no one knows exactly what it is, other than a series of bromides," he said.

The U.S. is hosting the summit for the first time since its launch in 1994, in Miami, as part of an effort to galvanize support for a free trade agreement stretching from Alaska to Patagonia.

But that goal was abandoned more than 15 years ago amid a rise in leftist politics in the region. With China's influence expanding, most nations have come to expect — and need — less from Washington. As a result, the premier forum for regional cooperation has languished, at times turning into a stage for airing historical grievances, like when the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez at the 2009 summit in Trinidad & Tobago gave President Barack Obama a copy of Eduardo Galeano's classic tract, “The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent.”

The U.S. opening to former Cold War adversary Cuba, which was sealed with Obama's handshake with Raul Castro at the 2015 summit in Panama, lowered some of the ideological tensions.

“It’s a huge missed opportunity,” Ben Rhodes, who led the Cuba thaw as deputy national security advisor in the Obama administration, said recently in his “Pod Save the World” podcast. “We are isolating ourselves by taking that step because you’ve got Mexico, you’ve got Caribbean countries saying they’re not going to come — which is only going to make Cuba look stronger than us.”

To bolster turnout and avert a flop, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have been working the phones in recent days, speaking with the leaders of Argentina and Honduras, both of whom initially expressed support for Mexico's proposed boycott. Former Senator Christopher Dodd has also crisscrossed the region as a special adviser for the summit, in the process convincing far right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who was a staunch ally of Trump but hasn't once spoken to Biden, to belatedly confirm his attendance.

Ironically, the decision to exclude Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela wasn't the whim of the U.S. alone. The region's governments in 2001, in Quebec City, declared that any break with democratic order is an “insurmountable obstacle” to future participation in the summit process.

The governments of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela aren’t even active members of the Washington-based Organization of the American States, which organizes the summit.

“This should’ve been a talking point from the beginning,” said former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Tom Shannon, who in a long diplomatic career attended several summits. “It’s not a U.S. imposition. It was consensual. If leaders want to change that, then we should have a conversation first.”

After the last summit in Peru, in 2018, which President Trump didn't even bother to attend, many predicted there was no future for the regional gathering. In response to Trump's historic pullout, only 17 of the region's 35 heads of state attended. Few saw value in bringing together for a photo op leaders from such dissimilar places as aid-dependent Haiti, industrial powerhouses Mexico and Brazil and violence-plagued Central America — each with their own unique challenges and bilateral agenda with Washington.

“As long as we don’t speak with a single voice, no one is going to listen to us," said former Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, who also faults Mexico and Brazil — the region's two economic powers — for the current drift in hemispheric relations. "With a cacophony of voices, it is much more difficult to find our place in the world."

To the surprise of many, the U.S. in early 2019 picked up the ball, offering to host the summit. At the time, the Trump administration was enjoying something of a leadership renaissance in Latin America, albeit among mostly similar-minded conservative governments around the narrow issue of restoring democracy in Venezuela.

But that goodwill unraveled as Trump floated the idea of invading Venezuela to remove Nicolás Maduro — a threat recalling the worst excesses of the Cold War. Then the pandemic hit, taking a devastating human and economic toll on a region that accounted for more than a quarter of the world's COVID-19 deaths despite making up only 8% of the population. The region's politics were upended.

The election of Biden, who was Obama's point man for Latin America and had decades of hands-on experience in the region from his time on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, set expectations for a relaunch. But as popular angst spread during the pandemic, the Biden administration was slow to match the vaccine diplomacy of Russia and China, although it did eventually provide 70 million doses to the hemisphere. Biden also maintained the Trump-era restrictions on migration, reinforcing the view that it was neglecting its own neighbors.

Since then, Biden's hallmark policy in the region — a $4 billion aid package to attack the root causes of migration in Central America — has stalled in Congress with no apparent effort to revive it. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has also diverted attention away from the region, something experts say could come back to bite Biden if rising interest rates in the U.S. trigger a stampede of capital outflows and debt defaults in emerging markets.

There have been smaller snubs too: When leftist millennial Gabriel Boric was elected president in Chile, setting high expectations for a generational shift in the region's politics, the U.S. delegation to his inauguration was led by the second-lowest ranking Cabinet member, Small Business Administrator Isabel Guzman.

Shannon said for the summit to be successful Biden shouldn’t try to lay out a grand American vision for the hemisphere but rather show sensitivity to the region’s embrace of other global powers, concerns about gaping inequality and traditional mistrust of the U.S.

“More than speeches," says Shannon, “”he will need to listen.”

___

AP Writers Matthew Lee in Washington, Daniel Politi in Buenos Aires, David Biller in Rio de Janeiro and Gonzalo Solano in Quito contributed to this report.

___

Goodman reported from Miami.

 

At this week's Summit of the Americas, Canada has stake in U.S. border challenges

WASHINGTON — If foreign policy was purely a matter of geography, one might assume Canada would be free to go check out the buffet at this week's Summit of the Americas once the discussion turns, as it surely will, to the migratory tide flooding the U.S.-Mexico border.



But at the dawn of a turbulent new geopolitical era, evidence is mounting that America's southern frontier — along with the political and economic challenges and opportunities it represents — is closer in many ways than most Canadians might realize.

And if President Joe Biden hopes to realize his vision of a comprehensive, holistic solution to the economic and social ills that imperil the Western Hemisphere, experts say he'll need Canada to be an integral part of that conversation.

"Canada has an enormous amount to contribute, because Canada is the country in the Americas that has come closest to getting immigration right," said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank based in Washington D.C.

"There's a lot that the rest of the Americas, including the United States, could be learning from Canada."

The idea behind the summit in Los Angeles, which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will attend beginning Wednesday, is to find a way to address some of the underlying political, economic and social causes of northward migration in the first place.

En route, Trudeau will stop Tuesday in Colorado Springs, Colo., where he and Defence Minister Anita Anand will meet with commanders and military officials from Norad, the joint-command continental defence system that's awaiting a long-needed upgrade.

He'll be joined in California by Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault and Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, who is scheduled to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Mexican counterpart Marcelo Ebrard.

As a cornerstone of Canada's economic growth, federal immigration policy strikes a delicate balance between economic, humanitarian and labour-policy priorities, all the while preserving public buy-in to keep the ever-present political dangers at bay, Selee said.

Those dangers, weaponized to great effect by Donald Trump, now loom larger than ever in North America, where the former president's isolationist, build-the-wall rhetoric has proven so potent that it's become standard Republican doctrine.

And while the migration challenges at Canada's southern border pale in comparison to those that confront the U.S. along the Rio Grande Valley, they are there — and they share a connection.

Despite the more than 2,300 kilometres separating Canada from Mexico's northern frontier, U.S. customs officials as far north as Maine have in recent months encountered dozens of people who entered the country from the south.

It's likely many were headed to spots like Roxham Road, a popular destination for those looking to make a refugee claim in Canada without being returned to the U.S., which is what automatically happens when they show up at an official entry point.

"It would not be surprising if there are people coming from or through Latin America that really want to get to Canada in the end," Selee said.

"Canada has just enough people who come from elsewhere in the Americas that it could become a much more attractive destination over time, particularly if the U.S. is a less hospitable environment."

It's been 28 years since the U.S. hosted the inaugural Summit of the Americas in 1994, "and we're obviously living in different times," said Juan Gonzalez, the National Security Council's senior director for the Western Hemisphere.

For starters, Russia has invaded Ukraine, the lasting impact of an ongoing two-year pandemic continues to reverberate, inflation is testing new records and many people on this side of the planet are "really starting to question the value of democracy," Gonzalez said.

Biden will propose what Gonzalez called a strategy of shared responsibility and economic support for those countries most impacted by the flow of migration. It will also include a multilateral declaration "of unity and resolve" to bring the crisis under control.

Leaders of "source, transit or destination countries" will seek consensus on how to tackle a problem "that is actually impacting all the countries in the Americas," he said.

"We need to work together to address it in a way that treats migrants with dignity, invests in creating opportunities that would dissuade migrants from leaving their homes in the first place, and provide the protections that migrants deserve."

The U.S. Border Patrol calls it "push and pull" — the myriad factors that spur people around the world to abandon one country in favour of another, often as clandestinely as possible. Those motivations were muted during the COVID-19 pandemic, but no longer.

Police intercepted nearly 10,000 people entering Canada between official entry points during the first four months of the year, compared with just 3,944 during the same period of 2019. And last month alone, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported 9,157 encounters at or near the Canada-U.S. border — seven times the 1,250 apprehensions in April 2021.

Late last month, two Honduran nationals appeared in court in Montana to face human smuggling charges after they allegedly led a group of migrants into the country by walking across the Canada-U.S. border.

Two U.S. citizens are also facing similar charges in a pair of separate cases — one last month that saw a group of Indian nationals rescued while trying to cross a river that separates Ontario from New York state, and one in Minnesota linked to the January deaths of a family of four from India who died of exposure in frigid conditions in Manitoba.

Agents in Maine have also recently encountered carloads of illegal migrants, including five Romanian nationals who entered from Canada. Two other separate incidents involved a total of 22 people, 14 from Mexico and seven from Ecuador, who entered the U.S. via the southern border.

"There are a number of push-and-pull factors … that make people want to leave their country or come to another country for one reason or another," said William Maddocks, the chief U.S. Border Patrol agent for Houlton Sector, which encompasses Maine.

Human smugglers are always keen to exploit that desire, he added. "Where these people see an opportunity for making a profit, that becomes their business. Anytime we change the laws, there will be people who seek to exploit those changes."

Other summit priorities will include helping countries bring COVID-19 under control, forging new ties on climate and energy initiatives, confronting food insecurity and leveraging existing trade agreements to better ensure more people are able to reap the benefits.

Defending core democratic values will also be a major focus in Los Angeles, which is part of why the U.S. has not invited leaders from Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela to attend — three authoritarian countries with dubious records on human rights.

Others, including Mexico's Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Bolivian President Luis Arce, have vowed not to attend unless all of the hemisphere's heads of government were invited. The U.S. has yet to release a final list of attendees.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 6, 2022.

James McCarten, The Canadian Press

Latin America, Caribbean 2022 poverty seen higher as Ukraine war bites: U.N. study


Peru inflation protests grip tourist capital Cuzco, gateway to Machu Picchu

Mon, June 6, 2022, 

(Reuters) - A United Nations commission has increased its projection for poverty in Latin America and Caribbean for 2022, citing economic disruptions caused by the conflict in Ukraine.

Latin America and Dominican Republic poverty will rise to 33% of the population this year, a 0.9 percentage point uptick versus 2021. Extreme poverty is seen reaching 14.5% this year, 0.7 percentage point more than in 2021, according to a study published by the UN's Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Cepal).

Higher fuel prices, and fertilizer and wheat supply problems provoked by the war in Ukraine have fanned inflation while intensifying hunger, casting doubts about the region's growth prospects, the U.N. agency said.

Cepal warned of a significant jump in people in the region deemed food insecure.

"These levels are markedly higher than those observed before the pandemic and make the possibility of a speedy recovery more distant."

The UN arm has recently cut its estimates for economic growth in Latin America and Caribbean for 2022, citing economic disruptions caused by the conflict in Ukraine.

The mostly Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking region is seen growing 1.8% in 2022, revised down from a prior forecast for growth of 2.1%.

Inflation in Latin America and the Caribbean more than doubled between the end of 2020 and the end of 2021, to 6.6%. Cepal projects that consumer prices will rise 8.1% during the 12-month period ended in April 2022.

The region's economies were seeing a slowdown this year in growth and trade even before Russia's invasion of Ukraine in late February, as well as the persistent drag of the coronavirus pandemic.

Latin American countries face "internal contexts characterized by a strong slowdown in economic activity, increases in inflation and a slow and incomplete recovery of labor markets, which increases poverty and inequality," the report said.

(Reporting by Natalia Ramos; Writing by Carolina Pulice; Editing by David Alire Garcia and Leslie Adler)

Kamala Harris' biggest assignment is in Latin America. But she hasn't gone there much

Noah Bierman
Mon, June 6, 2022

Vice President Kamala Harris' biggest assignment is addressing the root causes of migration from Latin America. But some question how seriously she is engaging on the issue ahead of a big summit this week in Los Angeles. (Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times)

Vice President Kamala Harris has spent just three days in Latin America since President Biden assigned her 15 months ago to tackle migration issues in Central America — half as long as First Lady Jill Biden devoted during a single trip to the region last month.

The lack of travel is a reminder of what some observers see as ambivalence from Harris toward a high-profile issue that is politically fraught at home and challenging abroad as she embarks Monday on a week of diplomacy at the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles. The issue of migration is certain to take center stage at the conference, a meeting of nations across the Western Hemisphere intended to showcase U.S. leadership in the region as the Biden administration seeks to tackle such complex challenges as the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change.

Harris and other top U.S. officials have been scrambling in recent weeks to shore up attendance at the summit, which some countries have threatened to boycott over the Biden administration's decision to exclude leaders of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

"I don’t know if Central America is still a priority in the U.S. agenda ... in this electoral year," said Alvaro Montenegro Muralles, one of the founders of a group called Justice Now in Guatemala, who met with Harris last year. That lack of consistent focus, which predates Harris, has been one of America's problems in sustaining a long-term strategy, he said.

Specialists say Harris’ lack of engagement in the region — partly the result of unreliable governments she has to deal with there — has stymied her ability to cajole its leaders on a raft of policy challenges. Harris has also not been a key player in the intensive effort to persuade Mexico's president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to drop his summit boycott threat, nor has she been deployed to Latin America like Jill Biden, who recently spent six days in Ecuador, Panama and Costa Rica promoting the summit.

“She is not perceived as a credible person on Latin America," said Michael Shifter, past president of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington. "She has not established herself with the Latin Americans."

Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei greets Vice President Kamala Harris as she arrives at the Palacio Nacional de la Cultura in 2021. (Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times)

Biden asked Harris last year to address the so-called root causes of migration from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador as people in those countries, including children and families, fled in record numbers. Migration from the region has spiked due to a web of factors, including poverty, corruption, racism, disease, natural disasters and gang violence.

It’s a daunting task, one that Biden himself took on in 2014 when he was vice president under President Obama. Despite Biden's vast experience as a leading foreign policy player in the Senate, he also failed to stem migration from the region or contribute appreciably to improving conditions there.

Though the issues are tougher today than a decade ago, many veterans of Latin American policy saw the opportunity for Harris to expand the assignment and position herself as a key player throughout the hemisphere, just as Biden had done, even before he was officially asked to work on Central America. The then-vice president traveled to Latin America 16 times over eight years.

"He was doing some tough diplomacy. ... It wasn’t go and show the flag and eat the local cuisine,” said Eric Farnsworth, who leads the Washington office of the Council of the Americas and Americas Society, a think tank focusing on the region. “That type of role is what many of us anticipated that the current vice president would be doing."

Farnsworth credits Harris with bringing “high-level attention to some really difficult issues” in the three countries she was tasked with improving. But he also noted there hasn't been much progress.

“Have we seen dramatic change in Central America?” he added. “The answer is no.”

A White House official who declined to be named said Harris has dug into the job, at least as it has been defined by Biden. The vice president has helped direct $1.2 billion in private investment to the three countries, announced an anti-corruption task force established by the Justice Department and a federal human trafficking task force, along with strategies aimed at better spending U.S. development dollars. The official said she has also played a key role in urging Caribbean countries to participate in the summit, where she plans to introduce climate and energy programs intended to help them.

Air Force Two, which carries the vice president, arrives at La Aurora International Airport in Guatemala City last year. (Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times)

The official said Harris will meet with business and civic leaders and expects to announce more private investments in the region at the conference. The official pointed out that the vice president has spent a day each in Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico, noting that it's rare for an official at her level to visit the same place twice in a short period.

Harris' travel has been limited in part by the pandemic and a series of unreliable partners. She made her biggest bet in Guatemala, spending a day there in June last year to meet with President Alejandro Giammattei. She pressed him publicly to support anti-corruption prosecutions, but the lead anti-corruption prosecutor, Juan Francisco Sandoval, was fired just six weeks after Harris and Giammattei exchanged smiles and handshakes.

The dismissal infuriated and embarrassed American officials who had put stock in Giammattei’s assurances that he wanted to combat corruption as much as Harris did.

It also deeply frustrated human rights and anti-corruption activists who met with Harris in Guatemala.

“The government is like the central piece of the corruption now,” said Montenegro of Justice Now. “They’re the ones that are attacking judges. They’re the ones making business with Russian guys.”

The trip quickly turned into a domestic political headache too. Harris was blasted by liberals and activists for telling would-be migrants to "not come" north because they would be "turned back" at the U.S. border. Republicans, meanwhile, sharply criticized her for not visiting the border when she traveled to Mexico after Guatemala. (She went weeks later.)

Harris has since pivoted to Honduras, making a brief trip to attend the inauguration in January of President Xiomara Castro in hopes that she will offer a more stable partnership. But that country’s problems also run deep. Former President Juan Orlando Hernández was extradited to the U.S. in April to face a slew of federal weapons and drug charges, a sign of how deeply embedded the drug trade is in the government.

Even if Castro proves to be on the same page with Harris in fighting that corruption, Harris’ engagement appears to have limits. A day after the vice president spoke with Castro by phone last month to discuss cooperation on economic and migration issues, Castro tweeted that she would not attend the summit unless everyone was invited.

Vice President Kamala Harris holds a virtual bilateral meeting with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei in April 2021. (Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times)

It is not clear whether Giammattei and Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, will attend. If they join the boycott, Harris' reputation in the area is likely to suffer.

Human rights and anti-corruption activists in Central America have wondered why Harris was given such a difficult assignment. Some have speculated it was to undermine her political prospects. Others worry the political situation in the U.S. and in their countries has tempered her enthusiasm to wade into the region's intractable challenges. Either way, such talk has eroded the faith of some reformers that Harris has the sway, or time, to create lasting change.

Manfredo Marroquin, a Guatemala-based human rights advocate, said he believes Harris has pulled back since her early trip to Guatemala because “she doesn’t want to expose herself” to the potential embarrassment of having her attempts at reform undermined by the region's anti-democratic leaders.

“She knows the risk of having a setback,” he said.

Carmen Rosa de Leon, a human rights activist who is now living in Spain because she fears being jailed by the Giammattei government, said she likes some of the changes she has seen under Harris, including a greater focus on working with local groups to distribute humanitarian aid. Such programs can take years to develop.

The countries' leaders, meanwhile, "are expecting that the Republicans are going to win” in the 2024 presidential election, Rosa de Leon said. “They’re expecting that they just have to wait" for a change in administrations.

Times staff writers Courtney Subramanian and Tracy Wilkinson and staff researcher Cary Schneider contributed to this report.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

We should fear, then embrace, Latin America. But not for the reasons you think

Phil Boas, Arizona Republic
Mon, June 6, 2022

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador will not attend the Summit of the Americas because the United States did not invite less-democratic nations.

The U.S-Mexico border is America’s window to Latin America.

As we look through it today many of us see chaos – a mass of humanity or roughly 7,800 migrants a day – showing up at our doorstep and trying to cross over. That’s nearly five times the number it was five years ago.

Forty-one percent of Americans surveyed in March tell pollsters they worry “a great deal” about illegal immigration, the highest percentage since 2007, Gallup reports. Another 19% are worried “a fair amount.”

As leaders of North, South, Central American nations and the Caribbean meet this week in Los Angeles for the Ninth Summit of the Americas, expectations could not be lower. Many believe the host-nation United States will face-plant.

“The threat is not simply that this year’s summit will be a flop – yet another example of feckless U.S. policy toward Latin America,” wrote Christopher Sabatini, a Latin American expert, in Foreign Policy. “Rather, the real risk is that – after nearly three decades of summitry – this year’s event may be interpreted as a gravestone on U.S. influence in the region.”

We don't understand the Latin American threat

For decades the American people have viewed the world south of us as a constant irritant, pushing northward and putting pressure on our national sovereignty, wages, hospital emergency rooms and broader welfare net.

We often ignore that Latin America is a source of enormous economic bounty. Among the top five U.S. export markets to the Western Hemisphere were Mexico ($256.6 billion), Brazil ($42.9 billion), Chile ($15.7 billion) and Colombia ($14.7 billion), reports the Office of the United States Trade Representative.

Our anxiety about the border and human and drug smuggling often lead to policies to shutter our southern window and Katy bar the door. Our impulse is to build walls, beef up U.S. Border Patrol, deploy National Guard to the border, expand high-tech deterrents and alerts.

All to confront a threat in Latin America.

But Americans don’t understand the greater threat in Latin America, one far larger than our inability to control the human surge at the U.S.-Mexico border. It is potentially more destabilizing and grows more ominous by the day.

Our policy prescription to meet this new challenge requires not roadblocks and fences, but an approach completely counter to today’s impulse. We need to embrace Latin America as never before if we are going to ensure our own national security and the stability of our side of the world – the western hemisphere.

China is growing more belligerent

As the United States welcomes the region’s leadership to talks in one of our great international cities, this would be a good time to pivot.

The nations of the Americas come to Los Angeles this week with an expanded understanding of the world and how it might evolve in the near future. Authoritarian powers in Asia have shown their hand through multiple world crises over the last five years.

In China, Xi Jinping has consolidated power and hardened his control of a nation that grows more militaristic and expansionist. In 2020, China completed the authoritarian takeover of Hong Kong, as millions there protested and later submitted to their Communist overlords.

The Chinese government was slow to tell the world of an emergent and deadly virus that originated in one of its important trade cities – Wuhan – and perhaps in a government laboratory. They stonewalled inquiries into the origins of COVID-19 and were unwilling to meet the transparency standards of democracies even as the virus killed 6.2 million people worldwide.

Unbowed by its role in the pandemic, China became more belligerent and threatening to its neighbors with what came to be called “Wolf Warrior diplomacy,” named for a chest-thumping jingoistic film about Chinese military commandos. In the same month COVID-19 was revealed, a Chinese ambassador threatened Sweden, “We treat our friends with fine wine, but for our enemies we got shotguns.”

In February, China stood aside as Russia invaded its neighbor Ukraine, obliterating large cities with bombs and committing crimes against humanity through summary executions of civilians.

As most of the advanced world protested, the Chinese sat idle. Xi, had after all, just signed a pact with Russian President Vladimir Putin in opposition to the United States and the West – a “friendship” with “no limits.”

The democracies began to worry that China would invade Taiwan.

Latin America embraces China's investments

As the world has become alert to the gathering threat of China and Russia, it is time for us to start listening to the Pentagon brass who have been warning for years that the Chinese and Russians, but particularly the Chinese, have taken an intense interest in Latin America and have begun to pour strategic foundations throughout our southern neighborhood.

In less than 20 years (2002 to 2021), Chinese trade with Latin America has rocketed from $18 billion annually to $450 billion. “Today, China is the second-largest trading partner for Latin America as a whole and the biggest trading partner for Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay,” wrote Brian Winter, editor of Americas Quarterly, in Foreign Affairs.

“Throughout this dramatic rise, the Chinese have been welcomed by many as ‘the new gringos’ – a fresh-faced, alternative partner to the United States, free of the baggage accumulated over 200-plus years of often imperialist U.S. behavior.”

Gen. Laura Richardson, combatant commander of U.S. Southern Command, told a U.S. Senate panel that the “Chinese have 29 port projects” across the command, which includes Central America, South America and the Caribbean, reports U.S. Naval Institute News.

Twenty-one nations in the region have “signed up” for China’s Belt and Road infrastructure projects, Richardson said. Belt and Road projects are widely seen as a strategic expansion of Chinese power with possible dual military uses.

Adm. Craig Faller, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2021 that China used the COVID-19 pandemic, “to rapidly expand its ‘corrosive, insidious influence’ – from money laundering for transnational gangsters to using its own ships to illegally fish protected waters and benefit from illegal logging and mining,” U.S. Naval Institute News reported.

“... ‘I can’t stress enough the full-court press’ China has put on the Western Hemisphere by promoting itself as an effective vaccine distributor to combat the pandemic, underwriting 40 port expansions or developments, offering questionable loans and pressuring the few remaining countries who recognize Taiwan as an entity to drop diplomatic recognition of the island.”

Meanwhile, democracy is eroding in Latin America

If the U.S.-China rivalry were to become a “hotter conflict,” China could also leverage these strategically located ports to disrupt U.S. commercial and naval access in the Western Hemisphere, wrote Leland Lazarus and Ryan C. Berg, in Foreign Policy.

“In recent years, China has wielded its commercial might to retaliate against Australia for demanding an investigation into the origins of COVID-19, India for ongoing territorial disputes, and Lithuania for increasing ties with Taiwan.”

For their part, Latin Americans nations remain open to widening Chinese investment and influence.

“The idea we are hearing more now – that China poses more risks to us than other big powers – is not convincing to me,” Andrés Rebolledo, a Chilean trade diplomat, told the Christian Science Monitor.

“My advice for Chile and Latin America is the same. Be the sweethearts of everybody, but married to no one.”

Democracy is in decline in Latin America. Venezuela has collapsed. Mexico is slowly sliding away. A few other nations are following Cuba’s lead toward more authoritarian models. All of this has led to resistance to this week’s Summit of the Americas.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador refused to attend after the White House left Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua off the guest list.

That caught the attention of the Chinese, who responded with glee. The Chinese foreign ministry argued the Summit of the Americas should not “be reduced to a ‘Summit of the United States of America,’ ” adding: “Instead of benefiting Latin America . . . the U.S. has brought Latin America wanton exploitation, willful sanctions, inflation, political interference, regime change, assassination of politicians and even armed aggression,” reports the Financial Times in London.

U.S. must raise its game in Latin America

How does the U.S. get back into the game with Latin America? Our nation has broken with its troubled history in the region and begun to treat those south of us more as partners than as subordinates.

We need to work with those countries to reaffirm our commitment to democracy. The democracies in the Americas have on several occasions signed such declarations going back to the 1940s. Time to call on those old values at the Summit of the Americas.

The United States can point to its immigrants from the south to show that the people of the region vote with their feet for liberal democracy and free market economies. Ours is the most welcoming country in the world to immigrants, notes the U.S. State Department. More than a million people a year arrive from abroad to become permanent legal residents.

The nations of the Americas need to condemn what the Russians did to Ukraine, to affirm our commitment to democracy and to dissuade the Chinese from invading Taiwan.

With supply chains roiled by the pandemic and the aggressive moves of Asia’s authoritarian powers, we need to build upon what has already begun – to bring back more manufacturing to the hemisphere to create here shorter, more efficient, more robust supply lines.

We need to invest more in Latin America and help it recover from the pandemic, beginning with greater vaccine distribution.

None of us wants a New Cold War, but we are in a contest of great powers and we will need to again promote democracy heavily to ensure that our own democracy remains secure.

That doesn't begin with construction of a wall.

It starts by making common cause with our fellow democrats in Latin America.

Phil Boas is an editorial columnist at The Arizona Republic. Reach him by email at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Latin America poses a threat worse than a 'border invasion'

HINDUTVA/HINDU NATIONALIST CENSORSHIP

India considering appeals panel with power to reverse Facebook, Twitter and YouTube content moderation decisions


Manish Singh
Mon, June 6, 2022, 

India is proposing to create an appeals panel with the veto power to reverse content moderation decisions of social media firms, it said Monday evening, republishing the draft changes to the IT rules after quietly withdrawing it last week.

If enacted, it would be the first time globally that a nation creates an appeals panel of this kind. New Delhi, which is currently seeking public comments on the proposal with a 30-day deadline, said the new amendment "will not impact early stage or growth stage Indian companies or startups," in a relief for local giants such as Dailyhunt, ShareChat and Koo.

India is the largest market of YouTube and Facebook by user count and a key overseas region for Twitter.

According to the current law, content moderation decisions by social media giants such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter can only be appealed to a court. India’s Ministry of IT and Electronics said in a statement that proposed “new accountability standards” are aimed at ensuring that the “constitutional rights of Indian citizens are not contravened by any Big-tech Platform.”

"A number of intermediaries have acted in violation of constitutional rights of Indian citizens," the ministry added.

The proposed amendments to the IT rules follows a remarkable few years for U.S. tech giants that have already been pushed to appoint and share contact details of grievance redressal officers to timely address on-ground concerns and coordinate with law enforcement officials.

“These rules have succeeded in creating a new sense of accountability amongst Intermediaries to their users especially within Big Tech platforms,” the ministry said.

Google, Twitter, Meta and many other firms already fully or partially comply with the IT rules, which came into effect last year.

The rules also require significant social media firms operating encrypted messaging services to devise a way to trace the originator of messages for special cases. Several firms, including Facebook’s WhatsApp and Signal, have not complied with this requirement. WhatsApp last year sued the Indian government over this requirement.

Twitter faced backlash from the government last year over its decision to not block some accounts and tweets that New Delhi deemed objectionable. The heat followed the company’s top executive vacating the position to pursue a different role within the firm.

New Delhi-based digital rights advocacy group Internet Freedom Foundation, which has expressed grave concerns about the IT rules, calling them "anti-democratic and unconstitutional," said in a statement that the proposed changes “only perpetuates the already existing illegalities.”

U.S. Supreme Court seeks Biden views on WhatsApp 'Pegasus' spyware dispute

Mon, June 6, 2022
By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday asked President Joe Biden's administration to weigh in on whether the justices should hear a case on whether Meta Platforms Inc's WhatsApp can pursue a lawsuit accusing Israel's NSO Group of exploiting a bug in the messaging app to install spy software.

The justices are considering NSO's appeal of a lower court's decision allowing the lawsuit to move forward. NSO has argued that it is immune from being sued because it was acting as an agent for unidentified foreign governments when it installed the "Pegasus" spyware.

WhatsApp has said the software was used for the surveillance of 1,400 people, including journalists, human rights activists and dissidents.

The Supreme Court on Monday asked the Justice Department to file a brief offering its views on the legal issue.

Meta Platforms is the parent of WhatsApp and Facebook and was known as Facebook Inc when the suit was filed. WhatsApp in October 2019 sued NSO seeking an injunction and damages, accusing it of accessing WhatsApp servers without permission six months earlier to install the Pegasus software on the targeted people's mobile devices. NSO has argued that Pegasus helps law enforcement and intelligence agencies fight crime and protect national security.

NSO appealed a trial judge's July 2020 refusal to award it "conduct-based immunity," a common-law doctrine protecting foreign officials acting in their official capacity.

Upholding that ruling last November, the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals called it an "easy case" because NSO's mere licensing of Pegasus and offering technical support did not shield it from liability under a federal law called the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which took precedence over common law.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

POLL NUMBERS WORSE THAN BIDEN'S 

Trust in Government Hovers Near All-Time Low: Poll

Michael Rainey Mon, June 6, 2022, 

In 1964, 77% of Americans said they believe the federal government does the right thing for the most part, but that proved to be a high-water mark for trust in government and the number has fallen steadily since then.

The latest data from Pew Research show that just 20% of Americans now trust the federal government to “do what is right just about always/most of the time,” demonstrating a deep skepticism about government that has persisted for decades.

The numbers over time are driven in part by partisan factors, with Republicans and Democrats expressing more trust in government when their party controls the executive branch (see the chart below). But the long-term trend is downward, and even now, with President Biden in the White House, just 29% of Democrats say they trust the government most of the time — and just 9% of Republicans agree. Just 6% of Americans say the phrase “careful with taxpayer money” describes the federal government extremely or very well and only 21% say it describes the government somewhat well.

On some measures, there is more partisan agreement, but the results are no more encouraging. Overall, 65% of poll respondents said they think politicians are mostly out for themselves. For Republicans, that number is 66%, while for Democrats it’s 63%.

At the same time, though, Americans say they think government has an important role to play in society — and could be doing more. For example, a majority of respondents (69%) say the government is doing too little to help middle-income people, and about the same number (66%) say the same about help for low-income people. On the other hand, most (61%) think high-income people receive too much help.

Even larger majorities see a role for government in a variety of areas, including keeping the county safe from terrorism (90%), managing immigration (85%), ensuring safe food and medicine (82%), responding to natural disasters (80%) and strengthening the economy (78%).

REASON VS RHETORIC
Fox Host Kennedy Rebukes Kayleigh McEnany’s Advice for Drug Abusers

Justin Baragona
Mon, June 6, 2022

Fox News

Fox News host Lisa “Kennedy” Montgomery on Monday pushed back against her network colleagues’ outrage over so-called “harm reduction” programs, which are designed to prevent and reduce overdose deaths by de-stigmatizing illicit drug use and addiction.

Notably, Kennedy took issue with former Trump spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany’s embrace of the Reagan-era mantra “Just Say No,” pointing out that “doesn’t work” for people who are already dealing with drug addiction.

During his HBO show Real Time on Friday night, Bill Maher—who has become a conservative media hero in recent months—raged against the New York City Health Department’s latest ad campaign encouraging users to test their drugs, avoid using alone, and take safety precautions. Additionally, he took shots at San Francisco’s similar approach to harm reduction.


“OK, that’s the first thing it says. Yes, this is part of the problem of losing civilization. Shame is part of life,” Maher groused on Friday night about the NYC ad telling users not to “be ashamed” they are using.

“We do this to everything. Toxic positivity. ‘Everything is positive.’ Everything is not positive. You should be ashamed that you are using, that might help you to stop,” added the pot-smoking comedian and longtime marijuana legalization advocate.

Applauding Maher on Monday’s broadcast of Outnumbered, McEnany noted that “all too often” she finds herself saying the late-night comic “has a point.” At the same time, lone male panelist Brian Kilmeade said he’s able to use “two or three clips” from Maher every week on Fox & Friends even though the HBO host is supposedly “liberal to the core.”

The rest of the hosts then took turns railing against the NYC campaign, with Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner going so far as to say that “it’s almost like China is writing the talking points” as they’re “happy” to keep Americans “hooked” due to being the largest manufacturer of fentanyl.

“I read this one part and maybe we shouldn’t be doing this right now,” Faulkner added. “I’m confused. What does it mean to take turns? How does that help anybody?”

Kennedy, however, offered up an endorsement of the harm-reduction programs, which largely focus on education campaigns and overdose prevention centers that provide addicts safe places to use drugs under medical supervision.

“I’ll tell you. Unfortunately, I know people who have overdosed from fentanyl and it’s tragic. The point of these is to prevent more loss of life,” the libertarian host responded. “You don’t want people to die. Of course, we don’t want people using drugs that are going to kill them.”

She continued: “People are still using drugs. You can have all of the ‘Just Say No’ and DARE programs that you want, it’s not going to keep people from using drugs.”

Kennedy explained that one benefit of drug users “taking turns” is that others can see if what they are injecting is safe and react accordingly, especially if the drugs are laced with fentanyl. While the rest of the panel offered their objections, she further pointed out that the presence of fentanyl strips and naloxone, sold under the brand name Narcan, could be life-saving.

“Do you want people to not use drugs? Yes, that’s the ultimate ideal. But nothing that the government has done so far has kept people from using drugs,” Kennedy passionately declared.

“I prefer ‘Just Say No,’” McEnany shot back.

“That works for you and that’s great. For people who are already addicted, it doesn’t work,” Kennedy retorted.

She added that this was also “for teenagers who are dumb enough to try it for the first time,” exclaiming that “I hope to god my kids are not in that position, but if they are, I hope someone has Narcan and I hope they have fentanyl sticks to catch it.”

McEnany waved off Kennedy’s responses, of course, claiming there was still “no safe way to use” the drugs. Kilmeade then snarked that this was the same thing as “going drinking” making sure to bring “the paddles ’cause you could have a heart attack.”

Without missing a beat, Kennedy flatly replied: “Or make sure you drink plenty of water and eat protein before drinking so you don’t get sick.”

California's 'Methuselah' bristlecone pine may no longer be the world's oldest tree


Felicia Alvarez
Mon, June 6, 2022

The 4,853-year-old Great Basin bristlecone pine tree known as Methuselah grows in the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in the White Mountains of Inyo County. 

(Tayfun Coskun / Anadolu Agency)

Scientists have discovered a new contender for the oldest tree in the world, potentially bumping California’s ancient bristlecone pine tree from the top spot.

The state's “Methuselah” bristlecone pine tree has been considered one of the oldest living trees on Earth since its rings were counted in 1957. The tree, located high in the White Mountains of Inyo County near Bishop, is estimated to be 4,853 years old.

Researchers in Chile, however, recently identified a new challenger to the world’s oldest tree from the depths of a ravine in Chile’s Alerce Costero National Park.

The tree, dubbed the “Alerce Milenario” or “Gran Abuelo,” may be more than 5,000 years old, according to a new report in Science magazine. Jonathan Barichivich, a scientist from Chile who specializes in dendrochronology, and his colleague Antonio Lara announced their findings last month. Dendrochronology is the study of tracking tree age by using growth rings.

In 1993, Lara and a colleague discovered an alerce tree stump in Chile that was more than 3,622 years old, placing alerce trees above giant sequoias as among the oldest trees in the world. In 2020, Lara and Barichivich returned to the forest to take a sample from the Alerce Milenario.

The claim of the 5-millennia-old tree may be met with skepticism from the scientific community, however, as the estimate of the tree’s age does not involve a full out of tree growth rings, according to Science.

Instead of taking a full core sample of the tree's rings, Barichivich and Lara used an increment borer to draw a narrow plug of wood from the tree. The partial sample of the tree’s wood showed about 2,400 growth rings.

Barichivich then compiled a statistical analysis to estimate the age range of the tree, according to Science. The model compiled complete core samples and environmental factors. According to Barichivich’s findings, which have not been published yet, the tree was estimated to be about 5,484 years old and had an 80% chance of being more than 5,000 years old.

Russia’s Crude Oil Revenues Take a Hit Even as Exports Swell

Julian Lee
Mon, June 6, 2022


(Bloomberg) -- Russia is earning less from its oil exports, even as seaborne crude shipments surge to a six-week high. That’s because of the big discounts that Moscow is having to offer Asian buyers to snap up barrels shunned by Europe, which translate into a drop in export duties.

Overall seaborne crude shipments jumped in the seven days to June 3, rising to their highest since late April. A total of 38 tankers loaded 27.6 million barrels from the country’s export terminals, vessel-tracking data and port agent reports show. That put average flows at 3.94 million barrels a day, up by 10% from 3.58 million in the week ended May 27.

The European Union finally adopted a package of sanctions on oil imports from Russia on June 2, following its late-February invasion of Ukraine. The ban on crude purchases, which doesn’t come into force until Dec. 5, is limited to volumes shipped by sea and excludes deliveries through the Druzhba pipeline system. Poland and Germany have committed to end their imports of piped Russian crude, even without an EU ban, leaving Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic as the sole buyers. That should cut deliveries to Europe by about 90% of last year’s level, according to data from Russian pipeline operator Transneft PJSC.

While self-sanctioning of Russian crude by European companies has already diverted significant crude volumes to Asia, so far it is having little impact on the overall level of crude shipments. About 660,000 barrels a day of Russian crude was discharged at Indian ports in May, up from about 270,000 barrels a day the previous month.

Flows of Urals crude from terminals in the Baltic, Russia’s primary outlet, rebounded in the week to June 3, rising by 417,000 barrels a day, or 29%, to their highest level in three weeks. The increase was partly offset by lower volumes from the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, where flows fell by 57,000 barrels a day, or 7%. Flows from Russia’s Arctic and Pacific export terminals were unchanged from the previous week.

While shipped volumes increased in the week to June 3, Moscow’s revenue from export duty moved in the opposite direction, falling by $9 million, or 5%, to $162 million. The dip in revenue reflects a lower per-barrel rate of export duty on shipments made in June.

Duty rates fell by 10% between May and June, dropping to $44.80 a ton, equivalent to about $6.11 a barrel, from $49.60 a ton, or $6.81 a barrel, in May. That’s down from $61.20 a ton, or $8.30 a barrel in April. Duty rates have now fallen by 27% since April, reflecting the steep discounts that Russia is being forced to offer to secure new buyers for its crude in Asia.

The number of cargoes shipped from Russian ports rose by four to 38 in the week to June 3 compared with the previous seven days. More ships departed from ports in the Baltic, while the numbers of shipments from all other regions remained unchanged.

There was only one shipment of Sokol crude from the Pacific port of De Kastri in May. Three Russian-owned shuttle tankers that regularly carry the grade are anchored empty off the loading terminal.

Crude Flows by Region

The following charts show the destinations of crude cargoes from each of the four export regions. Destinations are based on where vessels signal they are heading at the time of writing, and some will almost certainly change as voyages progress.

The volume of crude on ships loading from the Baltic terminals at Primorsk and Ust-Luga rebounded in the week to June 3. The volumes on tankers showing destinations in northwest Europe rose to a seven-week high, with now rare deliveries to Finland and Poland. Shipments from the Baltic to the Mediterranean dropped to an 11-week low, while the volume on tankers signaling destinations in Asia were the lowest in six weeks.

Both those figures are likely to rise, though, with more than one-quarter of the crude exported from the Baltic on ships that are yet to signal a final destination. Most of those are expected to head either to the Mediterranean or Asia.

Crude shipments from Russia’s Baltic ports are still going according to plan. All cargoes scheduled to load at Primorsk and Ust-Luga during the week to June 3 were shipped within a day of their planned loading dates.

Eight tankers completed loading at Novorossiysk in the Black Sea in the week to June 3, equaling the largest weekly number of vessels handled at the terminal so far this year. Most crude remained within the Black Sea region, with shipments to Bulgaria and Romania rising for a third week to reach their highest level for the year. Shipments to Asia were little changed, with two vessels heading to India.

All of the cargoes scheduled from Novorossiysk during the week loaded within two days of the dates on loading programs seen by Bloomberg.

Two ships loaded from Gazprom Neft’s Umba floating storage facility at Murmansk, one heading for Rotterdam and the other to India. A third vessel took a cargo from the Kola storage tanker used by Lukoil and is heading to the company’s ISAB refinery on the Italian island of Sicily.

Combined shipments from Russia’s western export terminals that are on tankers signaling destinations in Asia fell to 800,000 barrels a day in the week to June 3, down by 430,000 barrels a day from a revised 1.23 million barrels a day the previous week. But another 520,000 barrels a day are on vessels that are yet to show a final destination, so that figure is almost certain to be revised higher once destinations become apparent.

Crude flows from Russia’s three eastern oil terminals were stable during the week to June 3, with no shipments of Sokol from De Kastri for a fourth straight week.

Eight tankers loaded ESPO crude at Kozmino, unchanged from the previous two weeks. China is emerging as virtually the only buyer of Russia’s Pacific crude grades. Three vessels that loaded in the week to June 3 are currently anchored off Yeosu in South Korea, where they are expected to complete ship-to-ship transfers to Chinese supertankers. All three are owned by China’s Cosco Shipping Holdings Co., whose ships are increasingly used to shuttle ESPO crude from Kozmino to Yeosu, where it is transshipped onto larger vessels, also owned by Cosco, for onward delivery to China.

There were no shipments for a third week from De Kastri, which handles Sokol crude from the Sakhalin 1 project. Three Sovcomflot tankers have been anchored empty off the oil terminal since late April, with just one cargo loaded in the first week of May and delivered to Dalian in China.

One cargo of Sakhalin Blend crude was loaded from the terminal at the southern end of the island. Like all those from Kozmino, it is heading to China.

Long Voyages and Cargo Transfers

The number of tankers heading from Russia’s western export terminals to unknown destinations rose in the week to June 3. Five ships are showing destinations as Port Said, a regular signal for ships intending to transit the Suez Canal, while the same number are showing either no destination, or signaling somewhere that is clearly not where they will discharge their cargo.

Several tankers that loaded in earlier weeks are still not showing final destinations, with most continuing to indicate Port Said.

The Aframax tanker Zhen I transferred its cargo of about 100,000 tons of Urals crude to the VLCC Lauren II. While most such transfers take place in sheltered near-shore waters, this one was unusual as it was conducted in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, according to ship-tracking data. The transfer was done in waters about 300 miles west of the island of Madeira between May 26 and 27. The Lauren II remains drifting in the area, perhaps waiting for another cargo of Russian crude. The Afrapearl tanker is showing its destination as Acores, the Portuguese spelling of the Azores, a group of islands to the west of Madeira. Based on its destination signal, it too may transfer its cargo to the Lauren II sometime around the middle of June.

Note: This story forms part of a regular weekly series tracking shipments of crude from Russian export terminals and the export duty revenues earned from them by the Russian government.

Note: Bloomberg uses commercial ship-tracking data to monitor the movement of vessels. Ships can avoid detection by turning off on-board transponders, as has been done widely by the Iranian tanker fleet. There is no evidence yet that this is being done by crude oil tankers calling at Russian ports.

Note: Destinations are those signaled by the vessel and are monitored until the cargo is discharged. Destinations may change during a voyage, even under normal circumstances, and the final discharge point for the cargo may not be known until that port is reached.

Note: Cargo volumes are based on loading programs, where those are available, and on a combination of the ship’s capacity and its depth in the water where we have no other information.

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.