PrairiePundit

Washington Post: No credit cards, no selfies: How Hong Kong’s protesters are evading the surveillance state The last time Hong Kong saw pro-democracy protests, the leaders landed in jail. Today's movement is intentionally leaderless, with participants using cash, encrypted apps and face masks to leave no trace for authorities to follow. The Chinese surveillance state has its limits.  Hong Kong engaged in a general uprising and there was little authorities could do about short of mass murder.  But as the Tinamin square uprising demonstrated China is not above using mass murder to control the people.

Monica Showalter: ... Late last year, Chile held a presidential election, and in its result, Chilean voters finally dumped its corruption-plagued, soggy socialist government, up 'til now led by Michelle Bachelet, and re-elected center-right past president, Sebastián Piñera, instead. ... ... According to El Mostrador, a Santiago-based Chilean newspaper (in Spanish), he's called in the ICBMs of the economics world into his cabinet, the Chicago Boys, who are the embodiment of free-market economics. The Chicago Boys took their ideas straight from Milton Friedman in the 1970s, predating both Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, and their free-market reforms turned Chile into a first-world country. Chile is the home to the famous Chilean Model of private savings accounts for pensions that the left screams about, because that reform did more than anything to transform Chile. El Mostrador reports that multiple people with high-firepower economic degrees are being lined up for ...

NY Times: In a War on Obesity, Chile Slays Tony the Tiger New regulations, which corporate interests delayed for almost a decade, require explicit labeling and limit the marketing of sugary foods to children. Under socialist rule in Venezuela obesity has been eliminated except for Maduro and those close to him.  For them, there are plenty of empanadas, but for everyone else, malnutrition and starvation are a serious problem.  Chile dodged that bullet when the Chicago Boys brought free markets and prosperity to the country.  It now has a first world problem of too many carbs in the diet.

NY Times: Chile’s Voters Extend Latin America’s Rightward Shift With the presidential election going to the conservative Sebastián Piñera, the left lost its final shot to hold on to power in one of the region’s economic and diplomatic heavyweights. Chile has become an economic heavyweight by adopting free-market economics based on the University of Chicago model championed by Milton Freeman.  We have seen how socialism works in Venezuela and Cuba and how free markets work in Chile.  It takes willful ignorance to continue to support the evils of liberalism.  When will liberals in this country wise up and stop supporting the failed policies of Democrats?

Laguna Larga: Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Chile Agree to Remove All Trade Tariffs – Market Pulse Fx The Obama administration could learn some things from these countries.  It has been too wed to the labor thugs to openly embrace free trade in many areas.

The Economist: ONE by one they came to the stage and pitched their ideas to the crowd. There was the founder of Kwelia.com, which makes software that helps landlords mint more money from their properties. There was the co-founder of Chef Surfing, an online service for people looking to hire chefs, and for culinary wizards keen to tout their skills. And the creator of Kedzoh, which has an app that lets firms send short training videos to workers via their mobile phones or tablet computers.  These and other start-ups, some sporting fashionably weird names such as Chu Shu, Wallwisher and IguanaBee, won rapturous applause from the entrepreneurs and venture capitalists in the audience. To your correspondent, who is based in Silicon Valley, it all felt very familiar. Yet this scene took place in Chile, a nation better known for copper-mining and cheap wine than for innovation. Many countries have sought to create their own versions of Silicon Valley. Nearly all have failed. Yet C...

Daniel Mitchell: When Hugo Chavez Battles Supply and Demand Curves, Guess What Happens? Haiti may be the poorest nation in the Americas. Cuba may have the dictator with the longest lifespan. But Venezuela arguably has the worst government. It is a good piece with a chart that demonstrates how capitalism has made Chile prosperous while control freak socialism has made Venezuela poorer despite its oil resources.

Image via Wikipedia IBD: Nearly 30 years ago, on the very day Ronald Reagan was sworn in as U.S. president, Chile became the first nation to privatize its social security system. Three decades hence, it has surpassed all expectations. Decades ago, Chile's then-military dictatorship shuddered at a proposal from then-Labor Minister Jose Pinera to privatize Chile's liability-laden pension system. The military men argued that the public was too ignorant to manage its own affairs and only government's firm hand could be trusted to provide. Pinera explained that the pension liabilities the government then couldn't pay were not only perfectly payable, but could be converted into actual assets, which would become investment capital to develop the country. All they needed to do was privatize the system. The generals eyed Pinera balefully. But their worried junta chief, Generalissimo Augusto Pinochet , told the economist to go ahead. Thirty years on, Pinera's ...

Houston Chronicle: More than 4,000 miles from the chamber where 33 Chilean miners waited to be saved, Greg Hall lay awake in his bed, tossing and turning in frustration. It was August when the drilling industry veteran heard the estimated rescue date — December, at the earliest — and he was not impressed. "I would go to sleep, and I'd wake up in an hour or so just thinking about those guys sitting there in the mine, with 2,000 feet of rock above their heads. ... It really bothered me," Hall said. He made calls, day and night, eventually sitting in his small, two-desk Cypress office as he crunched numbers on his calculator and hashed out a broad plan that led to cheers around the world Wednesday as the miners were rescued. The plan, known as "Plan B" because it was the second of three considered by Chilean authorities, was solidified and developed into reality after Hall, the owner of Driller Supply International, a company with a Chilean subsidiary, co...

ABC has a live cam of the production.  There is definitely a lot of media interest in the rescue of these guys who have been underground almost as long as a nuclear sub is underwater.  The wives and girl friends are preparing for a warm welcome.

Telegraph: Authorities at Camp Hope have had to deal with a rush of women coming forward claiming to be first in the Chilean miners' affections in order to receive government handouts. At least five wives have been forced to come face to face with mistresses whose existence was kept from them by their husbands, who have been trapped more than 2,300ft below since a cave in on August 5. One miner has four women fighting over him in an effort to claim compensation offered to the families of those facing between three to four months underground until a rescue shaft can reach them. Government officials are considering asking the 33 trapped miners to name those they want to claim the benefits entitled to them in a bid to solve problems on the surface. ... It sounds like these guys are trapped in more ways than one. They could be saying, "Take your time with the relief shaft while I figure out how to explain things to those above ground that I gave the shaft to. Related a...

Fox News: Folks who work at the United States Geological Survey Earthquake Center in Golden, Colo., don’t just track temblors, they also answer the public’s questions via phone and email. The number one question they’ve been getting lately: “Is this the end of the world?” according to Heidi Koontz, the center’s Public Affairs Specialist. News of four major quakes in as many months, in Haiti, Chile, Mexico and Indonesia, has prompted a tinge of panic in some who would otherwise consider these events pure coincidence. “I received a call from a psychiatrist who is getting an influx of patients who are really concerned about the end of days,” says Koontz, “and he wanted us to pinpoint science and provide him with links to science that would help allay the fears of some of his patients. He needed some hard facts and he said that that actually helped.” Koontz explained to the doctor what seismologist Harley Benz explained to Fox News. That seismically speaking, this is all p...

BBC: While the human tragedy of the earthquake in Chile will be long-lasting, the impact on the country's economy is expected to be "limited and short-lived". Despite the Chilean quake being stronger than the one in Haiti in January, the difference between the two nations is vast. Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, while Chile is the world's 46th richest. More pressingly, Chile is widely regarded as having the best-run economy in the whole of Latin America. In the immediate aftermath of the two quakes, this meant that, thanks to Chile's stringent building regulations, far fewer buildings collapsed than in the Caribbean nation. And as both countries rebuild, while Haiti is all but totally dependant upon overseas aid, Chile has the financial clout to recover without recourse to foreign support. ... Since the country returned to democracy in 1990, successive left-leaning governments have combined a free-market economy with prudent government spend...

Telegraph: When their 13th-floor apartment began to shake, Alberto Rozas pulled his 7-year-old daughter Fernanda into the bathroom doorway and waited for it to stop. But as their brand-new apartment building toppled like a felled tree, the pair plummeted, hugging each other all the way down. Mr Rozas had no idea which way was up until he looked through his apartment's shattered window and spotted light - "the light of the full moon". Rozas and his daughter, Fernanda, clambered up and to safety with nothing more than a few cuts, scrapes and bruises. ... Apparently there were other survivors in the toppled building, although rescuers had to cut their way into their apartments to find them. They had a very fortunate ride down 13 floors without and elevator.

NY Times: A massive 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck Chile early Saturday, shaking the capital of Santiago for 90 seconds and sending tsunami warnings from Chile to Ecuador. Chile's TVN cable news channel was reporting 78 deaths, with the toll expected to rise. The quake downed buildings and houses in Santiago and knocked out a major bridge connecting the northern and southern sections of the country. It struck at 3:34 a.m. local time and was centered about 200 miles southwest of Santiago, at a depth of 22 miles, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. The epicenter was some 70 miles from Concepcion, Chile’s second-largest city, where more than 200,000 people live. Phone lines were down in Concepcion as of 7:30 a.m. and no reports were coming out of that area. The quake in Chile was 1,000 times more powerful than the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that caused widespread damage in Haiti on Jan 12, killing at least 230,000, earthquake experts reported on CNN International. The U.S. Geo...

IBD: Chile is expected to win entry to OECD's club of developed countries by Dec. 15 — a great affirmation for a once-poor nation that pulled itself up by trusting markets. One thing that stands out here is free trade. At a summit of Latin American countries last week in Portugal, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet suddenly became the center of attention — and rightly so. She announced that her country was expected to win membership in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, an exclusive club of the richest and most economically credible nations. Chile is the first country in South America to win the honor, and in a symbolic way its OECD membership card seals its exit from the ranks of the Third World to the First. For the rest of us, it's a stunning example of how embracing free markets and free trade brings prosperity. It's not like Chile was born lucky. Only 30 years ago, it was an impoverished country with per capita GDP of $1,300. Its distant geog...

From the Guardian: Latin America's swing to the right The writer makes the case that in Chile , Uruguay and Brazil the voters are moving away from the left. Perhaps they have seen the mess Chavez and his cronies have made.

NY Times: At the moment of greatest despair, Wang Zhijun tried to kill himself by twisting his neck against the debris. Breathing had become harder as day turned to night. The chunks of brick and concrete that had buried him and his wife were pressing tighter by the hour, crushing them. Their bodies had gone numb. Then there was the rain, sharp and cold, lashing at them through the cracks. “I don’t think I can make it,” he told his wife, Li Wanzhi, his face just inches from hers, their arms wrapped around each other. She sensed he was giving up. “If God wants to kill us, he would have killed us right away,” she said. “But since we’re still alive, we must be fated to live.” And they lived. They were pulled from the rubble of their collapsed six-story workers’ dormitory 28 hours after last Monday’s earthquake , spared the end met by at least 32,000 others. Their tale of survival is also one of a rekindled love, of two people who might have died had they been trapped alone. They whispered...

Reuters: Chile defended one of its top police officials on Friday after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez charged he was being probed for dictatorship-era abuses, saying the leftist leader was "badly informed" and wrong. Chavez said late that Thursday Arturo Herrera, head of Chile's investigative police branch and acting president of international police agency Interpol, was being probed over abuses committed during Augusto Pinochet's 1973-1990 dictatorship. Chavez was reacting to an Interpol report issued on Thursday that authenticated documents Colombia says prove Venezuela's leftist leader has supported FARC guerrillas. "We think President Chavez has been badly informed about what he has publicly stated," Deputy Interior Minister Felipe Harboe told reporters at Chile's presidential palace. "The government of Chile absolutely endorses the director general of Chile's investigative police unit." "The information given to President C...