At 11:45 a.m. today, billionaire and president-elect Sebastian Piñera will be inaugurated in Valparaiso as the next President of Chile. In the wake of the 8.8-magnitude earthquake that hit the country on Feb. 27, the ceremony will be a sober one, says The Santiago Times.

“We cannot celebrate while our fellow citizens are suffering and have lost everything. These are times of solidarity, of national unity and of working together to fix the country,” said the new government in a statement this week.

Bolivia’s President Evo Morales, President Álvaro Uribe of Colombia, President José Mujica of Uruguay and Felipe de Asturias, the Crown Prince of Spain, will be attending the service, as well OAS General Secretary Jose Miguel Insulza and representatives from other countries including the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada.

Piñera will dedicate part of the day to several protocol activities and talking to the various international leaders.

The inauguration will be followed by a lunch in el Palacio de Cerro Castillo in Viña del Mar with the heads of state. Piñera will then travel by helicopter to Constitución, Chile’s second largest city and the community hit hardest by last week’s earthquake and tsunami, to further assess the damage and announce the first concrete measures his government will take in rebuilding the area.

Meanwhile, Piñera’s ministers will be settling into their offices in Santiago to start up their respective ministries.

After returning to Santiago this evening, Piñera will salute the capital city for the first time as president by driving down Alameda, the city’s main thoroughfare. After being greeted by national authorities at la Moneda, he will appear at the building’s balcony to speak to the country.

The future president invited close to 80 people to his inauguration ceremony, of which 30 are family members. Other invitations were given to friends, former heads of state and sports and entertainment figures.

Carabineros police will be on hand should protests occur. Protesters handed out pamphlets this week calling for a boycott of the new government.

The transition to the new center-right government has been remarkably civilized, not withstanding criticism levelled at outgoing-president Michelle Bachelet for allegedly failing to act aggressively enough during the first hours following the February 27 earthquake.

Despite some friction on the issue, President elect Piñera said his future government is already working closely with Bachelet’s cabinet to take appropriate safety measures and retaining a number of Bachelet-era appointees to assure expedited emergency relief.

Meanwhile, the strongest aftershock since Chile’s devastating earthquake rocked the South American country Thursday as President Sebastian Pinera was sworn into office.

The 7.2-magnitude aftershock was stronger than the quake that destroyed the Haitian capital on Jan. 12, reports the AP.

There were no immediate reports of damages or injuries but the temblor – and at least three other aftershocks – strongly swayed buildings – shook windows and provoked nervous smiles among the dignitaries attending Pinera’s inauguration at the congressional building in coastal Valparaiso.

The biggest aftershock happened along the same fault zone as Chile’s magnitude-8.8 quake on Feb. 27, said geophysicist Don Blakeman at the U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colorado.

“When we get quakes in the 8 range, we would expect to see maybe a couple of aftershocks in the 7 range,” he said.

Blakeman said Chile now can expect to feel “aftershocks of the aftershock.”

“It’s not a sign of anything different happening. But what does occur when you get these large aftershocks, typically we have a whole series of aftershocks again,” Blakeman said.

Bolivian President Evo Morales seemed briefly disoriented and Peru’s Alan Garcia joked that it gave them “a moment to dance.”

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• Chile’s New President Enters a Changed Political Landscape (nytimes.com)
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Between 1923 and 1930 Spain was ruled by General Miguel Primo de Rivera (whose son José Antonio will,  before being put to death by a Leftist tribunal, create the semi-fascist, quasi-socialist movement, Falange). While the regime of Miguel was officially authoritarian, it lacked many traits that are usually associated with military dictatorships: it was bland rather than bloodthirsty or cruel; it was not rightist –on the contrary, it favored the lower classes; it was not ended by a coup d’état, a revolution or a foreign invasion. The dictator resigned as soon as he found out that the side effects of the international Depression had dried up the reasonable prosperity his government had brought to Spain in the mid- and late Twenties. Furthermore, Marquis Primo de Rivera, a top general and a member of the Andalusian landowning upper nobility, did not uphold his class. On the contrary, he aroused the discontent of his fellow aristocrats, then still the dominant stratum of Spanish society.

The dictatorship used to be the legal, highly respected top office of the pristine Roman republic, a very strong position that in hard times was deemed vital to the survival or success of the State. In the 90 years between 1833, when king Ferdinand VII died, and 1923 (Primo’s military coup), Spain had 111 governments, 3 bloody civil (“Carlist”) wars and, in 1898, was disastrously defeated by the United States, so losing the last remnants of her American and Pacific empires. In addition, the country suffered serious reverses in North Africa and a few Anarchist attempts at social revolution, including in 1909 the Semana Tragica (Tragic Week). When Primo de Rivera stormed the government, the parliamentary regime of the liberal oligarchs had reached its end.

Immediately after the disaster of 1898, Joaquin Costa, the leading mind of the “Regenerationist” movement, had prophesied that Spain’s disease was so advanced that only an “iron surgeon”, that is a dictatorial innovator, could possibly heal the nation. That was exactly what Primo de Rivera was for seven years after 1923 –a Roman-type legal dictator who would demolish the parliamentary politics, wind up the colonial adventure in Morocco and then start doing something new in favor of the country: mitigating the century-old poverty of the masses and modernizing the economy. Ludovico Incisa di Camerana, a career ambassador who investigated Spanish problems for years, stressed in a remarkable book that Primo’s dictatorship “was oriented in favor of the working men, their unions and the Socialist party” and that he “destroyed the power of the oligarchy”.

Indeed, the social orientation of the dictator appeared so strong that his top labor lieutenant was Francisco Largo Caballero, who in the ‘30s, after Primo’s fall, led the whole of the Spanish left as “the Spanish Lenin” and in the Civil War became head of the Republican government. With the strong support of Socialist Largo Caballero and of José Calvo Sotelo (who at 32 was appointed the supremo of economy and finance, and whose assassination in 1936 ignited the Civil War), dictator Primo de Rivera acted decisively in favor of the workers. Then, he built roads, railroads, canals, hydroelectric dams, promoted industrialization and other economic programs. Strikes almost disappeared, the salaries improved. Between 1920 and 1929 state expense grew 50% in the field of education, 98% in subsidies to the poors, 200% in the overall health budget, of 2,246% in help to caring for children (before Primo the State gave practically nothing to children).

Most bona fide historians routinely admit that Primo de Rivera, while despising democratic institutions and practices, strove to help the working class. So much so that he aroused the bitter resentment of the privileged– especially those upper aristocrats who were insensitive, brutal and foolish enough as to try keeping everything they had, only to be almost annihilated in 1936 (many were put to death).

Of course, Primo de Rivera antagonized intellectuals, Miguel de Unamuno first of all, who certainly was the best. But political choices of intellectuals are very seldom realistic or relevant. It’s a fact that the temperament and behavior of General Primo were often such to excite criticisms. He was overly spontaneous, unmethodical, individualistic, sometimes capricious, much attracted by women, and so forth.

On the other hand, Primo was principled. He decided not to marry a very rich fiancée, Mercedes Castellanos (in the opinion of the King she was the Second Lady of Spain), after discovering that she made some money out of her social connections. And he vetoed a love affair between a son of his (not José Antonio) and Infanta Beatriz, daughter of the King. The explanation: a Primo de Rivera, being born very high, must not further climb the social ladder by becoming a relative of the monarch. Primo made a number of favors to his friends, but was also lenient with his enemies and very generous with poor people. Above all he, unlike so many liberal/democratic politicians, did not steal public money. No historian is known to have advanced allegations of corruption against Marquis Primo de Rivera, who was born rich.

In conclusion, having taken power a few months after Mussolini did, for 5-6 years Primo was as popular as the Duce would be. The Spanish dictator lost consensus when the economy worsened, both for too many public works and subsidies and for the consequences of the international Depression of 1929. In the previous years, most Spaniards approved Primo’s forcing out of power the oligarchs (the liberal politicians) and cancelling parties and parliamentary institutions. Labor particularly supported the populist, socially inclined side of the Dictadura, a regime which in a few ways resembled Fascism but in the main was rather inspired by the social doctrine of the Church (in addition to simple common sense).

On Jan. 28, 1930, the dictator resigned and left Spain, only to die in Paris 48 days later. Considering the tragedies of Spain between the very beginning of the XIX century and the Civil War of 1936, any dispassionate student of history cannot help judging Primo de Rivera as  the statesman who acted better than all Spanish liberal politicians, including the respected Canovas del Castillo, Sagasta and Antonio Maura. Of course, said politicians were not dictators. But they were worse than that– they perpetuated the socio-political marasmus that in 1936 made the rebellion of the proletarians inevitable and killed the national peace.

Reports from Sao Paulo this weekend confirmed that Brazil’s President Lula da Silva will not be attending the very austere March 11 ceremony in Valparaiso to swear in Chile’s new president Sebastian Piñera, reports The Santiago Times.

Brazil government sources said da Silva had opted for an domestic agenda since the Chilean ceremony will be very simple and quick, and since da Silva already met with Mr. Piñera during the recent Group of Rio Mexico summit of Latin American and Caribbean leaders. The sources also noted that da Silva cut short his visit to Uruguay a week ago and flew to Chile to personally express Brazilian support to President Bachelet in the aftermath of the Feb. 27 earthquake.

“For the moment” there’s no trip planned to Chile for President Lula da Silva, however once the situation is back to normal “it is certain the president will hold a bilateral meeting with Piñera in Santiago,” said government sources.

A report from O Estado de Sao Paulo discarded “ideological differences” with conservative Piñera as the reason for Socialist da Silva’s absence from Santiago.

Uruguayan president Jose Mujica, however, has confirmed he will to travel to Santiago not only for Piñera’s inauguration, but also to express the Uruguayan people’s “solidarity and support” to the people and government of Chile following its tragic earthquake.

President Michelle Bachelet missed Mujica’s inauguration of in Montevideo on Monday, March 1, because of the earthquake. It will be President Mujica’s first foreign trip since taking office.

In related news, the White House reported that National Security Advisor, General James L Jones will be representing President Obama at the Chilean inauguration ceremony. He will be accompanied among others by Russell C. Crandall, head of Andean Affairs and the National Security Council.

Last week Secretary of State visited Chile where she met with outgoing President Michelle Bachelet and president elect Piñera.

Russia’s updated military doctrine mentions the “desire of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to provide its force potential with global functions, the implementation of which goes against international law, to bring the military infrastructure of the NATO member countries to the borders of the Russian Federation, including through the means of expanding the bloc.”

In the West, and especially in NATO circles, this doctrinal thesis was received cautiously, and even with some resentment. The present realities, however, speak for the legitimacy of the document.

February 18 marked the 58th anniversary of NATO’s first expansion (initially the military bloc had just six member countries), when Greece and Turkey joined the Alliance in 1952. This event heralded in an amendment to the North Atlantic Treaty, as now documented in Article 6, which reads: “For the purposes of Article 5, an armed attack on one or more of the Parties is deemed to include an armed attack: on the territory of any of the Parties in Europe or North America…on the territory of Turkey or on the islands under the jurisdiction of any of the Parties in the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer…”

This amendment was made simply due to the fact that Turkey is not a European state. Moreover, Article 10 of the North Atlantic Treaty, according to which only European countries may be members of NATO, contradicts Turkey’s membership in the military coalition.

Turkey’s accession into NATO contradicted Article 10 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which strictly restricts the geographical borders of the Alliance.

As for Ukraine, according to sociological surveys, the majority of its population is against the country’s membership in NATO. Nevertheless, according to Mr. Rasmussen, the Alliance has long made a decision that Ukraine will become its member. And that is democracy according to NATO. The people may desire what they may, but decisions will be made in the highest NATO structures, and it is not exactly clear in whose interests.

Clearly, the acceptance of Ukraine into the Alliance is not at all dictated by the desire to spread democracy. The eastward expansion of NATO has already provided the Alliance an ability, with the use of conventional weapons, to make tactical air strikes on Russia’s governmental and military centers, and well as its strategic nuclear forces. With Ukraine’s accession into NATO, which the United States is making significant efforts toward achieving, these abilities will become even greater. For example, Russia’s strategic air base, near the city of Saratov, is located just 600-800 kilometers away from Ukraine’s airports.

The adoption of new states into the Alliance does not so much resemble an expansion of the democratic space in Europe, as an actual encirclement of Russia by the new NATO members, who are ready to comply with any demand made by the leadership of the Alliance. One only needs to consider the secret CIA prisons in Lithuania as proof of that statement.

Read the full story here.

Read Der Spiegel’s piece on inviting Russia to join NATO here.

Iraq’s electoral commission has urged Iraqi political parties to wait for the announcement of official results before declaring victory in the country’s parliamentary poll.

Farag al-Haidary, the chairman of the commission, made the appeal in a news conference on Sunday as election officials began counting the ballots following the close of polls.

“The commission calls on all political parties leaders and the Iraqi people to wait until the election outcomes are formally and officially released, as the commission needs a great amount of time in order to reach the rightful conclusion,” he said.

“So far no tangible results have been reached.

“[But] there is no doubt that the outcome will pave the way for a new era of democratic system and peaceful rotation of power.”

The commission is to announce preliminary results from the election on March 10-11, based on votes from about 30 per cent of the polling stations.

The supreme court would then certify the poll results, after hearing appeals, within about a month of the election.

Read more here.

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The United States government has committed to playing a role in indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and promised that if the talks were to fail, the U.S. will assign blame and take action, according to a document sent by the U.S. to the Palestinian Authority, which Haaretz obtained on Friday.

The U.S. government sent the document to the Palestinians responding to their inquires regarding the U.S. initiative to launch indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

“We expect both parties to act seriously and in good faith. If one side, in our judgment, is not living up to our expectations, we will make our concerns clear and we will act accordingly to overcome that obstacle,” it was written.

This commitment by the U.S. was a determining factor in the Palestinians’ and the Arab League’s decision to agree to the U.S. proposal on indirect talks.

The document also reveals that U.S. involvement will include “sharing messages between the parties and offering our own ideas and bridging proposals.”

The U.S. also emphasized that their main concern is establishing a Palestinian state.

“Our core remains a viable, independent and sovereign Palestinian State with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967,” the document read.

Read more here.

President Michelle Bachelet and President-elect Sebastian Piñera both acknowledged Saturdays’ earthquake would have serious ramifications for the country’s economy and employment.

While immediate effects of the earthquake are still being measured — an estimated 800 were killed and more than 1 million are now homeless, many are only now receiving food, water and supplies — Chile has started to evaluate the effects the quake will have on different economic sectors.

The Wall Street Journal reported the Chilean stock market index opened 2.5 percent lower Monday and saw losses through Wednesday. Thursday saw the first gains since the earthquake hit, although there is expected to be much volatility in the coming days.

Despite fears of serious losses to one of Chile’s growing export sector, wine, the industry’s promotion agency, Wines of Chile, said the impact of Saturday’s 8.8-magnitude earthquake was “limited” and expects producers will meet export commitments without major problems.

After days evaluating affected wineries, they determined the total loss at 125 million liters, valued at approximately US$250 million. The losses including aging, bottled and bulk wine, and represent 12.5 percent of the 1.01 billion liters produced in 2009.

Wines of Chile president Rene Merrino reported infrastructure damage varied among wineries and is still being evaluated, but vineyards were largely unaffected. The harvest is just beginning and Merrino does not expect volumes to be affected by the earthquake.

In contrast, the tourism industry has been hit hard. Bringing in nearly US$10 billion in 2009, tourism represents about 3.5 percent of Chile’s GDP. Many countries – including the United States – have issued travel alerts for the whole of Chile, advising nationals to avoid any unessential travel in the country.

Tour operators, hostel owners and officials from the government tourism office SERNATUR met Thursday to discuss the impact on the industry and define strategies to move forward. Cybertour General Director Francisco Leal attended the meeting and told the Santiago Times it was important to get people from all sides of the industry up-to-speed.

“It’s important to get the message out that not all of Chile is like the images shown in the media,” said Leal. “Santiago is still open for business, the north and far south that have little or no impact.”

Gordon Brown today defended the invasion of Iraq but said he regretted he had not been able to persuade the US to take post-war planning “seriously enough” to ensure a “just peace”.

The prime minister revealed his frustration with US politicians in the build-up to the war when he told the Chilcot inquiry about his involvement in planning, discussions and decision-making while serving as chancellor.

Giving evidence today, Brown said the US-led invasion had been the “right decision made for the right reasons”.

Saddam Hussein was a “serial violator” of UN resolutions and a clear message had to be sent to “rogue states” that international law could not be flouted, he added.

He told the inquiry he had not been kept in the dark by Tony Blair in the run-up to the invasion, and said he had been convinced by a series of intelligence briefings that Iraq was a threat that “had to be dealt with”.

He also denied claims that the Treasury failed to provide enough money for military vehicles, forcing many troops to travel in lightly-armoured Snatch Land Rovers vulnerable to roadside bombs.

He said he provided the money every time defence chiefs asked for new equipment.

Brown also acknowledged that there were “important lessons” to be learned from the way Iraq had descended into chaos following the invasion, and said that the Americans had not taken the post-war reconstruction “seriously enough” prior to the invasion.

Read more here.

The approval of the Armenia “genocide” resolution by a U.S. House committee is perhaps not “the end of the world” but surely is the “end of the historic protocols” signed between Turkey and Armenia, according to a top official.

“No one should expect Turkish Parliament to proceed with the protocols at least until April 24,” a senior foreign ministry official told a limited group of journalists Friday. April 24 is the commemoration day of the alleged killings of Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire in 1915.  Many Armenians would like the U.S. president to use the word “genocide” in the annual written statement to mark the date.

Turkey and Armenia signed two protocols last year to establish diplomatic ties and open the border after decades of hostility between the two neighboring countries. The protocols, however, are yet to be ratified by either parliament. The resolution came at a moment when Turkey and Armenia were engaged in a diplomatic process to resolve problems that are blocking the ratifications.

“Turkey has internal dynamics, too. The Parliament cannot make any step with regard to the protocols. There is a very important reaction,” the official told journalists. However, the hurdles before the reconciliation process are not limited to the House panel’s approval. The lack of any development in the peace talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed Nagorno-Karabahk problem stands as an additional problem for Turkey, which promised its ally Azerbaijan not to proceed with the protocols unless Yerevan withdraws its troops from occupied Azeri lands.

According to the Turkish Foreign Ministry, some circles in the U.S. administration think the resolution can be used as leverage against Ankara for swift ratification of the protocols. “We know who they are and what they are planning. They should know such an attempt will never be responded to by Turkey,” the diplomat noted.

“They perhaps wanted to give a message to Turkey to urge that, in the case of the failure of the process, they are ready with their sticks in hand.”

The same source also touched on the role of the Israeli lobby during this process. “Our ambassador to Washington met with all prominent representatives of the Israeli lobby. They promised to give support, but when compared to the past, their support was minimal. Perhaps they also wanted to give a message to Turkey to show the damage in ties between Ankara and Tel Aviv,” added the diplomat.

Read more here.

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Will the recession change us?

This was the question asked a few days ago by the Newsweek columnist, Julia Baird. The answer was implicit in the very title chosen by the editors for the article: ‘Seeking a moral compass.’

Now, where can we find a moral compass?

Ms. Baird indicated two deposits of truth, one credible, the other not at all. The former was the complex teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, especially those against the two social sins of wealth without work and commerce without morality. Clearly, nothing can be opposed to the Gandhi-derived indictment of aberrations like ‘debt-driven consumer spending’ and ‘channelling profits toward only those already on the top of the heap’. Who would lament that, according to Baird, ‘there is a hunger for change away from the empty and destructive maxims like ‘Greed is good’?

Instead, Ms. Baird’s hope that a moral compass can be found ‘in the inaugural address of Franklin D. Roosevelt’ is utterly fallacious. We remember that FDR slammed the practices of unscrupulous money-changers, and promised that ‘we may now restore the temple of our civilization to the ancient truths.’ FDR was no money-changer (although he possessed much money as did his lieutenants, like Bernard Baruch, W. Averell Harriman, Edward Stettinius and other financiers), but he was certainly  unscrupulous. In common with all master politicians of the world he was so good at guile as to win his third term, in 1940, by assuring fathers and mothers of America that their sons would not be sent to fight foreign wars.

In forcing World War II on his reluctant country, he coldly condemned to die a few million human beings (mostly non-Americans), so that the plutocratic order of the world would be upheld against its challengers, however wrong the latter may have been. FDR certainly annihilated bloodthirsty Adolf Hitler, but saved from defeat and imposed to many nations the dictator Stalin, who was no better than the Fuehrer. One day after Roosevelt died, Harry Truman, his successor, turned upside down the philo-Soviet policy of the US and the Cold War began. The nation totally disavowed the Machiavellian Commander in Chief, who trusted the USSR as a champion of freedom. The lofty oaths of the Roosevelt inaugural address can be no source of hope.

Such source we must find in ourselves, in our own ability to go back to values that are better that a greed that is now overpowering. Earning lots of money is not paramount. Reverting to the simple life is. The $19 cell phone I bought a few days ago is as good to make and receive simple calls as a $900 one. The vast additional capability offered by the latter is superfluous in practice to most people. The same is true for large houses, expensive cars, costly clothes, fat incomes. The Great Recession is hard to some segments of our rich societies. But its by-product, a simpler life, will be godsend. Ms. Baird is right, despite being a believer in FDR.

Massimo Calderazzi is member of the Société Européenne de Culture, to which many eminent
scholars and a few Nobel prizewinners belong.