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Wilde claimed he could discuss any subject, at any time, prepared or not. A companion once took him up on this claim, asking that he discourse on the subject of “The Queen.” Responded Wilde: “The Queen, Sir, is not a subject.”

Now let’s turn our attention to the news of the world. Shall we look at things in a different geographic order today? Why not. Let’s live large.

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AMERICAS

🇺🇸 UNITED STATES

★ America’s desperate dysfunction:

… Look around and the signs of dysfunction are everywhere. Just as the scale of the country’s wealth and power are hard to comprehend for those of us outside the imperial homeland, so too is the scale of its violent disorder and dysfunction. … There are the 131 mass shootings in America this year alone, on top of the 647 last year and 690 before that—a form of nihilistic terrorism that has been normalized to the point of acceptance. The opioid crisis in the States is also of a different order to anywhere else. … Life expectancy, meanwhile, has collapsed in staggering fashion, in a way that is completely out of line with any other advanced country, down from 78.8 in 2019 to 76 today.

…. This is part of the great paradox of our American order. Even as the US grapples with its own social and political dysfunction, it dominates our world culturally, economically and militarily. Right now, the United States is attempting to maintain its global hegemony by protecting both the European and East Asian security orders at the same time. To do so, it must hold at bay both Russia in Ukraine and China in Taiwan. It is easy to forget the scale of this challenge because we have accepted it as normal. And yet it is not. America is the most powerful nation-state in history, not the new Britain but the new Rome. … Today, despite the chaos, the United States is not only maintaining its global power and wealth, but in many ways has deepened its dominance. Its economy is pulling away from Europe, while much of the democratic Western world is clinging ever more tightly to the legs of its big brother protector. Culturally, too, America remains the source of almost everything which defines our world, from its fashions and music, to its movies and even its political ideas. …

America faces a rare earth element crisis. Rare earth elements will power the future economy. The United States needs to do more to secure them:

[T]he Biden administration must recognize and prioritize the rare earth elements it needs to ensure national security. In a recent congressional hearing about US energy policy, Interior Secretary Haaland stated that the administration is currently “identifying those critical minerals within the US Geological Survey.” …Given the time frame and the severity of the shortage, the Biden administration needs to prioritize this research. Only with an understanding of the type and quantity of certain rare earth can the Biden administration devise the optimal rare earth policy for the United States’s economic and national security.

Rare earth elements have propelled the global economy. The nations that control rare earth element refining capabilities will be able to determine the future environmental, economic, and military capabilities of their country and its allies. ​​In 1992, while visiting a Chinese Rare Earths Research Institute in Baotou, Deng Xiaoping famously stated that “there is oil in the Middle East; there is rare earth in China.” America’s leaders must share the same attitude that Deng had for China.

How to get Americans to support a bigger navy. Safeguarding nautical thoroughfares is thus a national interest commanding the utmost importance. Yet the talking point always seems to fall flat with lay audiences. It has generated no groundswell of popular support for shipbuilding:

[But if] economic disentanglement between America and China continues, China may come to resemble the Soviet Union of the late Cold War years as a plausible hazard to commerce. If interdicting US trade no longer harmed Chinese trade, Beijing might come to see it as a worthy course of action. Severing sea routes between North America and East Asia would cramp the United States’ economic power and in turn its military and diplomatic clout, as close and distant blockades have since time immemorial. At that point, China’s navy and array of ground-based anti-access weaponry would come to look forbidding indeed. Beijing would have matched an imposing arsenal with ill intentions, imperiling that 90 percent of world trade that figures so prominently in US Navy rhetoric. And then senior leadership could put the question of shipbuilding to the American people with reasonable prospects of swaying their minds and hearts to the cause of a bigger navy. Reality would have come to back up rhetoric. 

🇵🇾 PARAGUAY

Paraguay’s political machine triumphs again: An anti-establishment candidate surged in the polls, but it’s still the Colorado Party’s game:

Ahead of Paraguay’s presidential election last Sunday, several factors—including rising anti-incumbent, anti-corruption, and pro-China sentiments in the country—suggested the opposition could score a rare victory. … despite all of this, Colorado Party candidate Santiago Peña still managed to win handily, earning 43 percent of the popular vote to Alegre’s 27 percent and Cubas’s 23 percent. … Paraguay’s election ends a streak of 16 free Latin American presidential elections over the past five years that threw the incumbent party out of power.

Paraguay conservatives’ election win defuses Taiwan’s fears. Peña’s Colorado Party tightens grip despite slowing economy, graft allegations:

… Colorado and right-wing party candidates also performed strongly in congressional elections and governor races, with some provinces recording a historic Colorado majority over opposition rivals. The election result leaves Peña facing a challenge to rev up Paraguay’s farm-driven economy, shrink a major fiscal deficit and navigate rising pressures from soy and beef producers to ditch Taiwan in favor of China and its huge markets.

Third-place finisher in Paraguay’s presidential election arrested. Paraguayo Cubas Colomés was broadcasting on Facebook Live when he was detained for allegedly “breaching the peace.”

Cubas has since taken to social media to challenge the results, calling the leaders of Peña’s ruling conservative Colorado Party “thieves” and accusing the election of being marred by fraud. However, the Organization of American States, as well as Paraguay’s own election authorities, have upheld the accuracy of the vote.

🇨🇱 CHILE

Chile plans to nationalize its lithium industry:

With the demand for lithium growing, Chile is making moves to nationalize its lithium industry. This isn’t just another money grab; it’s an effort to move up the value-add chain. The Indonesians have seen noteworthy success with the reclamation of their nickel industry, and the Chileans are looking to take a page from the Indonesian playbook. One of the most significant changes will be the development of critical infrastructure in the Atacama Desert, where most of the Chilean lithium is found. So who are the biggest winners and losers in all of this? China is really the only loser; much of its lithium ore supply will disappear and its processing infrastructure will sit idle. The Chileans are the biggest winners, but most countries transitioning to green energy will benefit from this.

Claire—somewhere in Heaven, Richard Nixon is struggling to make sense of this: Americans now cheer when Chile nationalizes its mines?

Chile and Argentina are playing against type on lithium mining:

The conventional wisdom in the Southern Cone is that Chile is a market-friendly economy where businesses can succeed, while Argentina is a basket case of state intervention where businesses will suffer. And there is some truth to those stereotypes. Over the past two decades, Chile has been a place where businesses can operate in a regulatory environment shaped by steady and fair rules. In contrast, Argentina has lurched from crisis to crisis, placing extensive regulations on prices, taxes and capital controls that have made business—as well as life in general—difficult. Even from 2015 to 2018, when Chile had a nominally socialist president and Argentina had a nominally pro-market rightwing president, Chile’s regulatory environment and business culture still made it the heavy favorite for foreign investment. However, when it comes to the lithium industry, that narrative about the two countries has just been flipped. In recent months, even as Argentina has suffered from a renewed economic crisis and hyperinflation, the country’s lithium industry has been prospering due to a relatively light touch by the government.

Chile’s far-right Republican party has finished first in an election to choose the members of the body tasked with drawing up a new constitution:

The Republican party won 22 out of the 51 seats, with right-wing parties winning another 11 seats. The constitutional assembly is to come up with a new constitution to replace the one brought in during the military rule of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. A draft by a previous assembly was rejected in a referendum last year. The first assembly had been dominated by progressive members and many Chileans found their proposals too radical. The constitution they had proposed would have changed many of the country’s institutions, such as replacing the Senate with a Chamber of Regions. It also would have declared Chile a “plurinational state,” recognizing the rights of Chile’s indigenous groups—which make up about 13 percent of the population—to their lands and resources. The failed proposal—which had the backing of left-wing President Gabriel Boric—also included improved social benefits and environmental rights. Had it been passed, it would have become one of the world’s most progressive constitutions. But in September 2022, 62 percent of voters rejected it, prompting Sunday;s election for a new assembly.

“Earthquake in Chilean politics.”

José Antonio Kast’s Republican party secured 22 of its 50 seats in a major blow to the progressive president Gabriel Boric. Boric beat Kast, an ultra-conservative lawyer often compared to Brazil’s former leader Jair Bolsonaro, in the 2021 presidential election. … Kast’s victory cements his status as the dominant figure on Chile’s right, and is the latest reminder of the populist far right’s continued appeal across South America, despite Bolsonaro’s defeat in Brazil’s presidential election last October.

Chile’s constitution will struggle to escape Pinochet’s shadow.

Colombia suspends deportation flights of returning citizens detained at the Mexico border, claiming “cruel” treatment by US officials:

Fernando García, head of Colombia’s migration agency, blasted cruel and degrading treatment that some migrants were subjected to before boarding and during the flights, including use of cuffs for hands and feet. …

The number of Colombians trying to migrate north to the US has soared in recent years, with more than 125,000 apprehended at the United States’ southern border in 2022, according US Customs and Borders Protection, up from about 6,200 in 2021. Colombia expected to receive some 1,200 migrants in flights programmed to arrive from the US during the first week of May, the country’s migration agency said in a statement. The pilot plan called “mom returns” was intended to send mostly women, children and adolescents back to Colombia.

🇲🇽 MEXICO

Mexican president complains US is funding opposition:

Mexico President Andres Manuel López Obrador has again complained to the United States that the US government is funding organizations opposed to his administration, this time in a letter to President Joe Biden. … In the letter, López Obrador states that the United States Agency for International Development for some time has funded “organizations openly opposed to the legal and legitimate government,” an act he described as “interventionist.”

Mexican authorities announced details of a government plan to attract businesses to a coastal corridor along a southern stretch of the country, part of a larger bid to pump investment into the long-neglected region. The project is a priority of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and aims to link Mexico’s Pacific and Gulf coasts via a freight rail line and build multiple industrial parks designed to attract manufacturing to poorer parts of the country.

Mexico to share “evidence” of fentanyl smuggling from China.

Mexico will provide China with evidence of illegal fentanyl shipments from the Asian nation to Mexican drug cartels, its president has said, after Beijing denied there was any such smuggling. A container that recently arrived in Mexico from China was found to contain the synthetic opioid blamed for hundreds of overdose deaths every day in the United States, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Friday. Speaking at his daily news conference, Lopez Obrador said that Mexico would ask “very respectfully” for China to inform it when the contraband leaves its ports, and if possible seize it.

Mexico has denied that fentanyl is manufactured in its territory. Lopez Obrador’s appeal follows calls from Republican senators in the United States to designate Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organisations and even send troops to fight them.

🇧🇷 BRAZIL

Brazil’s stance on Russia is worrying the West. President Lula’s positioning of Brazil as a broker in the war is emblematic of how some of the world’s largest countries are not picking a side.

🇵🇪 PERU

Arequipa gold mine fire kills at least 27 in Peru.

A port regulation adopted by Peru to combat illegal fishing by Chinese squid vessels appears to have backfired:

Instead of increasing oversight, the new Peruvian regulations appear to have driven Chinese ships away from the country’s ports—and kept crews made up of impoverished Filipinos and Indonesians at sea for longer periods, exposing them to abuse, according to new research published by Peruvian fishing consultancy Artisonal.

🇨🇦 CANADA

Thousands forced to evacuate as wildfires ravage western Canada. More than 13,000 people were ordered to leave parts of Alberta as 78 fires burned. The fires are expected to intensify.

Canada expelling Chinese diplomat over alleged legislator threats. Canadian foreign minister says Zhao Wei declared ‘persona non grata’ after alleged intimidation of opposition lawmaker.

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AFRICA