The President's Daily Brief - January 24th, 2023. Protests Continue in South America. What Impact Will This Have on You?

Episode Date: January 24, 2023

It’s January 24th. You’re listening to the President’s Daily Brief. Your morning intel starts now. ------ A good day to you, ladies and gentlemen. I’ve got four briefs for you this morning that are shaping America — and the world. First, we start in Peru with the latest on growing protests there and how they’re impacting copper prices — and the global economy. Second, we head over to Brazil where the country’s president there is cracking down on protestors — and blaming Donald Trump for inspiring them. Third, the country of Turkey is slamming the door shut on expanding NATO. All because a politician in Sweden set fire to a very important book. Finally, we’re going to take a ride this morning in a hot air balloon — yeah — flying high above the American midwest to see something very beautiful — and very alarming if we don’t take action soon. Later, we close out the podcast with a study about the importance of kids putting down those phones and getting outside. It’s good for their brains, science says. ----- Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of the President's Daily Brief. Email: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Own it all. Pay off your home, travel for life, drive a Ferrari. In celebration of the world premiere of the Monopoly Big Board Buckslot Machine by Aristocrat Gaming, Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is giving one person a $1.6 million dream package. The biggest prize in Yamava's history. Club Serrano members can earn daily instant prizes and secure a spot in the finale May 29th.

Don't pass go and own it all. Only at Yamava, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You win? Details at yamava.com must be 21-20. Please gamble responsibly. Monopoly is a trademark of Hasbro. Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion. It's January 24th. You're listening to the President's Daily Brief. I'm your host and former CIA

officer Brian Dean Wright. Your morning intel starts now. A good day to you, ladies and gentlemen. I've got four briefs for you this morning that are shaping America and the world. First, we start in Peru with the latest on growing protests there and how they're impacting copper prices and the global economy. Second, we head over to Brazil, where the country's president there is cracking down on protesters and actually blaming Donald Trump for inspiring them. Third, the country of Turkey is slamming the door shut on expanding NATO, all because of a politician in Sweden who set fire to a very important book. Finally, we are going to take a ride this morning in a hot air balloon. Yeah, flying high above the American Midwest to see something very beautiful and very alarming if we're going to be a lot of.

we don't take action soon. Later, we close out the podcast with a study about the importance of kids putting down those phones and TVs and getting outside. It's good for their brains, science says. But before we get to that, we got to get started with this. A new round of protests in the South American country of Peru means more trouble for consumers globally to include here in the U.S. So here's what we know and why we should care. So as PDB listeners, Probably remember, about six weeks ago, the then-leftist president of Peru, a guy named Pedro Castillo, tried to get rid of Congress because, well, they were going to get rid of him first. They were going to impeach him. Well, Peru's Congress managed to strike first, and they tossed the guy in jail.

Well, that set off weeks of violent protests, namely by Mr. Castillo's leftist supporters from the south of Peru. Since December, there have been 47 protesters killed and about 540 police. officers wounded. And that toll is likely to get worse. Yesterday, the Minister of Interior said that the protesters are gearing up for a new round of attacks to include using homemade explosive devices. So the demands of these protesters are threefold. First, free the jailed president. Second, write a new constitution. And third, launch immediate new elections. Well, according to the Peruvian government, none of that is going to happen. And because of that refusal to bend to these demands, the Interior Ministry is saying that things are likely going to get bad. In fact, yesterday,

they said that things are, quote, at one of the highest levels of violence in recent times since the 1980s, end quote. And that's interesting, because that period of Peru's history was when a leftist terror group called The Shining Path conducted nationwide attacks on cities and tourists and mining operations. And that's actually why I'm bringing this continued news to you. As PDP listeners know, Peru is one of the world's biggest suppliers of copper, a mineral that is of critical importance to things like electronics and transmission lines and all those electric vehicles that the world intends to build. In fact, we're starting to see that these protests are having an impact on both the supply and the price of copper. Peru's third largest copper mine called Las Bambas,

which, by the way, is owned and operated by the Chinese, hasn't shipped copper concentrate since January 3rd due to these security concerns. There's another mine operated by the Swiss company, Glencore, who suspended operations last Friday after protesters attacked the premises there for the third time this month. They set a fire buildings and vehicles. But I'll tell you, it's not just the mines that we should talk about. Peruvian coffee exports are being blocked.

That's a very important industry for that. country. Also, tourism is taking a hit. In fact, there were a group of 418 tourists and Peruvians trapped at the famous Incan Citadel Machu Picchu. The rail lines were sabotaged. So one last thing to note here. If you're wondering what's really driving these protests beyond what I've already mentioned, well, I'd highlight a couple things for you. First, the southern area of Peru, where the jail president has most of his support, that's very, very poor and frankly, radically leftist. So folks there have long agitated for better wages and working conditions. Plus, they complain about inflation rates eating into the wages that they do get.

Peru's inflation rate last year, by the way, was 8.4%. That is the highest in 26 years. But there's also growing concern that these protests are being funded or fueled by outside leftist groups. The Minister of Interior said that groups from neighboring Bolivia were sending in cash and agitators. That is, well, likely true based on the history of that region, but the Peruvian government has not offered any concrete evidence of this. At any rate, I'm going to keep you posted on this one, and, well, you might want to hold off on that trip to Machu Picchu and stock up on some Peruvian coffee. There is another very big protest scheduled for later today. Speaking of protests and left versus right, let's leave Peru this morning and head east to the country of

Brazil. The leftist president there is trying to hunt down and clean out conservative supporters of the former president, and he's blaming Donald Trump and his populist movement for fanning the flames of Brazil's problems. Now, before we dig into this story, let's remind ourselves of why we up to care. And a couple of reasons for this one. First, about 1.7 million Brazilian immigrants live in the United States, mostly in Boston, Miami, and New York. So that community of folks is certainly interested in their old country. Plus, we have some pretty notable trade with Brazil, about $105 billion in annual imports and exports of both goods and services. So, for instance, we exchange a lot of oil and refined oil products, plus airplanes and machinery. There's also a lot

of agricultural goods that we exchange, like unroasted coffee and grains, fruits and vegetable juices, and beef. The point then is that we ought to care about Brazil because whether we know it or not, our economy and our people are pretty much intertwined. Okay, with that background, let's talk about the latest from the capital city of Brasilia. The leftist president of Brazil, a guy's name is Luis Enacio Lula de Silva, declared last week that he was going to defeat what he called the new monster that is the fanatical far right. He was speaking about the former president, Jayaer, Bolsonaro and his conservative populist movement. So De Silva then added that Bolsonaro was a threat just like America's former president,

Donald Trump. And like Trump, the whole Bolsonaro movement has to be squashed. So here's what he said. Quote, although we have defeated Bolsonaro, we must still defeat hate, lies, disinformation, and fanatics because this society needs to return to being civilized, end quote. Well, that does sound familiar. Well, anyway, so how does this leftist president intend to restore his country to a more civilized state? Well, he's targeting his opponents, specifically the military and intelligence services,

which he said supported or encouraged the capital riots on January 8th. So to refresh my brief to you on that, Bolsonaro supporters took over the presidential palace, the Supreme Court and Congress about three weeks ago, after breaking through some protective gates and then destroying government property, all because they were opposed to this leftist president, assuming the presidency. So now President D'Slva is on the hunt for insurrectionists, and that's what he's calling him. On Saturday, he fired the army commander, and in his place, he promoted a guy who's promised to root out Bolsonaro supporters.

Last week. Next, the leftist president also, dismissed more than 50 military officers who had guarded the presidential residence and the National Security Advisors Office. Finally, Brazil's federal police last week rated the House of the governor of Brasilia, who is under investigation for failing to prevent the storming of these government buildings. So all in all, folks, I think it's pretty fair to say that things are pretty tense in Brazil this morning, a country that, by the way, is split about 50-50 between those who support conservatives like Bolsonaro, and those who prefer leftists such as De Silva, who, for the record,

spent time in prison for corruption related to an investigation called Operation Car Wash. So where do things go from here? Because it's a pretty darn important place, obviously, and we should be watching it. Well, I'm watching the military. You see, they used to run Brazil, that actually ended in 1985, and some Bolsonaro supporters wanted them to intervene once again, but they didn't. So could that change? Well, let's see how far these purges go of the military and intelligence and the police. If these purges go too far or they target the wrong people with powerful friends,

President de Silva could be in trouble. One final thing to note, the CIA might be playing a quiet role here. So last May, according to Reuters news, the CIA director William Burns told then President Bolsonaro's aides to stop casting doubt about the integrity of Brazil's electoral system, which is pretty bold and, frankly, sounds a bit like a threat. Anyway, I will be watching for more of those kind of indicators that the CIA might be helping Joe Biden in this case defend the leftist friends in places like Brazil to keep power

and squash those who might oppose him. With that, we've got one more brief before our first break, and for this one, we're going to do an update on that very tricky country of Turkey. So to refresh our memories on this one, Europe and the United States really want to add the countries of Finland and Sweden to their military alliance that's called NATO. Now, the biggest perk of this group is that if one nation is attacked, then everybody else is obligated to respond. And so adding Finland and Sweden, at least the argument goes, would make them safer from Russia, of course following their invasion of Ukraine. But there's a catch.

All NATO countries have to agree to let any newbies in. And the country of Turkey is saying, no, not so fast. That's because Turkey's president, Mr. Erdogan, wants some American jets out of this deal. He's not been able to get them so far. Plus, he's really angry that Sweden, in particular, is hosting some people called the Kurds, who are ethnically Turkish, but they hate President Erdogan. In fact, some Kurdish people have tried to overthrow his government, or at least he says so, through acts of terrorism.

Well, yesterday, Turkey threw more cold water on allowing Sweden or Finland into NATO, and that's because a politician in Sweden set a fire the Muslim holy book, known as the Quran. Well, as you would expect, Muslims from around the world and in Turkey were not happy about that. Here's what President Erdogan had to say. Quote, if you speak about freedoms and rights, like freedom of speech, then first things first, you should show some respect to the religious belief of Muslims and Turkish people. If you do not show such respect, then you cannot see any kind of support from us on NATO. Well, Muslims in other countries are protesting the book burning too, some riots actually happening.

We're seeing reports of that stuff happening in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. By the way, the fellow who burned this Quran, he's a Danish Swedish politician named Rasmus, Polidon. He's burned these Korans before as an act of protest against both immigration and Islam in Nordic countries. What he's trying to tap into is this growing regional threat of gangs, especially in Sweden and Denmark. Now those gangs, according to the BBC News and the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, are largely made up of first or second generation immigrants, almost all young men, and mostly from Muslim majority countries. For what it's worth, Data from that National Council that I just mentioned, well, that data show that eight out of every 10 shootings in Sweden are connected to these organized crime rings, even though Sweden has some of the world's most aggressive gun control laws in the world.

The gangs of these young Muslim men obviously are still finding weapons and using them. Plus, believe it or not, they're actually making bombs, including buying grenades from Eastern Europe. With that, ladies and gentlemen, let's take a quick break. When we come back, I've got one more critical piece of news for you. So hang tight, and we will be right back. Kayak gets my flight, hotel, and rental car right. So I can tune out travel advice that's just plain wrong. Bro, Skycoin, way better than points.

Never fly during a Scorpio full moon. Just tell the manager you'll sue. Instant room upgrade. Stop taking bad travel advice. Start comparing hundreds of sites with kayak and get your trip right. Kayak. Got that right. Welcome back to the PDB. I've got one more critical piece of news for you this morning. As longtime PDB listeners know, this podcast tries to hue as closely as possible to the actual

president's daily brief. And that means that we talk about, well, the hidden or discrete threats to America that nobody else is talking about. And I've got one of those threats for you this morning. It's sitting under the ground in the Midwest. So to understand this, this one, let's start with some imagination. Let's pretend that we are in Kansas and a hot air balloon and we're about to take off, but you got to pack your coats and grab some oxygen because we're going to go way up into the air, into the stratosphere, about 20 miles into the sky. Now, when we look down, we can see all the way from South Dakota into Wyoming through Nebraska and Kansas, in fact, all the way down through Oklahoma and Texas. Now, what you are seeing

are of course America's Great Plains and lots of agricultural ground. In fact, you probably see tens of thousands of crop circles and farms without irrigation, too, called dry land farms. But what you don't see, and the focus of this brief, is something under that ground. It's a body of water. It's called the Ogallala Aquifer. And it stretches through all of those states that I just mentioned. And what you might not know is that it's the lifeblood of America's.

bread basket. It waters billions of dollars in all sorts of crops and keeps the Midwest alive. But it's in serious trouble. And if it doesn't get fixed over the next decade or so, we are all in trouble. So let's lower ourselves back to the ground to get out of that hot air balloon and dig into what's going on. About a week ago, a Kansas state senator named Jim Minnix of Scott City, Kansas, gave an interview to the Kansas Reflector. He's a farmer, a rancher, and a Republican for what it's worth. He spoke about how the Ogalala aquifer is drying up. In fact, he warned, some areas of western Kansas have just 10 to 20 years of water left if nothing changes.

But it's not just Kansas. Critical Farm ground in northern Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado are in trouble too. But why is that? Why isn't there enough water going into the aquifer to refill or recharge what's used each year? Ah, well, let's start with this. Do you remember U.S. history when we had the Great Dust Bowl? It was back in the 1930s. The prairies had been dug up for farming in eastern Colorado, western Kansas, eastern New Mexico,

and the panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas. But both then and now, those areas are and were prone to drought. So when no rains came back in the 1930s, the crops died, and then came the annual winds. That pushed dust storms past the Mississippi River over the Appalachian Mountains all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. In fact, on May 11th of 1934, there was a two-mile-high dust storm

that started in these Midwest prairies that eventually got to Washington, D.C. and New York City, completely covered the Capitol building and the Statue of Liberty. Well, about 10 years later in the mid-1940s, Two things happen that solved that dusty crisis. They adopted, of course, better soil conservation measures. You might recall that from the era of FDR. But most especially, farmers tapped into the Ogallala aquifer.

And suddenly, big chunks of the Midwest weren't reliant on dry land farming. In other words, they didn't have to rely on Mother Nature for rain, but rather they tapped into the Ogallala. That created irrigated farming. In other words, they could sink wells and put in sprinklers. Sometimes you could see those crop circles, right? Well, that folks created the American breadbasket. Now, the data on tapping the Ogallala and what happened after is just incredible.

But the bottom line is that that water resulted in tens of billions of dollars in agricultural products being grown every year, which in turn supports all sorts of industries and the cities that rely on them. Now, of course, all of those wells tapping into the Ogolala started to drain it. Now, in some places, the aquifer was able to recharge itself with rains and snows. And that's most especially true up north towards the northern end of the Ogalala in states like Nebraska and South Dakota. But that's not what happened as you travel further south into the western parts of, say, Kansas, the panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas.

Because remember, those places are more prone to drought, just like we saw in the dust bowl. So the aquifer there just recharges more slowly. And that takes us to the problems of today and what that state senator in Kansas said. So in western Kansas, the Ocala has dropped more than 100 feet in some places since the 1950s. The same is true in the panhandle of Oklahoma. Meanwhile, in Texas, we've seen drops of over 300 feet in some wells, or some just dry it up altogether. That's according to data from the Texas Water Development Board. So what would happen if the Ogalala were to dry up in, well, this entire region?

So let's put that differently. How reliant are these areas on the Ogalala? Well, according to the states of Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas, that particular region gets about 98% of its water supply from the Ogalala aquifer. So it wouldn't be hyperbole to say that this issue is about life and death. And not just about the Ogalala, but a big chunk of the Midwest. Although actually, it's about life and death for the whole country, isn't it? It's America's breadbasket. It creates tens of billions of dollars in agricultural products.

This area helps feed the nation and the world. So finding ways to fix this slow growing crisis is really important. And thankfully, we have some good options. So as my farmers know, conservation is perhaps the most important. That can include planting different kinds of crops that require less moisture, or using something called precision irrigation, which, to just put it simply, uses sensors that determine when plants or sections of your field need water, and when they don't. By the way, the Israelis have done some brilliant work in this field. Incredible stuff. Also, it's possible that we could pay some farmers not to grow in certain years, especially in dry years, or to rotate which farmers can grow what?

Finally, one of the more industrious ideas is to build a 360-mile-long aqueduct from the Missouri River to western Kansas. That would cost around $18 billion to build and probably $200 million annually to operate it. That's according to an estimate by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. By the way, that $18 billion, it's about three months of support to Ukraine. Just saying. Anyway, all of these options create really prickly conversations.

In fact, there was a farmer in Lane County, Kansas, named Cameron Shea, who had this to say about all the conservation efforts that I just mentioned, especially around restricting water rights. Quote, it can't just be done by a bunch of activists who come in and don't know what they're talking about and strong arm it and do radical things, end quote. And you know what, he's right. He's absolutely right. coming from a farming and ranching family, I can tell you that government authorities are usually the last people who help fix problems like these. In fact, they usually make it worse. The bottom line, folks, is that I want to put this Ogalala problem on your radar. It's not one that we have to solve today or tomorrow or even in this year. But if we are good citizens,

thinking medium to long term about how to keep America strong and vibrant, we should be thinking about how to tackle this problem now. Because if we don't, it could spell economic ruin for not just the good people of the Midwest, but all of America and frankly the world. And if there were any doubt about how serious this is, all we have to do is look at pictures of the 1930s to see some very destitute people fleeing what turned out to be a preventable disaster. And with that, ladies and gentlemen, we conclude your morning brief.

But I've got one more thing before I let you go. We'll be right back. Welcome back to the PDB folks. I've got one more thing before I let you go. Well, it's a study this morning that probably didn't need to be done, but it's good confirmation that kids need to get outside and play. Researchers in Japan followed 885 kids from age 18 months to four years. So they looked at the relationship between three things. First, the average amount of time per day spent in front of a TV or computer or front of a phone starting at the age of two. All right?

Then they looked at the amount of outdoor play at that same age. Finally, they explored the neurological development of these same kiddos, in other words, language skills and socialization scores at the age of four. And what they found by comparing these kids at two, two and a half to age four and that connection to computer screens and phones and such, well, it's. the more the kids spent in front of a screen, the worse their neurological development. But when kids got outside to play, some of those negative effects of that screen time were reduced by about 20%. The study, by the way, will be published in the March edition of J.A. Pediatrics.

Now, there is more research to be done on this, exploring whether the type of content on the screen might be a little bit more or less detrimental. But the overall takeaway is pretty clear. Get those kids outside America. It is good for their minds, good for their bodies, because of course we've got to tackle that obesity epidemic. And ultimately, it's good for America's future because, as we all know, healthy kids means a healthy country. And that, ladies and gentlemen,

concludes your morning brief. As always, we close out the show, reminding each other of why we are here. talking about our country and our world. It's the creed of every good spy and every smart American. It's from John chapter 8, verse 32. And you shall know the truth. And the truth shall make you free.

Good day.