Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) Moves toward Continental Freedom of Movement ...Venezuela Makes “Equality” Call

By Ewan Robertson:



Mérida, 5^th December 2014 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – The 12 member Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) has taken a step toward creating South American citizenship and freedom of movement. Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro also called for strategies to promote continental economic development, social equality and defence sovereignty.

The new proposals for South American integration were made during a UNASUR summit in Guayaquil, Ecuador yesterday. Today regional leaders are meeting in the Ecuadorian capital Quito for the opening of the organisation’s new permanent headquarters.

Taking place over two days, the summit in Guayaquil sought to design strategies to further develop regional integration.

“We have approved the concept of South American citizenship. This should be the greatest register of what has happened,” said UNASUR general secretary Ernesto Samper at the summit yesterday.

Part of this proposal is to create a “single passport” and homologate university degrees in order to give South Americans the right to live, work and study in any UNASUR country and to give legal protection to migrants – similar to freedom of movement rules for citizens of the European Union.

For Samper, who is a former Colombian president, they key word at the meeting was “convergence” to continue integration. “Convergence of citizens, convergence of similarities, and convergence of solidarity are the proposals of this effort to bring us together,” he said.

Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, argued that the statutes of UNASUR should be changed and that majorities, rather than absolute consensus, should be the minimum necessary basis on which to advance important areas of integration.

In particular, Correa called for the advancement of financial integration and sovereignty, such as the Bank of the South and Reserve Fund, a currency exchange system to minimise the use of the dollar in intercontinental trade, the creation of a regional body to settle financial disputes, and a common currency “in the medium term”.

Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro agreed that the creation of new financial instruments was central to advancing regional integration and sovereignty.

“From Venezuela we believe that we must take the agenda of shared economic development into our hands; a new financial architecture [that includes] the Bank of Structural Projects, that converts us into a powerful bloc,” he said to media in Guayaquil before the meeting with other UNASUR leaders.

The two other priorities for the Venezuelan government at the meeting were to promote strategies for social equality and regional defence sovereignty.

On defence, Maduro said that Venezuela would support a “new South American military doctrine” based on a “system of education for South American militaries, below the guidance of the South American Defence Council,” in which the thought of the continent’s 19^th century independence leaders would be present.

Another important event at the summit was the passing of the pro tempore presidency of the UNASUR from Suriname to Uruguay.

Outgoing Uruguayan president Jose Mujica made a passionate speech while accepting the presidency on behalf of his country, where he stated, “There won’t be integration without commitment, willpower, and political will, because the global obstacles are enormous and the past continues to constrain us”.

Meanwhile, respected former Brazilian president Lula Da Silva declared, "Today our main challenge is to deepen the construction of strategic thought of Latin America and the Caribbean. We can construct an integration project that is more daring, that takes advantage of the formation of our rich history, goods and cultures”.

The UNASUR was created in 2008. Its members are: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Published on Dec 5th 2014 at 1.07pm 

Venezuelanalysis

Keep an eye on Suriname

By Ray Chickrie


Former military leader, and now democratically elected president of Suriname, Desi Bouterse, is keen to bring positive international spotlight to his country. That is the case so far.

Just a week ago, Fitch upgraded the sovereign foreign currency credit rating for Suriname one notch to B-plus, citing a stronger credit position and improvements in its balance of payments. The rating outlook was revised to stable from positive. Suriname is moving ahead in its quest to develop its economy without the help of Holland, its former colonial master.

Already, Suriname has made news in the Arab Gulf after Dubai Ports acquired major stakes in two harbours in Paramaribo. Canada and the United Arab Emirates are emerging rapidly as Suriname's principal trading partners because of economic external factors such as the rapidly growing world market for gold.

In the next three years, Suriname will see over 2 billion dollars in investments from IAMGOLD (US$800 million), Newmont (at least half a billion) and State Oil (US$1 billion). As well, the government will commence the building of 18,000 homes. These investments are besides those that China will be negotiating with Suriname soon. This will lead to a construction boom in Suriname and the government is already looking to address the issue of labour shortage. Most likely, Paramaribo will look to Guyanese labourers to fill this void.

Suriname pushed ahead before Guyana to build a major road and railway to northern Brazil and with a major partnership with Dubai Port and an agreement with Cayenne, this investment is sound. Moreover, on the western front, Suriname will bridge the Corantijn River to Guyana, and there are also discussions to build an international airport in Nickerie. This will attract Guyanese travelers from the state of Berbice, offering cheaper, easier and convenient options of travelling to the Caribbean, North America, Europe and Brazil. Suriname Airways (SLM) will recommence service to Guyana and extend its reach into Northern Brazil according to Foreign Minister Lackin.

Suriname has been on its own for the past decade, funds that Holland owed to Paramaribo have dried up, and the government is looking for foreign direct investment (FDI) and capital from Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Turkey and Gulf Arab States.

President Bouterse is a keen supporter of South American integration though the multi-lateral organisation, UNASUR. He has also given his ambassador to Indonesia, Amina Pardi the mandate to sell Suriname as the bridge between ASEAN and CARICOM.

Suriname has joined the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) and the Bouterse pro- Arab government has reactivated ties with the Middle East. The IsDB, the OIC’s financing branch, is one of many institutions that could provide financing for several government programs, said minister of foreign affairs, Winston Lackin. “We believe this organization is an important one, taking into consideration the resources which are available through the IsDB to finance our programs and projects,” the cabinet minister added.

On the tourism front, this sector is on the rise. The steady flow of Euro-travelers from French Guiana has the tourism industry there in Suriname learning French. These are not expatriates. While the majority of tourists from Europe are expatiates from Holland, there are many non-Surinamers from Holland visiting as well.

And while Guyana struggles to bring Marriott to Georgetown, Paramaribo has already attracted Best Western, Marriott and Wyndham hotels. These were all brought here by the local private sector. As well, the local Torarica and Kransnapolsky group of hotels have expanded in Paramaribo and in the interior to tap the lucrative eco-tourism market. There is much more work to be done to market this product and to reduce airfares.

August 18, 2011

caribbeannewsnow

Bahamas Blog International

Latin America and the Caribbean move toward energy security

Caracas, 13 May. AVN .- One of the main issues analyzed during a meeting by the people responsible for the energy area in Latin America and the Caribbean was the construction of an institutionality to be able to execute the proposals made on energy security, informed the Venezuelan Energy and Oil minister Rafael Ramirez.

The encounter held in a hotel in Caracas is part of the preliminary meetings in the framework of the Third Summit of Latin America and the Caribbean on Integration and Development (CALC) that will take place in Venezuela on July 5.

“Energy security includes a reliable and direct supply; for such reason, there are proposals to create mixed ventures in which each country can manage sovereignly its own resources without intermediaries that create so much speculation in the international oil market. We have progressed a lot in that matter in the Caribbean and in the South,” Ramirez explained.

In the first journey, it was decided the themes that will be discussed during the ministerial meeting of this Friday in which it is expected the attendance of the Venezuelan Foreign Affairs minister Nicolas Maduro.

From Friday"s meeting, a series of proposals will emerge and they will be debated over by the head of States next July during the Third CALC Summit.

“Solidarity, complementarity,energy security and asymmetries were the main themes discussed on Thursday,” he added

Ramirez stated that ministers have also debated over energy cooperation, since the countries in the meeting are part of Petrocaribe and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), and proposals have been made to make the two blocs work in the same direction.

The Venezuelan minister recalled that besides Petrocaribe, Venezuela has alliances in 8 mixed ventures in the Caribbean and is participating in the South in diverse natural gas, oil and fuel projects with Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil and Colombia.

“We have reached some progress in a bilateral way, but we think that this is an extraordinary proposal because we are holding talks with countries with common problems and we are building a fundamental bloc so as to give support to the socio-economic development of our nations,” he added.

Ramirez recalled that Latin America and the Caribbean have become one of the regions in the world with more hydrocarbon reserves, “which will be very important for the planning in next years.”

09:38 13/05/2011

avn

Bahamas Blog International

What does the emergence of a unified, anti-American, Europe-oriented trade bloc mean?

By Rebecca Theodore


If argument persists that a state cannot be fully understood if it is isolated from its historical development, then the transition from democracy to authoritarianism for Latin American countries implies that there must be a constant rewriting of the social contract based on new social and economic relations that are continually emerging in Latin America. Paradoxically, the return of democracy from authoritarianism not only demonstrates that ‘a government is legitimate if and only if no better feasible policy exists’ but also exhibits the fact that it is possible for democracies to be authoritarian as well.

Opponents have argued that Latin American state formation is more closely aligned with European state patterns due to colonial influences from the fifteenth century and it is to Western Europe that one needs to turn in order to uncover the roots of the embryonic parallel. However, it must be remembered that the US has also been deeply ingrained in Latin American affairs since 1823, when President James Monroe created the Monroe Doctrine to keep European powers out of the New World. In light of this, America’s reputation as the great superpower of the Andes and the savior of protectionism and liberalism is now viewed in Latin America as a policy of imperialism and a sign of utter weakness.

While China’s ideological connection of communism and socialism weakens US power in Latin America, it is evident that the European trade bloc is now Latin America’s primary trade partner. Latin American trade group Mercosur is the only multinational continent in the world to be united by a common linguistic background, a common culture, and a common religion factor making South America’s path to assimilation a lot smoother into the congregation of the European States of Europe. The legal structure of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) not only unites South America’s two major trade blocs -- Mercosur and the Andean Community -- but has now launched a South American Defense Council, unlike a NATO alliance to mediate regional conflicts and defense from foreign intervention and excludes the US from military planning in the region.

Moreover, Latin America is far more important to Europe as an industrial base than as a simple trade partner. The giant storehouse of timber, natural gas, crude oil, minerals, precious metals, and iron in the region from the Rio Grande to Terra del Fuego are resources that Europe needs in its ascension to world supremacy. The completion of the largest steel-producing complex in Brazil by ThyssenKrupp means steel products will be actively churned out to be sold to Germany and South American countries, with Venezuela as the principal buyer. This also means that the US-backed Área de Libre Comercio de las Américas (FTAA) is dead. Estados de América Latina ha creado su propio barrio, y los Estados Unidos de América no es parte de ella. (Latin American states have created their own neighborhood and the US is not a part of it.)

It is clear that anti-Americanism is now the common premise across every political party in Latin and South America. While Evo Morales is rapidly following Chavez’s lead by nationalizing Bolivia’s oil and gas in a move that reverberates that of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe’s land for grab deals, the newly elected president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff is just a hand-chosen puppet of wildly popular President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s policies. With huge oil reserves recently discovered off Brazil’s coast, and with a rare earth debate gaining momentum between China and Germany that excludes American interest, Rousseff inherits an economy that is among the world's hottest emerging markets and this means that it will need more than a party shift in the US House of Representatives to advance bilateral relationship.

Hugo Chávez on the other hand has, without doubt, polarized Venezuela’s society and intellectual debate by undermining civil liberties, threatening the continuity of democratic governance, hence his accompaniment of a repulsive episode of an ALBA alliance that provided Honduran president Manuel Zelaya and Ecuadoran Rafael Correa with a foretaste of how to rewrite the constitution and establish authoritarian rule in Honduras, leaving a Honduran legislature buried in turmoil and controversy over US intelligence officials bribing Ecuadoran police, and recruiting informants among them. Argentina, Peru, Uruguay, Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala, and Chile are all offering radical transformation and presenting different alternatives to deal with the consequences of economic reforms.

Now that the US has lost Latin America to Europe and China as primary trade partners also means that the Republicans’ tsunami win in the House of Representatives will prove that Barack Obama is not suffering the blunders of a political double standard on the economy as has been so widely anticipated. As Republicans embrace their ambitious legislative agenda they will in time notice that the U.S. economy is starving to death and reducing the deficit or the current unemployment rate of 9.6% and fighting the Great Recession is no magic but a sign of the times.

Trade with Latin America, coupled with other economic factors, has already started reading the eulogy of the US dollar, thereby exposing the grave danger of the economic reverberations that are just now beginning to shake the nucleus of the world’s financial systems. Regardless of what anyone says, this is not an Obama problem, it is a global problem -- “blame it on the economy stupid”. The only self-sustaining economic bloc is the establishment of an EU-style government and for this reason EU status must be fortified in the UN because Latin and South American states, Caribbean states and even Africa have no option other than complete reliance on the economic ties of a German-led EU, or cling to the apron strings of a Russo-China alliance in their quest for economic reforms.

Whether it means that economic reformers in the US need to employ authoritarian tactics to defend democratic processes or risk total failure or that democratic governments in Latin America are not authoritarian enough to defend positive economic reforms; it is clear that the new trend in Latin America is… Buenos dias Europe, Adios America, pero quando o povo esta morrendo de fome, a democracia e’ so uma palavra.” Good morning Europe, Goodbye America, because when the people are starving democracy is just a word.

November 15, 2010

caribbeannewsnow

Bahamas Blog International

Pittsburgh and the Margarita Summit

Reflections of Fidel

(Taken from CubaDebate)

THE Leaders’ Statement of the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh on Friday, September 25, would appear to be unreal. Let us look at the principal points of its content:

"We meet in the midst of a critical transition from crisis to recovery to turn the page on an era of irresponsibility and to adopt a set of policies, regulations and reforms to meet the needs of the 21st century global economy."

"We pledge today to sustain our strong policy response until a durable recovery is secured."

"…we pledge to adopt the policies needed to lay the foundation for strong, sustained and balanced growth in the 21st century."

"We want growth without cycles of boom and bust and markets that foster responsibility not recklessness."

"…we act together to generate strong, sustainable and balanced global growth. We need a durable recovery that creates the good jobs our people need."

"We need to establish a pattern of growth across countries that is more sustainable and balanced, and reduce development imbalances."

"We pledge to avoid destabilizing booms and busts in asset and credit prices."

"…we will also make decisive progress on structural reforms that foster private demand and strengthen long-run growth potential."

"Where reckless behavior and a lack of responsibility led to crisis, we will not allow a return to banking as usual."

"We are committed to act together to raise capital standards, to implement strong international compensation standards aimed at ending practices that lead to excessive risk-taking…"

"We designated the G-20 to be the premier forum for our international economic cooperation."

"We are committed to a shift in International Monetary Fund (IMF) quota share to dynamic emerging markets and developing countries of at least 5%."

"Sustained economic development is essential in order to reduce poverty."

The G-20 is made up of the seven most industrialized and richest countries:

United States, Canada, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Japan, plus Russia; the 11 principal emerging countries: China, India, South Korea, Indonesia, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Mexico and the European Union, a number of which have excellent economic and political relations with us. Spain and Holland have participated as guests in the last three Summits.

The idea of capitalist development without crises is the grand illusion that the United States and its allies are trying to sell to the emerging economy countries participating in the G-20.

Almost the totality of the Third World countries that are not allies of the United States are observing how this nation prints paper money which circulates throughout the planet as convertible currency without gold backing, buys shares and companies, natural resources, goods and real estate assets and public debt bonds, protects its products, dispossesses nations of their finest brains and confers an extraterritorial nature on its laws. This is in addition to the overwhelming power of its arms and its monopoly of the fundamental means of information.

Consumer societies are incompatible with the conservation of natural and energy resources that the development and the preservation of our species require.

In a brief historical period and thanks to its Revolution, China ceased being a semicolonial and semifeudal country, grew at the rate of more than 10% over the past 20 years and has become the principal driving force of the world economy. Never has a huge multinational state achieved similar growth. It now possesses the highest reserves of convertible currency and is the largest creditor of the United States.

The difference is abysmal in relation to the most developed capitalist countries of the world: the United States and Japan. The debts of both nations, in their turn, accumulate the sum of $20 trillion.

The United States can no longer constitute a model of economic development.

Starting from the fact that in recent years the planet’s temperature has increased by 0.8 degrees Celsius, on the same day as the Pittsburgh Summit ended, the top U.S. news agency reported that "Earth's temperature is likely to jump nearly 3 degrees Celsius between now and the end of the century, even if every country cuts greenhouse gas emissions as proposed, according to a United Nations update."

"Scientists looked at emission plans from 192 nations and calculated what would happen to global warming. The projections take into account 80 percent pollution cuts from the U.S. and Europe by 2050, which are not sure things."

"Carbon dioxide, mostly from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil, is the main cause of global warming, trapping the sun's energy in the atmosphere. The world's average temperature has already risen 1.4 degrees (0.8 degrees Celsius)," it reiterates. "Much of projected rise in temperature is because of developing nations, which aren't talking much about cutting their emissions, scientists said at a United Nations press conference Thursday."

"‘We are headed toward very serious changes in our planet,’ said Achim Steiner, head of the U.N.'s environment program."

"Even if the developed world cuts its emissions by 80 percent and the developing world cuts theirs in half by 2050…the world is still facing a 3-degree (1.7 degree Celsius) said Robert Corell, a prominent U.S. climate scientist who helped oversee the update."

"…still translates into a nearly 5 degree (2.7 degree Celsius) increase in world temperature by the end of the century. European leaders and the Obama White House have set a goal to limit warming to just a couple degrees."

What they have not explained is how they are going to reach that objective, nor the GDP contribution to invest in poor countries and compensate for the damage occasioned by the volume of contaminating gases that the most industrialized nations have discharged into the atmosphere. World public opinion must acquire a solid culture on climate change. Even if there isn’t the slightest error of calculation, humanity will be marching to the edge of the abyss.

When Obama was meeting in Pittsburgh with his G-20 guests to talk about the delights of Capua, the Summit of the Heads of State of UNASUR and the Organization of African Unity [African Union] was beginning on the Venezuelan Isla Margarita. More than 60 presidents, prime ministers and high-ranking representatives of South American and Africa met there. Also present were Lula, Cristina Fernández and President Jacob Zuma of South Africa, who had arrived from Pittsburgh to enjoy a warmer and more fraternal summit, during which the problems of the Third World were covered with much frankness. The president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Hugo Rafael Chávez, was brilliant and vibrant in that Summit. I had the agreeable possibility of listening to the voices of known and proven friends.

Cuba is grateful for the support and solidarity that emerged from that Summit, where nothing was left in oblivion.

Whatever happens, the peoples will become constantly more aware of their rights and their duties!

What a great battle will be waged in Copenhagen!


Fidel Castro Ruz
September 27, 2009
6.14 p.m.

Translated by Granma International

- Reflections oF Fidel

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