Most large exporters of energy are LDCs (less democratic countries). Oil seems to do that to countries. Venezuela for example, a nation that had been a democracy for decades is now more and more an LDC. How does this happen? Easy, a democratically elected president gets control over growing oil revenues and buys himself political power. Fast forward to Argentina. Argentina is a modest energy exporter nowhere near the ranks of Venezuela. Argentina however is a very large agricultural commodity exporter. Now that energy importing democracies (EU, USA) are beginning to use food to fuel their cars, namely biodiesel, and now that the prices of some agricultural commodities are beginning to track the price of oil, will we see the same tendency to power concentration in Argentina? Will we see Argentina joining the ranks of the LDCs thanks to Kirchner´s ability to control a few exports? Hopefully not but the combination of the autocratic tendencies of Kirchner with a very high price of agricultural commodities concerns me. The temptation to buy votes using state resources becomes hard to resist. And at a global scale I have another concern with biodiesel. I used to wonder about how was it possible that Argentina, one of the largest food exporters in the world, and Brazil, another one, had starving children. The question then was, should a country with starving citizens export food to other countries? But now the moral dilemma is even worse. Should a country with starving citizens export food so others in rich countries feed…. their SUVs?

Last month I blogged about how the Blackberry became the Redberry in China. Basically what I said is that China Unicom decided that instead of making a deal with RIM, the company behind the Blackberry it would simply copy the Blackberry but make it more Chinese and launch the RedBerry. So what is the RedBerry? It´s a push e mail device that with Chinese servers and Chinese controls included that pays no royalties to RIM nor accepts any direction from this Canadian company. And what is the VaticanBerry? Well, the VaticanBerry seems to be the same solution applied to Catholicism. Catholicism has its own system of patents and trademarks. As opposed to other religions you can´t call yourself a Catholic if the Vatican does not want you to. The Vatican owns the brand, or does it? China went for its own bishops. Welcome to the VaticanBerry.

Hugo Chavez has recently been a very good OPEC member. He´s been keeping oil production down. But this reduction has not taken place because Hugo Chavez wants to be a good OPEC member. The paradox of authoritarian leaders who nationalize oil production is that oil production goes down simply because they are bad at running their own, inefficient state oil companies. And the price of oil goes up. Personally I don´t believe that oil multinationals are the solution either. The best way for a country to get the most for its citizens is to blend well regulated intervention by multinationals with a very good schooling of local energy professionals. Rushed decisions a la Chavez simply fail.

Global conflicts tend to start in small places over relatively small issues that somehow get out of hand when other countries divide themselves along different sides of the dispute in question. Unfortunately this is happening with Iran. Iran could be just another country that goes nuclear, like Pakistan, or Israel, but because of Iran´s aggresive foreign policy which directly clashes with America´s plans for the Middle East, the Iranian violation of the nuclear proliferation treaty is dangerously dividing the world in two. These two blocks could potentially be the two sides of WWIII. All the authoritarian countries are on one side, the democratic countries on the other. Democracies are strongly opposing Iran becoming a nuclear power. These include USA, the European Union, Japan, India and others. Authoritarian countries including most Muslim countries, Russia, China, and the authoritarian countries of Latin America, are with Iran. This division is dangerous for the world. How did we get to this point? The US invasion of Iraq combined with the respect that North Korea got out of developing nuclear weapons made it clear to Iran that if the Bush Administration was going to call them names (axis of evil) they better be evil….and smart. By destroying Iraq and ignoring North Korea America rewarded the nuclear power. As a result the Iranians want nuclear weapons and they want them now. The Bush administration seems to have a tragic ability for escalating conflict into war.

We generally understand hemispheres as the two halves of the world that end up North and South of the Equator. But having grown up in Argentina surrounded mostly by water, I started thinking of a different way to split the world namely into an acquatic hemisphere and a land hemisphere. As it usually happens nowadays even ideas that seem very original are not and googling I discovered that somebody had already developed this concept. He calls it the continental hemisphere and the oceanic hemisphere. When I was a child I used to think that if you sailed East from Argentina you could go all the way around the world and after endless miles over water you would end up next door… in Chile. Never going over any other country. In the Southern Hemisphere, water is almost all there is.

A year ago I blogged about the opportunity to create political parties made of immigrants joined by native citizens who felt that to them humanity was a stronger concept than nationalism. Well, it´s happening!

I am an entrepreneur, not a politician, but I guess that in politics, as in business, there are “empty niches” ready to be occupied and in that sense politics is like business. Immigration was one of them. To me leaving enormous masses of people without political participation while doing legal work for illegal pay was an unfairness that was bound to explode sooner or later. And it did. Citizens of the United States and Europe can´t continue seeing immigrants as people who take advantage of them when the reverse is mostly true. While it is the case that a few immigrants take advantage of the welfare systems of rich nations most contribute much more than what they take. As the May 1st walkout is proving, America would suffer very badly without the hispanic participation. And when all the other immigrants join in, Asians, Eastern Europeans, Africans, it will be time for mainstream political parties that something must be done to end the tremendous unfairness of people working every day who are treated as criminals. Spain declared a huge amnesty and increased its legal population by over 1% in a few months increasing its working pool and its tax base. That was a very good move. Personally I think that immigration should be open to all of those with working contracts but clearly with some tests. I would recommend a 3 year testing period during which immigrant status can be ended if the immigrant ends unemployed. But if a worker is able to sustain a job for 3 years they should be allowed to become permanent immigrants and in 2 more years nationals of the countries to which they immigrated. What Europe does, namely growing ever larger populations of citizens who can´t vote, is tremendously unfair, especially since in Europe even people who are born in a European country and live their all their lives are considered permanent immigrants. This is not sustainable nor fair. The current status quo is too unfair and what immigrants want is reasonable…and most will get it. The ultimate remedy to the immigrant problem however, will not be immigration but investment in education, political reform, family planning, and businesses in the countries that are exporters of people. Some immigration is positive, massive flight of economic refugees is not.

US Foreign Policy is mainly focused on the Middle East. So it´s Spain´s. Both countries have strong historical and economics ties to Latin America. Both should focus on the region. None of them do. Latin America, 560 million people, GDP of $2.3 trillion dollars. Israel and the Palestinian Territories, 10 million people, GDP of $140bn. No comparison. Oil reserves? Venezuela´s are almost as high as those of Iraq. Wonder how Hugo Chavez is doing so well promoting his foreign policy around Latin America? Look at where the foreign ministers of USA and Spain spend most of their time. America and in a smaller scale Spain have created a power vaccum in the region and now Chavez clones are sprouting in the region with unexpected results.