Blue Moon

A lunar eclipse was observed in many places around the world last night, including Chile. Coinciding with the solstice (summer or winter, depending on your point of view/geography), I suspect that a Roman or Egyptian soothsayer would have reached some kind of conclusion, positive or negative, regarding the year to come. Or the year just ended.

In fact, in modern times we do something similar. Every year at around this time year-end reviews begin to appear. The Economist published a much-awaited (at least by geeks like me) The World In..... issue, which does its best to reduce predictions to political responsible generalities.

In Chile, we are not immune to this festival of nostalgia/divination. And if we look at the year that is ending, by most accounts, the Chilean versions of these analyses will conclude that 2010 was pretty awful. It began in January with the second round of the presidential election (which, depending on one's point of view, was either fantastic or awful, although these days it is hard to find anyone who will admit to it having been an awful result). Then came the earthquake, the World Cup, the miners' accident, the Bicentenary, the miners' rescue, the prison fire and resulting deaths. In between, the usual noise caused by the President's 21 May speech, the Teletón, and other yearly rituals.

Chileans do not tend to look on the bright side, but one could. The earthquake was far less lethal than it could have been, and Santiago suffered relatively little (downside: the reconstruction has been slow and inefficient, resulting in this week's political dogfight between the government and the opposition). The World Cup was a much needed release from the seismic tension of the preceding months (downside: Chile discovered the genius of Bielsa, turned him into the biggest Argentine national hero since San Martin, and then due to politics and in-fighting, managed to lose him). The mining disaster, or rather, rescue, was a PR bonanza for Chile and its government (downside: no one remembers the miners, and much less the issue of workplace safety). The Bicentenary was muted and classy, not an ostentatious and expensive show (downside: it was a missed opportunity for an imaginative, nation-wide project in the arts, in infrastructure, in something that would last). The prison fire has no upside.

All this hyperactivity on the national scene has given both government and opposition some breathing space. The Concertación has tried to regroup, but it has a long way to go, and bets are still off on whether it will actually survive in its current form. And the government has got away with a series of mistakes whilst the (favourable) press looked the other way.

Meanwhile the economy, buoyed by the high price of copper and Chileans replacing their earthquake-affected TVs, zoomed right along. The (favourable) media ignores the possibility of Dutch disease, of the economy overheating, of the total lack of creativity in terms of development policy, of the creeping privatisation of (what's left of public) health care and education, and fiscal deficits (Bachelet had deficits to finance one of the world's largest (in relative terms) stimulus packages; not to finance spending with 5.5% growth rates).

Since Chileans are drowning their sorrows in consumer spending, they do not seem particularly gloomy. But they are exhausted. Comments on Twitter are all about hoping that 2010 ends soon. One person wondered whether it would be possible to just slice the last two weeks off the year and get it over with. So even though last night's moon was red, the year in Chile really ends with a colour much closer to blue
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What a drip

As my latest column in Americaeconomía suggests, I am getting a little tired of the collective fiesta that Wikileaks as inspired. As the days and weeks go by, it seems Mr. Assange is becoming like one of those James Bond baddies who threatens to obliterate the planet if he doesn't get what he wants. In this case, he's threatening to divulge secrets if he doesn't get what he wants, whcih is a) to have serious legal charges ignored or dropped, and b) to be able to keep divulging whatever information he and only he deems to be fit for public consumption.

He presents himself as a democrat, but he is actually the complete opposite.

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Denial, Anger, Negotiation, etc.

Hundreds of public sector workers are apparently getting the ax in Chile today, ostensibly because they are not necessary (implying that the Concertación had a bloated and inefficient public service.......a line which has been used by Piñera since the 2009 campaign).

It will be interesting to see how the public service workers react, how the unions react, and how the Concertación reacts. I do not expect much.

Part of the reason can be found in my latest column, published today in El Mostrador. The Concertación is in no condition to combat the cutbacks, perhaps because it secretly understands many are justified, but probably because it is just in a different place -- according to my piece, in one of the five stages of grief.

I leave it up to others to decide which one, exactly.
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WikiLeaks

As my column in El Dínamo suggests, I really don't see what all the fuss is about. While the revelations are kind of fun and salacious, and certainly embarrassing for the State Department, I have seen very little so far that is truly surprising.

I have the feeling that journalists around the world are just patting themselves on the back, and this entire story is more about the fact that the State Department has a security problem than about the foreign policy of the United States, Iran's nuclear capability, Hillary Clinton's opinion of Mrs K, or Putin's machismo.
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No Logo

Chile is all atwitter, or at least Twitter is all atwitter, about the announcement this afternoon of the Government of Chile's new logo.

In keeping with the new corporate culture, here is a promotional video:



Apparently this piece of graphic art cost the Chilean taxpayer -- the same Chilean taxpayer whose taxes were raised earlier this year because we all had to tighten our belts in the wake of one of the worst earthquakes in recorded history -- some $20.000.

I am clearly in the wrong line of work.
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E-media in Chil-E

Even while it was in power, the Concertación knew that the media, and especially the print media, was ideologically opposed to it. Its strategy, which was particularly successful during the Lagos government, was to woo the media, try to reach a kind of détente, instead of searching for ways of encouraging friendly capital to start up new products and sources.

The massification of e-media has made this task easier, and since the changeover of power in March, two new online sources have joined the already existing El Mostrador and the more investigative CIPER -- El Post, and today, El Dínamo, in which I have published this column.

For now, these online sources of news, information and opinion tend to be read and commented by the commenting classes. Most Chileans get their information from TV, radio, and glancing at the headlines in kiosks. Although newspapers are cheap in Chile, it is common to see groups of people in the morning huddling around news kiosks reading the front pages of various newspapers.

It remains to be seen, then, how the increasing, but so for electronic, diversity of news sources affects Chilean politics. We know that people tend to read things they want to read, both in terms of interests and ideology.

But at least it will be increasingly difficult for anyone to claim the information was not available.
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Beatle hair

OK. So this (via flowingdata.com) is not exactly political science. But it's history, and pretty brilliant.
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