The week in review

I have been delinquent in posting updates to the blog in the last week, so here's a short summary of some of the highlights of the week.

US approves $400 million from the Millennium Challenge Account for El Salvador. From Reuters:

The Millennium Challenge Corporation, which doles out U.S. foreign aid for anti-poverty programs in developing countries, said the funds for El Salvador would help develop roads and expand access to education, water, sanitation and electricity in the impoverished north.

El Salvador, led by conservative President Tony Saca, is a strong U.S. ally and has a small contingent of troops in Iraq.

But the country's isolated northern area is still scarred by a 12-year civil war in which the United States supported the right-wing Salvadoran government and its army. More than 75,000 people were killed during the 1980-1992 conflict.

MCC chief executive John Danilovich said the decision was based on El Salvador's commitment to sound policies.


Remittances hit record levels in El Salvador. From AFX:

Remittances sent home by Salvadorans living in the United States jumped 18.5 percent in the first 10 months of the year compared with the same period last year, the Central Reserve Bank said Wednesday.

In the January to October period, Salvadorans sent US$2.72 billion, up from the US$2.3 billion sent in the first 10 months of 2005. The bank noted that a 3.3 percent growth in the U.S. economy through September 2006 contributed to the increase.

The 2005 annual figures totaled a record-breaking US$2.83 billion dollars in remittances, surpassing the previous 2004 record of US$2.55 billion dollars, according to Bank information. If the current growth continues, the Bank expects to finish 2006 with more then US$3.3 billion in remittances.

Commemoration of Jesuit Martyrs. November 16, 2006 was the 17th anniversary of the murder of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter by members of the Salvadoran armed forces. The Share Foundation has this excerpt from the funeral homily:
Lovers of utopia, they were realists and they knew how to take baby steps when it was necessary. They had strong commitment to their values. They knew how to ask for and tell the truth in the middle of a civil war that polarized, divided, and masked reality. They knew to defend life, and that peace would proceed necessarily from the rights of the poor. They gave their all to rigorous study, which would make the light of truth even more evident and brilliant.

School of the Americas protests. This weekend, as in previous years, tens of thousands of protesters go to Fort Benning, Georgia to protest at the former School of the Americas, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. View details of the protests at School of the Americas Watch. Many of the worst violators of human rights in Latin America during the 1970s and 1980s were trained by the US military at this institution.

US to resume training Latin America military personnel. The USA Today reports that the Bush Administration has quietly lifted a ban on training military personnel of 11 Latin American countries (not including El Salvador, however):
Concern about leftist victories in Latin America has prompted President Bush to quietly grant a waiver that allows the United States to resume training militaries from 11 Latin American and Caribbean countries.

The administration hopes the training will forge links with countries in the region and blunt a leftward trend. Daniel Ortega, an American nemesis in the region during the 1980s, was elected president in Nicaragua this week. Bolivians chose another leftist, Evo Morales, last year.

A military training ban was originally designed to pressure countries into exempting American soldiers from war crimes trials. The 2002 U.S. law bars countries from receiving military aid and training if they refuse to promise immunity from prosecution to U.S. service members who might get hauled before the International Criminal Court. The law allows presidential waivers.

The White House lifted the ban on 21 countries, about half in Latin America or the Caribbean, through a presidential memorandum Oct. 2 to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. A ban on giving countries weapons remains. Commercial arms sales are not affected, said Jose Ruiz, a spokesman for the U.S. Southern Command.

Comments

Anonymous said…
So USA's training of Latin American terrorists resumes, hmm? At least officially sanctioned by the US, because I'm pretty sure that covertly they've been aiding the paramilitary groups in Colombia who've gladfully ventured into Venezuela to wreck havoc.

I have a question for you, as an ally what is a crap country like El Salvador worth? I know that USA has made whatever it can to blunder progress in Latin America and keep the region as its personal "Africa", but realistically a country that has nothing like this... what is it worth in the world stage? Only votes (even though I'm sure all the Latin American mercs USA companies have hired have been useful as canon fodder)?

About the Millenium Account, well, I guess I have to thank the Millenium peeps for providing enough cash so El Salvador can see a new generation of "new rich" (people who will steal huge chunks of the funds). Mostly of them will probably ARENAZI supporters. But truthfully speaking, the only reason why USA bothered to give El Salvador the Millenium Account, is because about half of it is destined to building the Northern Road, part of the "Dry Canal" the region along with the USA wants to build. In other words, the only reason El Salvador got the account is so after all the road building is done, along with the port, transnationals can have a faster time getting the goods out of here and to give Predatory Pirate Mine companies easy access to potential project areas.
Hodad said…
one is that ES recognizes Taiwan in the UN as a country, US cannot piss of China so all the idiots in USA can still get all their cheap made walmart chinese plastic crap
at minimal duties
oh, ES folks ask where most of your maquila jobs are going, well a communist country,

also, all the 6 million ES in USA that work and send money back to ES, money that is held for 15 minutes by western union and millions madein those 15 minutes , from YOUR remitances
and money sent held for a day or so that also the bankers make interest, credit card charges are suppossed to be instantaneous into an account, yea right, my grandma wears army boots

anything else,
not done yet......
former, i said former exports from ES

#1 coffee, get real 3 years of coffee in warehouses in ES, right now, and Vietnam, another communist buddy of USA is #2 in the world, in caoffee, they pay thir coffee workers with a monthly bag of rice, yes i said still communist
soon to be #1, will be Vietnam
then guess where will be 2 and 3, no, not Colombia or Brazil, but Africa!
#2 sugar, read the facts, no more on that export, sugar growers in Florida and Louisiana lobby are all about that, and again from Africa!!
except for that very sorry company Coca-Cola, still the largest importer of coca leaves in the world and same that employs 12 year old ES to cut sugar cane and cut their legs off for very cheap ES sugar, bit not much of that, most stays in ES ,another reason the obesity levels in ES are very high now, look around at all the fat people, soft drinks are SO CHEAP... huh?

#3 shrimp
now really get real, no more shrimp, lots of pollution,with the estuaries, and road construction, building, soon to be gold mines, etc.
3 months of bans,april,may and september etc, and some smuggled Nicaraguan and Honduran shrimp in the marketsis all I saw this summer, at very high prices
ask me I know, not enough for even local consumption
so does that
answer some questions on ES importance?
oh, i quite forgot, yea Number 1 answer, what other country in the western hemishere has troops in Iraq other than US?
get it? guanaco cannon fodder

oh, and the very large narco business from ES to US , still on those good ole Military flights out of Ilopongo and now from Comalapa with the so called Forward Listening Post C-130 there
ask some of the employees? don't believe me?

anyway, cannot wait till the Black Caucus in Congress gets all this infoon El Salvador.......
we will then see what happens in this little country,
been burned too many times folks, their system and government sucks
when Bush gets impeached soon, [not soon enough] we will see
hang in fishermen friends, may be able to help yet,
but looking like Nicaragua is the place to be for the El Frente attitude and heart
leave ES to suffer unless maybe another situation arises, doubtful though
Anonymous said…
Well, heh. I was talking in a way of prestige, of importance, of influence... something "glamorous" if you will, something productive (like the world's biggest microchip exporter, the world's greatest recycled paper producer... I dunno). What does El Salvador worth? I know that we are all about cheap labor, drug trafficking bridge, and depend on remesas to sustain ourselves, and even as you mentioned, the "cheap labor" market is going elsewhere: Nicaragua and China.

As I see it, El Salvador isn't worth crap. It only matters internationally with those "votes" when we go as a region, perhaps? You know Central America, even when Costa Rica smartedly doesn't want to have ANYTHING to do with the retrograde narcs, parasites, pariah, pirates and buffons that we their neighbors are. President Arias said so himself: "Costa Rica won't enter PARLACEN, because PARLACEN is only sanctuary for corrupt officials to gather and keep stealing from the countries". Why would the most developed country in the region (even when they are also part of the money laundery business, I'm not saying they are perfect but they are leaps and bounds ahead of El Salvador) want to jeopordize its' developement and stability that they achieved SINCE THE 40s? Nah. No thank you. Right?

About remesas, well... It is a pity as one of Tim's articles pointed out, that all that mass money heading this way here only serves as safe netting for the decadent crap of this country, because first of all big part of that money is first of all part of the eternal money laundering scheme, secondly I'm sure that a good portion of the dear families that obtain remesas are quick to spend it... purchasing not only the essentials as they obviously should, but also foreign imports like tvs, etc. IMO, all the malls are being sustained because of that, and in the mean time, all the cash returns to the outside. The only benefit that the remeas are generating, is that now Hondurans can come here in the times of harvest, make their own dollars and multiply them by a 100 when they return home, because Salvadorans living here refuse to work for slave wages that doesn't exactly let them live well of with whatever they are making.

You know, it is as if the only real thing Salvadorans can do looking as our production is on the floor, specially like you pointed out on whatever goods we still have, we have either destroyed them (fishing), or we are gradually being replaced by another (Vietnam? I was reading that even though the gap between rich and poor is rising in Vietnam, it is nonetheless the second fastest growing ecomy, while El Salvador remains like a minor pawn thanks to ARENAZI).

Anway, by what I read from you, seems like ES is not exactly worth anything. It is a pity that all the cash made from the cotton business, the indigo business, coffeee business, sugar business, cocaine trafficking-money laundering business, our country over more than a century of that type of business hasn't exactly put all the cash it has mobilized into good use. Specially when you see that every year, some schmuck from ARENAZI-PCN and CO. steal from 10 million-100 million+ from somewhere. That is about a billion steps back, imo. How are we ever supposed to progress like that? But I guess underdevelopement is where my countrymen want to be, seeing how we repeatedly vote for the same corsair-mafia party that is screwing everyone up. You know, in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if ARENAZI won in 2009. It seems like the only badge of "honor" we can have, is being the continents what is it? 2nd most violent country and also next to Haiti the 2nd most polluted/deforested?

You know, something I asked you once... okay, you are going to take a fight against the illegal salvadoran immigrants, which is cool, perhaps if they are deported no more remittances and the country will end up imploding... BUT, I believe that either way that won't necessarily affect: Cristiani, Flores, Hill, Domenech, Prieto, Sol, Escalon, Dutriz, Poma, etc. They already have all their cash (along with a large percentage of the people's cash: read in colatino that Banco Cuscatlan has been sued in Honduras because of fraud, you can only imagine where the bulk of BC cash is in...) in international banks, in any of the world's leading mafia havens, you know, those very popular places where conmen, the Nazis, the drug lords, have their cash? They'll simply leave, comfortly recide in Miami... My question is, what will people like you do about people like them? IMO, those people are the ones that need to pay DEEPLY. It is them who are the racist top-cats, genocidals, mafiosos, the teacher of all the bad habits to the general population by years of uneducation/exploitation/oblivion.

Oh and two things... Bush impeached? Ha. If that only were true, but to the rest of the world... Democrat-Republicans, they are the same. One is just a fascist light and the other is to the extreme. I am sure the Dems would worry more about the natives while screwing the world over... but hey, people should've voted for Nader and any other party, don't you think? Isn't it time for a change, or at least try something different?

ABout Nicaragua... Dunno, man... but after reading some news that Ortega will respect the TLC with USA, will respect the business pursuits of the thousands of US people living there (honestly, wouldn't surprise me if they were Banana plantation owners or something like that, you know part of the mafias that reign Latin America), would respet the business interests of salvadoran "entrepeneurs" (hahhahahaha, what a joke)... I actually believe he has changed... If he actually doesn't become another corruption lord and plays his cards straight dealing with anyone for the benefit of Nicaraguan people, then that is cool.
Carlos X. said…
God halp us.
Anonymous said…
God? Check the dollar bill, there you will see God...