Hello Reader,
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After two decades of retreat, history’s arc is bending toward freedom again. On the heels of three Gen Z uprisings, liberty surged through Latin America this week—with a decisive assist from the USA.
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Freedom may be resurgent, but the removal of five little words made the world a much more dangerous place.

The Global Fight for Freedom

1. Bolivians Obliterate Two Decades of Socialism
2. Argentinians Vanquish the Architects of Poverty
3. Trump Menaces, Maduro Cowers
4. Men and Money: Putin's War Machine Bleeds
5. North Korea and the Vanishing Phrase

Country names are followed by their 2025 freedom scores according to Freedom House. Not a ranking.

Just months earlier, it had seemed impossible. But on October 19^th, Rodrigo Paz stood before jubilant supporters as results confirmed he'd won the presidency, ending two decades of socialist rule. The upset demolished the once-invincible Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), whose candidate secured just 3% in the first round as it won a single congressional seat.
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Bolivians voted for their survival. Annual inflation had exploded to nearly 25%, with critical shortages of dollars and fuel forcing Bolivians to queue for hours.
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Bolivia's descent into crisis began decades earlier. After military dictatorships ended in 1982, three parties governed through shifting coalitions until Evo Morales led an Indigenous-supported socialist coalition to power in the early 2000s. Morales initially lifted incomes and reduced poverty, but he stacked the judiciary, evaded term limits three times, allegedly impregnated a 15-year-old girl while president, and ruled increasingly like a dictator. When he fled in 2019 amid fraud allegations, chaos ensued.
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Morales' fatal miscalculation hastened the MAS collapse. Driven by foolish nationalism, he raised taxes so aggressively on gas producers that foreign companies halted exploration, causing energy revenues to collapse from $6.1 billion in 2013 to $1.6 billion in 2024, draining reserves to subsidize fuel Bolivia now had to import.
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Sanity's return to Bolivia was galvanized by Paz running mate Edman Lara—a charismatic former police captain whose viral TikTok campaign exposed MAS corruption. Together, they swept six of nine regions including Morales' former Indigenous strongholds, appealing to merchants who flourished under socialism but chafed against higher taxes and regulation.
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For Bolivians enduring record inflation and acute shortages, Paz's "capitalism for all"—as vague as it sounds—promised deliverance from the socialist wreckage.
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Latin America is reclaiming its freedom from the forces of oppression.

End of 2023: Annual inflation 211%, Poverty 42%, GDP −1.6%
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Today: Inflation 31% and falling, Poverty 32%, GDP +5.5%
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​In less than two years, global freedom’s most audacious champion delivered one of the greatest economic miracles in modern history, as Javier Milei took his chainsaw to Argentina's bloated state.
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But September elections threatened an ugly relapse as the Peronists—architects of Argentina's decades of fiscal catastrophe—mobilized their vast patronage machine in Buenos Aires elections. Promising to restore subsidies and dole out government jobs, they won big.
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Markets panicked. With investors fearing the return of the Peronist policies, the peso plunged 10%, and Argentine bonds suffered their worst selloff since 2020. When Milei burned billions in reserves defending the currency, Trump stepped in with a $40 billion lifeline.
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Half the package comes as a dollar–peso swap, giving Buenos Aires the hard currency it needs to stabilize the peso. The rest is a private lending venture led by JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs. Despite Treasury’s insistence, American taxpayers will take the loss if the peso collapses—but reap rewards if it stabilizes.
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On Sunday, Trump’s gamble turned golden, as Milei’s upstart La Libertad Avanza shattered expectations—winning 41% of the vote nationwide and crushing the Peronists (31%).
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Milei supporters compared the joy to Argentina's World Cup victory. On Sunday, Milei found the back of the net—off Trump’s perfectly timed assist.

It sounded like something Hegseth would shout from a stage before an adoring MAGA crowd: “Maduro started this war—President Trump is ending it.”
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But it came from the latest Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and the woman widely recognized as the true winner of Venezuela’s stolen 2024 election.
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María Corina Machado’s words land as U.S. power descends upon the Caribbean. The largest deployment of American warships and fighter jets in more than three decades now encircles Venezuela’s coast.
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What began as a mission to choke off drug smuggling has clearly morphed into a campaign for regime change. On Sunday, an American guided missile destroyer docked outside Trinidad and Tobago’s capital. The CIA now openly conducts covert operations inside Venezuelan territory.
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Maduro is afraid. His generals are sleeping in new locations every night. His ministers swap phones daily. And in a scene ripped from the Cold War, B-52 bombers cruise offshore with transponders on—openly advertising their presence. Trump, asked what Maduro has offered to defuse the crisis, replied: “He’s offered everything… because he doesn’t want to f*ck around with the United States.”
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Inside Venezuela, the hunger gnaws and dissent is still hunted, but Machado’s followers can feel the tide turning. She calls Trump’s brinkmanship “a lifeline to a dying nation.”
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I don’t believe Trump will go to war. He’s playing to his strength—chaos, using unpredictability and overwhelming force to make his enemies believe surrender is their only hope for survival.
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And for once, that terror is being used for good.

In May, Vladimir Putin launched his biggest offensive yet—hundreds of thousands of troops hurled against Ukrainian lines in a furious bid to break the resistance. Five months of relentless attacks set the entire front ablaze.
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The result? Russia seized 0.4% of Ukrainian land. Not 4%. Zero point four. No major cities fell. Pokrovsk still stands. The offensive achieved little.
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​A new estimate from the Economist reveals the cost: more than 100,000 Russian soldiers died this year alone. Since the invasion began, total Russian casualties have reached 984,000 to 1.4 million, including 190,000 to 480,000 dead.
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Russia cannot break Ukrainian lines because modern warfare won't allow it. Constant drone surveillance and precision weapons make massing forces near the front suicidal. Small groups must enter the "kill zone" to stake forward positions—slow, grinding, deadly work.
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The kill ratio tells the story: roughly five Russian soldiers die for every Ukrainian. At these rates, manpower may soon constrain Russia more than Ukraine. Putin's recruitment drive once outpaced Ukraine's by 10,000-15,000 monthly. Summer's casualties nullified that advantage.
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And this week, Trump—finally!—wielded real leverage, sanctioning Rosneft and Lukoil, the twin arteries of Russia’s war machine. Even the Dutch Supreme Court has joined the squeeze—upholding a $50 billion judgment against Moscow for deliberately bankrupting Yukos 20 years ago.
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For the first time, Moscow’s oil lifeline faces true jeopardy, and after three years of thwarted offensives, Russia's war economy may crack—before Ukraine's defensive lines do.

In September, when Kim Jong-un's armored train rolled into Beijing for his first visit in six years, Xi Jinping greeted him with red carpets, military honors, and lavish banquets—the full imperial treatment reserved for crucial allies. For two days, Chinese state media broadcast images of warm handshakes and hailed "unbreakable bonds."
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When Beijing released its official readout of the summit, analysts spotted a startling omission: any reference to the "denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula." The phrase had appeared in every Xi-Kim summit since 2018.
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For decades, China supported UN sanctions against North Korea because a nuclear-armed Pyongyang would drive Japan and South Korea to develop their own arsenals, surrounding China with nuclear adversaries. That nightmare is now materializing—over 70% of South Koreans want nukes—forcing Beijing to recalculate the balance of power.
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Russia sealed the capitulation. Putin offers Kim what China never would: explicit acceptance of his nuclear program. Moscow calls denuclearization a "closed issue" while providing advanced military technology. Kim knows who his real patron is.
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China's 400,000 Korean War dead bought Beijing seven decades as Pyongyang's dominant patron—a buffer against US forces in South Korea. Now Xi is scrambling to restore influence. Construction crews work Sundays building border infrastructure on China's side. North Korea's side: abandoned. Meanwhile, a Russia-North Korea bridge races toward completion—both sides building furiously.
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China insists its position "remains unchanged," but behind the scenes, Beijing is legitimizing a dictatorship enslaving 26 million people while inflaming the arms race it spent decades trying to prevent.
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The omission of five words just made the world a much more dangerous place.
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Freedom Fighter of the Week: José Daniel Ferrer

José Daniel Ferrer walked off the plane in Miami without smiling. For 20 years, he had refused every offer of freedom-through-exile, enduring beatings and solitary confinement rather than abandon Cuba. Now, at 54, the regime's most defiant opponent had finally left—not because his resolve had broken, but because State Security had made the threat explicit: sign the deportation papers, or watch your family suffer the consequences.
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Cuban exiles wept and waved flags, but Ferrer barely acknowledged them.
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Ferrer’s struggle began two decades earlier, when he joined the Varela Project, demanding free elections. For that, he spent eight years in prison during the 2003 “Black Spring.” When the regime offered freedom in exchange for exile, most of the 75 dissidents accepted. Ferrer refused. He walked out of prison into surveillance and threats—and immediately began building the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), a grassroots movement demanding democracy from the ground up.
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His defiance made him the regime’s obsession. His homes were raided, his phones tapped, and his family threatened. In 2021, he vanished into Mar Verde Prison—where he endured beatings, untreated infections, and months in solitary. Still he refused exile, telling guards, “Freedom means nothing if you abandon your country to win it.”
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Only when his health collapsed did the dictatorship relent under intense international pressure, deporting him last week under the pretense of “humanitarian release.”
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"This is not victory," Ferrer said after landing. He vowed to establish UNPACU offices across the diaspora, coordinate resistance from abroad, and return the moment the dictatorship falls. "Freedom will come when Cubans can speak without fear," he said. "And I will be there when it does."

Welcome to the land of the still mostly free, Mr. Ferrer! You've earned the right to smile.

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