South America

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Mon May 29, 2023 2:54 pm

South American Summit in Brazil: President Maduro to Participate, Boluarte Declines
MAY 28, 2023

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Headquarters of the Foreign Affairs Ministry of Brazil, the Itamaraty Palace, in Brasilia. File photo.

The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, was invited to participate in the 2023 South American Summit convened by the president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. President Maduro is expected to arrive in Brasilia on May 29. The summit will take place the next day, May 30.

The Brazilian president invited the heads of state of the other 11 countries of the region to participate in the summit: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

Peru will be the only South American country that will not be represented by the president at the summit, the Foreign Ministry of Brazil reported on Friday, May 27. The de-facto president of Peru, Dina Boluarte, excused herself by arguing that she cannot leave the country without parliamentary authorization. Peru will be represented by the president of the council of ministers, according to the Brazilian Foreign Ministry.

According to analysts, Boluarte might be trying to avoid being questioned for the more than 70 deaths in police and military repression on peaceful protest by humble Peruvians who consider the ousting of President Pedro Castillo as a coup. The coup put Boluarte in power with the help of the Peruvian Congress, something labeled by many as a parliamentary coup d’etat.

The summit, scheduled for May 30, has four main priorities on its agenda: revitalization of South American integration, repositioning South America on the global stage, rethinking South America as a region of peace and cooperation, and the reactivation of UNASUR. The “main objective is to resume dialogue” between the countries of the region “that have not met for many years,” explained Gisela Padovan, secretary for Latin America and the Caribbean of the Brazilian Foreign Ministry.

The Brazilian government expects the summit to discuss the possibility of “returning to a South American integration mechanism” that will be “permanent, inclusive and modern” and that will include the 12 countries of the region, regardless of the political ideology of the government of any of the countries.

Padovan stressed that the integration mechanism should not be fractured, thus distancing Brazil’s stance from that of organizations promoted in recent years such as Prosur. Prosur and the Pacific Pact, among others, are regional organizations with very limited and ideological scope created under Washington’s pressure to counter UNASUR and CELAC.

Brazil-Venezuela relationship
Relations between Brazil and Venezuela are in a new productive stage with the coming to power of Lula da Silva, in addition to a new wave of progressive governments that have embraced again the dream of unity of the Latin American independence heroes.

Recently, the Venezuelan ambassador to Brazil, Manuel Vadell, presented his credentials to the Brazilian president, which has been described by President Maduro as “a big step.”

The Venezuelan president stated that the appointment of ambassadors “constitutes a new starting point for the consolidation of the union between the two sister nations,” after years of attacks from Brazilian right-wing governments against Venezuela following Washington’s failed “regime change” attempt.

Open format
The summit will take place in a single day, with two sessions, one in the morning in which all the presidents will make opening remarks, and another in the afternoon, which will consist of an “informal” dialogue between the presidents.

This format aims to encourage the presidents to freely exchange ideas, and to identify the “common denominators” that serve as a basis for resuming the integration process of South America, according to the Brazilian Foreign Ministry.

https://orinocotribune.com/south-americ ... -declines/

The Ecuador of Guillermo Lasso
MAY 27, 2023

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Ecuador’s incumbent president Guillermo Lasso failed the people of his country during his short two-year term in office. Photo: Twitter/@LassoGuillermo.

By Tanya Wadhwa – May 27, 2023



During Lasso’s two years in office, Ecuador has registered the highest annual inflation of the decade, the highest rate of homicide in seven years, mass migration, and unprecedented drug-related activities.

On Wednesday morning, May 17, Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso decreed the dissolution of the country’s parliament using a never-before-tested constitutional clause known as “cross-death,” which triggered early presidential and legislative elections, and caused the premature end of his presidential term and plunged the country into an unprecedented political crisis.

The dissolution of parliament took place a day after the body began an impeachment hearing against Lasso. He is accused of corruption and embezzlement of public funds. He argued that there was a “serious political crisis and internal commotion” in the country, and that the dissolution of the opposition majority parliament was a “constitutional solution” and a “democratic action.”

The “political crisis and internal commotion” however, was not because the Congress dared to investigate the president’s acts of wrongdoing, but rather because of Lasso’s questionable governance. According to a survey conducted in February 2023, 85% of Ecuadorians disapproved of Lasso as president.

While Lasso has now successfully avoided the possibility of being investigated and removed from office, it is necessary to recall the track record of the two-year banker turned president and what his administration has meant for the country.

Economic crisis
In December 2022, Ecuador registered its highest annual inflation of the decade: a record 3.74%, according to a report by the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses of Ecuador (INEC). The items whose cost increased the most in 2022 included food products and non-alcoholic beverages, transportation, various goods and services, restaurants and hotels, furniture and household items, education, healthcare, and rent, water, electricity and gas services.

The INEC also reported that the cost of the basic family basket, consisting of 75 essential products, reached USD 763.44 in December 2022, and that of the vital family basket, made up of 73 products, but less in quantity and quality than the basic basket, reached USD 538.96.

Additionally, according to a recent study conducted by the INEC, 53.5% of the workers were employed in the informal sector in the first quarter of 2023. The figure represented an increase of 2.4% as compared to the same period in 2022. The situation was much worse in the rural areas, where 76.9% of the workforce is in the informal sector.

The survey also indicates that, in the first three months of the year, the average monthly income of this sector was USD 379.60. Likewise, in rural areas, the monthly income was around USD 219.70. Jobs in the informal sector are generally unstable, with low wages, and without social security or rights, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO).

Security crisis
Since January 2022, Ecuador has been witnessing a concerning spike in criminal violence, especially in the Pacific coastal regions. Assassins have been targeting judicial officials and killing police officers as well as citizens at record rates.

The Lasso government blames drug trafficking gangs for it, arguing that due to Ecuador’s location, between Colombia and Peru, the world’s leading cocaine producers, the country has become a key transit point for drug shipments to the United States and Europe.

In March, the president declared a 60-day state of emergency in the coastal provinces of Esmeraldas, Guayas, Los Ríos and Santa Elena, and deployment of the military to the streets. However, the murders have continued to take place, something that severely affects the credibility of the government.

In 2022, Ecuador recorded the highest rate of homicide in seven years: 25 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. In 2021, the rate was 13.7 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, which means in one year an increase of 82.5% was recorded.

Migration crisis
The deteriorating socio-economic conditions have forced thousands of Ecuadorians to leave their country and take on a perilous journey to the US in search of a better life. For years, Ecuadorian migrants have argued poverty and unemployment as reasons for migration. Now they are also citing the growing insecurity in the country as one of the causes.

There has been an alarming increase in Ecuadorian migrants crossing the Darién gap jungle that separates Colombia from Panama, an extremely dangerous trek. In January, the Panama Migration Office revealed that Ecuadorian was the second nationality that most crosses the Darién pass. During 2022, around 30,000 Ecuadorians crossed the jungle.

June 2022 national strike
In June 2022, hundreds of thousands of Ecuadorians mobilized across the country as a part of an indefinite national strike against the anti-people economic policies of the Lasso government and the increasing insecurity in the country. The strike was called for by various Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and peasant organizations, with a set of ten demands that address the urgent needs of the majority of Ecuador’s population in the face of rising inflation and cost of living crisis.

The demands included the reduction and freezing of fuel prices; provision of employment opportunities and labor guarantees; putting an end to privatization of public companies; introduction of price control policies for essential products; allocation of greater budget for public education and health sectors; protection to people from banking and finance sectors; provision of fair prices for agricultural products; an end to drug trafficking, kidnappings and violence; bans on mining and oil exploitation activities in Indigenous territories and near water resources; and respect of the collective rights of Indigenous peoples and nationalities.

After over two weeks of nationwide social protests and roadblocks, the government agreed to make concessions on some of its policies. It signed an agreement with organizations to end the strike and advance the negotiation process to address the social demands raised by them.

In October, the organizations and the Lasso government concluded the negotiations after three months of talks without agreements on all points.

Six were killed and over three hundred were injured during the protests before reaching an agreement. Following the strike, the National Assembly held the first impeachment vote to remove Lasso from power for unleashing brutal repression against social protests. Lasso survived the vote by a margin of just two votes.

Prison crisis
Ecuador’s prison system has also been going through a severe crisis since the end of 2020. Prisons across the country have been plagued by shootings, riots and violent confrontations. According to official data, since January 2021, 442 prisoners have been killed in the state’s custody in different massacres in prisons.

The Lasso government has blamed drug trafficking gangs fighting for control of prisons as well as territory and drug trafficking routes outside prisons for the crisis. Nevertheless, human rights organizations have highlighted that overcrowding, negligence of the authorities, and absence of crime prevention policies in the country are the fundamental reasons.

Drug-trafficking and the Lasso government
The Lasso government is trying to play the victim, but investigations have revealed that it may be intimately linked to the reason behind the worsening of the illegal drug trade and related violence in the country.

In January, digital media outlet La Posta published a series of documents and audio recordings that linked various government officials and Lasso’s brother-in-law, Danilo Carrera, with alleged acts of corruption and drug trafficking.

La Posta’s investigative report, called El Gran Padrino or The Great Godfather, revealed an alleged criminal structure for the appointment of positions and public contracts in exchange for money in state companies, linking Danilo Carrera’s friend and businessman Rubén Chérres —murdered in April—, and with various government officials, such as Hernán Luque, fugitive former president of the Coordinating Company of Public Companies (EMCO). According to the report, Chérres, Luque, and Carrera managed appointments to high positions within public companies and ministries, and decided which private companies work with the State in exchange for bribes.

The report also revealed Chérres’ alleged links with the members of the Albanian mafia, and that the mafia had chosen Ecuador as a strategic point for drug trafficking operations. It alleged that since Chérres and Carrera possessed influence over key institutions, such as the Customs service and the Ministry of Energy, they helped the members of the mafia disguise themselves under the facades of big businessmen and launder assets and promote arms and human trafficking in the country.

La Posta’s report details information from an investigative report prepared by the Anti-Narcotics Police of Ecuador between May and July 2021.

The impeachment trial
The publication of the report by the media outlet led the Prosecutor’s Office to initiate investigation against several public officials within public companies for the crimes bribery and corruption. The epicenter of the investigation in the EMCO were the public oil transportation company Ecuadorian Oil Fleet (FLOPEC) and the electricity company Electrical Corporation of Ecuador (CELEC).

In March, the opposition majority congress asked to start impeachment proceedings against the head of state. The Constitutional Court approved the request by opposition legislators to impeach Lasso politically for the crime of embezzlement of public funds, related to a contract signed between the FLOPEC and the private Amazonas Tanker Pool company.

The motion, presented by congresswoman Viviana Veloz of the left-wing opposition Union for Hope alliance (UNES) bench, detailed that there was evidence of “the diversion or distraction of the funds generated annually by these pools of companies with which LOPEC had a contractual relationship in the transportation of crude oil.” It also argued that Lasso “defined the continuation of oil transportation contracts in favor of third parties, conscious that they represented a loss for the state.”

For his part, Lasso rejected the existence of a structure or network of corruption in his government and public energy companies. He denied the accusations, arguing that the contract was signed under the previous administration of former President Lenín Moreno in 2018, and that under his administration profitable changes were made to the contract based on advice from the Comptroller General’s Office.

Pandora papers
In October 2021, Lasso was also implicated in corruption and financial crimes, after offshore companies owned by him were mentioned in the Pandora Papers. The Pandora Papers uncovered a complex web of tax havens, shell corporations, and offshore accounts that hide the true ownership of billions of dollars of assets.

A law passed in 2017 prohibits elected officials from holding assets and capital in tax havens. Following the allegations in the Pandora Papers, Lasso made several public statements declaring that he had not violated the law. He also released his financial documents in support of his claim. He said that while he had previously invested in foreign companies and held money in foreign accounts, he had sold them off after he dedicated himself to politics.

At the time, the National Assembly voted to only question him instead of removing him from office.

https://orinocotribune.com/the-ecuador- ... rmo-lasso/

Uruguay: It Is Time for Self-Criticism
MAY 27, 2023

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Palestinians march in Gaza City to observe Land Day. Photo: Reuters.

By María Landi – May 19, 2023

On May 15, the 75th anniversary of Nakba, the ethnic cleansing that destroyed Palestine and established the State of Israel on its ruins was commemorated with events, marches and activities around the world, including in Latin America. In Uruguay, however, the date went unnoticed in institutions and civil society [1]. It is a paradox that in Uruguay, May is the Month of Memory, and that this year marks the 50th anniversary of the civic-military coup, and at the same time, in Uruguay the Nakba continues to be, three-quarters of a century later, a memory denied, silenced, ignored. In short, we accept the memoricide that the Zionist project imposed on the Palestinian reality [2].

Perhaps this is a phenomenon worthy of further study: why in Uruguay the Palestinian issue is not known, not studied—at any level of formal education—and, therefore, not understood.

It is also pertinent to ask why Uruguay has never made a self-criticism about the role that its representative played in the UNSCOP: the special commission formed in 1947 within the nascent United Nations (which barely had 50 member states) and in which Uruguay promoted the partition of Palestine to hand over 56% of its territory to a movement of European settlers who had been in the country for a few decades, made up less than a third of its population, and owned less than 6% of the land. As Luis Sabini Fernandez explains in a lapidary analysis [3], the representatives of the progressive governments of Guatemala (then headed by Juan J. Arévalo) and Uruguay (under Luis Batlle) [4], both aligned with the US neocolonial leadership, were instrumental in persuading their Latin American peers to vote for the partition of Palestine. Worse still, Uruguay’s sin dates back to 1917, as it was one of the few countries to sign the Balfour Declaration, by which the foreign minister of the British Empire formally promised the British Zionist movement his government’s support for the establishment of a “Jewish national home” in Palestine.

From a decolonial point of view, the lack of sensitivity to the existence, interests, and will of the original Arab population, who for centuries had constructed social, religious, and cultural institutions as well as a vibrant society and economy in Palestine, is inadmissible today; and yet—with typical colonialist contempt for the natives—was ignored by the European imperialist power, which gave away a country that did not belong to it to a colonizing movement whose explicit intention was to build in that strategic region a “bulwark of Western culture against barbarism” [5].

Colonialism is in the DNA of Uruguay, a country created for the interests of the British Empire, populated by successive waves of European immigrants, which still has problems with recognizing its indigenous and African roots [6]. But it is inadmissible that, almost 80 years later, Uruguay still finds more natural affinities with the white Ashkenazis who colonized Palestine and has so many difficulties to feel any empathy towards the Palestinian people, who have been resisting since then a project of territorial colonization, military occupation, and legalized apartheid.

I am not interested in analyzing why the Uruguayan right wing sympathizes with the Zionist project embodied in the State of Israel; the similarities of interests is evident. Instead, what deserves a serious analysis is why the left practices what Palestinian activists call PEP (progressives except for Palestine). The examples of close relations between the Uruguayan left and organized Zionism are many and longstanding. Senior leaders of the leftist bloc Frente Amplio, as well as renowned leftist intellectuals, political analysts, academics, human rights defenders, etc., have received from the hands of the Israeli Central Committee of Uruguay (CCIU) the Jerusalem Award, commemorating the “reunification of Jerusalem,” which is nothing but the occupation and annexation of East Jerusalem by Israel, an act considered illegal by the UN (a position that Uruguay, in theory, supports). Did any of them bother to find out what the award they were accepting represented? Is it ignorance, or is it fear of contradicting a powerful economic and media lobby?

The list of sins is extensive and spans the region. In 2007, Mercosur, under progressive governments with the exception of Paraguay, signed a free trade agreement with Israel (the bloc’s first with a country outside the region). It is true that Uruguay formally recognized the Palestinian state; but it did so only in 2011, a year after every one of its Mercosur partners had done so. In 2017, the mayor of Montevideo, Daniel Martínez organized, together with the Israeli embassy, a gala at the Solis Theater to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the creation of that State (completely ignoring the 70 years of Palestinian suffering). In 2020, a month before leaving the government, Tabaré Vázquez adopted the questionable and problematic definition of anti-Semitism created by the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance), which qualifies criticism of the policies of the State of Israel as anti-Semitic. And in 2022, the Frente Amplio voted for a staunch defender of the criminal policies of the State of Israel and its systematic violations of international law, one who also lobbies for Uruguay to vote against Palestinian rights at the UN, to become a member of the National Human Rights Institution.

We must not forget that numerous leaders of the left as well as of the trade union, university, business, scientific, cultural and sports circles—with or without Jewish roots—have traveled to Israel, have studied there, have marveled at the economic and technological miracle of that country, but have never been interested in knowing how the Palestinian population lives (not only in the occupied territories, where these Uruguayans have never set foot, but even inside the Israeli territory), nor how billions of dollars of US aid sustains that “miracle,” nor the very foundations on which the so-called exclusive and exclusionary “Jewish State” was built (especially the plight of the Bedouin indigenous communities). Thus, the Uruguayan left, by action or by omission, ends up being aligned with the colonizers and occupiers, and not with their victims. Yet the left, and not just the Uruguayan left, cultivates the fantasy (I do not mean hypocrisy) that they can be in solidarity with the Palestinian people without bothering their oppressor and even maintaining normal relations with the same oppressor.

It is therefore understandable that this so-called left would experience cognitive dissonance when, after decades of condemnations by Palestinians, major Israeli and international human rights organizations finally recognize, as they have done in recent years, that “the only democracy in the Middle East” is in reality an apartheid state: a racist regime of Jewish supremacy, built on the elimination, expulsion, segregation, and discrimination of the Palestinian people who do not really constitute a minority but more than half of the population living between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river, in addition to the fact that the Palestinian refugee population is double that number, and that “demographic threat” is the reason why they are not allowed to return to their ancestral land.

A separate chapter should be devoted to media of the entire ideological spectrum, which do not address the Palestinian issue, or do so in an inadequate manner to give an account of the ping-pong of aggressions from both sides, always without context or causal analysis. In the media programs and sections of international politics, Palestine does not exist, and it is better to ignore it than to mess with the powerful lobby and its allies. Years and years of Israeli investment in the well-served “annual press junkets” have paid good dividends.

Thus, it is not surprising that, across the political spectrum, Tyrians and Trojans seek the front rows to commemorate with the CCIU the night of broken glass, but little do they care that in Palestine every night is a night of broken glass (and broken houses, crops, ancient olive trees, water reservoirs, solar panels, tractors, vehicles, schools, mosques, animals, and human bodies) carried out by Israeli soldiers or by gangs of armed settlers, now formally integrated into the colonial army under a terrorist Minister of Security who never stops encouraging this violence.

What is the importance of remembering the Nakba, beyond the moral duty to break the silence and fight against memoricide, the denial of the existence, identity and centuries of history of the Palestinian people in their land, before they were dispossessed of it? In the reality of Uruguay, a country where the Zionist project has never been critically analyzed, nor has its responsibility for making it possible been reviewed, remembering the Nakba is important in order to get out of the epistemic trap of interpreting the Palestinian question as a conflict between two peoples disputing a territory, which is nothing more than applying the theory of the two demons, putting on an equal footing the oppressor and the oppressed, the occupier and the occupied, the colonizer and the colonized.

With this logic, one tends to consider that the core of the “conflict” lies in the 1967 occupation. As if the Zionist colonization of Palestine prior to 1947—with the complicity of the imperialist powers—did not involve any injustice towards the native Arab population. As if UN Resolution 181 had been equitative. As if the State of Israel had always been there; as if 1948 had been “a war” and not a deliberate plan (Plan Dalet) of ethnic cleansing, destruction of Palestinians’ villages and theft of property, massacres and expulsion of 750,000 people who today, together with their descendants, number 7 million and continue to live as stateless refugees. As if the UN resolutions from 1949 onwards were just and not a violation of its own founding charter, since these resolutions legitimized the establishment of Israel in 78% of the Palestinian territory (even more than the 56% granted by the already unjust Resolution 181) despite the fact that it was territory acquired through a war of conquest.

The Nakba refutes these naturalized myths and reminds us of the need to decolonize the analysis in order to understand that the root cause of the oldest problem that persists on the UN agenda, with grave consequences for a region that has never again experienced a day of peace, is the colonial, racist and supremacist project, which has materialized in a system of apartheid that should not be tolerated in the 21st century.

A number of Jewish organizations throughout the world have reached this conclusion, such as Jewish Voice for Peace (USA), Independent Jewish Voices (Canada), International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Na’amod (UK) and many others, as well as numerous Jewish people in the academia, the social and physical sciences, journalism, culture, and the arts. They are so many and so brilliant that it is impossible to name them in this column, but all these voices have been raised again and again to respond “Not in my name!” to the crimes committed by the Zionist state against the Palestinian people. I am privileged to count some of those exceptional Jewish people among my friends and fellow travelers.

Not a single one of those voices has been heard in Uruguay, a country that several personalities and organizations have proudly defined as “the most Zionist country in the continent.” Perhaps the absence of critical Jewish voices, as well as of a local Palestinian community (and an Arab community in solidarity with their cause) in the national public scene has contributed to this unanimous silence of the Uruguayan society, a situation that is unique in Latin America.

Perhaps it is time to start reflecting as a whole society, in this Month of Remembrance, and on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the coup d’état, that when we say “Never again” we must commit to ourselves that it is for all peoples everywhere in the world, including the Palestinian people, who have been resisting State terrorism and fighting for their liberation for 75 years.

Notes
1. With the exception of an event organized by the Vivián Trías Foundation and the Commission for the Support of the Palestinian People.

2. When I speak of Zionism, I am not only referring to its Jewish expression, but also to its Christian aspects, which are even older than the former. Christian Zionism is a great ally and facilitator of Israel’s colonizing project.

3. ONU 1947. Uruguay en el origen de Israel. Ediciones I Libri, 2022.

Jorge García Granados represented Guatemala and Enrique Rodríguez Fabregat represented Uruguay in UNSCOP. Two politicians of white and Eurocentric imprint, completely lacking in sensitivity towards indigenous issues, as Sabini points out.

5. Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State (1896). European Zionist leaders spoke explicitly about their colonization project, but stopped doing so when in the post-war period the decolonization processes gained legitimacy in the world; then they converted their discourse to “independence.”

6. Sabini observes that even in a leftist intellectual as influential as Carlos Quijano, “a strong anti-Americanism coexisted with no interest in the indigenous question.”

https://orinocotribune.com/uruguay-it-i ... criticism/

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Cristina Fernández de Kirchner Calls for Renegotiation of the IMF Debt and Judicial Reform in Argentina
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 27, 2023
Peoples Dispatch

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Argentine Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner calls for renegotiation of the IMF debt on May 25. (Photo: Cristina Fernández de Kirchner/Twitter)

The Argentine vice president also called for coordination between public and private sectors to regulate strategic natural resources, and renewal of the democratic pact established after the last civil-military dictatorship

On Thursday, May 25, Argentina commemorated the 213th anniversary of the May Revolution, which led to the expulsion of the Spanish viceroy and the formation of the first national government of Argentina on May 25, 1810. The revolution also paved the way for Argentina’s independence from Spain’s colonial rule on July 9, 1816.

This May 25, in addition to celebrating the May Revolution, the ruling center-left government of the Frente de Todos coalition, along with various social movements and diverse sector trade unions, also commemorated the 20th anniversary of former president Néstor Kirchner’s inauguration. Under heavy rain, tens of thousands of citizens gathered in Plaza de Mayo, in the capital Buenos Aires, to pay homage to late President Kirchner.

At Plaza de Mayo, former president and current vice president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (CFK) addressed the supporters of left-wing peronism. She talked about the achievements of her husband’s government. She recalled that under Néstor Kirchner’s leadership (May 25, 2003 to December 10, 2007), Argentina was able to pay off all its gigantic debts to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which was left by the previous neoliberal governments. She also highlighted how the country’s economy thrived after that and during her two consecutive presidencies (December 2007-December 2015). She pointed out that during those 12 and a half years, the Argentine government regained control of the economy and began a process of industrialization in the country. She recalled how different measures taken by her government led to the strengthening of workers’ rights and resulted in reduced poverty.

In this regard, CFK condemned the opposition leader and former president Mauricio Macri (December 2015 to December 2019) for indebting the country again with a USD 44 billion IMF loan, which has brought the country to its knees today. Argentina is currently grappling with an inflation rate of 108% and a poverty level of around 40%.

Fernández de Kirchner also defended the current Alberto Fernández government. She assured that despite all the criticism and the pressing problem of income distribution, the current government is “much better than another Macri government would have been.”

The vice president stressed that “to better distribute income, many times you have to face those who have a lot.” “Why do you think they hate me, persecute me and ban me? Because I was never one of them nor will I ever be. Whatever they do with me: they kill me, they arrest me, I will never be one of them. I come for the people and I will never move away from them,” she said.

In December 2022, Argentina’s Federal Oral Court 2 sentenced CFK to six years in prison and disqualified her for life from holding public office on corruption and fraud charges. The former president rejected the accusations, adding that the charges and proceedings against her were politically motivated. She denounced that the sentence against her originates from a “lawfare”, a common form of “political warfare” in the region that involves politicians, the judiciary and the media working together with a view to smearing leftist leaders as corrupt.

Earlier this year, CFK appealed the verdict and under Argentine law, her right to serve and run for public office remains intact. Nevertheless, months ago, she announced that she would not run for the upcoming presidential elections in October. President Alberto Fernández also ruled out standing for re-election.

Fernández de Kirchner has a large and loyal base in Argentina. On several occasions during the rally on Thursday, her supporters reiterated their support for her. They requested her to reconsider her decision of not standing in the elections, singing songs and raising slogans such as “President Cristina” and “One more time” among others.

The Frente de Todos coalition has yet to decide its candidates for the primaries in August. CFK is a dominant figure in the coalition and an influential progressive leader. She is expected to play a major role in deciding the candidates as well as outlining the program for the next government.

During her speech on Thursday, she made four suggestions that in her opinion would transform the country: the renegotiation of the debt with the IMF and an end to its interference in the country’s politics and economic affairs; the coordination between public and private sectors to regulate strategic natural resources such as shale gas and lithium without losing sovereignty; the renewal of the democratic pact established after the last civil-military dictatorship; and the reform of the country’s judiciary.

The vice president also called on the people to build a stronger and more structured organization of the working class, with cadres that take the lead and the leap that the country needs.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/05/ ... argentina/

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Brazil government stops arms sales to Peru
May 27, 2023

The government of Brazil has decided to stop the sale of lethal weapons to Peru until the political and social instability, ignited by the coup, ceases. The information, according to Brazil’s Metrópoles, was confirmed by Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira.

Vieria says he received a letter by PSOL lawmaker Fernanda Melchionna, who told Itamaraty and the Ministry of Defense that Peruvian security forces were using Brazilian ammunition to repress demonstrations against the overthrow of President Pedro Castillo.

“I took it to the president. We are not going to sell any more weapons to Peru. The weapons that are there were sold three years ago”, declared the Foreign Minister, during a hearing in the Chamber, on May 24. “Right now there is no request [from Peru for weapons]. This was done a while ago, and as long as the situation lasts, this export will not exist.”

The decision refers to the government of Peru. In the private sector, however, Peruvian companies also buy Brazilian weapons. The Ministry of Development, Industry, Commerce and Services informs that R$ 1.44 million in firearms and ammunition were exported to the country between January and April of this year. Last year, sales totaled R$ 6.5 million.

More than 50 Peruvians have been killed by security forces in protests against the coup which removed President Pedro Castillo from office in December.

https://kawsachunnews.com/brazil-govern ... es-to-peru
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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Thu Jun 01, 2023 1:19 pm

THE URGENCY OF RELAUNCHING UNASUR (SPECIAL WORK)
May 30, 2023 , 11:29 a.m.

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Unasur headquarters, Quito, Ecuador (Photo: File)

President Lula da Silva's recent call for a summit of South American presidents to be held in Brazil comes at a time when the region faces challenges both in terms of economic integration and political unity. In this sense, regional leaders should take into account the need to strengthen these areas through the relaunch of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur).

UNASUR AS A POWERFUL AND INFLUENTIAL BLOC
The government of Lula Da Silva in Brazil has a great symbolic value for the reactivation of Unasur, because the treaty that gave rise to it was signed in this country. Resuming the path from Brazil would be a forceful message of renewed commitment to the integration and self-determination of the region, in a global context in which a return to the tensions typical of the Cold War is perceived.

One factor that stands out about Unasur is its diversified geopolitical profile. Other regional bodies focus on specific thematic areas. Instead, this body addresses a wide range of issues, from energy issues to financial, social and cultural integration. This allows it to have a stronger presence and greater power at the regional level. In addition, their presence gives South America a geopolitical centrality, something that other initiatives such as Prosur or the Pacific Alliance have not achieved, even after the path was cleared after the disintegration of Unasur.

While other regional platforms face problems of structure and representativeness, Unasur has a manageable number of member states that allow it to have an efficient organizational architecture. This facilitates the coordination and planning of meetings between presidents and ministers of foreign affairs, as well as high-level communication, which streamlines decision-making.

The relaunch of Unasur would also be a great narrative achievement for the continent, since it would mean a formalization of the geopolitical change of direction that has occurred due to the appearance of new progressive governments . It would confirm that integration is a priority on the agendas of these governments.

Its reactivation would make it possible to overcome the vacuum of political unity left by the cycle of right-wing governments allied to the United States, demonstrating to the emerging geopolitical blocs a serious and responsible advance in regional integration. This body could embody the unified voice of the continent in international affairs, positioning itself as a powerful and influential bloc.

RESPONDING TO NEW CHALLENGES WITH PEACEFUL RESOLUTION AND SOVEREIGNTY
Unasur has shown its effectiveness and capacity in the past by collectively tackling destabilization attempts, coups and regime change operations on the continent.

During its first years, this block was key in defending the political rights of Manuel Zelaya in Honduras , contributing to the stability of Bolivia during a secessionist coup attempt, acting quickly in Ecuador in the face of a coup attempt, and also making him against the consummated parliamentary coup in Paraguay .

This body has a Protocol against coups , approved in 2010, which makes it the only entity in the region with its own vision of stability and the preservation of democratic order. This translates into a series of tools and mechanisms to address episodes of destabilization that could be very useful in a context of political and social fragility in the region.

The relaunch of Unasur represents a propitious opportunity to counteract President Gustavo Petro's proposal to rewrite the region's "democratic pact" under the conception of the Organization of American States (OAS) and its human rights system (based in Washington, DC), which would weaken the autonomous position of the region.

By offering a counterweight alternative, the body could neutralize this and any other initiative to strengthen Washington's ideological influence and strengthen its institutions oriented towards interference in the region. This is crucial in a context in which the fragility of US power is becoming evident.

INTEGRATION AND COMPLEMENTARITY IN THE MULTIPOLAR ERA
Unasur has the capacity, and the advantage, of being the central axis of the implementation of the "South" currency proposal , and in the same way it can be of other mechanisms that promote the de-dollarization of commercial and financial exchange in the region.

On the other hand, the accumulation of strategic mineral reserves and the agricultural and industrial infrastructure of the Member States represent a solid material base that gives immediate geopolitical weight to the region. If properly harnessed, this geopolitical weight can drive autonomous monetary projects and further energize trade integration in the region, with this bloc at the epicenter of these developments.

The body can support complementarity and the generation of common projects between the Member States. Venezuela can be a source of fertilizer supply for the powerful infrastructure of Argentina and Brazil, while the lithium export potential of Bolivia and Argentina could give rise to the discussion of joint projects that restructure value chains and democratize profits. in technology for regional development.

The strengthening of Unasur, in terms of bargaining power at the global level, is key to allowing joint and solid action among the member states. The possibility of acting as a block contributes to the region having a greater share of influence in financial entities and multilateral forums.

This resource can be used to act against the pressure exerted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Argentina and against the policy of illegal "sanctions" imposed by the United States against Venezuela. Unasur could carry out a joint action of the Member States, with a view to mutual collaboration at critical moments in their respective national situations.

In order to achieve these objectives of economic stabilization and promotion of regional integration projects, it would be beneficial to take advantage of Brazil's influence in entities such as the New Development Bank of the BRICS and promote lines of financing that promote the development of the countries of the region.

It would also act as a platform to improve relations with the powers of the multipolar world and participate in discussions on new security initiatives and financial structures independent of the dollar.

An effective restart of Unasur, aimed at acting as a unified and relevant entity, would have the possibility of contributing a significant advance towards a greater influence and prominence of the region on the global stage.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/la ... o-especial

GEOPOLITICS AND THE CHALLENGES AROUND BOLIVIAN LITHIUM
Betzabeth Aldana Vivas

May 29, 2023 , 4:42 p.m.

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Bolivia has 21 million tons of lithium only on the surface of the Salar de Uyuni, in Potosí (Photo: Claudia Morales / Reuters)

When Luis Arce was elected as president of the Plurinational State of Bolivia in 2020, an event that allowed the country to return to political and constitutional normality after the coup d'état at the end of 2019, the interrupted trajectory of the Community Social Economic Model was resumed Productive (MESCP), from which a scheme of extraction and use of raw materials is proposed through the active participation of the State, with the hydrocarbon and mining sectors being the pivots of the national and sovereign approach in the management of Bolivia's strategic resources of said model.

Based on the MESCP, the Arce government promoted the 2021-2025 Economic and Social Development Plan, under the premise: "Rebuilding the Economy to Live Well, Towards Industrialization with Import Substitution." Since the approval of this instrument, measures have been implemented for different terms, whose core and support is lithium for the general perspectives of economic development.

According to the plan, Bolivia has 21 million tons of lithium only on the surface of the Salar de Uyuni, in Potosí. However, there are other salt flats that obviously increase its total accumulated reserves, which exceed those of Australia, which despite being the largest lithium producer in the world has 13.2 million tons of mineral reserves.

The goal of numeral 4.2 of the Arce government plan is based on deepening industrialization in Bolivia in order to increase lithium production, through measures to develop refining plants and other related projects to boost the industry in this sector. and thus generate added value in lithium exports.

One of the obstacles to extracting lithium by traditional means in the Salar de Uyuni lies in the fact that this mineral contains high levels of magnesium , which makes the separation process difficult to obtain it in high purity conditions and in high concentrations.

In addition to this, the climatic conditions in the Uyuni region affect extraction with traditional technology, due to the relatively rainy climate that tends to dissolve the surface layer of salt. In the case of Argentina and Chile, for example, the salt reservoirs are drier, thus facilitating mineral extraction.

Therefore, one of Bolivia's challenges with respect to lithium is to implement new technologies for the development of the industrial park, a purpose that must have significant investment flows (domestic and foreign), expertise and a boost to innovation in non-traditional sectors. .

In December 2022, the US news portal Mongabay , in a sign of intense business and geopolitical competition for the exploitation of Bolivian lithium reserves, reported that the Arce government was evaluating offers from several foreign companies to exploit the resource, indicating that four Chinese companies (CATL/CMOC, CITIC Guoan/CRIG, Fusión Enertech and Xinjiang TBEA Group), one American (Lilac Solutions) and one Russian (Uranium One Group) were competing for bids.

THE INTERESTS OF THE UNITED STATES
In 2017, then-President of the United States, Donald Trump, signed Executive Order 13817 as a first administrative step to improve the management of essential minerals in the United States in order to secure supplies and reduce dependence on those minerals for security reasons. National security.

Henceforth, by May 2018, the United States Department of the Interior published the list of essential minerals that includes lithium, vital for the functioning of the technological sector of the US economy.

In a report by the United States Congressional Research Service (CRS) on US public policy for essential minerals, they comment that, in certain political quarters in Washington, concerns arose over China's advance as a producer. dominant in the mining sector.

Given this, the entity considers that Chinese producers seek not only to expand their production capacity in the country, but "to continue negotiating long-term supply agreements or create capital companies throughout the world", especially in South America, focusing in lithium.

Based on this, in January 2023, the enormous interest of the United States government in the mineral located in the South American region was observed in the interview given by the head of the Southern Command, Laura Richardson, to the think tank Atlantic Council: "Why what does this region matter? With all its rich resources and rare earth elements. You have the lithium triangle, which is necessary for technology, today 60% of lithium is in the lithium triangle between Argentina, Bolivia and Chile ".

At the time of that statement, very little time had passed since a substantial agreement for lithium production had been signed between Bolivia and China.

Richardson also expressed concern about the support his Eurasian adversaries receive in the region. In addition, in March 2023, when Richardson participated in a hearing before the US Congress, he emphasized that the Latin American region is extremely important "for the defense of the homeland" because after his tour of the region he was able to confirm that the security of the United States " is directly affected" by Chinese and Russian financial support to other countries.


In the aforementioned CRS report, it indicates that the United States mining policy encourages the national private sector to explore, produce and process these materials, however, they make the caveat that some raw materials do not exist in sufficient quantities in the United States, revealing the deficit of resources on an internal scale and the need to look for sources of supply abroad.

In 2021, the United States Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm, published the "National Plan for Lithium Batteries", developed by the Federal Consortium for Advanced Batteries, as a roadmap for lithium investments by the Biden administration. to "establish a secure supply chain of battery materials and technology that supports the long-term economic competitiveness of the United States."

It should be noted that the United States has 3.6% of the world's lithium reserves , and also has the Silver Peak company that has been producing lithium since the 1960s; it is currently the only lithium production company in the United States. This means that that country must source most of the lithium it needs from abroad.

This situation contrasts with China. The consultancy Wood Mackenzie estimates that the Asian country represents almost 75% of the world's lithium-ion battery manufacturing capacity.

Regarding the approach of large US companies to Bolivia, in 2021 the New York Times published that EnergyX, a US company with advanced technology in lithium exploration and processing, had entered into contention with companies from China and Russia to establish pilot projects of lithium. mineral in Bolivian territory.

At that time, the CEO of EnergyX, Teague Egan, commented that Bolivia was "the new Saudi Arabia", referring to the importance of its reserves. At the end of 2021, this company installed the first of three pilot plants to operate in the Uyuni salt flat, whose projection was to supplant current extraction methods, improving cost, time, and performance.

However, in 2022, EnergyX announced that Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos informed them that "they will advance their commercialization efforts without us (EnergyX)", due to the fact that they did not deliver the report corresponding to the results of the pilot tests of their extraction technique. lithium direct.

Given the importance of lithium for the United States, the possibility of applying different forms of pressure through its large corporations to enter the lithium production circuit in Bolivia is not ruled out.

In its blog , the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a think tank based in Washington, referred to the year 2013, when former President Evo Morales formally expelled the United States Agency for International Development (USAID, its acronym in Spanish). in English) and noted that that agency "can no longer act as an intermediary for private investors, the government and NGOs."

This statement could demonstrate the prominent role of NGOs financed by the United States in the aforementioned pressure mechanisms to enter Bolivia's investment windows, specifically in the lithium sector.

CHINA LEADING THE RACE
At the end of January 2023, it was possible to sign the agreements with CATL BRUNP & CMOC (CBC) for the implementation of two industrial complexes with Direct Extraction of Lithium (EDL) technology in the Uyuni salt flats, in Potosí, and Coiasa, in Oruro. The company will invest one billion dollars in the industrial complexes that it will install in Bolivia.

Last March, the president of Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos (YLB), Carlos Ramos, announced that "Bolivia would sign agreements with four other companies and not only with the Chinese CBC to exploit lithium," he is referring to the Russian Uranium One Group, the American Lilac Solutions, and the Chinese Citic Guoan and Tbea Group, who participated in the international call.

On this matter, Ramos commented that "Bolivia has the sovereign right to choose its partners from the country it considers as long as it respects the national rules for the industrialization of lithium", and categorized US fears about the prospects and regional influence of the "lithium triangle" as unfounded. ", in reference to the declarations of Laura Richardson:

"The statements by the head of the United States Southern Command on lithium are a very subjective allusion to us (Bolivia) because, in one way or another, in Argentina and Chile it is American companies that are exploiting lithium."

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/la ... -boliviano

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Chile Rallies Behind Peru’s Coup Government
MAY 30, 2023

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Sub-Secretary of Foreign Ministry Gloria de la Fuente with Vice Foreign Minister Ignacio Higueras of Peru. Photo: Foreign Ministry Chile.

Evo Morales harshly criticized the move by the Boric government which occurred just after Peruvian congress approved the entry of hundreds of US troops for training activities

The former president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, on Wednesday, May 24, condemned the Chilean government’s decision to support Peru’s de facto government in demanding the transfer of the pro tempore presidency of the Pacific Alliance. Morales pointed out that the decision was especially concerning because it had come at a time when the Peruvian Congress had approved the entry of US troops for training activities in the country.

“We are very concerned about the decision of the president of Chile, brother Gabriel Boric, to support the illegal and illegitimate government of Dina Boluarte for the pro tempore presidency of the Pacific Alliance just when the US military intervention in Peru has been authorized,” said Morales in a tweet on Wednesday morning.

“It seems that the president of Chile has forgotten that [former president of Chile Salvador] Allende was a victim of CIA interventionism. The presence of the US Armed Forces in Peruvian territory corresponds to the interference plan of the Southern Command to usurp the natural resources of the region, especially lithium, gold and freshwater. The authorization of the entry of these troops is an attack against peace in Latin America,” Morales added.

Morales’ statement came two days after the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs of Chile, Gloria de la Fuente, stated on behalf of the Boric government that Peru should assume the temporary presidency of the regional trade bloc.

“Our government, through its Foreign Ministry, has been very clear about our position regarding the Pacific Alliance. We believe that indeed the pro tempore presidency corresponds to Peru. We advocate that there be an understanding between our countries that will effectively allow this [issue] to be smoothed out in the best possible way,” said De la Fuente after a meeting, held on May 22 in Lima, with the Peruvian Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ignacio Higueras.

Currently, the rotating presidency of the Pacific Alliance -an entity that brings together Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru- is in the hands of Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). It was scheduled to be transferred to Peru in January. However, President AMLO refused to hand it over to Boluarte, insisting that “for Mexico, she is not legally and legitimately the president of Peru.”

Since the legislative coup against former progressive president of Peru, Pedro Castillo, and his illegal arrest in December 2022, President AMLO, on several occasions, has explicitly condemned the Boluarte government for violating Castillo’s political rights as well as the human rights of hundreds of thousands of Peruvians who took to the streets demanding her resignation. He has called on Boluarte “to resign from the presidency because she is usurping that position and to get Pedro Castillo out of jail.”

On Monday, May 22, the Peruvian Congress, where the right-wing parties have a majority, declared President AMLO a ‘persona non grata’ and banned him from setting foot in the country. AMLO’s public statements criticizing Boluarte and supporting Castillo, his decision to grant asylum to Castillo’s family in Mexico and his refusal to hand over bloc’s presidency to Peru are some of the reasons that provoked the designation.

In January and February, the Peruvian Congress also declared Morales and Colombian President Gustavo Petro, ‘persona non grata’ and prohibited them from entering Peru due to their comments rejecting the coup against Castillo and the brutal repression unleashed against protesters in Peru.

In the past months, the Boluarte government has also announced the definitive withdrawal of the Peruvian ambassadors to Honduras, Mexico and Colombia, alleging that the statements made by their heads of state represent interference in Peruvian internal affairs. Peru has been maintaining bilateral relations with the countries through the chargé d’affaires.

The decision adopted last Friday by the Peruvian Congress to authorize the entry into the country of the US Armed Forces, from June 1 to December 31 of this year, “for cooperation and training tasks for the military and police of Peru,” has been condemned by various social and Indigenous organizations of Peru. Many have deemed it “a maneuver” of the US empire to consolidate Boluarte’s de facto regime, and through it, take control of the country’s large copper and lithium reserves.

It is worth noting that in April, the Boluarte government announced its plans to privatize lithium mining in Peru, marking contrast to Castillo’s proposal to nationalize it. Minister of Energy and Mines Óscar Vera announced that the government would soon grant permits to a Canadian mining subsidiary for lithium exploration in the southern region of Puno, near the border with Bolivia. He also reported that the authorities were working to reduce license approval time for copper mining projects from about two years to about six months.

https://orinocotribune.com/chile-rallie ... overnment/

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Lula Brings Together South America in Brasilia: ‘We Must Unite’
MAY 31, 2023

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Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro (left) and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (right) end a press conference at Planalto palace in Brasilia, Brazil, Monday, May 29, 2023. Photo: Gustavo Moreno/AP.

Brazil’s leader says South American countries must work toward a prominent integration.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Tuesday that it is time for a united South America after long years of division, calling for economic, cultural, and social integration between its countries.

Lula’s statement came as he hosted the continent’s 12 leaders in a Brasilia summit, where the recently elected president revealed that the aim of the gathering is “taking the first steps to resume our dialogue.”

On Twitter, the Brazilian leader posted a picture of himself and his counterparts holding hands high, captioned: “South Americans” with the flags of present countries.

Peru was the only South American country not represented at the level of president, rather by cabinet chief Alberto Otarola.


“We let ideology divide us and interrupt our efforts to integrate. We abandoned our channels of dialogue and our mechanisms of cooperation, and we all lost because of it,” he told the heads of state gathered at the Brazilian Foreign Ministry headquarters.

Lula also criticized his predecessor former President Jair Bolsonaro who “closed our doors to historic partners” and “chosen isolationism.”

“As long as we are disunited, we will not make South America a developed continent in all its potential. Integration must be a permanent objective for all of us. We need to leave strong roots for the next generations,” he said on his Twitter account.


Newly elected Colombian President Gustavo Petro voiced his Brazilian counterpart’s calls saying that “Latin America must play a united role and have a united voice.”

Lula and other leaders of the continent, on top of which is Venezuela’s late President Hugo Chavez, established UNASUR in 2008 to develop deeper coordination between South American countries and counter foreign influence and intervention.

The summit in Brasilia is the first time the organization convenes in almost nine years.

“Among the many things I have learned in politics is that the presidential term is much shorter than it appears. We have no time to lose. South America has before it, once again, the opportunity to walk the path of unity. And you don’t have to start over from scratch. UNASUR is a collective asset,” he said in another tweet.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was warmly greeted by Lula in a landmark moment after being barred from entering Brazil during Bolsonaro’s term, who called Maduro a “dictator.”


“This marks the beginning of Maduro’s return” to the international arena, Lula said.

“We are living in a historic moment. After 8 years, the president @NicolasMaduro visits Brazil again and we regain the right to carry out international relations policy with the seriousness that we have always done, especially with the countries that border Brazil,” Lula tweeted.


The meeting on Tuesday took place behind closed doors and was followed by a dinner hosted by Lula at his official residence, the Alvorada Palace.

https://orinocotribune.com/lula-brings- ... ust-unite/

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Peruvian judge prohibits Keiko Fujimori from leaving the country in three years

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The judicial measure seeks to guarantee the presence of the former congresswoman and her main collaborators in the final phase of the process against her. | Photo: EFE
Posted June 1, 2023 (5 hours 12 minutes ago)

The daughter of the former Peruvian president, Alberto Fujimori, faces a possible sentence of 30 years in prison.

A judge of the National Superior Court of Peru issued a ban on leaving the country for the next 36 months for former presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori, her ex-husband Mark Vito and six other leaders of the Fuerza Popular party until the start of the trial that accuses them money laundering.

This measure seeks to guarantee the presence of the former congresswoman and her main collaborators in the final phase of the process, in which the Fourth Preparatory Investigation Court concludes the prosecution control hearings against Keiko Fujimori.

The daughter of the former Peruvian president, Alberto Fujimori, who is currently serving a sentence for aggravated homicide, aggravated kidnapping and serious injuries, faces a possible sentence of 30 years in prison for alleged illegal contributions in his electoral campaigns.


The case, managed by the special team that investigates the Peruvian ramifications of the Lava Jato and Odebrecht cases, also implicates various political figures from the Fujimori party for corruption and misappropriation of electoral funds.


The Prosecutor's Office achieved that the policy and the rest of the defendants will have to appear every 30 days at the biometric control registry to register their fingerprint and inform the court of their planned activities, after one year and nine months of investigations.

Despite the suspicions that weigh on Keiko Fujimori and his collaborators, Judge Zúñiga ended up denying the Public Ministry's demand to impose judicial surveillance on the Popular Force Party for the next three years.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/juez-per ... -0005.html

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Sat Jun 03, 2023 1:49 pm

Boric Embraces Trump's Attacks on Venezuela: Evo Morales

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Evo Morales. | Photo: Twitter/ @upholdreality

Published 1 June 2023

"The struggle for the Latin American sovereignty and dignity must be coherent and consistent,” the Bolivian leader stressed.

On Thursday, Bolivia's former President Evo Morales rejected statements made against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro by Chilean President Gabriel Boric.

During the summit of South American presidents held in Brasilia on Tuesday, Boric said that the Venezuelan human rights situation is not a "narrative construction" but a "serious reality", which he has personally appreciated "in the eyes and in the pain of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who are currently in our homeland and also demand a firm and clear position.

This opinion was shared by the right-wing Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle, who asked the South American leaders "not to cover the sun with one finger" about the Venezuelan situation.

In response to these criticisms, which are clearly aligned with the U.S. hegemonic speech, the former Bolivian president asked Boric to be coherent with the Latin American history.


“We are very sorry for the actions of the brother president of Chile Gabriel Boric, who forgets Salvador Allende's anti-imperialist vocation and repeats Donald Trump's attacks against the Venezuelan people. The struggle for the Latin American sovereignty and dignity must be coherent and consistent,” Morales said.

During the Brasilia summit, Maduro declined to reply to Boric's statements, emphasizing that history will respond with the truth.

The prevailing narratives about Venezuela were built as part of a “brutal, continuous aggression to crush a political project that raised the banner of Bolivar, has been in power for 24 years, and has held 29 elections,” the Venezuelan president said.

Maduro also pointed out that the achievements of the Bolivarian revolution have been possible thanks to the support of an "organized, conscious, and mobilized people."

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Bor ... -0015.html

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President Lula Responds to Comments From Boric and Lacalle on Venezuela (+Evo and Diosdado)
JUNE 1, 2023

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Meme shown by Venezuelan deputy Diosdado Cabello with a photo of Chilean President Gabriel Boric next to US flags and the caption "employee of the month." Photo: Screenshot of Con El Mazo Dando episode #433.

The president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, highlighted the fact that “each country is sovereign to decide its political model,” when responding to criticism presented by the presidents of Chile, Gabriel Boric, and Uruguay, Luis Lacalle Pou, regarding statements Lula made about Venezuela the day before Brasília’s Summit of South American Presidents.

“I have always defended the idea that each country is sovereign to decide its political model, its internal affairs,” Lula commented this Wednesday, May 31, at a press conference aired by Brazil’s O Globo news network. “The same demand that the world makes of Venezuela, it does not make of Saudi Arabia. It is very strange. I want Venezuela to be respected. I want this for Brazil and for the whole world.”

Lula also stressed that “no one is obliged to agree with anyone,” and that the meeting of the Latin American region’s leaders in Brasília do not necessarily have to form “a group of friends.”


"O que eu disse para o Maduro é que existe uma narrativa no mundo de que na Venezuela não tem democracia e que ele cometeu erros. É da obrigação dele construir a narrativa dele com os fatos verdadeiros", diz Lula após receber criticas de outros líderes.

➡ Assista ao #Edição18… pic.twitter.com/HgUnxmeFDX

— GloboNews (@GloboNews) May 30, 2023


On Monday, the eve of the Summit of South American Presidents, Lula received the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, in the Brazilian capital. “Venezuela must showcase its narrative, so that it can effectively make people change their minds,” commented the leader of the Workers Party (PT). “You [Maduro] need to build your narrative. And your narrative will be infinitely better than what they have been telling about you.”

“It is in your hands to build your narrative and turn this game around,” President Lula reiterated, “so that we win definitively, and Venezuela returns to being a sovereign country, where only its people, through a free vote, can say who will govern that country.”

“Cover the sun with a finger”
The following day, during the proceedings of the summit, the presidents of Uruguay and Chile made public statements to the press disagreeing with their Brazilian counterpart. “I must say that I was surprised when [Lula] said that what is happening in Venezuela is a narrative,” the far-right leader of Uruguay stated. “We already know what we think of Venezuela and the Venezuelan government.”

“If there are so many groups in the world that are trying to mediate so that democracy is present in Venezuela,” Lacalle added, “so that human rights are respected, so that there are no political prisoners, the worst thing that we can do is cover the sun with a finger,” in reference to supporting persistent attempts by US regime change agents to promote the Venezuelan opposition and denigrate democracy.

Boric, meanwhile, assured that he had “respectfully” expressed his discrepancies with Lula in relation “to the fact that the human rights situation in Venezuela was a narrative construction,” stating, “it is not a narrative construction, it is a reality, it is serious.”

In response, Lula noted that “since [Hugo] Chávez took office, a narrative was built against him. I had the opportunity to see this, a narrative that claims that the guy is a demon. From the moment you create the narrative that he is a demon, from that moment, you start turning everyone against him. It happened with Chávez, and that’s how it happened with me,” he added.


Arremetida del presidente de Chile, Gabriel Boric, contra el presidente de Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, y crítica al presidente de Brasil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, por decir que la dictadura en ese país es una construcción narrativa. “Como presidente de izquierda pienso que era… pic.twitter.com/jQElL3svGr

— BluRadio Colombia (@BluRadioCo) May 30, 2023




“That is why I told Maduro that there is a narrative in the world that there is no democracy in Venezuela and that his obligation is to create a narrative with true facts,” Lula emphasised.

In a display of statesmanship, President Maduro, during the development of the Summit, declined to respond to the claims made by Lacalle and Boric out of respect for the success of the meeting, in which he breathed “a renewed spirit of South American integration,” making the statement, “Let history answer, let the truth answer [these allegations].”

Evo Morales reacts
Former president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, also joined the discussion this Thursday, stating that “the fight for the sovereignty and dignity of Latin America must be coherent and consistent,” after rejecting the statements about Venezuela by the Chilean president, Gabriel Boric, during the summit.


Muy apenados por la actuación del hermano presidente de Chile @GabrielBoric que se olvida de la vocación antiimperialista de Allende y repite ataques de Trump contra el pueblo de Venezuela. La lucha por la soberanía y dignidad de América Latina debe ser coherente y consecuente.

— Evo Morales Ayma (@evoespueblo) June 1, 2023


“Very sorry for the actions of our brother president of Chile, Gabriel Boric,” Morales stated via social media, “who forgets the anti-imperialist vocation of [Salvador] Allende and repeated attacks by [Donald] Trump against the people from Venezuela.”

PSUV’s Diosdado Cabello responds
The vice president of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), Diosdado Cabello, also commented on Boric and Lacalle’s attempts to stain the successful summit in Brasília. During episode #433 of his television show Con El Mazo Dando, Cabello questioned the statements made by Boric, whom he accused of being a pawn of the US government in an attempt to sabotage the summit.

“All the leaders of the region were summoned to Brazil; only Perú was missing,” Cabello noted. “Our president, Nicolás Maduro, was there representing Venezuela, and there he had bilateral meetings with President Lula, with President Alberto Fernández [of Argentina], with President Luis Arce [of Bolivia], and with President Gustavo Petro [of Colombia]. All these meetings were made in order to share a vision and reinforce the points where, in some way, unity requires more work.”

“They (Washington) look for the fools on the board, those who are very easy to handle, and so the biggest fool emerges: Boboric,” Cabello added—referencing Bobo, the petty bourgeois culture of champagne socialism where counter-culture is merely absorbed into the capitalist mode of production—and affirmed that the White House does this because “they no longer had Piñera, Macri, all the lackeys who have always been there, but now they left, their resources dried up.”

He regretted that the Chilean president was disrespectful; first of President Lula and the Brazilian people, and secondly of the Venezuelan people. “Although it was really bad only for him because he didn’t make his plans work, in the end the summit was a outstanding success,” he added, showing a meme of the Chilean president with the caption, “US employee of the month.”

Cabello also mentioned that while Boric is criticizing human rights in Venezuela, there are more than a thousand Chileans still in prison just for the uprising of 2019 that Boric used to promote his presidential ambitions in portraying himself as a leftist politician.

https://orinocotribune.com/president-lu ... -diosdado/

The US Sends Troops to Peru. Ukraine To Come Next
JUNE 1, 2023

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US troops. Photo: gestion.pe.

By Lyuba Lulko – May 29, 2023

Starting from June 1, the United States will deploy its regular military units in Peru. The Americans always act “to protect democracy” in other countries, and Ukraine will be no exception.

The Pentagon’s Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) will deploy hundreds of its Marines to Peru on June 1. US Congress approved the intervention.

Peruvian legislators, at the suggestion of US protege President Dina Boluarte, authorised the arrival of 700 American soldiers.

According to official data from Washington, the “US personnel” will carry out “cooperation and training activities with the armed forces and the national police of Peru” and without encroaching on the sovereignty of the country.

However, Peru has long had such training centres. Therefore, the stated goal is just a cover to deploy soldiers in regions of greatest resistance to American puppets.

The people of Peru reject them. Dina Boluarte’s highest approval rating was 16 percent, the rating of the Parliament is even lower.

Coup d’état in Peru
The Boluarte regime came to power through a coup, with Washington’s direct complicity. Leftist President of Peru Pedro Castillo who was popularly elected in 2021, was overthrown by the parliament with the support of the army a year and a half later “due to moral inconsistency.” He tried to carry out anti-oligarchic reforms, but, as expected, he was not allowed to. Boluarte took over his position as Vice President.

US Ambassador to Peru Lisa Kenna, who coordinated the army, was quick to support Parliament’s decision to depose Castillo. Kenna affirmed that her country fully supported Peru’s democratic institutions.

The people of Peru did not accept the new government. As many as 70 people were killed and hundreds were injured in protest suppression. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) found the Peruvian police and army guilty of “excessive, indiscriminate and lethal use of force.” The Commission also denounced the Boluarte regime for stigmatising peasants and indigenous peoples with false accusations of being terrorists, thus justifying the massacres.

Purpose of all US interventions: control resources
Mexican President Andreas Manuel Lopez Obrador, commenting on the entry of US troops into Peru, drew the attention of the US government to the following:

“The preservation of the interventionist policy in no way contributes to the establishment of brotherhood on the continent.”

“The Peruvians are our brothers. We consider it unfair what Peruvian congressmen did to remove the legitimate President Pedro Castillo, who was elected by the Peruvians,” Obrador said.

It is Peruvian oligarchs who stand behind these and other decisions, Obrador said. At the same time, though, legislators violated Peru’s entire legal and constitutional framework.

Lawyer Raul Noblecilla confirmed that US troops would come to Peru to control Peruvian minerals, because “this is how servile and submissive governments function.”

“Imperialism controls its backyard,” he warned.

Other countries of the continent, such as Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela do not recognise the US-installed government in Lima.

The Peruvian Ministry of Defence has denied reports about ten US army bases in Peru. Yet, journalistic investigations show that they are present at military units in Peru.

“How the network of North American bases operates in South America” — a book by Argentine journalist Telma Luzzani — mentions that the constant presence of the US military in Peru under the pretext of joint exercises, training, visits and other things makes it clear that the US military operate within Peruvian military bases although they may not have their own or exclusive bases, such as those at Guantanamo Bay.

It was also revealed that there was a network of US laboratories operating in Peru “without appropriate transparency” supposedly to study tropical diseases. To crown it all, the Supreme Court of Peru has recently ruled that there was no right to protest de facto under the country’s constitution.

Ukraine like Peru
The state of affairs in this South American country resembles that in Ukraine, starting from the oligarchy-assisted coup that was legislated through the parliament and coming down to military bases, medical labs, and US control of natural resources.

The United States acts according to a standard pattern. Thus, one may expect US troops in Ukraine who will come to protect America’s property and influence in Ukraine. Perhaps we will see Polish or Romanian troops in Ukraine first, because unlike in Peru, the Russian Federation is conducting a special operation in Ukraine.

https://orinocotribune.com/the-us-sends ... come-next/

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Lasso Not To Stand for Re-Election as President of Ecuador

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President Guillermo Lasso, Quito, Ecuador. | Photo: Twitter/ @ECUADORCHEQUEA

Published 2 June 2023 (18 hours 55 minutes ago)

This politician swore that he would devote the remaining 6 months of his administration to "work twice as hard" as he has done up to now.


On Friday, Guillermo Lasso, the right-wing former banker who became president of Ecuador in 2021, announced that he will not run for re-election in the early elections whose first round will be held on August 20.

"Today I will tell all Ecuadorians that I will not accept the nomination to be a candidate for the presidency of the republic... I do it out of respect for you citizens," Lasso said.

"When I decreed the dissolution of the Assembly, that decision allowed me to return to the citizens the power to elect a new president and a new assembly," he added.

In the last part of his 90-second video, Lasso swore he would devote the remaining 6 months of his administration to "work twice as hard" as he has done up to now.


From the Carondelet Palace in Quito, Lasso thus expressed his decision through social networks, thus leaving his CREO movement free to choose the candidate who must complete the 2021-2025 period.

This comes after this right-wing politician dissolved Congress and called snap elections in May 24.

To do this, he used a constitutional procedure called "Cross Death" that allows the President of the Republic to govern without legislative counterweights for six months.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Las ... -0016.html

Indigenous Leader Iza Not to Run for the Ecuadorean Presidency

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Indigenous leader Leonidas Iza, June 2, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/ @radiolacalle

Published 2 June 2023 (20 hours 39 minutes ago)

The Pachakutik party "is currently kidnapped by the oligarchy," Indigenous leader Cartincus said.


On Friday, Leonidas Iza, one of the most charismatic leaders of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), withdrew his candidacy from the early presidential elections to be held on August.

During a press conference, Jairo Cartincus, CONAIE President for the Coastal Region, said that the decision to withdraw Iza's candidacy was made because there are no favorable conditions for the Indigenous peoples to present their own candidate.

The Pachakutik party, which had been linked to Indigenous grassroots organizations, "is currently kidnapped by the oligarchy," Cartincus said, thus confirming that that such a party has in practice an alliance with President Guillermo Lasso and other right-wing groups.

Previously, Iza had made his participation in the presidential race conditional on Pachakutik removing from the new lists of candidates for legislators all those lawmakers who had collaborated with the Lasso administration.


Marlon Vargas, president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon (CONFENAIE), mentioned that Pachakutik's lists of lawmakers even include people who were against the 2022 national strike.

Iza explained that there were also other disagreements with Pachakutik since the lists of candidates for congress did not include social leaders capable of guaranteeing adequate representation of grassroots organizations.

"We are not leaving Pachakutik. We just have to get rid of those bad elements that have misled our glorious Pachakutik movement, which was born in the heart of the struggles of the Indigenous movement but articulated with all popular sectors," Iza pointed out. out.

By renouncing his presidential candidacy, Iza effectively leaves the way open for the presidential binomial of the Citizens Revolution, which is a political group led by former President Rafael Correa, to become the only leftist option in the upcoming elections.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Ind ... -0014.html

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Ecuadorian trade unions and social movements condemn dismissal of workers from government ministry

Over 35 workers, including Juan Fernando Rodríguez Escobar, President of the Ecuadorian Solidarity Workers Confederation, have been dismissed from the Ministry of Government. The illegal dismissals are believed to be linked to the ongoing collective bargaining process for better wages and working conditions

June 02, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch

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Officials of the Ecuadorian Solidarity Workers Confederation addressed a press conference on June 1, condemned the illegal dismissal of 37 workers from the Ministry of Government. Photo: CTSE/Twitter

The Ecuadorian Solidarity Workers Confederation (CTSE), on Thursday, June 1, reported that 37 workers had been fired from the Ministry of Government over two days and demanded their immediate reinstatement. The dismissals are allegedly linked to the ongoing collective bargaining process for better wages and working conditions.

Juan Fernando Rodríguez Escobar, president of the CTSE, was among those fired. Rodríguez is also a member of the National Union of Drivers and Workers of the Ministry of Government, which was engaged in collective bargaining negotiations with the national government. For this reason, the CTSE deemed the sudden and unjustified termination of workers as “evidence of the persecution and anti-union character of the illegitimate government of Guillermo Lasso.”

“The National Union of Drivers and Workers of the Ministry of Government is one of the constituent unions of the CTSE, therefore, we consider this measure as a political action against our organization and express our strongest repudiation,” the union said on Wednesday. It termed the dismissal of Rodríguez as “a selective act of political persecution,” and declared that it would “answer and confront with firmness and dignity a government that has shown itself to be the enemy of the workers.”

The trade union center held Government Minister Henry Cucalón responsible for the sacking and criticized him for not keeping his promise to not fire workers. The union said that the dismissals were a violation of the articles 187 and 195 of the Labor Code, which protect union leaders from untimely dismissals resulting from political retaliation by employers.

In the previous days, the CTSE had repeatedly warned that the Lasso government could dismiss the workers of the government ministry to intimidate and deter its members from organizing in defense of workers’ rights.

The union center called on its grassroots unions to remain vigilant against increasing precarious employment. “In view of these illegal acts, which are evidence of a government policy of retaliation, intimidation and violation of labor rights, we call on our rank and file and the people in general to remain vigilant, as this could become the prelude to a governmental move to violate rights and make the condition of the working class even more precarious.”

The CTSE also called on the International Labor Organization (ILO) and other international and national organizations to reject this attack against their union.

Social movements reject persecution of workers, express solidarity
The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), the country’s largest Indigenous organization, condemned the illegal dismissal of workers and called it a “violation of labor rights, persecution and attack against the trade union” by the Lasso government.

“We second the public denunciation made by the Union of Workers of the Ministry of Government regarding the massive, untimely and illegal dismissal of 37 colleagues, pointing out that Minister Henry Cucalón is responsible for this action. This only confirms the violation of labor rights, persecution and attack against the trade union by the government of Guillermo Lasso. We support the working class of the country, which has been the most affected by this government, and we join the demand for the respect and restoration of labor rights that have been violated,” CONAIE said in a statement.

The Indigenous and Peasant Movement of Cotopaxi (MICC) also rejected the persecution of workers and expressed solidarity.

“We recognize the legitimate struggle of the sister trade union that managed to incorporate the principles of plurinationality and interculturality, together with the class and anti-patriarchal position, in the defense of the interests of the working class that generates wealth in our country. The coup of the extreme right-wing government minister intends to undermine the consistent trade union positions that do not sell out the grassroots unions for public office, nor compromise with the governments in power,” the MICC said in a statement.

“We call on our affiliates to support the struggle of the CTSE and coordinate new spaces for the diffusion of the demands and struggles of the classes exploited by the capitalist system, patriarchy and coloniality,” the MICC added.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/06/02/ ... -ministry/
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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Tue Jun 06, 2023 1:46 pm

BEHIND THE ENTRY OF US TROOPS AND WEAPONS INTO PERU
Jun 5, 2023 , 11:49 a.m.

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Let us remember that the United States intends to install a kind of "metallic NATO" in South America (Photo: Catherine Ledner / Getty Images)

On May 31, the Peruvian government authorized the entry of US military personnel into the Andean country with weapons, both by air and by sea. According to Dina Boluarte's administration, the purpose would be to carry out cooperation and training activities with the Peruvian Armed Forces and National Police.

Legislative Resolution No. 31758 states the following:

"The entry into the territory of the Republic of military personnel from the United States of America is authorized, with the purpose of carrying out training cooperation activities with the Armed Forces and the National Police of Peru, from June 1 to December 31, 2023; within the framework of what is established in numeral (8) of article 102 of the Political Constitution of Peru, in accordance with the specifications and objectives indicated in the annex that forms an integral part of this legislative resolution".

A quick ABC of this arrival of the US military in the Andean country would indicate that they will be in Lima, Callao, Loreto, San Martín, Santa Lucía, Huánuco, Ucayali, Pasco, Junín, Huancavelica, Cusco, Ayacucho, Iquitos, Pucusana and Apurímac; that they will carry out training activities with the Armed Forces in connection with the Resolute Sentinel 2023 International Military Exercise; and that everything happens within the framework of bilateral cooperation.

However, the local context, the latest political and social events in Peru, the meetings between the leaders of the region with a view to consolidating an autonomous political bloc, as well as the establishment of large trade agreements between China and South American countries are immovable factors that they account for the interests of the United States in that piece of the Andes, beyond the obvious.

First of all, we must point out the controversial nature of the Dina Boluarte government, which has become a political crisis that adds to the panorama that was already being experienced in the country. Her arrival to power was marked by a framework that ended with the coup against President Pedro Castillo. Since then, there has been a strong repression against the population, which to date has left at least 50 dead, thousands injured and tens of thousands detained.

The strong repression against a large part of the social sectors that have mobilized on a national scale, transferred from different parts of the country to the capital, aroused the rejection of some leaders in the South American region, but not from the United States. A few days after the questioned government was installed, Boluarte received the support of the United States Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, who, according to what the Foreign Ministry said, reiterated his country's support for Peru and "its willingness to continue strengthening the large bilateral relationship".

Total support was "for democratic institutions" and for the actions to deal with what they called "social outbreak", which reflects that the population that was being brutally repressed did not matter, but confirmed that the Boluarte government was a reliable ally.

"Of course we recognize the Peruvian president, Dina Boluarte, and we will continue to work with the democratic institutions of Peru. We look forward to working closely with President Boluarte and the Peruvian state," the spokesperson for the country's State Department declared in December 2022 . American, Ned Price.

Everything points to the fact that the United States does not want to lose an important piece of what they consider to be their geopolitical "backyard", one of the port hubs of the Pacific axis, and they will do everything necessary to not cede ground of influence in the region, especially because of the attempts of some countries to promote integration platforms and geopolitical projection. It is also evident that they respond to China's progress and its large investments to continue deploying the Belt and Road Initiative -IFR, also known as the New Silk Road- throughout the world.

It should be noted that one of the exercises will be carried out in Lima and Callao, locations where the most important ports in that country are located and where the port of Chancay is being built, the largest in the country that is being built with Chinese capital, an investment that does not it has been well regarded by the Pentagon for interfering in its interests in the region.


¿Why is it so important? The megaport with 11 berths with the capacity to receive ships of up to 9,000 tons constitutes a commercial gateway through the Pacific Ocean for merchandise from Asia. Given its location, it would also be an important port where raw materials from the region would leave for the Asian continent. For example , lithium , a mineral that has received worldwide attention because it is vital for the new technological architectures that are being built.

The border region of Bolivia, Chile and Argentina, called the "lithium triangle", concentrates 68% of the world's mineral reserves. According to recent studies , Bolivia has 30% of the world's lithium reserves, followed by Chile with 21% and Argentina with 17% of the total. The metal market is evidence of the way power relations have shifted on a geopolitical scale in the past two decades, as the central economic powers of the 20th century—the United States, Germany, Japan, France—"see each other more and more lagging behind and dwarfed by the strong dynamism in South Asia, especially that generated by China," the report states.

Let us remember that the United States intends to install a kind of "metallic NATO" with which it could control, via extraterritorial militarization, the dynamics around the lithium and other metals market in the aforementioned "triangle". The training of the Peruvian troops and police by the Pentagon could have a strategic intention around this, establishing its political, economic and geostrategic interests as prerogatives for the advancement of bilateral relations with Peru, a country that has a kidnapped state. between political and social crises and coups of different kinds.

Although it is not the first time that a US military contingent has entered Peru, since in 2015 more than 3,500 soldiers entered as cooperation and "fight" against drug trafficking and insurgent groups, everything indicates that with this new advance they would be covering two fronts. On the one hand, to collaborate with the security forces to maintain the stability that the Boluarte government maintains and, on the other, to try to establish itself as a dominating and "deterrent" factor through weapons in the region in the face of the advance of China and of the possible factors of regional integration.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/de ... es-en-peru

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They rule out preventive detention for Lenín Moreno in Ecuador

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As is known, the alleged corruption scheme, known as "Sinohydro", includes 37 defendants, including Moreno, his wife, his daughter, two brothers and two sisters-in-law | Photo: EFE
Posted June 6, 2023 (1 hour 24 minutes ago)

There are charges against Moreno and his wife, Rocío González, for alleged bribery in the case known as "Sinohydro".

The National Court of Justice (CNJ) of Ecuador dismissed the request of the State Attorney General's Office to subject former Ecuadorian President Lenín Moreno (2017-2021) to preventive detention due to breaches of precautionary measures against him, official media reported. .

On Moreno and his wife, Rocío González, there are charges for alleged bribery in the case known as "Sinohydro", for which they had to go to the CNJ every 15 days since March 20, 2023. However, according to the Prosecutor's Office, the couple has not complied with that ordinance.

For this reason, the surrogate prosecutor Wilson Toainga requested a preventive detention sentence from the CNJ, a measure rejected by the associate judge Mauricio Espinoza during a hearing to review precautionary measures, in which the same magistrate denied the request for preventive detention against Irina Moreno, daughter of the ex-president.


Espinoza substituted the periodic presentation every 15 days, arranging that both appear within the first 10 days of each month before the diplomatic headquarters of Ecuador in Paraguay, where they reside. In addition, they will have to travel to their country every four months to sign before the criminal court judge.

As is known, the alleged corruption plot, known as "Sinohydro", covers 37 defendants, including Moreno, his wife, his daughter, two brothers and two sisters-in-law, who allegedly benefited from almost 76 million dollars in bribes.


After learning of the judicial verdict, the former president celebrated the decision and echoed it on his official account on the social network Twitter. Moreno affirmed that he did not commit any crime and that he hopes "that since justice has proceeded today, during the investigation process my innocence is proven," he wrote.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/justicia ... -0008.html

Peruvian president to testify for deaths in protests

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The Public Ministry initially summoned Dina Boluarte for May 31, but later agreed to change that date to June 6. | Photo: EFE
Posted June 6, 2023 (6 hours 49 minutes ago)

The investigation of the Prosecutor's Office against Dina Boluarte is for the alleged crimes of genocide, qualified homicide and serious injuries.

The designated president of Peru, Dina Boluarte, must attend the country's Attorney General's Office on Tuesday to testify in the preliminary investigation into the deaths of protesters due to the repression of the mobilizations and protests that took place in the country between December and March last year. .

Dina Boluarte stated last week that she would go to the summons of the Public Ministry because her intention is to help clarify the events that led to the death of at least 49 people during the latest protests against the designated president of the country.

The current president announced that she will only testify before Attorney General Patricia Benavides, because "she is the only competent authority in the investigations of high-ranking officials of the Peruvian State in accordance with the law."


The preliminary investigation of the Prosecutor's Office against Dina Boluarte is for the alleged crimes of genocide, qualified homicide and serious injuries, committed during demonstrations in the regions of Apurímac, La Libertad, Puno, Junín, Arequipa and Ayacucho.

The Public Ministry initially summoned Boluarte for May 31, but later agreed to change that date to June 6, as part of the investigations that it opened on January 10 against the ruler and several of her ministers and former ministers.


The investigation against the president has also included the prime minister, Alberto Otárola; his predecessor, Pedro Angulo; the former Ministers of the Interior Víctor Rojas and César Cervantes, and the current Minister of Defense, Jorge Chávez.

The protests broke out in Peru, after the dismissal of former president Pedro Castillo at the beginning of last December and continued since January with mobilizations in various regions of the country demanding the resignation of Boluarte, the closure of Congress, the advancement of general elections and the convocation of a constituent assembly.

According to various sources, at least 49 civilians died during the protests due to repression by the Peruvian police and Army.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/presiden ... -0006.html

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Judge Suspends Money Laundering Case Against Cristina Fernandez

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Argentine Vice President Cristina Fernandez-Kirchner. | Photo: Twitter/ @ZoomEcuador

After 10 years of investigations, Judge Casanello determined that there was no evidence against the leftist politician.

On Monday, Judge Sebastian Casanello decided to dismiss Argentine Vice President Cristina Fernandez-Kirchner in the case called "The Money Route K" for alleged money laundering.

On May 24, Prosecutor Guillermo Marijuan closed a seven-year investigation after determining that there was no evidence to prove a link between Fernandez-Kirchner and businessman Lazaro Baez, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for this crime.

"Without an accusation, there is no possible criminal proceeding," judge Casanello affirmed in his ruling, where he also specified that the formation of this summary "does not affect the good name and honor that he would have enjoyed."

He stated that the absence of an accusation limits his jurisdiction, for which reason he cannot go beyond the claim required by the accusation or "replace the punitive mission of the State”.


In May, former President Fernandez-Kircher's lawyer Carlos Alberto Beraldi stated that judges were not impartial and prosecutors did not act objectively.

Casanello's decision, however, closes one of the legal proceedings against her. The Argentine left denounces that accusations against Cristina seek to remove her from political activity.

In December 2022, Fernandez-Kirchner was sentenced to six years in prison and perpetual disqualification from holding public office for alleged fraud against the State during her administration (2007-2015). This ruling was appealed and the Argentine Supreme Court must resolve it in a period not yet specified.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Jud ... -0016.html
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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Thu Jun 08, 2023 2:13 pm

Preventive detention ordered against Bolivian governor Camacho

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The governor from Santa Cruz has been in preventive detention since the end of 2022, accused of alleged terrorism and other crimes in the "Coup d'état I" case. | Photo: EFE
Posted June 7, 2023 (7 hours 16 minutes ago)

The decision against the former governor of Santa Cruz responded to the crime of breach of duty in which the defendant incurred and not for uneconomic conduct.

The First Anti-Corruption Court of the Bolivian department of Santa Cruz ordered on Tuesday the preventive detention order against the governor of that territory, Luis Fernando Camacho, for his involvement in the "Car Firefighter" case, official media reported.

The lawyer Marcelo Aliaga, representative of the complainant, confirmed in a television interview that "The judge has ordered preventive detention (of Camacho) for a period of 90 days."

According to the lawyer, the decision responded to the crime of breach of duty in which the defendant incurred and not for uneconomic conduct. However, the complainant filed an appeal and it will be an Appeal Court that determines if the crime of uneconomic conduct was actually committed.


The governor was accused of breach of duty, uneconomic conduct and contracts injurious to the State for the alleged irregular acquisition of a fire truck. Although the Santa Cruz government dissolved the contract due to non-delivery, the vehicle arrived in the country at the end of 2022.

The deputy of the Movement for Socialism (MAS), Rolando Cuéllar, revealed that the vehicle was purchased by direct invitation and not by public bidding. In addition, the Government signed a contract with a "ghost" company for the purchase of the fire truck.


Camacho intervened in the hearing via virtual means, since he is being held in custody in Chonchocoro while the investigations are ongoing for the case called "Coup d'état I" that investigates the plot that led to the riots that made former President Evo Morales resign in 2019 .

In this regard, the governor's defense attorney, Martín Camacho, asserted that "there is no economic damage", since the guarantee slip was executed to the company that was to deliver the vehicle, with which "there would not be" the requirement to consider the criminal charge.

The governor from Santa Cruz has been in preventive detention since the end of 2022, accused of alleged terrorism and other crimes in the "Coup d'état I" case, related to the 2019 political crisis. Likewise, a court sentenced him to another six months for his participation in the 36-day strike in Santa Cruz.

The Prosecutor's Office accused him of terrorism, resolutions against the Constitution, racism and discrimination. In May another sentence for two months was added, due to the decree that Camacho signed for the appointment of an interim governor. Then charges for illegal appointments and breach of duty were added.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/justicia ... -0003.html

Commission of the Peruvian Congress archives complaint against Boluarte

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The Permanent Commission's decision was made one day after Boluarte was questioned by the attorney general, Patricia Benavides. | Photo: EFE
Published 8 June 2023

The Commission rejected a request for reconsideration submitted by legislator Sigrid Bazán.

The Permanent Commission of the Peruvian Congress filed on Wednesday a constitutional complaint filed against the president-designate Dina Boluarte and several of her former ministers for the deaths that occurred in the anti-government protests that took place between last December and March.

The decision was made after receiving a prior pronouncement from the Subcommittee on Constitutional Accusations, which on May 5 declared the complaint inadmissible "due to alleged constitutional violations," reported the parliament.

The Commission rejected a request for reconsideration presented by legislator Sigrid Bazán, for which reason it sent to the archive the complaint against Boluarte, the former Minister of Defense and current Prime Minister, Alberto Otárola, his predecessor, Pedro Angulo, and the former Minister of the Interior, César Cervantes.


Bazán pointed out on Twitter, after learning of the decision, that "the Permanent Commission ended up burying the possibility that this Congress investigates the deaths of more than 60 Peruvians."

In addition, he added that Parliament "still has not formed the Multiparty Investigation Commission of the possible crimes committed by the recent political and social crisis."

The decision of the Permanent Commission was made one day after Boluarte was questioned by the attorney general, Patricia Benavides, as part of the investigation for the alleged commission of the crimes of genocide, homicide and serious injuries.

The protests broke out after the dismissal by the Legislature of constitutional president Pedro Castillo last December. These continued in January with mobilizations and confrontations with the forces of order demanding the resignation of Boluarte, the closure of Congress, the advancement of general elections and the calling of a constituent assembly.

At least 49 civilians died during the clashes, while the demonstrations left a total of 77 dead, as other people, including seven Haitians, lost their lives due to protest actions such as road blockades.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights condemned in its latest report the violence used by the security forces during the demonstrations in Peru and assured that it has found cases of "extrajudicial executions."

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/peru-com ... -0002.html

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President Petro Denounces Peru-Style Lawfare Against Him
JUNE 7, 2023

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Colombian President Gustavo Petro and Minister of Defense Iván Velásquez walk alongside members of the armed forces during the inauguration of General William Salamanca as the new director of the police, in Bogotá, on May 9, 2023. Photo: Raul Arboleda/AFP.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro reported that there are attempts to prevent him from participating in the shortlist to elect the new attorney general to take office in February 2024. This is another step in advancing a coup d’état in the making similar to the one against Peruvian President Pedro Castillo.

Petro’s denunciation comes in response to a tweet from former prosecutor Vivian Morales, who suggested that the Colombian president should “declare himself barred from being part of the shortlist that should elect the new prosecutor.”

To appoint the attorney general of Colombia, the president must define the shortlist of candidates in the second half of the year. Then, he will have to send it to the Supreme Court, which will choose who will assume the position in February 2024.

President Petro responded via social media, saying, “This is what they are looking for. To limit my duty to present a list [of candidates] against impunity. This is where it all begins. Not only do they seek to prevent the government of change from presenting what they know will be a shortlist against impunity, but they seek the path that Pedro Castillo suffered, as Nestor Humberto Martinez well expressed,” referring to the parliamentary coup that ousted the Peruvian president last year.


The maneuver against Gustavo Petro aims to remove him using lawfare, which is the use of fabricated legal processes to remove someone from public office. Similar lawfare mechanisms were used against President Pedro Castillo in Peru, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, and Cristina Kirchner in Argentina, all progressive governments disliked by the White House.

On social media, President Petro also referred to the leaked audios of the now-former Colombian ambassador to Venezuela, Armando Benedetti.

Petro noted that he extracted two things from what the former official said: first, that his former chief of staff, Laura Sarabia, received enormous pressure that he was unaware of and second, that Benedetti was mistaken in thinking that Sarabia was the one who formed the cabinet. Petro reiterated that there were no irregularities with the financing through donations during his campaign.


The Colombian president recalled that in two interviews, Benedetti stated that he helped get donations for the campaign and there were no irregularities.

“It is true, every time someone asked to donate or get donors, they were processed via the proper channels, where the screenings were always done according to the law,” he stated.

Petro added that his campaign management rejected many donations and accepted others according to the legal criteria. He highlighted that most of the financing was done with commercial bank loans.

https://orinocotribune.com/president-pe ... ainst-him/

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For Argentina’s Small Farmers, the Land Is Predictable but the Markets Are Not: The Twenty-Third Newsletter (2023)

JUNE 8, 2023

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Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

Thirty years ago, in my economics textbook in India, the section on international trade referred to Argentina. It would be better, according to the textbook, for Argentina to concentrate on the production and export of beef, while Germany should direct its resources towards the production of electronics. This example was used to illustrate Adam Smith’s ‘absolute advantage’ principle – countries should focus on what they do ‘best’, rather than diversify their economies. It seemed churlish to me, that developing countries such as Argentina should only produce raw materials, while wealthy countries such as Germany went ahead with technological development.

Argentina, at that time, was still a major producer and exporter of beef. My peers and I had no access to José Hernández’s epic poem ‘Martín Fierro’, about the gauchos of the pampas, the cowboys of the plains of Argentina, but we knew of the ferocious compadritos (‘streetcorner thugs’) and cuchilleros (‘knife fighters’) from the short stories of Jorge Luis Borges. There were cowboys mixed in here, loners who sat on their horses on Argentina’s flatlands and gathered their cattle for the market. No longer do these horsemen define Argentina’s rural society. Today, the countryside is defined by the small farmer and the agricultural proletariat who work for the large agribusinesses and are the protagonists of the country’s fortunes.

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According to Argentina’s National Agricultural Census, the number of agricultural holdings (EAPs) in the country decreased by roughly 41 percent between 1988 and 2018, due to the increasing concentration of land into the hands of a small elite.

In 2021, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) noted that Argentina remains ‘a major exporter of agricultural products’, which, at that time, accounted for nearly two-thirds of the country’s exports (as of April 2023, agricultural goods accounted for 56.4% of the country’s exports). The main products are grains (wheat, maize), soya, and beef. Argentina’s agribusinesses enthusiastically entered into the global soybean market, even producing a ‘soy dollar’ scheme to encourage greater exports so that the country could earn dollars to offset its major foreign exchange crises.

Argentina has been wracked by three consecutive years of drought (exacerbated by the climate catastrophe) and faced pressure from the increasing acreage for soybeans in the other four leading producers (Brazil, the United States, China, and India). The production of soybeans has transformed Argentina’s countryside, drawing in over half of the country’s arable lands and concentrating production into the hands of what the economist Claudio Scaletta called the ‘invisible giants’ (corporations such as Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland Argentina, Bunge Argentina, Dreyfus, and Noble Argentina). It is no longer cattle that run through the pampas; it is now the soybean flowers that tilt in the breeze.

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In this graph, we can see the proportion of agricultural holdings, or EAPs, categorised according to size (hectares), in orange, as well as the share of total surface area that each category accounts for, in yellow. The majority of the productive EAPs are small; as they increase in size, the number of farms is reduced, but the amount of land they account for increases.

Our latest dossier, Whose Land Is It and What Is It For? An Unfinished Debate about Land Access in Argentina (June 2023), explores some of the most startling contradictions that afflict Argentina’s rural landscape. The most obvious incongruity is that Argentina has more than enough arable land to feed its 46 million people, and yet hunger is growing in the country. Most of the food consumed by the people is produced not by the large agribusiness conglomerates but by family farms, and yet these family farms are disappearing as families find it impossible to economically sustain themselves and make the trek from rural areas to the cities in large numbers. Rising landlessness and hunger have produced the social reality out of which new forms of political protest have appeared: verdurazos (‘vegetable protests’) and panazos (‘bread protests’), often led by rural social organisations, confront the ridiculous situation in which those who farm the soil cannot eat its crops.

A few years ago, I spent some time with small-scale farmers outside La Plata. Wildo Eizaguirre of the Federación Rural told me that the greatest burden for farmers such as himself is rent. Antonio García as well as Else and Mable Yanaje agreed that rent is a dead weight for them. The cost of land is prohibitive and their tenure on the land is uncertain. It prevents the farmers from making capital improvements to the farm or even from buying equipment (such as tractors) to make their labour more productive. These farmers neither own the fields nor do they control the pathways to the market. Brokers buy their produce at the lowest prices and then take them to be processed or sold directly to supermarkets. The money is made elsewhere than on the fields.

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The land access bills proposed in Argentina in recent years are based on two key laws, the Historical Reparation of Family Agriculture Law (no. 27118, 2014) and the Indigenous Territories Emergency Law (no. 26160, 2006).

It is out of the struggles of people such as Wildo and Mable that Argentina’s government passed key laws such as the Historical Reparation of Family Agriculture Law of 2014 and the Indigenous Territories Emergency Law of 2006 (repeatedly extended in 2009, 2013, 2017, and 2021). The Historical Reparation of Family Agriculture Law seeks to ‘construct a new rural life in Argentina’ and guarantee ‘access to land for family, peasant, and indigenous agriculture, given that land is a social good’. These are powerful words but, in the face of the power of the agribusiness, they are not often translated into deeds. The law itself does not close off the class struggle. In Brazil, for instance, the Movement of Rural Landless Workers (MST) uses the 1988 Brazilian Constitution to the letter as a legal justification for its land occupations. And yet, punctually, Brazil’s agribusinesses and their political allies try to criminalise the MST occupations with a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry, which MST leader João Paulo Rodrigues correctly considers an opportunity to hold a public dialogue about agrarian reform, food sovereignty, and social equality.

In 2020, the International Land Coalition and Oxfam released an important report called Uneven Ground. Land Inequality at the Heart of Unequal Societies. There are 608 million farms in the world, the report notes, most of them being family farms (with 2.5 billion people involved in smallholder farming). The largest 1% of the farms, however, control more than 70% of global farmland, while 80% of the farmers are smallholders who operate less than two hectares. Land concentration, the report shows, has increased dramatically since 1980. Meanwhile, according to a study by Luis Bauluz, Yajna Govind, and Filip Novokmet, in Latin America the top 10% of landowners capture up to 75% of the agricultural land value, while the bottom 50% own less than 2%. As the dossier highlights, in Argentina the disparity is extremely sharp: 80% of family farmers (who are characterised as smallholders) occupy around 11% of demarcated agricultural land, while the big landowners who make up 0.3% of farmers occupy almost double that land. The tendency towards land concentration is hastened by the power of multinational agribusinesses and by the increasing use of farmland as a financial asset by private equity firms and asset managers (as Madeleine Fairbairn argues in her book Fields of Gold: Financing the Global Land Rush, 2020). On the African continent, farmers are being pushed off the land due to ‘nature conservation’ and the growth of the mining sector (such as we documented in Xolobeni in South Africa).

Over the past century, peasant movements have put forward a demand for ‘agrarian reform’ as the antidote to capitalism’s devastation of the countryside. In the foreword to our dossier, Manuel Bertoldi of the Federación Rural writes, ‘We must start talking without fear about agrarian reform, food sovereignty, agroecology, and about socialism as an alternative system, since it is through socialism that these ideas become viable’.

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In recent years, a number of proposals, such as the ‘March to the Countryside’ programme, have been put forward to address Argentina’s agrarian crisis.

The Brazilian poet João Cabral de Melo Neto wrote with great feeling about the only piece of land to which the peasants are entitled, their graves. In 1955, he composed the verse ‘Morte e Vida Severina’ (‘Death and Life of Severino’), where he wrote,

– The grave you’re in
Is measured by hand,
The best bargain you got
In all the land.

– You fit it well,
Not too long or deep,
The part of the latifundio
Which you will keep.

– The grave’s not too big,
Nor is it too wide,
It’s the land you wanted
To see them divide.

– It’s a big grave
For a body so spare,
But you’ll be more at ease
Than you ever were.

– You’re a skinny corpse
For such a big tomb,
But at least down there
You’ll have plenty of room.


Farmers and peasants around the world know that their struggles are existential, a feeling that gripped the Indian farmers and peasants during their ongoing struggle against the privatisation of the marketplace for agricultural commodities. They want land to live, not just for their graves.

Warmly,

Vijay

https://thetricontinental.org/newslette ... tina-land/

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THE CORPORATE AGENDA THAT DEFINES THE LITHIUM STRATEGY IN CHILE
Betzabeth Aldana Vivas

June 6, 2023 , 2:14 p.m.

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The Salar de Atacama, in Chile (Photo: File)

"Today, lithium allows us to drive the growth and development of Chile and its people, and our declared objective is to be the main producer of this mineral in the world. We have a clear opportunity to take a leap in development. That is why we present the National Lithium Strategy": this was said by Chilean President Gabriel Boric on June 1 before the National Congress to carry out the Public Account corresponding to his second year in office.

The Chilean government's lithium plan was published on April 20 and President Boric announced that a bill would be sent to Congress for the creation of the National Lithium Company, where the Chilean State will participate in the entire production cycle of this mineral.

This is how the Chilean president put it in his message to the country : "The lithium industry has to be at the service of the people and not the people at the service of an industry (...) For this it is essential, and we have defined it that way, that the State is present throughout the lithium production cycle". Then, he made the caveat that the Chilean State will respect the private contracts that are in force in the exploitation of the Salar de Atacama.

From the National Lithium Strategy , apart from the creation of the national company, some keys can be highlighted:

Communities close to the salt flats will participate and will also have the collaboration of private companies.
They will begin conversations with the current foreign operators in the salt flats in order to incorporate the State in the production phases, especially in the Salar de Atacama.
The initial role in everything that the “strategy” implies will be carried out by the national mining companies, Codelco and Enami, as representatives of the State.
A Public Technological and Research Institute for Lithium and Salt Flats will be created.
This strategy is not new, since the then President Michelle Bachelet in 2014 created the National Lithium Commission to promote the development policy of this strategic mineral, prioritizing joint work between the State and private companies to achieve better profitability. .

Bachelet recently published an article for the newspaper El País explaining the opportunities that lithium would give Chile, as well as the opening to the participation of more companies that want to join the Chilean strategy, taking special care with geopolitical events that may arise. : "It will be strategic to diversify conversations and alliances with actors that represent different countries (...) we have lithium for everyone, we have more than 60 salt flats and saline lagoons."

Hopefully for this type of business, for the obtaining and control of the raw materials that generate energy, it would occur in a diversified, harmonious way and full of opportunities for all, but in reality the US corporate interest in monopolizing the market for this mineral it will come out on top, especially if companies from Russia and China come forward to become even more involved in the commercial dynamics of the region.

And so it has been studied at Tsinghua University of China. In a research paper on lithium, Chinese researchers consider that "with the accelerating pace of the energy transition, competition in the lithium-ion battery supply chain is intensifying in a wide range of countries." Lithium is the new reason for potential conflicts, as well as oil and gas.

There are no further details in the "strategy", beyond the announcement of the creation of the national company. At that time, different media outlets spread the story of a supposed nationalization of lithium in Chile, but reviewing the plan and the statements of the authorities, only general approaches were found about the "new" management of lithium in Chile by the State. with his new company and private company.

LITHIUM LEGAL CORPUS
Although the 1980 Constitution is still in force in Chile, it establishes in Chapter III that the State has absolute, exclusive, inalienable and imprescriptible domain of all mines". The Organic Constitutional Law on Mining Concessions and the Mining Code are the instruments laws that define the concessions to explore and exploit a specific mineral resource.

Regarding lithium, it is specified that it will not be subject to a mining concession, this means that the Chilean government on duty has exclusive rights to explore and exploit this mineral in the country. Surprisingly, this detail has been maintained until today, since Salvador Allende's process of nationalization of resources in the 1970s.

However, the concessions can be granted by the President of Chile, since he is the authority empowered to establish the conditions for the lithium exploitation process, taking into consideration State companies or private companies through a special contract generated by the Ministry of Mining.

Based on the mining code, the granting of concessions is discretionary.

On the other hand, in Chile there is the " Mining Royalty ", it consists of the payment that companies make to the Chilean State for obtaining the right to exploit a mineral resource in Chilean territory. This guideline was created in 1955 and has undergone different mutations , whose law originated in the Chamber of Deputies in 2018, namely:

In 2021, the Finance Commission of the Chilean Chamber of Deputies approved the "Royalty Minero" project, which sought to establish a 3% tax on the sale of copper and lithium in favor of the State. Some time later the Chilean Senate stopped the project.
In May 2023, almost three years later, the bill was resumed , due to the fact that the Upper Chamber of the Chilean Senate approved the project that establishes the royalty for large-scale copper and lithium mining, which seeks to "modify the taxes that large corporations pay by setting a maximum potential tax burden.
It is noteworthy that, in order to execute the approval, the negotiation focused on lowering the maximum tax burden for mining companies to 46.5%; initially the proposal established 50%. In commercial terms, in a sector as lucrative as mining, this reduction marks a significant difference to the income that Chile could receive from the exploitation of lithium that lies under its soil.


AMERICAN COMPANIES FEEL AT HOME
Albemarle Lithium Inc, is an American company that develops and markets lithium, but, as indicated before , the United States does not have vast reserves of this raw material as Bolivia, Chile and Argentina do. Therefore, Albemarle has been exploiting and marketing Chilean lithium for more than 40 years.

Thanks to the large Chilean reservoirs, this company is the world's largest producer of the mineral, and has a contract to operate in that country until 2043.

After the announcement of the creation of the Chilean national company and the start of new contract negotiations, Albemarle CEO Kent Masters said in an interview with Reuters that the US company is not opposed to renegotiating a lithium supply contract. with the Chilean government. In fact, Masters's comments about the business in Chile have not left aside his confident optimism, here are some forward-looking comments:

"The company's investment in Chile is secure until the end of its concession in 2043 " and Masters sees opportunities to engage with the Chilean government to obtain additional lithium within the country.
"We have an opportunity to obtain additional mining concessions and partner with the Chilean government to do so. So we see it as an opportunity for us ," Masters said.
Masters plans to deploy new ore filtration technologies in Chile.
"Chile is the best country to produce the best quality lithium at the best price," concludes the CEO.
By 2043, many governments in Chile will have succeeded, as well as changes in their extractivist policies according to the interests of the day. Masters knows his way around commercial salt flats.

Going back to Albemarle's historic alliance with the Chilean State, it is recalled that in 1980 the Chilean Production Development Corporation (CORFO) signed the "Basic Agreement" with that American company, formerly the Foote Mineral Company, to develop the Salar de Atacama and thus constitute a company for the production and sale of lithium.

CORFO has been the pillar in the lithium business and policies in order to systematize what is today the lithium industry in Chile, whose main partner is Albemarle.

By 2016, Albemarle was able to obtain other agreements for the exploitation of lithium through CORFO: "It is an authorization for a New Quota for the production and commercialization of lithium products." Also, in 2018 , CORFO authorized the increase in the lithium production quota in Atacama.

Although in 2021 there was an impasse , since CORFO filed an international arbitration against Albemarle before the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), for the reason of non-payment by the US party in relation to the lithium production contract signed on the concession of the Atacama Salt Flat. Finally, the American company paid CORFO 467 million dollars .

It was not the only clash due to non-payments , but in the end it opted for the resolution of the conflict and Albemarle continues to exploit Chilean lithium. After Boric's announcements, CORFO reiterated to Albemarle that the "operations in the Salar will maintain the same current logic: CORFO will continue to be the owner of the mining properties, while the exploitation will be carried out via lease contracts with the Corporation."

CHALLENGES, OR MORE OF THE SAME
Bolivia tops the ranking of countries with the largest lithium reserves. But Chile has 36% of the world's lithium reserves , behind Australia with 46%. Chile has more than 60 lithium salt flats, however, the Salar de Atacama is the current production nucleus.

These numbers give clear signs that Chile plays an important role in the dynamics of the new energy markets, or as it is known politically: "energy transition." In addition, its geographical location towards the Pacific Ocean makes Chile a key international actor for the Belt and Road Initiative project.

In April, CORFO assigned the capacity of specialized lithium producer to the important Chinese electromobility company BYD, to produce 50 thousand tons per year of lithium ferrophosphate cathode material in Chile. BYD could invest billions of dollars in Chile to help the country build a supply chain for battery materials.

Despite the media alarm over the supposed nationalization after Boric's announcements last April, in May the Chilean opposition achieved victory in the elections of the constituent process of that country. In short, it is the right-wing conservatives who will dominate the decisions and write the new Chilean Constitution.

This fact could stop Boric's "innovative" plans. With a confused policy on this matter, the chances of slowing down the development process of lithium production in Chile are enormous. And added to this, this invitation for new players to join the lithium dynamics in Chile is uncertain, when the competition to obtain the mineral is increasing more and more.

The only variable that could make a difference is the technological innovation that foreign companies can offer in order to be able to stand out and show their attractiveness in the market in the context of the distribution of quotas on mineral management. In this, China has the advantage, as it is the world leader in lithium extraction, both in technology and in production capacity, innovation, extraction and profitability.

In short, the Chilean State has the right to award concessions to foreign companies, but lithium operations fall on the companies that are installed. By now, we all know how those companies push to gain part of the control of some strategic resource. So, for now, in Chile, radical changes in lithium extraction policies that really benefit its population and boost economic growth are minimal, in keeping with the Chilean president's lack of political clarity and infantilism.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/la ... o-en-chile

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Sat Jun 17, 2023 2:33 pm

Ecuadorian Prosecutor's Office condemns armed attack on provincial headquarters

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The Public Ministry recalled that the activities of investigative and administrative agents of the entity carry a high level of risk. | Photo: @CommentaryUdeC
Posted June 15, 2023

The Ecuadorian Prosecutor's Office ratified its commitment to work for justice without giving in to any form of intimidation.

The Ecuadorian Prosecutor's Office condemned on Wednesday the armed attack perpetrated against the entity's headquarters in the province of Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas.

Through a statement, the Public Ministry denounced that officials and users were victims of the attack and demanded that the Ecuadorian authorities assign more security personnel to protect the Institution's facilities on a national scale.

They also indicated that the attack was neutralized by police officers, who managed to kill one of the alleged attackers.


In the text, the Prosecutor's Office ratified its commitment to work for justice without giving in to any form of intimidation.

The Public Ministry recalled in the text that the activities of investigative and administrative agents of the entity entail a high level of risk, especially in the midst of the levels of insecurity that the country is going through.

For about two years, violence associated with organized crime, the drug trafficking business and criminal gangs that carry out hit men, extortion, kidnapping, assault and robbery, among other crimes, has intensified in Ecuador.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/fiscalia ... -0001.html

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President Lula Questions European Union’s Punitive Proposal in Mercosur Trade Agreement
JUNE 14, 2023

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Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (right background) and Ursula Von der Leyen (left) during an official ceremony at Planalto Palace, Brasília, on Monday, June 12, 2023. Photo: EFE.

Before the European Commission, Brazil questioned the annex to the agreement between the European Union (EU) and the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) introduced by the Europeans. The annex stipulates sanctions in case of non-compliance with environmental obligations, a common European approach towards international relations.

On Tuesday, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva questioned the president of the European Commission (EC), Ursula von der Leyen, about the annex to the agreement that provides for sanctions in case of non-compliance, said a note from RT.

“I explained to President von der Leyen Brazil’s concerns with the additional instrument to the agreement, presented by the European Union in March of this year, which expands Brazil’s obligations and subjects it to sanctions in case of non-compliance,” said Lula after von der Leyen’s visit to Brasília.

For Lula, “the premise that should exist between strategic partners is mutual trust, not distrust and sanctions.”

Signing of the agreement
In 2019, the EU and Mercosur signed the agreement. However, some countries refused to ratify it until former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s government committed to adopting a series of environmental measures, especially deforestation control.

The EU proposed establishing an additional protocol with changes to the chapter on trade and sustainable development to include obligations, especially in environmental matters, with sanctions in case of non-compliance.

Restrictions
Brazil argues that, with this protocol, the European Union is hindering the development of the powerful agribusiness sector for reasons beyond environmental preservation. In other words, they argue the European Union is using the environmental issue as an excuse to protect European agribusiness corporations.

“The European Union has approved its own laws with extraterritorial effects that modify the balance of the agreement. These initiatives represent potential restrictions on Brazil’s agricultural and industrial exports,” Lula stated.

Recently, the European bloc passed a law to close its market to products, such as coffee, soybeans or meat, that contribute to deforestation or forest degradation, displeasing several countries, including Brazil.

They hope to conclude the agreement
Given this situation, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said she hopes both parties can conclude the agreement.

“We both believe that the time has come to conclude the agreement between the European Union and Mercosur,” she said. “We both have the ambition to conclude it as soon as possible, at the latest by the end of the year.”

The EU official said that both sides “share the same vision of the fight against climate change. We eagerly await their response” to the additional protocol.

Lula’s environmental policy praised
Von der Leyen praised Lula’s environmental policy and announced that the EC will support the Amazon Fund with €20 million. The Amazon Fund is an international resource pool to protect the largest rainforest on the planet and was reactivated with Lula’s return to power after years of climate change denial by former president Jair Bolsonaro.

International tour
This Monday, the President of the European Commission began her tour of Latin America in Brazil. She will also visit Argentina, Chile and Mexico.

One of the purposes of the tour, as part of the economic consequences caused by the conflict in Ukraine, is to find partners to help members of the European Union reduce their dependency on fossil fuels, especially those from Russia.

Von der Leyen’s visit is part of the preparation for the next summit between the EU and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), which will take place on July 17 and 18 in Brussels, where over 30 American political leaders will participate.

https://orinocotribune.com/president-lu ... agreement/

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Peru’s De facto President Blames Protesters for Their Own Deaths at the Hands of State Forces
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JUNE 16, 2023
Peoples Dispatch

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Peru’s de facto president Dina Boluarte rejected the call for new social protests against her government on June 14. (Photo: Twitter)

Boluarte condemned the fresh wave of protests and blamed social organizations for creating violence and chaos in the country.


Peru’s de facto president Dina Boluarte, on Wednesday, June 14, expressed her annoyance over the announcement of new social protests against her government. Talking to the local press, after attending a bilateral meeting with Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso in Piura, Boluarte once again stigmatized social organizations and their struggle and blamed them for creating violence and chaos in the country.

Boluarte’s statement came after social movements and trade unions called for a third massive march in the capital, known as the ‘Toma de Lima’ or ‘Takeover of Lima’, to demand her resignation, closure of right-wing dominated Congress, new general elections, and a new constitution. The march will be held on July 19, for which thousands of members of Indigenous and peasant communities as well as diverse social organizations and trade unions from all regions of Peru are expected to arrive in Lima.

In a press conference held after the Council of Ministers meeting on June 15, Boluarte addressed one of protesters’ primary demands and told the press that, “The idea of holding early elections is over. We will continue working responsibly, respecting the rule of law, democracy, and the constitution, until July 2026.”

Boluarte said that during the first six months of her government, she has had to constantly face “violent” demonstrations and criticized organizations for calling new protests.

“In the six months that we have been in government, we have practically been firefighters putting out almost 500 violent demonstrations. Right now, I call on these people who are once again announcing a third takeover of Lima or the third takeover of Peru, how many more deaths do they want? Doesn’t it hurt your souls to have lost more than 60 people in these violent mobilizations,” said Boluarte.

In addition, she denied that the deaths in the protests were caused or sought by her government, ignoring the report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which confirmed that the Peruvian state committed human rights violations during the anti-government protests that broke out following the legislative coup against former left-wing president Pedro Castillo in December 2022 and continued till February 2023. She said that the deaths caused in protests only served to “benefit” the people who were asking for her resignation.

“Right now, they are not satisfied with the fact that I have not resigned. They are still asking for it and want to use the Peruvian population to continue generating anxiety, violence, chaos, crisis. Where else are we going to go to now?,” she said.

The IACHR, in its report released in early May, noted that 57 people died in these protests, and said that response to the demonstrators by state forces was characterized by the “disproportionate, indiscriminate and lethal use of force.” It added that in some cases, the actions could be classified as “extrajudicial executions” and “massacres.”

Peru’s Prosecutor’s Office is also investigating Boluarte, along with some of her ministers and police chiefs, for the alleged crimes of genocide, homicide, and serious injuries. On June 6, she appeared before the Prosecutor’s Office to respond to the accusations against her. She denied her responsibility for the crimes charged against her, and protected herself by using the right to remain silent.

In addition, Boluarte has lashed out at opposition leaders -without mentioning any by name- for disapproving of her management before international organizations.

“These people who traveled to Europe, with a false narrative, speak ill of Peru. Shouldn’t that be classified as treason against the homeland? Who finances their trips so that they pass across Europe speaking ill of Peru?,” she said.

“We are working without stealing from the people! Why don’t they say that out there instead of lying [saying] that we are a civil-military government?…We are a democratic government,” she added.

She was implicitly referring to former presidential candidate Verónika Mendoza, who participated last week along with various other progressive leaders from the region in the second edition of Latin America Day held in the European Parliament.

During her speech, Mendoza mentioned that “June 7 marked six months since the civil-military regime headed by Mrs. Boluarte began,” who she said was the visible face of a “conservative and mafia-like authoritarian coalition.”

The Boluarte government has been highly unpopular since the day it assumed power. People have condemned the de facto leader for betraying the progressive ticket she was elected on after she entered into a political alliance with the country’s right-wing forces to govern. According to a new survey conducted by the IPSOS Peru, 77% of the Peruvian citizens disapprove of the Boluarte administration, and 81% reject the performance of the Congress.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/06/ ... te-forces/
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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Tue Jun 20, 2023 2:50 pm

THE TRANSNATIONAL OCCUPATION OF LITHIUM IN ARGENTINA
Betzabeth Aldana Vivas

Jun 19, 2023 , 3:02 p.m.

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"Argentina has produced its first sub-battery quality lithium carbonate as part of the start-up": this was published by Canadian transnational Lithium Americas recently to announce one of Argentina's largest lithium production projects. It is the Caucharí-Olaroz.

This productive complex of two salt flats is located in the province of Jujuy, in the northeast of the Argentine territory, and within what is known as the Lithium Triangle (or ABC Triangle) in the Latin American region.

As a commercial attraction, Caucharí-Olaroz is expected to become one of the lowest cost lithium brine extraction projects in the world, a matter that draws attention because Jujuy is an arid zone and vast amounts of water would be required to carry out the mineral extraction process, making the process more expensive.

It is expected that 40,000 tons of lithium can be produced annually, achieving a purification of inferior quality to obtain lithium carbonate, and in the second half of this year it is projected to improve that quality. It seems to be encouraging news for Argentina, but this project has foreign hands.

THE TRANSNATIONALS
Currently, in Argentina, lithium production is carried out in two projects: in the Salar del Hombre Muerto, by the American company Livent Corp, and the one mentioned above in Jujuy.

Caucharí-Olaroz has an investment of more than 900 million dollars and a mining durability range of 40 years . The Argentine company Minera Exar runs the operations, however, the company has foreign owners distributed in a tripartite manner : Lithium Americas and the Chinese company, Gangfeng Lithium, have almost 50% each; and with barely 8% in the proprietary distribution, Jujuy Energía y Minería Sociedad del Estado (JEMSE).

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Lithium exploitation in Jujuy, Argentina (Photo: File)

Although Lithium Americas and Gangfeng Lithium became partners in this dynamic of lithium extraction and processing in the southern country in 2017, the Canadian company announced a new entity to operate in Argentina, Lithium Argentina, somewhat separating from the Chinese partner and focusing in his project in the United States. In short, the company announced its intention to divest the business in Argentina.

This move is not accidental, since it occurs when the Canadian government ordered three Chinese companies to divest their investments from Canadian mining companies, supposedly for national security reasons, in order to protect their supply chains. In response, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said the divestment order violated international trade and market rules.

In March, Lithium Americas CEO Jonathan Evans outlined his company's "new" vision, explaining that he hoped to shorten the long paths of lithium processing because lithium can travel such a long way from mine to finished product. : "If you look at the current path in which lithium travels from South America or Australia to China (...) it is a very long path (...) long supply chains are exposed to geopolitical disruptions."

This rule change in the transnational mining game shows clear signs of the new "Hunger Games" for control of the lithium market. Canada, as a loyal partner of the United States, has cracked down on Chinese investment in mining as they push to compete with Beijing for access to lithium.

On the other hand, Lithium Americas is not the only Canadian company that operates in Argentina, Alpha Lithium is also present. But the leader in lithium carbonate production in Argentina is the American Livent Corp, which has just merged with Australia's Allkem to expand the range of production in Argentine salt flats.

The hand pieces of foreign companies are being readjusted to obtain greater advantages and benefits in the lithium business, whose state participation is little noticed.

DISPOSING OF LITHIUM
There are several international mining companies active in Argentina that operate at various points in the lithium production cycle. There are no restrictions on foreign investment and the operation of companies dedicated to the exploration and extraction of the precious mineral. These big businessmen comment that in Argentina there is no legal uncertainty that implies risks for their investments.

The root of the current state of the circuit of the participation of litiferous companies comes from the government of Carlos Menem (1989-1999), which was characterized by promoting monetary policies of privatization and accompaniment with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that led to unleashing a of the strongest economic crises in Argentina.

Menem's domes granted facilities. The former interior minister in his government, José Luis Manzano, is currently the owner of the private company Integra Lithium, which owns many hectares of lithium salt flats in Catamarca and Jujuy. Last April, Manzano presented himself to certain investors as "the main local lithium player."

Menem established that foreign companies invest without obstacles and that there be full openness, through the promulgation of Law 24,196 of "Mining Investments", which allowed transnational companies to settle in the Argentine salt flats without any problem. Given this, Martina Gamba, a researcher at the Faculty of Exact Sciences of the National University of La Plata and co-author of the book Lithium in South America , explains that in Argentina, "under current legislation, exploration, extraction and commercialization is almost entirely in the hands of of private transnationals, without the National State having any type of policy or participation in the value chain of any lithium derivative".

In 2011, at the height of Kirchnerism, Jujuy's lithium was officially considered a strategic natural resource. In the aforementioned book, Gamba argues that "Article 124 of the National Constitution, the Mining Code and the Mining Investment Law, is a true legal-tax triad that prevents the development and planning of policies around the exploitation of lithium that give it a genuinely strategic character".

To better illustrate the scenario, Martín Obaya, director of the Center for Transformation Studies at the National University of San Martín, explains that there is a regulatory framework for mining, where foreign companies are "granted a lot of benefits and the provinces, which are the owners of the resources, cannot collect royalties of more than 3%". The lithium that is extracted does not generate significant income for the Argentine State.

In this way, Argentina has an unquestionable attraction for lithium transnationals, and even more so due to the coming years of rising demand for this resource.

However, Argentina has a long way to go to see the real benefits that lithium production offers. With changes in the legal corpus, it could formulate the necessary public policies so that the mineral can be classified as strategic at the national level and the Argentine State can obtain a due royalty. With much more reason if one takes into account that projections for 2025 estimate that Argentine lithium exports will reach 5.6 billion dollars.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/la ... -argentina

Google Translator

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Jujuy rises up against repression and regressive reforms

The province led by conservative Governor Gerardo Morales has been rocked by mass protests against the reform of the constitution which undermines Indigenous rights and the right to protest

June 19, 2023 by Zoe Alexandra

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The blockade of Route 9 in Purmamarca was heavily repressed on Saturday June 17. Photo: Edgardo Valera / TELAM

In Jujuy, Argentina, communities and organizations have been mobilizing on the streets and highways to reject the constitutional reform that was pushed through an early approval by the provincial government of conservative Gerardo Morales in the early morning of Friday June 16. The massive protests in cities and towns across the province, which have seen participation from Indigenous communities, trade unions, and social movements, have been met with heavy repression from state forces.

On Saturday June 17 in Purmamarca, Jujuy, police cracked down on the blockade of Highway 9 organized by Indigenous communities and social movements since early Friday. Dozens were injured by the attacks with tear gas, rubber bullets, and batons, and police also detained 30 protesters. 17-year-old Mijael Lian Lamas lost one of his eyes after being shot in the eye with a rubber bullet.

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Dozens were injured in the repression on Saturday June 17 in Purmamarca.

The National Secretary of Human Rights, Horacio Pietragalla Corti, traveled to the province on Sunday to verify the situation on the ground and has called on the governor to sit down and dialogue with the different social sectors who have taken to the streets and insisted he abandon his “capricious” position. Pietragalla expressed concern that if the provincial authorities do not take measures to address the grievances raised by the communities, the situation could get worse.

The express approval of the reform takes place in the midst of a context of great social unrest in the province governed by the right-wing Radical Civic Union party under Morales. Teachers in the province are currently on week two of a strike organized by the Association of Provincial Educators (ADEP) and Center of Middle and High School Teachers (CEDEMS) to demand salary increases. Following the announcement of the constitutional reforms last week, trade unions, Indigenous organizations, and other progressive organizations had called for a day long general strike across the province on Friday June 16 to voice their opposition.

On the night of Thursday June 15, while legislators in the Constitutional Convention were voting, thousands were marching on the streets of the capital with torches in opposition to the reforms and as part of the ongoing teachers’ strike.

Days before the reform was passed, the National Secretary of Human Rights, led by Pietragalla, released a communique on the situation of human rights in Jujuy, referring to the ongoing protests and the mass opposition to the proposed reform. The national body expressed concern over what it called a “serious setback in the rights of the people of Jujuy” and warned that “the consolidation of the authoritarian actions of the Morales government would represent a threat to the democratic system in the Argentine Republic.”

Constitutional reforms undermine rights
The reforms to the provincial constitution have galvanized widespread opposition from diverse social sectors who have united on the streets to demand Morales’ resignation and the reversal of the reform.

One of the major points of contention is the reform to Article 36 regarding the “right to private property”. The reform gives greater rights to property holders as it gives “rapid and expedited mechanisms and routes that protect private property and reestablish any alteration in the possession, use, and enjoyment of the assets in favor of the title holder.” It also paves the way for a law that determines conditions for eviction.

Many Indigenous communities have pointed out that despite being ancestral inhabitants, 90% of Indigenous communities lack property titles. They say that this reform empowers private landowners to evict them, especially in a context of increased disputes over land rights regarding the extraction of lithium by multinational corporations in the province. Jujuy is home to several lithium extraction projects such as the Cauchari-Olaroz project one of whose primary shareholders is the Canadian giant Lithium Americas as well as the Cauchari and Olaroz projects of Australian lithium company Lake Resources.

The other key point of the reform which has sparked mass opposition is the point called “Right to Social Peace and Democratic Peaceful Living” which incorporated into the constitution the “expressed prohibition of total road and highway blockades, as well as all other disruptions to the right to free circulation of inhabitants of the province and their legal consequences.” Organizations across the country have condemned this point as a serious threat to the right to protest and to the full guarantee of human rights.

National response
Despite attempts to crush the resistance to the reform, the heavy repression of protesters and the undemocratic nature of the reform has sparked a national response. On Monday June 19, the Association of State Workers (ATE) announced that they would hold a national strike on Thursday June 22 to demand Morales cease the repression against the people of Jujuy and reverse the constitutional reform.

In a statement, the national trade union wrote, “We urge the government of Jujuy to cease these attitudes and actions, which have nothing to do with the exercise of democracy, we demand the release of our unjustly detained comrades and we call for a strong National Strike to show our repudiation of this situation.”

Legislators from the national ruling party Frente de Todos (FdT), as well as trade union leaders and human rights defenders held a press conference in the capital Buenos Aires on Monday to express their rejection of the “brutal repression” of the protests in Jujuy and announced a mass mobilization outside the Jujuy Provincial House in the city on June 22.

Hugo Yasky, the Secretary General of the Workers’ Central Union (CTA) and a national deputy with FdT, said in the press conference that the reform goes against the National Constitution and warned that Jujuy is a test case of what “the right wing wants for Argentina”.

On June 19, Amnesty International, the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS), Association of Lawyers for Indigenous Law, the Foundation for the Development in Justice and Peace (FUNDAPAZ), along with several other human rights and jurist organizations in the country, issued a statement titled “We demand the suspension of the constitutional reform in Jujuy”.

Highlighting the multiple irregularities in the process from the procedural issues in the approval, exclusion of social sectors in the discussion, to the problems of “legality and legitimacy” of the reform, and the heavy repression of protests, the organizations say that the only measure to respond to the demands of the people and “ensure a necessary, obligatory, and participatory debate of all sectors of society in Jujuy” is for the Constitutional Convention and Governor Morales to suspect the reform.

The organizations declare that: “Moving forward with such a reform will inevitably lead to its immediate challenge in court, since several of its provisions contradict the National Constitution and international human rights treaties, which will compromise the responsibility of the Argentine State before the international system for the promotion and protection of human rights.”

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/06/19/ ... e-reforms/

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CNE of Ecuador Suspends Citizen Revolution Ticket for Presidential Election
JUNE 19, 2023

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The National Electoral Council (CNE) headquarters in Quito, Ecuador. Photo: Prensa Latina.

In Ecuador, two presidential candidates have had their candidacies put on hold after the National Electoral Council (Consejo Nacional Electoral, CNE) detected errors in the registration process. The CNE granted the candidates 48 hours to correct the errors.

The candidates of the Citizen Revolution Movement (Movimiento Revolución Ciudadana, RC), Luisa González and Andrés Arauz, have been suspended, along with those sponsored by the Gente Buena and Construye alliance, Fernando Villavicencio and Andrea González.

The CNE suggests that the momentary disqualification can be resolved by submitting the government plan, outlining general and specific objectives of the multi-year plan, or addressing any deficiencies in the document’s signatures.


Xavier Hervas, another candidate seeking the presidential seat for the Renovación Total (RETO) Movement, is facing an impeachment request for allegedly owning assets in tax havens, which is prohibited in the country.

Hervas already presented his defense before the CNE and declared it is an “unfounded” accusation by the RC Movement to prevent his registration and participation in the early general elections scheduled for August 20.

On the other hand, the electoral authorities validated the participation of candidates Yaku Pérez, Daniel Noboa, Jan Topic, Otto Sonnenholzner and Bolivar Armijos.

It is expected that by August 6, the procedures will be concluded and the final list of registered candidates will be presented.

The electoral campaign is scheduled to begin on August 8 and conclude on August 17, with the presidential debate held on August 13.

Ecuador has managed to advance the general elections after President Guillermo Lasso decreed the “cross death” last May 17, which resulted in the dissolution of the National Assembly and the call for extraordinary elections. More than 13 million citizens have been called to the polls for August 20 to elect the president and vice president, as well as the 137 members of the Legislative Assembly.

https://orinocotribune.com/cne-of-ecuad ... -election/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Thu Jun 22, 2023 2:26 pm

Argentina: Repression Against Indigenous People in Jujuy (+Human Rights in Venezuela)
JUNE 21, 2023

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Indigenous woman in Jujuy playing drums in front of a police blockade as a sign of protest. Photo: Twitter/@PresentesLatam.

Police repression of mass protests regarding provincial constitution reforms—threatening the right to protest and land workers’ rights—have led to at least 68 people being arrested and 170 injured this Tuesday, June 20. The events in the lithium-rich province of Jujuy, Argentina, have mobilized spokespersons of the international community and human rights defenders around the world.

Reforms of the provincial constitution have deepened the differences between union organizations, indigenous communities, social movements, and the regional government of the opposition leader Gerardo Morales. Governor Morales has been in power for the last eight years, and belongs to the right-wing alliance led by former President Mauricio Macri.

Background

The first action of Gerardo Morales, when he became governor, consisted of an express reform of the judicial system, where he expanded the maximum jurisdictional court from five to nine members, including two former deputies of his party.
With the courts in his favor, he began an attack against Milagro Sala of the Túpac Amaru neighborhood association, a social leader who overshadowed his questioned leadership, whom he imprisoned for protesting against his right-wing policies.
He launched a budget cut in the education sector, that caused the closure of numerous courses and a mass layoff of teachers.
Morales promoted a xenophobic campaign against the Plurinational State of Bolivia, with which Jujuy shares a direct border.
Morales endorsed Macri’s “indebtedness” policy, holding a fiscal policy in favor of companies and capitals—foreign and local—mainly associated with lithium exploitation.
Unconstitutional regional constitution reform
With only one month of alleged discussions—behind closed doors—the constitutional reform, modifying 193 of the 212 points of the 1986 Regional Constitution, was approved this Tuesday, with 40 out of 48 possible votes and in the midst of the resignation of leftist assembly members.

Transnational Lithium Occupation in Argentina


The controversy and popular uprising against the provincial constitutional text is centered on at least two major issues:

Criminalization of protests, conditioning the right to permits issued by regional bodies and prohibiting freedom of demonstrations.
Modification of the right to land ownership, incorporating fast-track registration and forced eviction.
Both issues have alarmed and affect the 300+ indigenous communities that inhabit the area of Jujuy, the nerve center of mining and lithium exploitation in Argentina, and part of the US SOUTHCOM-targeted region known as the Lithium Triangles, shared between Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina.

Several legal experts and human rights organizations warn that the reform is incompatible with the rights enshrined for indigenous peoples in international treaties and in the constitution of the Argentinian Republic.


Who is Gerardo Morales?
Morales—a right-wing politician with an unglamorous career in the student movement—formally made his way into politics in 1989, when he became a member of the Jujuy Legislature. In the year 2000, he was called by then-President Fernando de la Rúa to be part of a repressive government, responsible for the worst economic and institutional crisis of the Latin American country.

“For those who do not remember or were not born yet, I recommend once again the series “December 2001″ by director Benjamín Ávila, which has been shown for a few days now on a well-known platform and which narrates the events [of that year] that culminated in the state of siege and the death of 38 Argentinians,” Cristina Kirchner noted regarding Morales. “Paradoxically, the same governor [Gerardo Morales] who today ordered the repression in Jujuy, was a high official of that government of the First Alliance that established the state of siege and was responsible for those deaths.”

Although, in 2011, Morales managed to reach the senate for the minority opposition, by that time he already had a history of electoral defeats in his race for the governorship of the province. This situation was reversed in 2015, thanks to a radical right-wing alliance against Peronism, led by Mauricio Macri.

Destabilizing agenda
Gerardo Morales and the movement Juntos por el Cambio (Together for Change) insist on blaming the government of Alberto Fernández for fueling recent protests, where indigenous movements are demanding their territorial rights and their right to their ancestral lands. In doing so, their movement is following to the letter the discourse of ungovernability promoted by Macri, which seeks to break the national hegemony of Peronism, in view of the upcoming presidential elections, where Morales has been emerging as a possible candidate.

Hágase cargo Gobernador Morales y pare con la locura represiva que su propio accionar ha desatado. Lo que está sucediendo en la Provincia de Jujuy es absoluta responsabilidad suya y usted lo sabe.

Pareciera que la represión salvaje está en su ADN. Usted fue un alto funcionario…

— Cristina Kirchner (@CFKArgentina) June 20, 2023


Contrast with Venezuela
Meanwhile in Venezuela, the Chavista government addressed a similar controversy last week regarding the Yukpa indigenous people using a very radical and different approach. The government sent high-ranking officials to hold meetings with the indigenous community in order to address their demands, following protests in the state of Zulia, bordering Colombia.

The Argentinian government and its foreign ministry, led by Alberto Fernández, have maintained an approach of attacking Venezuela on its alleged so-called bad record of human rights, when in reality the approach of the Chavista government towards social demands is far more humane than those of Argentina and the governments that have accused Venezuela of the contrary, in accordance with US instructions.

https://orinocotribune.com/argentina-re ... venezuela/

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Peruvian judge rejects Pedro Castillo's appeal

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The defense of the former Peruvian president seeks to declare the investigation for which he is serving prison unfounded. | Photo: EFE
Posted June 21, 2023 (6 hours 58 minutes ago)

The magistrate evaluated the charges and determined that the rights of the former Peruvian president are not being violated during the investigation.

The judge of the Supreme Court of Preparatory Investigation, Juan Carlos Checkley, rejected on Tuesday an appeal presented by the defense of former President Pedro Castillo to annul the investigation for the alleged crime of rebellion.

According to the judicial body, the magistrate evaluated the charges and determined that during the investigation the rights of the former president are not being violated, who remains incarcerated in the Barbadillo prison, of the Directorate of Special Operations (Diroes) of the district of Ate, in the province of Lima.

Pedro Castillo was sentenced to 18 months in pretrial detention on charges of alleged rebellion and conspiracy when he tried to dissolve Parliament during the crisis his government faced in 2022. In response to his decision, the Legislature dismissed him through a presidential vacancy.


According to specialists, the former president's defense seeks to have the investigation for which he is serving prison declared unfounded, since Castillo himself maintains that he is innocent of all the charges against him since his arrest.

It also transpired that Congressman Guido Bellido announced an amnesty bill for Castillo. In the text, the official points out that "We prepared an amnesty bill for Pedro Castillo in response to social outcry and popular support."


Bellido pointed out that they elaborate the plan based on precedents and explained that Castillo's action, in the criminal framework, "did not generate a real affectation to legal assets; on the contrary, it reflected a response to political pettiness."

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/juez-per ... -0006.html

Google Translator

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Meanwhile, the Monroe Doctrine goes to the ash heap of history.

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New Wave of Protests Begin as US Troops Enter Perú
JUNE 20, 2023

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Protester arrested during the January Takeover of Lima, Peru. Photo: AP.

By Clau O’Brien Moscoso – Jun 15, 2023

A Third Takeover Of Lima Is The Next Action Planned In The Mobilization Against The Coup Government In Peru.

National Strike, Day 161.


As the parliamentary coup against democratically elected president Pedro Castillo enters its sixth month, the people of Perú continue protests and begin a new wave of coordinated actions throughout the country to prepare for a third Takeover of Lima in July. Despite the coup regime’s various attempts to stifle the uprising that began December 7th and has continued both in the capital city of Lima and in the outer provinces and regions. Despite the Supreme Court ruling declaring protests are not a protected right and Congress trying to take Perú out of the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights , the people have not stopped making their voices heard. With the entrance of hundreds of US military personnel starting on June 1, it is yet to be seen what this deployment means for the movement and the people’s struggle for a plurinational and sovereign nation. Meanwhile, plans continue for a renewed wave of protests.

June 7 marked Flag Day in Perú as well the 6 month anniversary of the Boluarte/ Fujimori coup regime that claimed the lives of over 80 Peruvians during the uprising. Peruvians, particularly in the southern regions of Puno, Arequipa, and Apurímac raised the black and white Peruvian flag honoring those killed during 6 months of dictatorship. Merchants in mercados throughout the country raised the black and white flag. Families of victims and others in places like Ayacucho, Junin, and in Lima staged a “lavado” (wash) in public squares where they were washing flags in buckets of soap and water (to metaphorically get the blood of their slain children and other martyrs and abuses of this dictatorship off the flag), amid continuous organizing towards the July 19th Third Takeover Of Lima where delegations of people from outer regions into Lima to demand the ouster of the Boularte regime, the closure of Congress, and justice for the victims, among other demands.

As with much of this popular uprising, the southern region of Puno has provided leadership to the struggle. On May 30, all of Puno observed a full strike (paro seco) that had all storefronts, hostels, and restaurants closed in observance of the call made by Popular Assembly. Through various formations, both longstanding and newly formed in the past six months, popular assemblies have been converging throughout the regions and macro regions of the country to plan for the upcoming delegations heading to Lima, and also to plan more local actions like the May 30 strike. More importantly, popular assemblies meet to discuss the character of a popular, sovereign, and plurinational constituent assembly. Other regions, like Arequipa , have also agreed to the Third Takeover of Lima for mid July while also planning local actions in the lead up to the mass march on the capital, according to Yasmani Cayo, president of Frente de Defensa del Avelino.

The Boluarte regime declared an additional 60 days of a State of Emergency for Puno in response to the planned protests. The next day resulted in tense scenes in the Puno city of Juliaca between police and mourners jostling to lower the flag at half mast, but no deadlier interactions were reported. With this round of renewed protests and major mobilizations to the capital city of Lima, the mobilized masses have yet to face the brutality of whatever training the Peruvian Armed Forces are receiving from the additional 1,000 US military troops. As President of Cuba Miguel Diaz-Canel recently replied when asked about the entrance of US troops to Perú, “that is interference, that is aggression. A country that respects itself does not allow that. That is an attack against the sovereignty of a nation, it is to end self determination… Behind this, it shows the interest to assault and be present in the problems of our countries as an element of domination.”

As government contracts with the Department of Defense flood Lima, particularly the Naval Medical Research Unit Six (NAMRU-6 ), the primary source of infectious diseases research in the Latin American region for the US Navy, it’s clear that the US is further entrenching itself in Perú not only to help clamp down the popular uprising inside the country, but also as a threat to the region of what happens when the people elect a government promising to have the resources of the country benefit the masses.

https://orinocotribune.com/new-wave-of- ... nter-peru/

Latin America is No Longer a US Backyard
JUNE 20, 2023

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Latin America is no longer the quiet backyard of the United States, a commentator of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) said, quoted by KCNC on Wednesday. Photo: Prensa Latina.

By Ileana Ferrer Fonte – Jun 14, 2023

In the face of the domination and hegemony attempts of the world superpower, a wave of independence and political and economic integration is rising in Latin America, Paek Kwang-Myong stated in an article on local media.

The text recalls that the US plans to take over the continent goes back from the early 19th century when President James Monroe launched a doctrine identified with his name that essentially stipulated “America for the Americans.”

Paek recalls that countless US invasions, interference, and meddling in Latin America, including the seizure of territories by force, followed since then and cites the blockades against Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua as the most recent aggressions.

But times have changed; the Latin American peoples’ determination to live and develop independently and solve the problems that affect them is strengthening, which will eventually end the domination of these lands by the United States, he affirms.

https://orinocotribune.com/latin-americ ... -backyard/

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The highest authority of the Communist Party in Shanghai and secretary of the Municipal Committee, Chen Jining, receives the President Xiomara Castro. June 9, 2023.

Xiomara Castro arrives in China for historic 6-day visit
June 9, 2023

Honduran President Xiomara Castro has arrived in China on Friday, starting what is called by both sides a “historic visit.”

This is Castro’s first visit to China. She is also the first Honduran President to pay a state visit to the country. Her visit comes on the heels of the inauguration of China’s Embassy to Honduras, less than three months of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Honduras.

Hailing bilateral ties has ushered in a new chapter at a quick pace, officials and experts from both countries hold confidence that cooperation on multiple fields and closer exchanges are about to set off in full swing.

‘A historic meeting’

Castro would visit China from June 9 to 14 and she wrote on Twitter “the refounding of Honduras demands new political, scientific, technical, commercial and cultural horizons.”

“We are delighted to visit China and will travel with the President to several cities so that we can get to know each other and strengthen our bilateral relations, fostering an everlasting China-Honduras friendship,” Hector Zelaya, secretary of Castro, said in an interview with the China Media Group (CMG) ahead of the visit.

During Castro’s visit, the two heads of state will have a historic meeting to jointly chart the course for further growth of bilateral relations, according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

Discussions between the two leaders are anticipated to center around the augmentation of Honduras’ agricultural exports to the Chinese market, extending China’s investment in Honduras, and collaborative endeavors under the Belt and Road Initiative, forging paths towards shared development and connectivity between the two countries.

“China looks forward to working with Honduras and taking this visit as an opportunity to deepen mutual trust, expand cooperation, enhance friendship, and promote the steady and sustained development of the bilateral relations,” said Wang Wenbin, spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, on Wednesday.

Quick-pace development

On March 26, 2023, China and Honduras officially established diplomatic relations, opening a new chapter for bilateral relations.

Officials from both countries said that since the establishment of diplomatic ties, the two countries have delivered on their commitments and worked together with a sense of urgency to bring bilateral relations to a fast track with the principles and objectives of mutual respect, equality, mutual benefit and common development in mind.

Members of the media were in the first Honduran delegation to visit China after the two countries established diplomatic ties.

From April 30 to May 9, about 30 reporters from Honduran radio, TV, newspapers and social media platforms, visited Chinese cities, including Guizhou, Chongqing, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Shanghai, to experience the country’s economic, social and cultural development on different dimensions.

On June 2, Castro appointed Salvador Moncada as the first ambassador of Honduras to China.

Three days later, the inauguration ceremony of the Chinese Embassy in Honduras was held in Honduran capital Tegucigalpa.

All the Chinese diplomats at the embassy, representatives from the Honduran government and National Congress, renowned figures from various sectors, members of the diplomatic corps and representatives from Chinese institutions and the Chinese community in Honduras attended the event.

“The newly opened Chinese Embassy in Honduras will serve as a bridge between the two countries for deeper political mutual trust, more practical cooperation and closer friendship between the two peoples,” said Wang at Tuesday’s press conference commenting on the event.

‘Great potential, great benefits’

Noting that establishing Honduras-China diplomatic ties is an independent and courageous historic decision, Manuel Antonio Diaz, attorney general of Honduras, said that no country can ignore China’s status and role in the global economy, finance and trade.

According to Chinese Customs statistics, trade between China and Honduras reached $1.589 billion in 2022.

Honduran Foreign Minister Eduardo Enrique Reina told CMG that the two countries will begin trade talks “soon.” He noted that the two countries are evaluating other products such as shrimp and melons, adding China has also expressed interest in buying Honduran products such as beef and bananas.

“There will be new possibilities for the Honduran people to fight against poverty, and new opportunities to enhance the Honduran economy and its development,” Reina said in another interview with CGTN.

Other Honduran officials expressed willingness to cooperate with China under the Belt and Road Initiative.

Notably, the construction of Honduras’ Patuca III dam project, was successfully finished by the Power Construction Corporation of China. Building upon this fruitful collaboration, Honduras now looks to secure China’s assistance for the Patuca II project, further cementing their partnership in advancing sustainable energy solutions.

As China has embarked a journey for high-quality development, it is able to provide great opportunities for Honduras to boost regional, agricultural and also tourist development, Rong Ying, vice president of the China Institute of International Studies told CGTN.

“So, great potential and certainly great benefits for the two countries,” he added.

https://kawsachunnews.com/xiomara-castr ... -day-visit

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Presence of two Iranian banks in Brazil nearly certain
June 8, 2023

The Secretariat of the Joint Iran-Brazil Chamber of Commerce held the first joint meeting between managers of the public, and private sectors, banks, and heads of specialized commissions of the joint chamber as well as the Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Brasilia in order to regulate and synergize the capacities and capabilities of the newly established trade center in the south American country as well as the joint chamber.

The meeting was held with the aim of developing increased trade relations between the two countries at the same time as the opening of a trade center in the South American country.

Seyed Fakhreddin Amerian, the chairman of the Iran-Brazil chamber pointed to the capabilities and capacities that the Iranian companies have to increase exports to Brazil and said that the chamber will spare no efforts to help the Iranian-made products get to the Brazilian market by analyzing and introducing the South American country’s markets.

He described the Brazilian market as a gateway to the greater Latin American market.

“This year, we will send an Iranian trade delegation to Sao Paulo headed by the Iranian trade center in Brazil, and we will hold large and important economic talks between Iranian and Brazilian businessmen after many years,” Amerian added.

“This year, we will witness the presence of a number of Iranian banks in Brazil, the presence of two of which has already become almost a certainty. Together with the trade center, they will help businessmen to establish secure financial and banking relationships,” the Iranian economic official said.

In the meeting, Iran’s ambassador to Brazil, Hossein Gharibi considered the opening of the Iranian trade center in Brazil as one of the best economic opportunities for the presence of Iranian companies in the Brazilian market.

Across the pond, Iranian Foreign Minister Hosein Amir Abdolahian and his Brazilian counterpart Mauro Vieira met on Friday in Cape Town, South Africa, on the sidelines of the BRICS summit.

Abdolahian reaffirmed Iran’s readiness to formalize and sign a comprehensive long-term cooperation plan with Brazil and invited his Brazilian counterpart to visit Tehran.

https://kawsachunnews.com/presence-of-t ... ly-certain

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President Comandante Daniel and Compañera Rosario Vice President of Nicaragua welcome Ebrahim Raisi President of the Islamic Republic of Iran. June 13, 2023. Photo: Jairo Cajina

Commander Daniel welcomes President Ebrahim Raisi to Nicaragua (transcript)
June 14, 2023

Below is a transcript of the remarks by President of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, and President of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi in Managua during the second leg of the Iranian president’s tour of three Latin American nations.


President Comandante Daniel
and Compañera Rosario
Vice President of Nicaragua
welcome His Excellency Ebrahim Raisi
President of the Islamic Republic of Iran
June 13, 2023



Words of Daniel

Beloved Nicaraguan Brothers and Sisters; beloved Youth, Divine Treasure; beloved young people, representing hundreds of orchestras
Young people who have been organizing throughout the country thanks to the Revolution.

These are signs from God, and we share with the People of Iran whose President is visiting us here in Nicaragua today, we share that deep faith in the God of all Times, the God of all Triumphs, the God of all Victories, in the God of Peace.

Here with us, Brother President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi. Welcome to Nicaragua!

These are the signs of Heaven, the signs of God, because it is no coincidence that the Revolution in Iran triumphed in 1979, with Ayatollah Ruhollah Mousavi Khomeini, and that the Sandinista Revolution triumphed in 1979. That is why we have always said and repeated that we are twin Revolutions, with deep roots in defense of our Identity, in defense of the well-being of our Peoples, and in permanent struggle against the empires, which throughout history 

have tried to take over these lands, these peoples, these continents, in Latin America and the Caribbean; in North America, the same; in Africa, in Asia, in Eurasia.

That is, they have always wanted to dominate the world, not for good, but for evil. It is the so-called European “Civilization” that in past centuries acted the most brutal way in which human beings, children, entire families can be treated.

Slavery is the best example of what deep down those who say they respect human rights really are, they are the ones who trafficked in slaves and turned human beings into merchandise, moving them from those regions and then across to Europe to then transfer that enslaved force to these lands, to these continents that were being conquered using the force of the Cross and the Sword, which was a true blasphemy against Christ.
Yes, they used the Cross and the Sword to steal the lands of our indigenous ancestors, rob them, trying to steal their Identity, trying to steal their Soul, their Heart. But, with the same fortitude with which the Cacique Nicarao and the Cacique Diriangén dealt the first great blow to the invaders led by Gil González, 500 years ago, on April 5th in perfect coordination between Cacique Nicarao and Cacique Diriangén, they managed to ambush the Spanish who thought they had already managed to subjugate our Native Peoples. And they were defeated and had to withdraw from Nicaragua at that time.

And in these lands the rebellious spirit of the first anti-imperialist Heroes of these lands was sown, when the names of countries in the region had not yet been invented, they were times in which these lands became subject to those people to whom the monarchs distributed them, lands the monarchs handed over to the conquerors. They were giving away what was not theirs!

The European empires, all without exception, were great aggressors and exploiters of Peoples in different regions of the Earth, and the truth is that this practice has not disappeared, because it is the very essence of those Empires, and still they want to offer lessons in human rights, lessons in democracy, they want to give lessons to our Peoples, but our Peoples have that force that emanates through time from our chieftains.

Then came Yankee expansionism, and the English disputed territories from the Spanish; and in their eagerness, the United States, through a group of racists, slaveholders, in the years 1852 to 1854, looked towards Nicaragua.

In Nicaragua there were no large amounts of gold as in other countries in the region, there was no great wealth in Nicaragua, it was a very small population, a very small territory, but when the conquistadors began to arrive, they discovered that there was a natural passage through which a transit route could be opened between the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, and North American businessmen, shipowners, of course very much related to the Government of the day, came and made agreements with the sell-outs who were fighting over the government in Nicaragua, and for what? To open up a transit route.

In other words, the United States opened a transit route in Nicaragua in those years, because the conquistadors had found that there was a natural route across Nicaragua, the San Juan River, the Great Lake of Nicaragua, and through there we then had the Caribbean joined with the Pacific zone via those two spaces, the river and the lake, and what was left was just a small stretch on the Isthmus of Rivas, 12, 14 kilometers, so that the transit across Nicaragua could then operate; a transit that in no way benefited the Nicaraguan people, bringing instead, humiliation, pain, blood and fire.
And why was it so desirable and so urgent for American businessmen, Vanderbilt’s companies? Cornelio Vanderbilt, a tycoon of the time, came up with the idea of organizing the Transit Company, and this he agreed with the sell-outs who gave him the right to organize the Transit Company.

And what was the Transit Company’s business at a time when the Gold Rush had begun in the United States and thousands of Americans were traveling across the entire territory from the East Coast to the West Coast, in difficult conditions, having to cross deserts and everything else?

Thus, the US shipowner found it was safer and even faster to make the journey by sea from the East Coast of the United States, starting with ships of great capacity at the time and transporting passengers to the East Coast of Nicaragua, disembarking them, and then embarking them on smaller ships able to transit the lake and the river, and on the other side another large ship was waiting to take the passengers to the West Coast of the United States.

Thousands of Americans traveled that route. And what did that mean for Nicaragua? What it meant for Nicaragua was a tragedy, because in that situation a group of US mercenaries organized supposedly to support the government that had given the concession to Vanderbilt. But there were already other US companies trying to contest the passage.

And then, in those circumstances, a US slave owner and lawyer, William Walker, came along and called elections, he counted the votes himself and appointed himself President of Nicaragua; and the US Ambassador participated in that ceremony. But the Nicaraguan people united, those who loved their nation, those who loved their Dignity, and they carried the fight against the filibusters from the United States who were better armed, better provisioned and in the end these were defeated by a People fighting with their Soul, with their Heart.
Here we can never forget the feat of Andrés Castro, a simple Nicaraguan who was defending his position, and a gringo, a Yankee hurled himself towards him with his rifle, but Andrés grabbed a stone and knocked him down with the stone.

The years have passed but with the passing of the years the United States launched itself with even greater voracity against Nicaragua. And what were they looking for? Control of Nicaragua, so that no other country could develop that Canal with Nicaragua.

They made the Panama Canal, but already now the Panama Canal, even taking into account its expansion, is really lacking, and another transit route is needed. That is why, when we have discussed the matter here in Nicaragua and we have worked to develop the Canal, immediately comes the campaign of the forces opposed to the Revolution, the US government and others, who start up their offensive to try and prevent that project from getting under way.
I mentioned to the President that Nicaragua has really been a country attacked like no other in Latin America and the Caribbean, by invasions of US troops, the United States Army, always seeking to dominate Nicaragua so as to have control of that Canal route. They see, they know that this Canal is necessary but they do not want the Nicaraguan people to own the Canal, which is, let’s say, the resource, the wealth of Nicaragua, and which has turned the United States into a fierce enemy of Nicaragua, because they do not want to lose control of Nicaragua. However, here the People decide, the People decide, and the People defeated the Yankees in 1855-1856, and Walker ran away and had to send for US ships to be brought from the United States, to rescue him.

Then came another stage of opening, of Revolution, led by General José Santos Zelaya, against whom, because he chose a policy independent of the United States, the United States began to conspire and used US agents to start provoking acts of terrorism here in Nicaragua, and here in Nicaragua, they managed to blow up a ship.

So President Zelaya ordered the arrest of the people who had blown up the ship, whoever it was, and among other people arrested there turned out to be two Americans. And the Yankee government made threats. But what Zelaya then did was to apply the law the same as they apply it in the United States, that is, since the two terrorists confessed, they were shot.

Then came another invasion of the Yankees here in Nicaragua to defeat Zelaya, but always the People fought back, and General Benjamin Zeledón gave battle against the Yankee troops who landed and invaded our territories to impose a puppet government.

Later, our General Sandino confronted the invaders, and they couldn’t defeat him and they had to abandon Nicaragua, they had to leave Nicaragua. And in the list that they have in the United States of the defeats the United States has suffered, there they have the defeat dealt to them by Sandino.

Well, I’m not going to do more than cite these fundamental elements of our history that explain why it was that the banner of Sandino, the banner of Andrés Castro, of José Dolores Estrada, the banner of Zeledón, the banner of Cacique Diriangén and of Cacique Nicarao, entered victoriously on July 19th with the Triumph of the Sandinista Revolution.

Today, beloved Brother President, we welcome you, your Delegation, Brother Hossein Amirabdollahian, Minister of Foreign Affairs; General Mohammad Reza Gharaei Ashtiani, Minister of Defense and Logistics of the Armed Forces; Brother Bahram Eynollahi, Minister of Health, Treatments and Medical Education; Brother Javad Oyí, Minister of Oil; Brother Mohammad Mehdi Mofateh, Deputy of the Islamic Consultative Assembly; Brother Mohammad Jamshidi, Deputy Head for Political Affairs of the Office of the President of the Republic; and the Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Nicaragua, Mr. Majid Salehi.

And we welcome the First Lady of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Dr. Jamileh-Sadat Alamolhoda.

And on this day, this afternoon, at this historic site in the Plaza of the Non-Aligned Countries, in honor of General Omar Torrijos, who managed to rescue the Panama Canal, we pay tribute to him and also to our Heroes and Martyrs, to all the Heroes and Martyrs of Iran, and in particular to General Qasem Soleimani, who was assassinated by Yankee imperialism when he was fighting terrorism, while the Yankees encouraged terrorism, and the Yankees calmly accepted that they committed that crime.
But that does not bend the Iranian People and does not frighten the Peoples of the world, there was a condemnation of that crime, the world’s Peoples have condemned that crime; and on this day, welcoming the President of Iran, we observe a minute of silence for the Martyr of the Islamic Republic of Iran, General Qasem Soleimani.

Long live the Martyr of Iran,
General Qasem Soleimani!

Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!

Long live the People of Iran!

Sandino Lives, the Struggle Goes On!

A Free Nation or Death!



Words of Comrade Ebrahim Raisí, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

In the Name of God, thanks be to God, may the Peace of God be upon our Prophet and all his Family.

I would like to thank my beloved Brother President Daniel Ortega for inviting the delegation of the Islamic Republic of Iran, so that myself and the delegation that accompanies me have the opportunity to visit the brotherly and friendly country of Nicaragua.

I pay tribute and my respects to the National Heroes of the brotherly and friendly country of Nicaragua; I also pay my respects to the heroic, patient, resilient and combative People of Nicaragua.

The Islamic Revolution in Iran triumphed in February 1979 and at the same time coincided too with the triumph of the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua. Certainly, the struggle and effort of our Peoples during those Revolutions influenced one another.

Our people know very well the struggles, efforts and movement of the Nicaraguan people. You fought against imperialism, and you triumphed. You fought against the plunder, the illegitimate demands and desires of imperialism, and you triumphed. During all those years you resisted against the conspiracies of imperialism, and you triumphed.

Ruhollah Khomeini, the Founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, taught our People: By fulfilling two Principles one can always succeed: Trust in God and trust in ourselves, in our abilities.

And the great People of Iran knew very well the conspiracies, the tricks and the plans of the imperialist enemies, and resisted in the face of all their conspiracies, resisted during the eight years of the war imposed on them, and triumphed.

There is a lot of similarity between the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the Sandinista Revolution of the People of Nicaragua. Movement in search of Justice, Independence and Freedom are the principles that both Revolutions have in common. The People of Iran wanted their whole destiny and all their social, economic, political interactions to be based on their religious principles.

The system of the Islamic Republic of Iran is a democratic system, during the 44 years of the Islamic Republic of Iran it has always been the popular vote that has decided the authorities of all government bodies.

Those in the West and in the United States pretending they are democratic and defend democracy, act to the contrary 

and do not respect countries and governments that are always elected with the popular vote of their Peoples. They lie about their claims to democracy and human rights. We have witnessed many examples of their violations of human rights in different parts of the world, perpetrated by the United States and by world imperialism.

The United States wanted to paralyze our People through threats and sanctions, but our People did not paralyze their progress, turning threats and sanctions into opportunities, and through those opportunities they achieved great progress in different areas.

Today, the Iranian nation is an advanced nation and has made great progress in different areas despite the enemy’s coercive measures. This shows that if a People has a firm will, there is no way the diabolical and imperialist Powers can stop it.
I would like to say to you, to the resilient and heroic People of Nicaragua and to the Brothers of the Government of Nicaragua, that, as our Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini says, Victory can be achieved through two principles: the first is to believe in God, to have Faith in God, as you mentioned very well, Mr. President Ortega, everything comes from God; and the second principle is to have hope in the future.

The enemy wants to disappoint the Revolutionary Peoples. But the Peoples can be sure that a New World Order is going to be formed and is being formed in favor of the resistance of the Peoples and against imperialist interests.

The United States and the imperialists created the terrorist group Daesh, and the Hero of the fight against terrorism was the Martyr General Qasem Soleimani, killed by the United States. We have the honor of being those who have resisted and fought against terrorism, and we believe that they have earned the hatred of the Peoples for pretending to fight terrorism, but murdered a Hero who fought against terrorism all his life.

Since the beginning of the Victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, there has been an excellent fraternal relationship with our Brothers of the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua. Our relationships are not the usual, traditional relationships, for they are completely strategic relationships. We want to increase and deepen our relations in all areas, political, economic, cultural, and in all fields, especially in the field of science and technology.

I would like to express my infinite gratitude for the warm welcome by President Daniel Ortega, Vice President Murillo, the presidents of the judicial power and of the National Assembly of Nicaragua, and all the authorities of the different institutions of the Nicaraguan Government and the Nicaraguan People.
I am going to conclude my remarks because it is time to pray, we are going to fulfill the prayer, and also continue our conversations and negotiations with President Ortega and his work team. And I ask Almighty God, to help us first to know what our Duty is, and then to fulfill it well.

Finally, I would like to pay tribute again to all the Heroes and Martyrs of Nicaragua who during these 44 Years have fought for their Dignity, for the Dignity of their People, and also to pay tribute and my respects to the Heroic, Noble and Resilient People of Nicaragua. Thank you very much.

By Kawsachun News

https://kawsachunnews.com/commander-dan ... transcript

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Six US Citizens Indicted in Venezuela on Conspiracy Charges and Related Crimes (+Operation Gideon)
JUNE 21, 2023

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US mercenary Airan Berry after being captured by Venezuelan authorities in 2020, following the failure of the coup plot known as Operation Gideon. Photo: Screenshot of VTV video/File photo.

According to a report by news outlet Últimas Noticias, “seven men and one woman of US nationality are being criminally prosecuted in Venezuela,” according to records from the Ministry for the Penitentiary Service published this Tuesday, June 20.

It is worth noting that six of the eight Americans detained are being prosecuted for conspiracy and related offenses. Two of the prosecuted have already sentenced to 24 years in prison each: Airan Berry and Luke Alexander Denman. According to the investigation of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, both were captured on May 3, 2020, in Chuao (Aragua state), when they came to execute US-backed Operation Gideon, aimed at the overthrow of President Nicolás Maduro.

It should be further noted that Berry and Denman are former US soldiers and were hired by mercenary contractor Silvercorp USA—owned by former Green Beret Jordan Goudreau—to carry out mercenary operations in Venezuelan territory, under a contract signed by Juan Guaidó, who had presented himself to the world as the so-called “interim president” of Venezuela.

Últimas Noticias reports that both US nationals “admitted their participation in the mercenary plot, and consequently the Fourth Anti-Terrorist Court sentenced them on May 3, 2021, for conspiracy, criminal association, illicit trafficking of weapons of war, and terrorism.”

The other defendants charged with conspiracy and criminal association are Jerrel Lloyd Kenemore and Eylin Alexis Hernández, captured in San Antonio del Táchira for entering Venezuela illegally in November 2022.

Jason George Saab, captured in Zulia, is being “prosecuted for conspiracy, resistance to authority, and criminal association,” while Joseph Ryan Cristella, also captured in Táchira in October 2022, is being prosecuted for conspiracy against the Venezuelan state.

https://orinocotribune.com/six-us-citiz ... on-gideon/
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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Sat Jul 01, 2023 2:37 pm

Ecuador’s Lasso Subordinates Foreign Policy to US Interests, Expert Says
JUNE 29, 2023

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Ecuadorean ruler Guillermo Lasso and US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Western Hemisphere Daniel Erikson. Photo: Twitter/@LassoGuillermo.

Less than two months before the presidential elections in Ecuador, President Lasso met with political envoys from Washington to discuss security issues. Spanish sociologist Decio Machado told Sputnik that “Ecuador’s international policy and the fight against drugs” obey US geopolitical interests.

On June 21, Guillermo Lasso met at the Carondelet presidential palace in Quito with US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Western Hemisphere Affairs Daniel Erikson to discuss security issues and organized crime associated with drug trafficking in Ecuador—at least, according to what their governments stated.

Following the meeting, which was attended by Ecuador’s Minister of Defense Luis Lara and US ambassador to the South American country Michael Fitzpatrick, Quito announced that a memorandum of understanding would be drawn up between the two nations to establish an integral security and peace strategy through an action plan establishing cooperation mechanisms, local media reported.

In a conversation with Sputnik, Machado explained that Lasso’s foreign policy “is subordinated to the geopolitical interests of the United States.”

The expert argued that through a new cycle of progressive governments in the region, there has been a shift in regional geopolitics not aligned with Washington that “seeks neutrality, independence and autonomy with respect to US international political interests.”

According to Machado, the White House seeks to position Ecuador as a center of operations in the American Pacific region, replacing Colombia–the country that held that position for many years—after the arrival of Gustavo Petro, who has criticized US influence in Colombia.

“Ecuador is a small country,” said Machado. “It does not have the same geostrategic and geopolitical importance as Colombia, which is a country with a much more important economy… The US has no other possibility but to transfer that capacity of influence and operational focuses in the region.”

This new regional geopolitical scenario is also framed within the existing instability in Peru, “where the change of government and the imprisonment of [Pedro] Castillo generate a logic in which it is not very clear how Peruvian politics will develop in the coming years,” Machado pointed out.

Machado maintains that Ecuadorian policy, at the international level, is subordinated to Washington’s geopolitical interests, a context in which the visit of Undersecretary Daniel Erikson to Quito took place, despite Lasso’s controversial decision of dissolving the Parliament. This decision allows Lasso to rule by decree until the upcoming presidential elections.

“Ecuador’s international policy and the Ecuadorian anti-narcotics fight are tremendously mortgaged to the US,” Machado added.

According to the analyst, Washington “extends its borders in the fight against drugs,” transferring them to Ecuador, “and a large part of the level of violence that is developing in the South American country, with more than 4,500 deaths per year, has to do with this dynamic.”

“The drug problem is not in the country [Ecuador], but where they receive the drugs, which in this case is in the US,” Machado said.

In this context, the bilateral cooperation agreements between Quito and Washington “are fundamentally focused on strengthening technical capacities in the fight against crime and the fight against drug gangs. The rest is secondary for the Americans,” Machado said.

Machado stated that the memorandum of understanding between the countries responds “to the interests of the United States and not of Ecuador.”

“At the same time, it demonstrates the internal incapacities of our Armed Forces, which have no capacity on their own or to generate regional agreements to combat drug trafficking or, as Brazil has done with Paraguay or Bolivia, intra-regional agreements to share intelligence,” Machado added.

The sociologist regretted that “this is happening two months before the new presidential elections in Ecuador and is evidently related to the fact that it is very possible and feasible that the political winds will change in the country; that is, that a progressive option will triumph.”

Therefore, “the US has an interest in signing long-term agreements before a new government arrives, in order to consolidate these agreements with the Armed Forces, regardless of who is sitting in the presidential palace in Carondelet,” Machado concluded.

https://orinocotribune.com/ecuadors-las ... pert-says/

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THE ILLUSION AROUND THE LITHIUM TRIANGLE
Betzabeth Aldana Vivas

June 30, 2023 , 5:11 p.m.

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Global lithium production is crucial in defense matters (Photo: Getty Images)

After mapping the dynamics on lithium in South America with:

Geopolitics and the challenges around Bolivian lithium https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/la ... -boliviano
The corporate agenda that defines the lithium strategy in Chile https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/la ... o-en-chile
The transnational occupation of lithium in Argentina ... https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/la ... -argentina

...it is pertinent to address the geopolitical significance of the brand new "Lithium Triangle", a salt-bearing space in which these three Latin American countries form the vertices where the world's largest reserves of this precious mineral lie.

There is talk that up to now it corresponds to 60% of the total world reserves , more than half of what the planet has and with a tendency to increase, due to the fact that investments for exploration activities continue and, in recent years , the identified lithium resources have increased substantially.

Of the three Latin American countries mentioned, Bolivia is the one with the most mineral reserves. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) indicated in its 2021 annual report that Bolivia had more than 21 million tons of lithium , becoming the first country in the ranking of reserves.

For any commodity market, the reserves of a resource achieve their profitability by being exploited. In the case of Bolivia, the lithium industry is in the nascent process. A few days ago, the State managed to sign agreements for the extraction of the vast Bolivian lithium deposits with the Chinese company Citic Guoan and the Russian company Uranium One Group, after a long bidding process to form part of the new lithium industrial stage. in Bolivia.


Both companies offer Direct Lithium Extraction (EDL) technology, a fundamental technique to extract it and that is more efficient than the evaporation technique. In addition, it has been well said that Bolivian lithium contains high levels of magnesium that make the separation process difficult in order to obtain a mineral with a considerable percentage of purity.

Purity levels in ores are important because they determine the quality of the final product, and higher concentrations lead to higher yields per ton processed, which makes it more profitable. And by being profitable, the product becomes attractive to the global market.

The specialized finance magazine Forbes published at the beginning of this year that lithium prices closed 2022 with an increase of 72.5% compared to 2021. Even this appreciation in market prices made lithium enter the list of commodities , taking a leap into trading, where supply and demand are now part of its exchange ecosystem, as it offers attractive potential in returns and financial diversification.

Image

By November 2022, the Argentine government announced the progress of signing an agreement with the European Union (EU) to attract investment in the lithium value chain so that it would work like any other commodity . On June 13, Argentine President Alberto Fernández and the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, signed the Memorandum of Understanding of the Strategic Association on Sustainable Value Chains in Raw Materials . Von der Leyen commented that it was "an important step that will be mutually beneficial, for example on lithium, to see how we can develop new value chains that go beyond mere extraction."

In the previous installment " The transnational occupation of lithium in Argentina, it was explained that the exploration, extraction and commercialization of lithium in that country are almost completely handled by large transnational companies and with no political or participation of the Argentine State in the chain of value of that mineral The agreement with the EU would not move away from that commercial logic, much less with presidential elections on the horizon.

On the other hand, in Chile, the important Chinese electromobility company BYD entered the game for Chilean lithium together with the State to produce 50,000 tons per year of lithium ferrophosphate cathode material.

However, the American company Albemarle Lithium sets the standard in the lithium business. Despite the announcement by Chilean President Gabriel Boric about the creation of the National Lithium Company, the transnational's contract to operate in Chile is set until 2043. With a constituent process in the hands of the conservatives and the validity of the contract, there is no nothing that worries the CEO of that company.

In this sense, lithium -with its three nationalities- is projected differently in terms of the real participation of the State in each project.

Bolivia begins its lithium industrialization roadmap with the support of companies from China and Russia, leaving an important footprint in the productive development of this mineral to generate tangible benefits for the country.
To a lesser extent, Chile seems to be following a "nationalist" policy, which, although it has been ambiguous and not much detail has been published about it, everything indicates that the lithium development process in that country could slow down due to the recent applied policies are superficial for the competitive weight in which foreign companies orbit.
And Argentina, by history and legal architecture, private companies are the ones that hold the reins of the lithium industry with few royalties for the State.
It is understood that the transnational private sector, in addition to bringing experience and innovation to the table, has the necessary capital to install the necessary industrial park and thus extract and process lithium in order to materialize its sale in the large global markets.

Last year there was talk of the creation of an "OPEC for lithium", but given the signs described that each country in the famous triangle applies different ways on the management of the mineral internally, the scenario of forming an organization that can promote the consensus between States to balance their market, and that, above all, world prices are not defined only by the transnationals.

To date, none of the three presidents that make up the triangle countries have met to discuss lithium issues, not even in formats such as a consultation mechanism and exchange of experiences.

Lithium is not only important because it is the raw material for the manufacture of batteries. It is an important mineral and considered strategic. Specifically, the United States adopted that category. Even the head of the Southern Command, Laura Richardson, publicly said that Latin America imports to the White House for its natural resources, noting that "the lithium triangle, which is necessary for technology; today 60% of that material It is located in the lithium triangle between Argentina, Bolivia and Chile".

In other words, at a commercial level it is essential, but at a military level it is much more so, since lithium batteries are found in the weapons systems used by the United States Department of Defense, to a large extent in its portable equipment. Also, such batteries provide more power with less weight.

In June 2022, Washington quietly signed a "mineral security partnership" (MSP) with the European Commission, Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Sweden, and the United States. United Kingdom. The State Department initiative was dubbed by Reuters a "metal NATO," described as a coalition of countries that are committed to "responsible critical mineral supply chains to support economic prosperity and climate goals." In this way, a kind of militarization of lithium is being promoted to elevate the mineral to a security category.

In addition to this, the company DNK Power published an article describing that weapons and high-performance military equipment require energy storage with great reliability, security, and high performance.

The global production of lithium is crucial in defense matters, and this element is always a priority for countries like the United States, China and Russia. Lithium is added to the list of resources in the scenario of competition and geopolitical struggle.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/la ... -del-litio

Google Translator

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Bolivia To Process Lithium With Russian and Chinese Companies

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The world's biggest salt flat in Uyuni, Bolivia. | Photo: Twitter/ @pameduam

Published 30 June 2023 (22 hours 28 minutes ago)

The Arce administration agrees with Chinese and Russian companies on the implementation of Direct Lithium Extraction technology in two salt flats.


On Thursday, Bolivian President Luis Arce signed agreements with China's Citic Guoan and Russia's Uranium One Group for the application of their Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) technologies in two salt flats, with a total investment of US$1.4 billion.

These agreements add to the one signed in January with the Chinese consortium CATL BRUNP & CMOC (CBC). President Arce pointed out that Bolivia has signed deals for the industrialization of lithium worth US$2.8 billion in the first half of 2023.

He said the signing of these agreements is of "singular importance" as it demonstrates that the Bolivian economy "cannot depend on a single product," referring to natural gas, which was the basis of national economic growth until a few years ago.

Arce also emphasized that four companies will operate in the Bolivian salt flats, including three foreign companies and the state-owned Bolivian Lithium Deposits (YLB). He highlighted that the national reserve allows for "many more firms."

Hydrocarbons and Energy Minister Franklin Molina recalled that the selection process for DLE technology began in 2021 and that the first step was the CBC agreement.

This “drills” are around the world. Here in Peru our congress gave authorization for US military to enter the country with weapons. It was in the news a couple of days ago. https://t.co/opiLEY5tHz

— Milagros Quiñones G.R. (@Artemisa444) June 25, 2023
Molina emphasized that the second "crucial" step was the signing of agreements with Citic Guoan, a leader in DLE technology with battery and electric vehicle manufacturing, and with Uranium One Group, which has 70 years of experience in lithium processing and battery manufacturing as well.

The agreements include the construction of two DLE processing plants in the areas of Pastos Grandes and Uyuni Norte, both located in the Potosi region, where a minimum of 45,000 tons of lithium will be produced annually.

Through these agreements, the Arce administration aims to produce around 100,000 tons of lithium carbonate by 2025. Bolivia possesses estimated lithium reserves of 21 million tons, distributed in Uyuni, Pastos Grandes, and Coipasa.

Currently, this Andean country has a potassium chloride industrialization plant, a lithium carbonate pilot plant, and another plant under construction for lithium industrialization.

These facilities will be able to produce up to 25,000 tons per year of battery-grade lithium carbonate with 99.5 percent purity, employing semi-industrial and industrial processes in the evaporitic chain.

The Arce administration also seeks to coordinate with Chile, Argentina, and Peru to enhance regional development through the utilization of lithium.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Bol ... -0012.html
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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Wed Jul 05, 2023 2:44 pm

Letter to My ‘Progressive’ Friends
JULY 3, 2023

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Chilean President Gabriel Boric. Photo: Al Mayadeen.

By Sacha Llorenti – Jun 27, 2023

The recent speech of Chilean President Gabriel Boric at the Summit of South American Countries calls for a debate on the meaning of the term “progressive.” This word appears in almost every reference to the political moment Latin America is going through and there is talk of a “second progressive wave” or attempts to place under this umbrella a wide variety of political positions.

Fraternally, I ask you: can someone who repeatedly attacks Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua without considering the serious aggression of the United States against those countries be considered “progressive?” Is participation in the UNITAS military maneuvers organized by the Southern Command and carried out within the framework of the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR) “progressive?” Is it “progressive” to support NATO? Is it “progressive” to accept at face value the international disorder promoted by bodies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF)?

This is not a superfluous debate. The struggle over the meaning of words is an important part of the cultural battle and the construction of hegemony. Many of you shy away from words like imperialism, colonialism, or leftism. It is clear that you want to moderate, to neutralize. Whoever backtracks in language will also retreat in action. On the other hand, one who names, specifies; one who specifies, wins.

It is striking that from this “progressivism,” not only is reality analyzed with the constant of imperialism eliminated from the equation, the word is not even mentioned. I think that this is inadmissible, it constitutes a cultural and political defeat that in fact would also mean a capitulation.

Imperialism, as an economic, financial, commercial, political, military, technological, institutional, communicative and ideological phenomenon, is an undeniable reality and is one of the main obstacles to the construction of a more just society. So, comrades, is this “progressivism” anti-imperialist?

On another level, some “progressives” seem to limit the political and economic horizon to the redistribution of resources, the expansion of certain rights and the widening of the democratic field through the struggle for identity. Nothing wrong with that, but what about the class struggle? What about obscene inequality? What about the enormous power of transnational corporations? What about ownership of natural resources and strategic companies?

Some have apparently lowered the flags of the struggle against capitalism, ignoring that this system not only plunders resources and exploits peoples, but is also the cause of the climate crisis, the effect of which could be the extinction of the species.

You may recall that, a few years after leaving power, Margaret Thatcher was asked what she considered her most important achievement as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The destroyer of British labor unionism and staunch defender of apartheid in South Africa replied: “Tony Blair and New Labour,” referring to the rightward shift of the British Labor Party.

As we know, Thatcher’s main ally in our region was the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Probably, seeing the outcome of the Chilean constituent process, the alignment of the Boric government in relation to the United States and its attacks against several revolutions, could Pinochet also say that this “progressivism” is among his greatest achievements?

I know that these statements may seem harsh, but the cultural battle and the clarity of positions are very important and losing them has a very high cost.

US political philosopher Michael Sandel answers the question of why the extreme right is growing, pointing out that one of the reasons is the failure of the policies of the social democratic or progressive parties to confront the growing inequality caused by what he calls the “excesses of capitalism.” Probably there we can find the answers to the failure of the Chilean constituent process or the outcome of the Argentinean government’s negotiations with the IMF and the tragic possibility of the right wing returning to these “excesses of capitalism.”

The German philosopher Walter Benjamin said that behind the return of fascism there was a failed revolution. Probably, the resurgence of fascism in Europe and in other latitudes of the planet is due to the new failure of social democrats and progressives who promise changes and, by not modifying the structural causes of the crisis, betray their discourse and their voters.

The Slovenian Slavoj Zizek says that, in reality, these types of political currents cannot see beyond the limited horizon of “liberal and democratic capitalism,” and, therefore, become followers of Francis Fukuyama, who in the face of the collapse of the socialist camp in the 1990s decreed the “end of history.”

In our context, the “Latin American Fukuyamists,” disguised under the title of “progressives,” are functional for both capitalism and imperialism. They contribute to the demonization of revolutionary processes and leaders, as well as to the demonization of words and their meaning. They try to take away the essential content of the left by diluting it to the ambiguities of “progressivism.”

The effects of this tendency are very dangerous because in fact they move the center of the political spectrum to the right, and with it, the transforming horizon. From the left, we must recognize that this is a very important issue. We cannot allow confusion and conformism to be nurtured, to try to domesticate hopes and, in this way, to sustain the status quo.

To conclude, dear comrades, if being “progressive” means raising the banners of anti-imperialism, of the class struggle, of the struggle against colonialism and against capitalism, count on me to take the sky by storm.

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"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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