Latin America is doing rather well at the moment (with two major exceptions).

Under nominally left-wing governments, Argentina has managed to reverse its economic woes way ahead of expectations, with 7% growth in 2003; Brazil stagnated last year but is on track for strong growth in 2004; and Chile is booming.

Peru is going through a jobless recovery, which our illustrious leaders tell us is a good thing – and is relatively guerilla-free.

Moving onto the exceptions: Venezuela has been over-covered, but in short – a socialist-ish leader took power; forces (approved of, but possibly not backed, by the US) tried to oust him; and as a result he became far more dictatorial, nationalist and statist. No wonder Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro get on so well…

In Bolivia, a popular revolt has ousted a pro-American leader whose only focus was on coca eradication (a policy which benefits the US, but not the locals), to replace him with a weak centrist. Loony Indian populists now loom in the background, threatening truly stupid economic moves.

The more adept reader may be able to spot a pattern. Since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, the US has demanded that it be the only global power to influence Latin America. The Roosevelt Corollary to this doctrine adds that America can use military force in Latin America whenever it likes (in case you were wondering, the relevant Roosevelt is Theo the bad one, not Frank the good one).

Famous applications of the doctrine include the attempts to overthrow Fidel Castro by sanctions and military invasion, driving Mr Castro to seek support from the USSR and causing the missile crisis that nearly ended the world, and the CIA-backed overthrow of elected Chilean socialist Salvador Allende, replacing him with loveable rogue Augusto Pinochet.

In short, if anything goes well in Latin America, the US intervenes to screw it up. If anything goes badly, the US intervenes to make it worse. The governments currently in power realise this, hence their reluctance to get too close to the US. And so senior figures in the current administration are worried that Latin America might actually be doing well on its own for a change.

To try and counter this terrible state of affairs, the US is publicly slating the new generation of left-leaning leaders for daring to do things like go to Cuba. It may also have backed the coup attempt against Chavez, although it’ll be 30 years before we get to confirm that.

For Latin America’s sake, let’s hope that the US leaves the new generation of leaders alone – rather than either overthrowing them for daring to be leftwing, or provoking them into populist nationalism. If it does, then the continent’s chances are brighter than in a long while. If not, then it’ll be back to business as usual.

Now, why do I get the impression Latin America is hoping for a Dean victory this year?

Even though tit-for-tat moves between governments on tariff barriers are destructive, I salute Brazil’s tit-for-tat reaction to the absurd new US visa rules. If everyone else outside America had the balls to do the same… the government probably still wouldn’t take any notice. But it’d be cool.

“If just one in ten people could understand and coherently explain comparative advantage, the world would be an immeasurably better place” – David Gillies, in Peter Cuthbertson’s comments section (a surprising source for wisdom, I know…)

We (ie the government, airlines, and people who do a bit of research into these things; not sure if the Public At Large do or not) know perfectly well that well-planned terrorist operations can breach security, and will be able to for as long as there are low-wage civilian jobs in airports.

We also know that there will always be low wage civilian jobs in airports; otherwise the cost of flying would be impossibly high and everyone would be far worse off (unless you’re a Green who believes flying is next only to genocide in the scale of Very Bad Things).

We also know that real life is not like 24 or a Harrison Ford film. If there’s a gun battle 10,000 metres up between terrorists and armed policemen with 300 civilian bystanders, the outcome is rarely going to just be Bad Guys Dead, Good Guys Live.

We also know that military planes can easily shoot down hijacked airliners. This is why worries about another literal 9/11 disaster are completely misfounded: no government will ever mess up its air defences quite as radically as the US did that day. That’s probably unfair to the people involved: given that as far as anyone knew the US faced no incoming airbound threats, they were totally confused by what happened. But that won’t be the case if there’s a next time.

So the only thing sky marshals can help ensure is that hijacked airliners crash into unimportant targets – and this can be achieved by air defence already. What a brilliant use of resources…

1) If you’re travelling to America then don’t wear an unusual jacket

2) The nastiest piece of work in the New Labour crew is a big sky marshal fan (well, probably not, given that nobody sensible could be. But he’s willing to lie that he is for the sake of his career).

In particular, sorry for not updating SBBS – and for not changing it to display old posts when everything has expired. My own fault for being too stubborn to use MT, I guess… Anyway, happy new year. What’s happened since I last posted?

The US government’s plan to force foreign airlines to hire sky marshals has reached the sneakily coercive stage – “have marshalls, or we’ll ban your flight from taking off!”. I’m sure the insurance industry only quotes higher premiums for pilots travelling with sky marshals than those travelling without because the people working there don’t understand risk, not because the plan is utterly mad and dangerous.

In other news, head Kink Ray Davies has been shot. Surprisingly, not by his brother or any of his other bandmates.

The most shocking news of the Christmas period, though, was the revelation that if you take a country with a long-established climate of corruption, put a notorious crook in charge, and abolish the laws against fraud, then Bad Things will happen. I’ll drink (milk) to that.