The Americas Post - Just think of Chavez' show "Alo Presidente" as the ultimate in reality TV

Venezuela President Hugo Chavez threatened on Sunday to nationalize any private bank that fails to comply with local legislation setting standards for agricultural finance and other projects in the country.

The leftist leader, who since 2008 has increased state involvement in the financial sector, has criticized banks repeatedly for their lack of support with  agriculture and housing.

“The private banks, if they don’t comply with the Constitution and the law, well I have no problem, I repeat, to nationalize them.  We have to enforce the Constitution and laws of this Republic,”  Chavez said in his weekly TV show.

The new ruling, to promote financing for agriculture in the oil-producing country, says a bond issue will provide banking resources for the agricultural  sector.  But Chavez provided no details,  requesting a meeting with executives of banks Banesco and commercial premises, and the Spanish Banco Provincial.

The Provincial Bank, a subsidiary of Spanish bank BBVA is one of the largest in the country.

“(Vice President) Elijah (Jaua), this week you call the presidents of the largest banks, namely Bank Banesco, the Provincial and Commercial, call them to the vice presidency and talk to them but do not fall for flattery, “Chavez said in the third edition of his program.

The retired army officer, who claims to be cured of his cancer diagnosed in mid-2011, passed a law enabling private banking fund transfers to portfolios directed at agricultural financing.

“I am ready, if they do not comply, to nationalize the banks.  I have no problem, I repeat,” said Chavez, who said he is willing to work on “coordination and cooperation with private banks “.

The program also announced that Vice President shall resume the country’s Ministry of Agriculture and Lands.  Since taking office in 1999, Chavez, seeking reelection in the presidential election of 2012, has nationalized large sectors of the Venezuelan economy. In July 2009 he completed the nationalization of Spanish financial group Santander.

The Americas Post - Chevron managers could end up in Brazilian prison

Brazilian prosecutors are planning to file criminal charges against Chevron Corp within the next several weeks, adding the possibility of prison time to an $11 billion civil lawsuit for a November oil spill offshore.

The federal court filing in Campos, Brazil, will probably include a criminal indictment of Chevron Brazil CEO George Buck and other staff, Brazilian government officials have revealed.

Transocean Ltd, whose rig was used in the operation, and some employees in Brazil will also be charged, according to the officials.  A judge will then decide whether to accept the charges and move ahead with indictments.

Buck and Chevron acted in a “careless and irresponsible way,” said one official who investigated the 2,400-barrel spill.  He admitted it is unlikely that people facing charges will be arrested soon or be prohibited from leaving Brazil. As the case advances however, those measures could be applied.

The charges would come more than a month after a Federal Police investigator submitted a report saying Chevron and Transocean took “unacceptable” risks in the Frade oil field off Brazil’s southern coast, and recommended that 17 individuals be indicted.

Police and prosecutors alleged that Chevron knew it was drilling in a high pressure area and that rock structures above the reservoir were fragile, factors that should have prompted more caution.

“This well could not and should not have been drilled,” the Federal Police said in a December 20 report.

Chevron denies taking undue risks and says Brazilian authorities approved drilling plans.  Oil from the leak did not reach shore and was less than 0.1 percent of BP’s 4.9 million barrel Gulf of Mexico spill in 2010. The Frade leak was also much smaller than several previous spills in Brazil by Petrobras.

The Americas Post - That isn't the Exxon Mobil logo on the side of that storage tank

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced on Sunday that his nation will not recognize any decision by a World Bank tribunal in a multibillion-dollar arbitration case against Exxon Mobil Corporation.

Exxon has called Venezuela before the World Bank’s International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes, or ICSID, demanding $12 billion in compensation for nationalization of the Cerro Negro oil project by Chavez in 2007.

“I tell you now: we will not recognize any decision by ICSID,” Chavez said in a televised speech.   He repeated accusations that the U.S. oil producer has used unfair practices to rob the South American OPEC member of its resources.

“They are immoral … How much could they steal in 50 years? Who would dare launch this madness without any foundation?  They wanted $12 billion. From where?” he said.

“We are not going to bow before imperialism and its tentacles, understand that … They are trying the impossible: to get us to pay them. We are not going to pay them anything.”

Exxon declined to comment.

Some interpreted the statement to mean Venezuela would reject rulings in the 20 other cases pending before the World Bank’s tribunal, responses to multiple state takeovers in recent years.  They include separate multi-billion dollar claims filed by another U.S. oil company, Conoco Phillips.  Two statements issued later however, by Venezuela’s Petroleum and Mining Ministry and by its state oil company PDVSA, only mentioned the Exxon case.

Last week an arbitration panel at the International Chamber of Commerce, awarded Exxon $908 million in a separate case about the Cerro Negro nationalization.  On Saturday, Venezuelan Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said he did not expect a verdict in Exxon’s World Bank case before the end of this year.

Both cases are being monitored by the industry for precedents in future disputes between companies and producing states, which have demanded a larger share of oil profits as prices increase and new reserves grow scarce.

For years, Venezuela’s socialist president has accused foreign oil companies of looting that nation’s resources, while still maintaining close ties with many of them.

Exxon says the World Bank case is to compensate for its assets, and experts say it could result in a larger award.  The government has insisted Exxon receive only slightly more than the $750 million it said was invested in the project.  In September, Venezuela offered to settle for $1 billion.

For years, Chavez has hit oil companies with tax hikes and contract revisions  to fund public anti-poverty programs.

Venezuela’s push for more control over its oil has been emulated by other producing nations.  Critics say it has scared investors away from that country and reduced production volume.  Regardless, some companies remain eager to invest in Venezuela’s Orinoco extra heavy oil belt, one of the world’s largest untapped reserves of crude.  Chevron and Spain’s Repsol both signed deals in 2010 for new projects there.

The Americas Post - Why is this such a familiar sight? Photo Credit: AP

The Brazilian Federal Police department announced that it has begun investigating an oil spill in an offshore field operated by multinational producer Chevron Corporation off the coast of Rio de Janeiro.

Federal Police department environmental affairs division chief Fabio Scliar told government news service Agencia Brasil that his division began looking into the causes of the spill and its extent on Thursday.

Chevron spokesman Scott Walker released a brief statement, saying only that the company “continues to fully inform and cooperate with Brazilian government agencies.”   The company said it has 18 ships working on a rotating basis to collect oil off the surface and monitor the slick.

Chevron admits only that between 400 and 650 barrels of oil have leaked from a well it was drilling off the coast of Rio de Janeiro.  The company said the spill occurred when drillers underestimated the pressure of an underwater oil reservoir, causing oil to rush up the bore hole and escape into the surrounding seabed.  It then began to leak from seven cracks in the ocean floor within 160 feet of the well head, continuing to release between 420 gallons and 4,200 gallons daily.

The Americas Post - Mexicans appreciate fine German workmanship

The factory of German arms manufacturer Heckler & Koch was raided on Thursday by some 300 German agents, on suspicion of bribery related to the sale of weapons to Mexico in 2005.

Authorities in Stuttgart confirmed that the search, which included the homes of some employees, was for evidence of bribes paid to Mexican officials for approval of arms contracts over several years.  The accusations include some German officials who prosecutors allege were also bribed.

For years investigators have suspected the German company of exporting arms to four states in Mexico “with violent internal conflicts”, in violation of German law.  Authorities did not specify who the recipients of the weapons were.  In January the Economics Ministry suspended all exports from that factory to Mexico.

Heckler & Koch was previously accused of violating an embargo on arms exports to Libya.  The company has always denied any role in illegal sales, but declined to comment on the latest accusations.

Other current customers include the German police and military, as well as other NATO countries.

The Americas Post - Will they call it LAN AM?

Chilean airline LAN has avoided a lawsuit from local competitor PAL and reached an agreement that will allow LAN to proceed in their planned marriage with Brazilian airline TAM.   The merger would create one of the largest airline groups in the world.

LAN, one of the leading carriers of Latin America, announced Tuesday that PAL agreed to drop objections to the merger raised some weeks ago in the Chilean Supreme Court, in return for compensation of US$5,000,000.

Based in Santiago and owned by the local Cueto family, LAN operates in Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador and Peru, with additional cargo service in Brazil and Mexico.  Over a year ago the company announced their intention to acquire TAM, thus creating the largest airline in Latin America with over 10.5 billion in revenue.

Based in Sao Paulo and controlled by the Amaro family, TAM is the largest airline in the largest economy of Latin America.  The company has announced it will not renew four aircraft leases next year as originally planned, saving $50 million a year and reducing their fleet to 159 planes instead of 163 at the end of 2012.  TAM reported profits of 38 million dollars in the second trimester, leaving behind their losses for the same period last year.

LAN plans to invest heavily in their fleet as part of an aggressive expansion plan for 2011-2014.  The Chilean carrier reported a year-over-year revenue decline of 11% for the third trimester, due to restructuring of their Colombian operation and foreign exchange losses.  From January to September the company reported profits of US$207,700,000.

Expected to be complete by mid 2012, the merger is expected to save almost 400 million dollars per year by combining operations.  Both companies plan to ask the Chilean Supreme Court to approve the deal by waiving three remaining legal obstacles imposed by the local anti-monopoly tribunal.

Russian-Venezuelan "techno-military" cooperation

Relations between members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) appear to be suffering as a result of the Arab Spring and unilateral decisions to increase production taken by members of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

This week Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez told visiting Russian vice minister Igor Sechin and energy minister Sergei Shmatko that he had “a modest proposition, one of those ideas that one throws out:  to discuss how we can create a new organization for this new world that is surging forth.  An organization of petroleum giants, which don’t number more than four or five, of which Russia and Venezuela are two.  It’s something to talk about”, he said.

Chavez’ declarations come as Iraq and other Persian Gulf OPEC member countries have granted diplomatic recognition to Libya’s National Transition Council government, which overthrew Chavez ally Muammar Gaddafi.

The chief of state added that OPEC would not be affected in any way.

“OPEC is an organization with a history, a profile, a trajectory.  It has and will continue to play an important role of internal equilibrium in historic times like we are living:  the invasion of Iraq, the invasion of Libya, conflicts between member countries.”

Following Chavez’ suggestion his Minister of Petroleum and Energy Rafael Ramirez also referred to OPEC, in the context of production quotas.   “Countries that produced additional volumes need to reduce them from the market before we go back to talking about anything else”, he said.  ”There are people who have been led astray from OPEC; they have to return to the system of disciplined production.”

In OPEC’s last meeting this June, US ally Saudi Arabia led a group proposing to increase production to stabilize oil prices and offset shortages resulting from the revolution in Libya.  Venezuela and Iran led the resistance to that idea. Although the quotas were not changed, the Saudis and United Arab Emirates unilaterally hiked production to help lower prices, which approached 120 dollars per barrel in April.

During the visit it was announced that joint Russian-Venezuelan company Petromiranda would begin early production of 50,000 barrels daily by May of 2012, from wells being drilled by December of this year.  The parties signed an agreement to speed formation of the company, which is expected to swell volume to 450,000 barrels daily, according to Ramirez.  He said that the partners are investing US$525 million financed by bilateral Russian-Venezuelan institutions or other financial entities.

Chavez also announced an agreement extending credit worth four billion dollars to support military technical cooperation between Russia and Venezuela.  ”That’s two billion next year and two billion for 2013″, he said from Miraflores Palace.

Security: Joe Parry from Cambridge Intelligence and Victor Bjorgan, CEO og Global Security Services LLC and Publisher of TheAmericasPost.com, during the EISIC 2011 Conference.

How should we communicate the results of our analysis to decision-makers? How to visualize key information for decision makers?  The talk of Joe Parry argued that visualisations and infographics play a very important role, not only for analytical processes of data analysts, but also for explaining the analytical results to decision-makers at the highest of levels.

Some care must be taken to avoid various common pitfalls when designing such visuals: the talk will cover bad examples as well as good in order to uncover design guidelines and practical advice for those wishing to pursue a more visual approach.

in that sense, Joe Parry initiated his keynote that these visualization tools are specially important for law enforcement and National Security. In that sense he recalled an old saying ” a good sketch is better than a long speech”.

What is visualitation? asked Parry to the conferencists. Well , a good visualitation does not consist in just good pictures.

About graphs and numbers, Parry said that the use of interactive data and vissualy representation of data is used to amplify cognition. Parry briefly described how a good visualization helps in the Intel analysis. Described some common pitfalls in data visualization. he recommend the reading of the book written by Westell, Duncan and Weeks on visualization in Intel analyIntel analysissis.

Parry also described a model of intelligence analyzing processes. The final product of such analysis is a report.

In the reports, he does not recommend the use of colours to describe the visual variables. He recommend the use of Kinley Visual variables.

To start the visualization of the Analysis in its low phase, Parry mentioned the visualization of pattern of life, but said this is a analytical tool, not a decission tool. He also said that this analysis must be simplified, not use numbers.

During his keynote speech, Joe Parry showed a photograph of former President George Bush looking a wall full of sketches with the networks and interrelations of all individual terrorists participants in the attacks of September 9/11. It was a very confusing material, President Bush was looking at in this photo. Not the best intelligence visualization report.  President Bush was not looking in the photo at a screen with the three followings ingredients that are important in any report: geovisualization, timeline visualization and network visualization.

Parry said, that if only using that photo, it was impossible for former President Bush tot ake any intelligence decission, because there is no report, but only information.

In things not to do, Joe Parry also told participants that it is no good to put pies in the reports, neither 3D presentations. The intelligence reports for decission makers must avoid the use of colour since there is often a color blind among the public. He recommends not to use labels, simplicity instead  of complexity, no use of black backgrounds, no use of pie charts, not use of misleading scales.

Joe Parry showed enthusiasm while talking about the infographics reports of the New York Times NYT. He said the NYT infographics show all needed info to understand what is happening.

Summarizing, Parry described some of what he called as ” design guidelines” for any Intel report, like  first an overview, always  aim for clarity, show context, show how the situation has changed, make comparison easy, all visual elements must be backed by data, and that the report should be so clear and convincing that the decission makers will act backed by the report.

To know more about the subject, Joe Parry from Cambridge Intelligence mentioned some sites that can be of interest like:

flowingdata.com

infosthetics.com (slow uploading, be patient..)

visualcomplexity.com

nytgraphics.com

stamen.com

visualization.org

Finally, Joe Parry ended his keynote speech saying to all participants: “Back Up everything you say!”

Joe Parry´s email address is joe@cambridge-intelligence.com

His twitter is @parry_joe

Phone nr: 07973 787 233

His address is:

idea Space

The Entrepreneurship Centre

3 Charles Babbage Road

Cambridge CB 3 OGT

Biographical Details:
Joe Parry has worked on visualization and graphics systems for intelligence work for the last thirteen years.
During that time he has done software development, design, systems architecture and more experimental
research projects. He has worked with the intelligence communities of the UK, US and other countries. His
recent professional interests include social network analysis and web-based visualisation systems. This year he started his own software company which is producing what he hopes will be part of a new wave of
investigation software.

New business alternatives within Airport Security

The U.S. Government agency that manages airport security shifts its strategic emphasis from stopping weapons to finding people.

It’s a potential $4 billion market for private industry, based on what the Transportation Security Administration, or TSA, currently spends on aviation security.

“Businesses that are good at data analysis, behavior-pattern recognition, big data handling, data-visualization — all ought to come out ahead,” said Stewart Baker, who headed the Department of Homeland Security from 2005 through 2009.

“We could also see an increase in demand for identification tools, such as biometric and facial-recognition scanners,” he said in an interview.

Stepping up to the plate are well known publicly-traded companies such as…READ MORE HERE

U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy navigating the Arctic Ocean (Photo Credit to Martin Jakobsson, Stockholm University)

Among the consequences of  global warming, the Arctic Ocean has become a more strategic region for the United States and Canada. Russian economic and military interests in the Arctic are common knowledge. They are neighbors up there, and the Arctic has strategic and security value for both Americans and Russians.

One of the U.S. protagonists in the protection of American interests in the Arctic Ocean is the United States Coast Guard (USCG).

The important role of the USCG will require higher budgets, more personnel,  better equipment  and more boats to patrol the area and respond to incidents, according to Coast Guard Commander Adm. Robert Papp, who testified Friday at a field hearing of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee in Anchorage, Alaska.

Admiral Papp  said the Coast Guard has been unable to run exercises inside the Arctic Circle due to a lack of suitable vessels that can sail those difficult waters.

Papp informed the Senate that the USCG conducted some limited coastal drills  during open water (ice-free) periods, but now Papp said in written testimony that  “the Coast Guard will require specialized vessels, aircraft, and crews trained to operate in extreme climates”.

As oil companies prepare to start exploratory drilling in the Arctic Ocean, the Coast Guard has been conducting exercises with skimming systems and oil recovery systems around Alaska  to avoid a new environmental disaster like the one in the Gulf of Mexico.

However, no exercises have occurred north of the Arctic Circle to date, Papp informed to the Senate, as oil recovery systems cannot operate in areas with too much ice.

Admiral Papp defended the White House fiscal 2012 budget´s  request for more funding of research and development on oil detection and recovery in icy water, in order to extend the U.S. capability for skimming and recovery systems.

Papp said the USCG is interested in regularly transitting ice-laden waters,  opening seasonal bases for air and boat operations in the Arctic and developing a force structure that can operate in extreme cold and ice.

The Coast Guard only has one active boat that can sail through icy seas — the Healy, a medium icebreaker, which is used for scientific research.  The USCG now plans to bring a heavy icebreaker, the Polar Star, back into service by 2013 after a major refurbishing.

Investment in more resources for the USCG is very important as oil companies are increasingly moving into the Arctic, Papp said. Shell  has submitted a plan to start exploring wells in the Arctic in the spring of 2012,  and other companies like ConocoPhillips and Statoil may soon follow.