Notes

It's been a busy weekend with little time to breathe let alone blog, but here are some notes from the hemisphere:

Boz has an interesting post on the upcoming Honduran presidential election.

Former Nicaraguan president, Arnoldo Alemán, whose porcine greed led thim to loot $100 million from Nicaragua and whose porcine appetite led him to be confined to house arrest for health reasons,  was granted even more lenient terms for his crimes allowing him to leave home detention as long as he stays within Managua. Prensa Latina (consider the source) and only Prensa Latina as I write this is saying that these terms were revoked and he's back under house arrest. He belongs in jail.

Roger Noreiga left his post as assistant secretary of state for Hemispheric Affairs on Friday afternoon (when else!) . Don't expect someone less than a rigid ideologue to be appointed to replace him.

Larry Rohter has a generally good article on corruption in Latin America, although I would translate the sign in the photo as "Enough Already of corruption and impunity!" With the qualification that this is a Larry Rohter article discussing Lula, I really find the closing quote by Lula to be disturbingly arrogant:

"Among 180 million Brazilians, there is no one, neither man nor woman, with the authority to lecture me about ethics, morals or honesty," he said in a speech here last week. "In this country, the person who can debate ethics with me has yet to be born."

If any of my regular readers from Brazil can source this quote for me, I'd appreciate it. If he said it, shame on him.

Back tomorrow.

Comments

[boz]

Considering that Rohter predicted the loss of Ambassador Moreno as president of the IDB only a few hours before he won (and he won decisively), I don't think he's having a great week. I understand that if Moreno had lost, Rohter would have looked like a brilliant analyst, but it wasn't the smartest of predictions considering every other analyst said Moreno was ahead in votes leading up to the election.