IRANIAN PRESIDENT ON A NEW SOUTH AMERICAN JOURNEY
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad starts in Brazil today a new attempt to consolidate relations with South America. Mr Ahmadinejad wants to take advantage of Brazil’s endeavour to play a greater role in international politics to persuade him to mediate in the conflict over Iran’s nuclear plans.
Iran has already established strong links with Venezuela. Mr. Ahmadinejad has met President Hugo Chavez 11 times and, through him, the Iranian President has established links with Ecuador and Bolivia.
EL PAIS (Spanish)
Brazzil Magazine
http://www.brazzilmag.com/content/view/11458/1/
BOLIVIA: MORALES CAMPAIGNS IN ENEMY TERRITORY
President Evo Morales led a mass rally in Santa Cruz during the weekend, as part of his campaign to get re-elected in the elections scheduled for 6 December.
Santa Cruz was one of the provinces to have demanded autonomous status, something Morales opposes. Although Santa Cruz is a stronghold of the right-wing opposition to the government, Morales enjoys a great deal of support in the poorest neighbourhoods of the provincial capital.
EL PAIS (Spanish)
“FRIENDLY” COUNTRIES MARGINALISE BOLIVIA
The government of President Evo Morales of Bolivia claims to have many allies in the region, and Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is the staunchest and most vociferous of them all. However, when it comes to markets, it seems that ideological considerations become, to say the least, irrelevant.
According to the Bolivian National Chamber of Exports, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Venezuela are planning to consolidate an energy bloc in Latin America, with the exclusion of Bolivia, one of the region’s biggest producers of natural gas
The same goes for textiles. Textile exports from Peru and Ecuador to the USA and Europe have recovered, also at the expense of Bolivia
El Diario (Bolivia, Spanish)
ECONOMY
VENEZUELA BAILS OUT STATE-OWNED COMPANY
A slump in the prices of minerals in the international markets is causing serious problems for some state-owned companies in Venezuela, to such an extent that the government of President Hugo Chavez has been forced to subsidise the industries that have experienced the biggest losses.
Some of those companies, mainly in the aluminium and steel sectors, cannot afford to pay their workers, who they have threaten to ballot for industrial action. Mr. Chavez said that those employees who want to strike over wages are “counter-revolutionaries”.
Bloomberg
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=a4CW0erLZ79I
CLIMATE CHANGE
URUGUAYAN EXPERT: CLIMATE CHANGE IS INEVITABLE
“Global warming within the next 50 years cannot be stopped because many of the [greenhouse] gases that have already been emitted have a lifespan of decades”, said Mario Bidegain, lecturer in climatology at the Universidad de la Republica in Uruguay.
Professor Bidegain, who is a member of the National Communications Support Programme of the UN’s Global Environmental Facility, believes that Latin America will inevitably be affected, with average temperatures increasing by 2.5°C by 2050, with a 10% increase in rainfall.
He believes that Latin America should take a joint position to the Climate Change Summit on Copenhagen to counterweight the influence of the industrialised economies that, he says, are refusing to take strong enough measures to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
Analitica.com (Venezuela, Spanish)