Toma nota.../Take note...

It is quite understandable for any person or family to look for a destination that offers them better living standards and greater personal security. However, this need does not justify violating the laws. Today, it is known that more than a million immigrants obtain a legal entry visa to the United States every year and there are several million on waiting lists that respect immigration laws. The following analysis search for its causes.

Understanding Migration

Corruption, Poor Governance, and their Effects on Migration in Central America

Institutional neglect and corruption in Central America 

On February 2, the Biden Administration announced an Executive Order to address the root causes of migration from Latin America. The Executive Order directed a small collective of officials to develop a plan “to address the root causes of migration, including by (A) combating corruption, strengthening democratic governance, and advancing the rule of law; (B) promoting respect for human rights, labor rights, and a free press; (C) countering and preventing violence, extortion, and other crimes perpetrated by criminal gangs, trafficking networks, and other organized criminal organizations; (D) combating sexual, gender-based, and domestic violence; and (E) addressing economic insecurity and inequality.”

While all these actions are laudable as part of U.S. foreign policy, the Executive Order did not make clear how corruption and governance issues are related to migration. Nor have subsequent actions by the Administration. The links were taken as obvious, or taken for granted. Yet the relationship between poor governance, corruption and migration is complex and multiple factors exist, sometimes intensifying each other and at other times neutralizing each other.

Latin America has suffered from decades of neglect in building strong institutions and pervasive poor governance, including the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Throughout the region, political systems that benefit political and economic elites are entrenched, and corrupt governance is pervasive. One consequence is that the state is unable or unwilling to provide basic services to the citizenry — education, public safety, response to natural disasters, consistent legal institutions, and core public-health services like universal vaccination. A second consequence is that individuals have very low institutional trust in government, even when they do not report personal experience with corruption. Yet services do exist in these countries that approximate services delivered in the Global North in quality—but only available to local elites.

This situation has dependable outcomes. People believe, correctly, that they are getting the short end of the stick. People believe that things are not going to change. For many, then, the solution is migration. Migration becomes the way to change one’s life, to rise up socially, gain access to needed services, enable a better life for one’s children, or buy the goods that individuals dream of owning.

Corruption and Migration

Several relationships between corruption and migration are clear in Latin America, although not all of these are analogous in relationship or equivalent in strength ...

[ Read the full report ] 

Naturpaz fue un grupo ecologísta y pacifista de cubanos que brotó auspiciado por las esperanzas de libertad que parecía proyectar Mikhail Gorbachov a fines de la década de 1980 y en medio de los acontecimientos que desembocaron en el fin del Imperio Soviético. Uno de sus fundadores y dirigentes fue el autor del siguiente testimonio. quien nos ofrece una certera pincelada de una época llena de entusiasmo por un cambio hacia la democracia y la libertad en Cuba que ellos y muchos otros cubanos veían próximo y posible a principios de la década de 1990. Leonel Morejón Almagro iría más allá de su grupo Naturpaz, tocando las puertas de las principales figuras de la oposición pacífica para fraguar la idea de un evento que los aglutinara a todos. Lo bautizó como Concilio Cubano y debió realizarse el 24 de febrero de 1996, hace ya más de 25 años; el sueño de la unidad de propósitos en la senda emancipadora nunca estuvo más cerca de concretarse pero nunca llegó a ocurrir. El aparato represor del régimen cubano se esmeró en aplastar el proyecto y el golpe policial y de inteligencia liquidó las estructuras y el liderazgo que estuvieron a punto de consolidar una especie de parlamento opositor con capacidad para impulsar el cambio democratizador.

Notas al alma: 35 aniversario de Naturpaz

por Leonel Morejón Almagro

Tratar de seguir la apertura de mi héroe Mijaíl Gorbachov durante el invierno de 1985 en La Habana me obligó a pagar cinco pesos por Novedades de Moscú a contrabando, un periódico que antes de la perestroika y la glásnost solo era usado como papel de baño.

Los cubanos en busca de aperturas encontramos en las insólitas páginas de Novedades de Moscú y la revista Sputnik, una respuesta a nuestras ansias democráticas. La perestroika y la glásnost calentaban la esperanza mientras yo escribía los versos en mi primer libro de poemas, titulado Testamento.

El título macabro recreaba los temores que llenaban mis días de estudiante a los 21 años. En el invierno de 1985 descubrí, en la revista Correo de la Unesco, que la Unión Soviética y los Estados Unidos poseían misiles nucleares capaces de exterminar más de veinte veces el número de seres humanos en la Tierra. Leyendo ese Correo de la Unesco también me enteré de que Naciones Unidas había declarado el próximo año 1986, como “Año Internacional de la Paz”.

British intelligence services are now reportedly reassessing their position on the theory that COVID-19 leaked from a lab in China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology. A Sunday report from the Sunday Times of London quotes British spies who initially dismissed the lab leak theory, but now say it is "feasible. 

There might be pockets of evidence that take us one way, and evidence that takes us another way," the paper quoted a source as saying. "The Chinese will lie either way." Previous theories suggesting that the coronavirus jumped into people from bats via an intermediary animal have been debunked.»

The Chinese Virus scandal – New Developments

U.S. State Department warning: Don’t ‘Open a Can of Worms’ on the COVID-19 Origin.

Lab-Leak Bombshells Drop: Death Threats, ‘Cover-Up’ ...  and More. 

June 3.– Vanity Fair found evidence that some figures within the U.S. State Department did not want a complete investigation into the virus’s origins in early 2020; it appears to have found one of the smoking guns of this entire abominable story of the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting that in early 2020, some corners of the federal government explicitly discouraged a full investigation into how the pandemic started:

A months long Vanity Fair investigation, interviews with more than 40 people, and a review of hundreds of pages of U.S. government documents, including internal memos, meeting minutes, and email correspondence, found that conflicts of interest, stemming in part from large government grants supporting controversial virology research led by Dr. Fauci, hampered the U.S. investigation into COVID-19’s origin at every step.

Resumen de Eugenia Aldana de la charla impartida por Gabriel Zanotti [Video de la charla al final].

Gabriel Zanotti plantea la importancia de conocer la historia y principios de la Escuela Austriaca de Economía, así como a sus autores, quienes han dado valiosos aportes a través de cuantiosas publicaciones.

Menciona Gabriel que entre los grandes exponentes que dieron el primer paso de dicha Escuela está Carl Menger quien con base en elementos de conceptos filosóficos de autores alemanes, elaboró una teoría general del valor subjetivo.

Quería demostrar a los profesores alemanes que se podía hacer una síntesis de las corrientes alemanas e inglesas”.

La propuesta de Menger no fue bien aceptada, sin embargo, tuvo a dos importantes seguidores que fueron Friedrich von Wieser y Eugen Böhm von Bawerk quienes de alguna manera desarrollaron de manera más técnica la ley de utilidad marginal decreciente y productividad, que en Menger tenía otro enfoque más histórico y filosófico.