A normal Bolivian wedding present: A house

Coming to Sucre and Cochabamba soon.........

Over the weekend in a public address in his home patch of Villa Tupari in Chaparé, Professor Evo Morales (known as a natty dresser and President of the fastest growing country in South America) said that:

"The state will provide a house to any couple that gets married."

Honestly, this is not a joke. The population of South America's poorest country has just added a 6th social program to provide its poorest citizens with a basic need, that of a house to any couple that gets hitched. Evo continued:

"This will be our (social) program and the government is obliged to attend this need."

And don't think for a minute that he won't come through on this one, because the other five social programs and payments launched by his government so far have been resounding successes, including the old age pension, payment for meals for schoolchildren, the pre-/post natal payments for mothers who attend hospital during their pregnancies and make sure their young babies get all the necessary care until the age of two, and one-off payments for ex-soldiers who saw combat in the Chaco war. Bolivia runs an annual average of 22,000 marriages per year. Something tells me that we're about to see an acceleration in that statistic. Meanwhile, what has your government done for you lately, blue-eyes?

Teenage Peru can't take its own medicine

VRAE base, Peru: ain't no gringos here...oh no no no no no no

In Peru right now, there's a congressional investigation going on about the so-called Casas de ALBA (ALBA houses), a string of social support offices and drop-in centres that are dotted all around the continent but can also be found in the poor, highland areas of Peru.

The problem Peru has with these ALBA houses is that the funding supposely comes from Hugo Chávez's Bolivarian Revolutionary Socialist (etc etc) Venezuela. The Peru of President Twobreakfasts doesn't like that, y'see. Definitely doesn't like the fact that somebody else cares more for its poor than the Lima-centric government of Peru. Definitely doesn't like the idea of Socialism propagating amongst "those brown people".

Back in November, your humble correspondent noted in this post that Peru was trying to change its laws to make it much easier to chuck out bodies such as ALBA. So right now busybody congresspeople are snooping around all the ALBA houses they can to build their case. One of the places the suits have recently snooped is Copacabana...

....a small town in Bolivia just a few clicks from the Peru border where up to 14,000 Peruvians have reportedly visited in the past couple of years to get free medical treatment in an ALBA house run by Cuban doctors. Especially popular have been free cataract operations performed by the team there (cos Peru...err...doesn't do that, y'see. No money = go blind in the land of democracy).

But the thing is, Peruvian congresspeople had absolutely no right to do what they did, namely go marching into Bolivia and demanding answers. So when Dr. Evo Morales got wind of Peruvians on his patch he threw a snarky barb over, saying that he'd like to send over a delegation to investigate the suspected US air base in Peru.

As thus Peru exploded (here's a link to 192 Spanish language news stories in the last day), Twobreakfasts calling Morales an interference, the Defence Minister saying there was no airbase in Peru like there is in Ecuador, that Morales was talking rubbish, that he has no right to blah blah etc etc. Or in other words Peru once again acts like an immature teenager stomping its foot.

In fact, there might not be a formal US air base in Peru the same as the one in Ecuador, but anyone who hangs in the right places in lowland Peru more than a week knows the VRAE airbase, supposedly Peru soldiers only, is constantly packed full of US soldiers, planes, copters and air crew. So Morales gave Peru an ironic dose of its own medicine and Twobreakfasts just couldn't hack it. The Twobreakfasts administration of self-congratulatory corrupt cronies finds it impossible to accept they cannot treat another sovereign state in the same arrogant manner as it treats its own people. Their shrill screams are laughable, and Evo does well to mock them as he does.

All power to Morales for sticking it to Peru where it hurts; directly in the pride gland. My stars they surely deserve it.

In-house post: How is the blog doing? (and what it can do for you)

When IncaKolaNews started being a humble corner of cyberspace on March 11th this year I didn't really know what I was doing or where this blog would take me. One thing about those first couple of weeks that I do remember was the happy first time 100 readers came to visit in a single day. Now we're in the thousands of visitors per day and the thing just keeps on growing and surprising me. It's all good, and I hope you enjoy the content as much as I enjoy publishing the blog (comments and criticisms always welcome).

A few weeks back (in my last in-house musing) I was wondering out loud how to make this blog site pay for itself. Since that time:

1) Two news site sponsors have come on board. Fortuna Silver (FVI.v) and Vena Resources (VEM.to) are both solid companies with good business plans and operations and I'm very happy to be able to recommend them and be sponsored by them. Please visit these sponsors and learn more about the companies, because I'm quite sure that at current valuations both companies are real bargains and will pay you well as investments.

2) I launched Otto's NOBS bespoke investment service (find out more and get a free sample on this link here). By way of an informal progress report, I'm happy to say that in the 12 days since launch I've sold six reports (though one of those still needs writing).


To change the subject a bit, I've just been checking the dustier levels of back office stats today and noticed (with surprise and delight) that e-mail and RSS feed subscriber numbers have jumped quickly in the last month. This is the main reason I decided to write this in-house post today, in fact. So for those who don't know, just by clicking on the links over there on the right hand side of the page you can sign up to the same service (or even both services, if you want RSS and e-mail). A couple of things to note:

• Both services are totally free, gratis, for nothing and don't cost you a penny. They will stay free in the future, too.

• With the RSS, once you click through you add the blog to your Reader service (for example, Google Reader, which is by far the most popular amongst present subscribers). With the e-mail service, you just add your mail address into the box that comes up (and fill in the non-spam codeword). Then when the relevant mail arrives in you inbox, just click the "Yes, I want to get this service" link that's included in the mail and it's done!
  

• With RSS you receive the individual blogposts in your reader a few minutes after they appear on site here.

• With the e-mail service you receive the day's posts all together as a single mail the morning after (I think it's sent out at around 6am New York Time).

• Both services are totally safe. Neither incakolanews nor the service provider (Feedburner, part of the Google empire) passes on e-mail addresses to third parties. You will find Adsense advertisements included after the posts in each service. This because any time a client is interested in finding out more about those adverts and clicks on one, a small commission comes my way (normally a few pennies, but every little helps).

So now you know more about the RSS and e-mail service, you can consider subscribing to one or the other (if you're not there already).

To wrap this post up, between the new sponsors, the Adsense support, the small amount of commission from the free magazines offer (linked here) and the money generated by the NOBS reports so far, the blog is now on its way to becoming financially self-supporting. And if (touch wood) readership continues to grow as it has in the first half year I'll be in a position to make this blog part of my permanent lifestyle.

Thanks for reading this admittedy navel-gazing post all the way to the bottom, and as long as the blog keeps providing you with a good service I hope you keep coming back. Finally, for any comments of whatever type, feel free to contact me (as quite a few do these days) at my e-mail address:

otto.rock1(AT)gmail(DOT)com

Though it has to be said that pleasant language from you helps a long way in starting a conversation :-)

A country deserves the government it has

Feliz Salmon sums up the US House's decision to reject Plan Paulson with his headline "Oh Shit".

The Dow:
The USA really is governed by very, very stupid people. Just remember who voted for them. But one thing they don't realize is how much they're going to be loved down here after today:

The Bovespa (down 13.7% and dropping fast)
The Merval (down 9.8% and dropping fast)

So when the next round of job losses hit Latin America and the locals protest against the economic model that followed the USA and promised prosperity and all that, don't start blaming people for rejecting its politics, too. All in all, it's a good job you guys up there still have all those nuclear bombs, because otherwise nobody would take you seriously any more.

I know what the US citizenry's comment on the side-effects coming the LatAm is going to be too.

"We don't care."

And that, dear reader, just about sums it all up.