South America

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Sat Apr 03, 2021 1:33 pm

Ecuador: Lasso Linked to Tens of Millions in Florida Properties

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According to CEPR, shell companies owned by Guillermo Lasso in Florida significantly increased their holdings over the past 4 years as the banker used his intimacy with the Moreno regime to stash away tens of millions of dollars. | Photo: Twitter/@eluniversocom

Published 2 April 2021 (14 hours 2 minutes ago)

A review of corporate and real estate records in Florida shows the Lasso-linked shell companies’ holdings have increased since 2017, raising questions over the legality of Lasso’s candidacy.


Ecuadorian presidential candidate Guillermo Lasso had links with shell companies in the United States for more than $30 million in 2017, which after the approval of a legal reform were covered up with "additional veils of anonymity," the CEPR research center denounced Thursday.

This revelation comes just over a week before the ballot in Ecuador between Lasso - a right-wing banker - and leftist candidate Andres Arauz, a protegé of former President Rafael Correa.

In the last 2017 presidential election, the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) denounced the existence of shell companies in Florida linked to Lasso that had properties in Miami valued at more than $30 million.

Ecuador approved in 2017 a reform called the Ethical Pact to prevent public officials or candidates for elected office from having companies or accounts in tax havens.

According to Ecuadorean law, Florida is included in the list of preferential tax regimes in the case that the investments are under the form of Limited Liability Companies (LLC for its acronym in English).

"Although additional veils of anonymity have been introduced to hide ownership, a review of Florida's corporate and real estate records show that front companies linked to Lasso have increased since 2017," CEPR stated.

The center indicated that in 2020, most of the shell companies noted underwent countless changes, including deactivations, resignations, name changes, mergers and dissolutions.

"Many companies changed their names within a week of dissolution. All but four of the companies associated with Lasso have now merged into new entities. In total we identified 23 active companies registered in Florida," CEPR noted.

According to CEPR researcher Jake Johnston "shell companies are a significant factor in explaining how the rich, the powerful and the corrupt can hide their money to avoid paying taxes."

Johnston indicated to AFP that "Lasso should clearly explain what connection he has with these or any other front companies outside of Ecuador."

"Voters in any country should know the business, local or foreign interests of candidates for high office and whether they use corporate anonymity or accounting tricks to avoid contributing a fair share to the country they seek to govern," he concluded.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Ecu ... -0023.html

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Lenin Moreno and the CIA against Andres Arauz

Posted Apr 02, 2021 by Eds.
Originally published: Orinoco Tribune by Katu Arkonada (March 29, 2021) |

The second round of the Ecuadorian election between the candidate of the pro-Correa citizen revolution Arauz and the banker Lasso is approaching, and things are accelerating in the axis formed by Lenin Moreno and the United States, with its intelligence services at the forefront.

Recently, a secret meeting took place in the Galapagos Islands between the Ecuadorian and U.S. governments. On the Ecuadorian side, President Lenin Moreno, Vice President María Alejandra Muñoz, and the Secretary-General of the Cabinet of the Presidency Jorge Wated took part; on the U.S. side, its Ambassador Michael Fitzpatrick and senior U.S. military commanders.

In this meeting, Moreno thanked the United States for the support given by the U.S. Embassy in Quito, to submit to polygraph all his government officials and Ecuadorian diplomats in Washington who may have leaked the information we made public on February 4 about the destabilizing plans to prevent the victory of Andrés Arauz and Correa’s supporters.

Likewise, Cabinet Secretary Jorge Wated was instructed to monitor the email and social media accounts of all officials in the Carondelet, the Ecuadorian government palace.

For his part, Ambassador Fitzpatrick gave Lenin Moreno a secret report that gives Andrés Arauz a 20-point lead over banker Lasso, based on analysis by U.S. intelligence agencies.

It was also agreed to remove Foreign Minister Luis Gallegos from the Cabinet, as he opposed Moreno-Fitzpatrick’s orders to escalate the diplomatic conflict with Buenos Aires. Gallegos was supposed to draft a note of protest to his Argentine counterpart over Alberto Fernández’s statements about Lenin Moreno. But the real objective was to strain relations between Ecuador and Argentina, due to the sympathies that both Rafael Correa and Andrés Arauz have for Alberto and Cristina Fernández.

Also, at the urging of several U.S. senators, Lenin Moreno was asked to get rid of former Secretary of the Presidency Juan Sebastián Roldan for allowing Arauz’s victory in the first round and not implementing all the measures agreed with the Colombian government to link Correa with the ELN guerrillas.

For her part, former Minister of Government María Paula Romo insists on preparing Moreno’s departure, using an alleged heart condition as a justification, in order to later announce from the U.S., Moreno’s resignation.

For weeks now, in the early hours of the morning, the evacuation of classified information and money belonging to Moreno and his family has been taking place in the Carondelet, as well as the destruction of sensitive information by trusted officials of the current government.

It is in the Carondelet itself where U.S. Ambassador Fitzpatrick has a permanent office, very close to the presidential office. And it is in these corridors where, given the imminent deterioration of the national situation, a Crisis Committee is being considered to lead the country, made up of María Paula Romo herself, Vice President María Alejandra Vicuña, the OAS, and Ambassador Fitzpatrick.

Meetings also continue to be held via Zoom led by Romo to analyze the situation in the country. Lenin Moreno, U.S. Senators Marco Rubio, and Robert “Bob” Menendez, and State Department official Martha Constanza Youth are taking part.

Also in March, meetings were held with public and private media executives and members of the Communications Secretariat (SECOM). The objective was to draw up a media strategy for the second round of elections, with instructions to create a national media campaign that would reduce the chances of Correa’s supporters. The main accusations are that Arauz will turn Ecuador into a new Venezuela, the financing of the Correa campaign by Colombian guerrillas, and the alleged corruption of the Correa campaign. To this end, they hired 250,000 fake Twitter accounts.

In a complementary manner, Lenin Moreno analyzed with the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the National Police how to link aerial and maritime drug trafficking activities, recently detected on Ecuador’s borders with Colombia, with Arauz’s campaign. This with the aim of challenging the elections and preventing the April 11 election to take place.

Another avenue explored these days by Lenin Moreno, in conjunction with the national coordinator of the Pachakutik movement, Cecilia Velázquez, is to use the demonstrations and the request presented to the Electoral Disputes Tribunal to prevent the victory of Correism.

A call was also made for this movement to vote null and void in the second round on April 11, although within Pachakutik there are members who do not share Yaku Pérez’s mercenary positions, reject the Yaku Pérez-Lasso-Moreno alliance, especially the alliance between Yaku and the U.S. Embassy, and prefer to support Andrés Arauz. In recent hours the Shuar nationality (Sucumbíos province) has decided to support list 1 headed by Arauz.

On April 11, the future of Ecuador is at stake: on one side, the banker Lasso, supported by Lenin Moreno, the U.S. Embassy, and the right-wing indigenous bureaucracy; on the other, Andrés Arauz and a project of social justice based on the citizens’ revolution promoted by Rafael Correa.

Once the coup d’état in Bolivia has been defeated, it is time for Ecuador to rejoin this new phase of epochal change, and the new progressive cycle led by the Argentina of Alberto and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, and the Mexico of López Obrador.

https://mronline.org/2021/04/02/lenin-m ... res-arauz/

Dunno enough about Kirchner to comment but Obrador is about as 'progressive' as the average US Democrat...
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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Wed Apr 07, 2021 1:22 pm

Ecuador: Building an Anti-Neoliberal Popular Front
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on APRIL 6, 2021

Revista Crisis

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In view of the latest declarations of the president of CONAIE, Jaime Vargas, in support of the progressive project of Andres Arauz, several sectors have generated a series of accusations against the highest authority of the social arm of the Indigenous Movement.

The petty-bourgeois Franciscan ultra-left -both urban and rural-, together with the Pachamama oenegero ecologism, allied with the reactionary conservative wing of the Indigenous Movement, have accused Vargas of having been “co-opted by Correism”, of having negotiated the political project, and even of corruption. When the reality is simpler: Vargas understands the historical moment in which we find ourselves, and understands the need to build a popular anti-neoliberal front against the pretensions of the banker oligarchy to perpetuate itself in government.

In the face of the death machine of neoliberalism, the reproaches made to real politics and bourgeois democracy, about their impossibility to achieve structural transformations, remain in the background. The reality we face as a people is the possibility of continuity of these last four years of extermination policy, executed from the shock doctrine. Through unstoppable pressures on the lives of the people, they have managed to implement the neoliberal mandates par excellence. It is not in vain that the shock of neoliberalism is framed not only in the economic plane, but also in the moral and emotional-mental health of the people. Living conditions are so extreme and precarious that an organized and articulated popular response becomes practically impossible.

The mismanagement of the pandemic, the endless waiting lists for ICU attention, the helplessness generated by the cases of VIP vaccines and the helplessness against the neoliberal State indifferent to the life of the people have multiplied the pain and anguish during these four years. Together with the economic austerity measures: the regression in labor rights, massive layoffs, the privatization of (almost) everything common, and the impossibility of access to basic rights such as education, health and work, end up leading to a bad luck of demobilization and hopelessness. Unfortunately, at this historical moment and with the current organizational conditions, it is at the ballot box where a forceful response against neoliberalism can and must be given.

The social and political division between the fiction of correism-anti-correism has come to permeate the political and theoretical debates of the left, displacing the central debate about the possibilities of organization and conditions of struggle, in the face of a progressive government, as opposed to the scenario of the continuity of a neoliberal government. However, for the popular sectors, political polarizations are irrelevant. The precariousness of life has reached insufferable levels and the situation is clear: four more years of the shock doctrine are unsustainable for the people. The historical reality is that, far from being a revolutionary project, progressivism does democratize and redistribute access to rights, and makes possible more dignified living conditions than those existing within the framework of neoliberalism.

In this sense, the efforts of Guillermo Lasso’s campaign to distance itself from the Moreno government and its many crimes against the people are irrelevant and desperate. It is a joke that Lasso now pretends to ignore his deep admiration for Social Christianity and its caudillos. As well as shameless his attempt to incur in the speeches of rights for women and dissidents, having asked for a total veto to the COS in September 2020. The direct action executed by Delfin Quishpe and the people of Guamote, standing firm against the banker Lasso, reminds neoliberalism and its representatives of all the dignity and memory that the people have. The people are aware that neoliberalism does not respect any rights, but consolidates itself precisely through its policy of regression of collective and individual rights, in order to maximize its inherent logic of capital accumulation.

Quite contrary to the careerist diagnosis of the intellectual petty bourgeoisie and Franciscan ultra-leftism, the people have a profound class consciousness. Those who do not understand nor have class consciousness are these sectors, who prefer to spend their efforts in arguing about the purity of actions and “the revolutionary duty to be”, belittling the many forms of resistance of the people. In this framework, the support of the CONAIE presidency and the Amazonian leaders for Arauz’s candidacy represents a profound anti-neoliberal stance in symbolic and political terms. Perhaps the courage of Vargas, as president of CONAIE, is the necessary step for other popular sectors to decide for the consolidation of an anti-neoliberal popular front, which overcomes the manufactured polarization of correism-anti-correism.

Faced with the electoral chiaroscuro, with the oligarchy and the political elites calling publicly for military intervention, and the entrepreneurial petty bourgeoisie of the lower classes supporting the neo-liberal project of Moreno and Lasso, the ballot boxes are indeed a legitimate territory of resistance. Consolidating an anti-neoliberal popular front, self-convened and self-organized is constituted at this historic moment, as the only real option to build possibilities of organization, and therefore possibilities of struggle in the next 4 years. An anti-neoliberal popular front that overcomes the electoral conjuncture and turns little by little to the cooperative support of life. That confronts neoliberalism not only in its economic dimensions, but also in its symbolic, ideological and political dimensions, replacing individualism with the politics of collective care.

At some point we asked ourselves: unity for what? Now we have the historical answer: to resist the neoliberal onslaught. Reality always surpasses any fiction, and next April 11, we are gambling not only the conditions of struggle, but of life for the people. With an anti-neoliberal popular front, the slogan that “only the people save the people” makes sense.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/04/ ... lar-front/
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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Tue Apr 13, 2021 1:22 pm

In Blow to Arauz, 16% of Votes Cast Were Null in Ecuador Runoff

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In a blow to Andres Arauz's candidacy, environmentalist indigenous ex-candidate Yaku Perez called on his supporters to cast null votes, which they did to the tune of 1.75 million, far more than the 423,000 vote difference between Lasso and Arauz. | Photo: Twitter/@yakuperezg

Published 12 April 2021

In the same call made by the New York Times, Indigenous leader Yaku Perez led the campaign for the null vote in Ecuador's second-round presidential elections Sunday.


The option to annul the vote and thus fracture the left vote, postulated by Perez's Pachakutik party, experienced unprecedented support in the Ecuadorian presidential elections.

The call made by former Ecuadorian presidential candidate Yaku Perez, and his party, the Pachakutik movement, for citizens to vote null in this coming elections, had important popular support.

More than 1.7 million of the votes cast at the polls, representing a formidable 16.33 percent of the total, were counted as null, sending a message of disapproval to both candidates who participated in the runoff.

This way of voting had its consequences. Those 13 provinces where Yaku Perez obtained a majority of votes during the first round of elections were the ones that, in the end, were decisive in the victory of Guillermo Lasso.


"This is how many #Ecuadorians in #Europe vote in resistance to the lack of #transparency of the #CNE in #ElectionsEC2021."

Yaku Perez and his party, Pachakutik, asked their supporters to vote null in protest for what they consider an electoral fraud in the first round of February 7, when after spending a large part of the count qualifying for the second round with Arauz, he was suddenly surpassed by Lasso by a mere 32,000 votes.

The electoral bodies dismissed his appeals and requests for a recount in several provinces of the country, including Lasso and Perez's agreement to request a recount, which Lasso himself retracted.

This position was recently supported by a faction within the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), an organization which, through a communiqué, expressed: "we make our official position (...) to promote the ideological null vote for organizational unity in rejection of divisionism and conjunctural demagogy in elections."

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/In- ... -0020.html

'Divide and Conquer' again proves a winning gambit. Yaku Perez is a double edged tool of the US State Dept: a so-called environmentalists who welcomes the rape of his country's resources by northern barbarians and a high level 'native informant' who divided the working class just enough.

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Peru's Electoral Authority Declares Presidential Runoff June 6

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Peru seems headed towards a far-left vs far-right presidential election run-off. Pedro Castillo from the communist Perú Libre party zoomed into first place in the last few days of the election. Firmly in second appears to be Keiko Fujimori, daughter of dictator Alberto Fujimori. | Photo: Twitter/@PopulismUpdates

Published 12 April 2021

On a more than 10 hour election day, Peruvians went to the polls to elect their new president; however, the campaign will be extended until June 6 with the second-round runoff.


Pedro Castillo, known for leading a Peruvian teachers' strike in 2017, was the first-place winner in the polls, while Keiko Fujimori, the eldest daughter of jailed former president Alberto Fujimori, and right-wing economist Hernando de Soto, continue to fight for the other runoff slot after polls closed at 7:00 p.m.

While Fujimori bets on continuing his father's legacy, alleviating pandemic measures, promoting large mining projects, and generating new jobs, Soto reiterated that he would continue with an expansive fiscal and monetary policy to help reactivate the economy, support businesses and strengthen border controls.

One of the elements that clouded Fujimori's campaign, according to Reuters, was the investigation against her for alleged money laundering and the receipt of more than US$ 1.2 million from Odebrecht, for which she may face a sentence of up to 31 years in prison. The candidate has always denied the charges.

The day passed without a clear favorite. However, candidates such as Pedro Castillo, of the Peru Libre party and Hernando de Soto, of the Avanza Pais party asserted throughout the day as they were the most favored with 16.1% and 12.9%, respectively in the last survey conducted in the country.

Peru Libre has defined itself as a "Marxist-Leninist-Mariateguist" party, while its leader Vladimir Cerrón has asserted that due to the party's "provincial" origins, it would represent "deep Peru."

Castillo's party is explicitly anti-imperialist, and internationalist appears to promote robust state control and regulation of the national economy in favor of people's interests.

Similarly, the party that received the most votes supports a rewriting of the country's constitution, defends the state apparatus's decentralization, and supports the revolutionary processes of countries such as Cuba and Nicaragua.

A significant element that disturbed election authorities and voters' tranquility on Sunday was the number of polls enabled in the country's different cities; these could not be set up by the National Office of Electoral Processes (Onpe).

San Isidro, Miraflores, San Borja, and Surco were the districts with the lowest number of voting tables in the morning hours, which forced authorities to call on young people to volunteer.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Per ... -0017.html

"Ya win some, ya lose some." Well, I dunno that we can take solace in that, and this ain't a done deal yet, who knows what treachery Blinken will rubber-stamp. Still, the will of the people comes more and more to the fore though it will still take a crowbar to remove the wealthy from their high perch.

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Wed Apr 14, 2021 12:02 pm

AN OVERVIEW AFTER THE ELECTIONS IN BOLIVIA, ECUADOR AND PERU
13 Apr 2021 , 2:50 pm .

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Members of the Ecuadorian National Electoral Council on April 11, 2021 (Photo: Luisa González / Reuters)

Elections of different kinds have just been held in three South American countries, all of which make up part of the Andean belt on the Pacific side: Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru.

Each one under different circumstances but all traced by an institutional crisis (crossed by economic and social debacles, neoliberal state policies and the Covid-19 pandemic) or going through its ebbs at times of high impact for their societies.

The results of the Bolivian, Ecuadorian and Peruvian elections will have repercussions in the short, medium and long term at the local and regional level, taking into account that the realities of these nations are framed in moments of high political and social tension as a result of the aforementioned crisis.

Let us briefly see what is happening in that geographic mountain range of the region, vital to understand the dynamics of the geopolitical movements to come, key in a continent that is being claimed by the United States as its very personal "backyard".

RECONSTRUCTION OF MAS IN BOLIVIA

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The second round of regional elections was held in Bolivia (Photo: AP Photo)

After the victory of Luis Arce in October 2020 and with his inauguration as president of Bolivia a month later, the Movimiento Al Socialismo (MAS) party has been working on a process of internal recomposition and on its deployment at the local level. , regional and national.

With Evo Morales, historical leader of the party, out of the presidency since the coup against him took place at the end of 2019, the MAS has had to rebuild some leaderships that had been losing strength and connection with the Bolivian bases, in addition to passing by the persecutory steamroller of the de facto administration of Jeanine Áñez, which managed to untie the unitary capacity of the party through the persecution and lawfare against Masista members.

In this way, within the framework of this partisan reconstruction, the MAS lost the effectiveness of its machinery in some key regions and has also reproduced, as the ebb of the coup in 2019, an outbreak of anti-MAS leaderships that have been attracting the attention of certain social sectors that demand greater connection with a leadership that looks worn out after so many years in the bustle of the Evo Morales project.

This can be clearly seen in the results of the regional second-round elections that took place this Sunday, April 11, corresponding to the departments of Tarija, Chuquisaca, Pando and La Paz.

While Chuquisaca was always a strong opponent (where Chuquisaca Somos Todos won with almost 60% of the votes), Pando, historically in favor of the MAS, fell to the Third System Movement with 55%.

But the biggest disappointment for MAS is with La Paz, the Jallalla political group being the winner with more than 56%.

There are explanations for all these results: an important sedition in the ranks of the MAS occurred in the candidacies for La Paz and El Alto, with Eva Copa leading the Jallalla coalition as a clear division of the party led by Morales.

Since Eva Copa assumed the presidency of the Senate after the 2019 coup, succeeding Áñez, the components that make up Jallalla began to approve decrees of the de facto government and with it a political collaboration that bore electoral results, the result of Sunday being expressive for La Paz and Pando.

Copa, after being expelled from the MAS, dragged other party leaders from La Paz and El Alto towards a rare and unprecedented scenario for the Masista leadership, since different regional parties began to form in order to capitalize on local leadership crises of the MAS and the political consequences of the Añista dictatorship.

In addition, the minor parties in various regions were conformed with alliances that Comunidad Ciudadana , a party of former presidential candidate Carlos Mesa, has been making , and which they capitalized precisely in Pando.

Although the inevitable process of change in the MAS was taking place precisely in elections, and hence the results, the challenges fill the current political scenario in Bolivia.

From there, a new dynamic for the management of public life in the country should be derived, a transition that began with Luis Arce in the presidency and that will continue with Evo Morales in another role, not yet consolidated, which consists of strengthening regional leadership. The challenges of the Bolivian leadership are existential, taking into account that it comes from a coup and goes towards a central government confronted with anti-Masist regional powers with destabilizing records.

The political game is just beginning in Bolivia.

NEOLIBERAL CONTINUITY IN ECUADOR

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Guillermo Lasso celebrating the results of the presidential elections in Ecuador (Photo: Getty Images)

Banker Guillermo Lasso ended up triumphing in the 2021 elections in Ecuador, and will be the new president until 2025. He won in 17 of the 24 provinces of Ecuador and with 52.48% of the vote.

It should be noted that the null vote had its cry of electoral presence with more than 1 million 660 thousand and also the white vote with 163 thousand 913, out of a total of 10 million 211 thousand 652 voters. In other words, more than 10% of the Ecuadorian population that voted did not recognize in any candidate a legitimate option to overturn the Ecuadorian reality.

Lasso managed to run despite having violated a law that prevented investors in tax havens from taking public office, sanctioned in 2018. Andrés Arauz was in the lead in the polls, however the 180-degree turn in the elections on Sunday, April 11 They put a banker who was contesting the presidency for the third time on the path to deepening the turn to the neoliberal right and the dismantling of the state that began with the presidency of Lenín Moreno in 2017.

Although Arauz emphasized that it is an "electoral setback, but not a political or moral defeat," the truth is that the political persecution undertaken by the current president against the correista opposition and neoliberal measures, such as one at The privatization of the Central Bank appears to be prompt, which could become effective even with the current administration, which denotes a continuity in the essential economic policies.

What did this electoral turn consist of, which resulted in Lasso's victory? The limitations of the Arauz campaign, in the midst of a political and electoral persecution on the part of the Ecuadorian institutions (with mechanisms of lawfare and state degradation), clearly absorbed by the logic of the Moreno administration, played an important factor, as did anti-belt media campaigns that included dirty propaganda.

But in addition, and above all, the polarization propagated by the Ecuadorian right took its toll, in which there was agglutination of votes against Correísmo and, at the same time, the migration of voters from Yaku Pérez and Xavier Hervas - third and fourth in the first round - In favor of Lasso they played an important role last Sunday, allowing Lasso to reverse a distance of more than 12 points that had separated him from Arauz in the first round with the help even of indigenous groups.

In Ecuador, too, the health catastrophe will most likely continue as a result of the poor management of the pandemic by the Moreno government, which has decided to put neoliberal interests first over those of the population, which has not prevented the rise in the inequality rates but quite the opposite.

Lasso has publicly announced that he wants to lower taxes on companies, attract more foreign investment, give even more free rein to bankers, consolidate the policy of trade openness by entering the Pacific Alliance and it is very likely that he will try to integrate leaders linked to Pachakutik (by Yaku Pérez) and CONAIE in one way or another to their government with the aim of further dividing those organizations with strong influence on trade union and ethnic-union politics in Ecuador.

A model that has not finished giving good results to its population is being deepened in Ecuador.

PERU AT THE CROSSROADS

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Pedro Castillo, winning candidate of the first round of the presidential elections in Peru (Photo: AP Photo)

Being one of the historically most conservative countries on the continent, it seems surprising to foreign eyes that Peru is increasingly close to being presided over by Pedro Castillo, a trade unionist belonging to the teachers' union and candidate of the Peru Libre party, who will most likely face second back to Keiko Fujimori from Fuerza Popular.

The final results of Sunday, April 11, are not yet known, but according to data from the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE) of that country, with records counted at 95.853%, Castillo has 19.09% of the votes, followed Fujimori with 13.35%; It is followed by two other candidates with just over 11% and another with 9.10%.

In this way, with little voting for many parties, the Peruvian political crisis is expressed, a country that has had four presidents since 2016 and in which all its first leaders, from Alberto Fujimori to Manuel Merino, have been prosecuted or investigated by corruption, with the exception of Valentín Paniagua (2000-2001).

The recent history of Peru has several political earthquakes, including those of the Fujimori era and the armed conflict that lasted for about two decades at the end of the 20th century. But since Pedro Pablo Kuczynski resigned in 2018, after just under two years in office, the slide of the delegitimization of the Peruvian political class was sustained by its own gravity.

Neither Martín Vizcarra (2018-2020) nor Merino (from November 10 to 15, 2020) nor Francisco Sagasti (from November 17 to the present) have been able to contain the social crisis that has been accumulating throughout these years, despite the so-called " Peruvian economic miracle " that has not been enough to shrink the inequality gap in recent years, but rather the opposite.

Political scientist Mauricio Zavaleta believes that the neoliberal management of the economy in Peru "implied not investing much in public spending, prioritizing the control of the fiscal deficit and that inflation and public debt are not high. From the regions there is the perception that everything it is being played in Lima and that the regions are relegated. They are the ones excluded from the profits that the system gives, "which the candidate Pedro Castillo has been able to silently capitalize on in the country in an electoral way.

In fact, the Peru Libre candidate has been able to reach out to voters in rural areas due to his remembered role as the leader of the 2017 strike in the education sector. The aforementioned academic Zavaleta adds that it is "the teachers (...) who are most listened to by families. It is the teachers from those areas who have propagandized family by family.

Castillo in his campaign promised to activate the mechanisms to convene a Constituent Assembly in order to end the 1993 Constitution, which emerged at the mercy of Alberto Fujimori, and create another that could cover all sectors of the country. Likewise, he also said that he would approve the formation of a new Constitutional Court elected in popular consultation, since the magistrates elected by Congress, he says, "are defending a Constitution that has ended all rights and the looting of the country."

His candidacy is faced by Keiko Fujimori, Alberto's daughter, who is the standard-bearer of her father's legacy in both a symbolic and factual way. She herself will represent, in the ballot, the entire Peruvian right, in its various expressions, which will surely "close ranks" with the Fuerza Popular candidate for the defense of the neoliberal economic model.

If we add the electoral percentages of the right in these elections, the Popular Force, Avanza País, Popular Renovation, Christian Popular Party and Peru Patria Segura parties, according to the ONPE, this political spectrum leads the win with almost 40% in total, This is a significant number for Keiko Fujimori, taking into account that there will be a right-wing and neoliberal political and media avalanche that will try to perpetuate the current Peruvian inequality system .

The left, on the other hand, has the upper hand if we add the votes confirmed so far for Peru Libre, Juntos por el Perú (whose candidate Verónika Mendoza failed to meet the electoral expectations of the more traditional left) and Frente Amplio, which totals little more than 28%, which numerically does not allow Castillo to advance towards the Peruvian presidency. Unless the electoral strategy turns 180 degrees, as happened in Ecuador.

Peru is at a crossroads in which the Fujimori neoliberal legacy will be put in suspense. It remains for the Peruvian people to choose whether to continue with what has caused the greatest social misfortunes or to change towards another paradigm, even when the difficulties are multiple in the face of a new parliamentary cycle where no party has a clear majority.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/un ... dor-y-peru

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Sat Apr 24, 2021 3:09 pm

Pedro Castillo Pledges to Expel USAID from Peru
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on APRIL 23, 2021
Kawsachun News

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The leading candidate in Peru’s presidential election will be expelling USAID within the first 100 days in office if elected, following in the footsteps of Bolivia.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which reports having a presence in over 100 countries, was expelled from Bolivia in 2013 for financing individuals and groups conspiring against democracy in Bolivia. President Evo Morales said there was no benefit to USAID’s presence—quite the contrary. The agency worked to eliminate campesino and indigenous organizations, while the majority of its operations were related to intelligence and social control.

Pedro Castillo of Peru Libre, a surprise winner in the April 11th first round vote, defeated a wide field of candidates while running on a set of anti-imperialist campaign pledges. Party campaign literature published in March listed the expulsion of USAID, the closing of U.S. military bases and withdrawal from the Lima Group as priorities for the first 100 days of government, among others.

The party’s take on USAID was elaborated in a section by Peru Libre Congressman-elect, Guillermo Bermejo, who says the agency “is a sort of ‘legal’ intelligence service of the U.S. in Latin American and they are involved in everything you can imagine: education, health, reproductive policies, agriculture, human rights, environment, economy, defense and the fight against drugs.”

The section goes on to say that the U.S. agency’s ‘talent’ ranges from former political leaders, lawmakers from different parties and even “a liberal sector that tries to sell itself as the left,” to carry out the work of implementing a “well-designed plan” in order to “fulfill the purposes of imperialism in the region.”

While successive administrations have deferred to Washington’s directives to devise policy, the results have been disastrous.

“That is why they boast of the nefarious Free Trade Agreement, despite that they are destroying our agriculture and mutilating any possibility of national industry. Anti-drug policies [have resulted in] a tripling of cocaine production, the ‘economic growth’ has generated the largest social gap in Latin America,”

Bermejo points to problems within the educational system and Peru’s military agreements, under which U.S. troops are funneled into the country with the pretext of fighting ‘narcoterrorism,’ while achieving no positive results. Bermejo detailed Castillo’s position on the DEA, U.S. military presence in Peru and the failed anti-drug strategy, devised by Washington, in a recent interview. USAID’s foreign aid and development assistance efforts begin to gradually spill over into new areas while advancing U.S. values and interests (as described by Blinken).

Peru Libre considers USAID’s advocacy and program focus on human rights hypocritical, citing the provocative and hostile treatment towards socialist governments in the region, in particular Venezuela, in comparison with the silence surrounding murders and massacres in Colombia.

“USAID must leave Peru, just as it was expelled from Bolivia. And get out of the disastrous Lima Group, which is a disgrace in international politics. Peru Libre and Pedro Castillo are committed to that,” it concludes.

Polls show Castillo leading neoliberal opponent Keiko Fujimori in voter intention by 15 points (Pollster: Datum).

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/04/ ... from-peru/

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Peru: Pedro Castillo Would Expel U.S. Military and World’s Main Drug Cartel, the DEA
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on APRIL 21, 2021
Kawsachun News

Pedro Castillo would expel the U.S. military and the DEA if elected President of Peru.

During a Monday evening interview, incoming Congressman Guillermo Bermejo, of Pedro Castillo’s Peru Libre party, told Canal N host Mavila Huertas that the Washington-designed anti-drug policy in Peru has been a total failure.

Guillermo Bermejo, of Pedro Castillo’s Peru Libre party, to Canal N host Mavila Huertas:
“The DEA is the main drug cartel in the world and any serious analyst on drug trafficking will tell you.” pic.twitter.com/BpuBIfSQod

— Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) April 21, 2021
Guillermo Bermejo, a socialist who was elected to Congress in the April 11th elections and who has been an outspoken proponent of expelling USAID from Peru, detailed a situation in which the country is characterized by weak institutions, and a Congress, armed forces, police and political class which are despised by the population.

Bermejo said that while the country pumps out cocaine to the world, the major media networks have worked with the country’s political class to ignore the issue:

“Peru is the second producer of cocaine in the world, Mavila. That issue is never seen on television channels, no one talks about it, and the question is why? In Peru are there not drug cartels?”

“In Peru, production has gone from 250 tons of cocaine to 750 tons of cocaine in less than six years, and we only seize, on average, 3% annually. Tell me, do we not have cartels? Who is permitting those small planes to pass?”

“Have the media at any point looked over the results of the fight against drug trafficking in this country? Why is this not a campaign issue if we are the second producer of cocaine in the world, if here they haven’t captured not one small plane, not one in more than 20 years.”


When asked by host Mavila Huertas what a Castillo government would do “to improve the efficiency of the armed forces and the police,” Bermejo replied saying U.S. cooperation is the underlying problem.

“First, remove foreign intervention from Peru. The Congress, all of them, since the dictatorship until now, allow the entry of hundreds of U.S. soldiers and U.S. military advisers annually who walk through all the barracks of the country. Showing them techniques, in theory, of repression against the population. And that’s [agreed to by] the President and it’s been all of the Presidents, without exception (..) all of them have asked that people who represent the most bloodthirsty and cruel army in the history of humanity [come to Peru], after they massacre more than seven million people in the Middle East. We attend them, we let them enter our home and we put them in our barracks.”

“Would you expel the DEA?” asked Huertas.

“Of course. The DEA is the main drug cartel in the world and any serious analyst on drug trafficking will tell you” responded Bermejo.


He continued,

“The high command of police and army have been discredited here. I only ask that the issue of drug trafficking [not be ignored]. I challenge television networks to begin to dig into that matter because if they aren’t seizing one single aircraft in Peru, and there aren’t cartels like in Colombia and Mexico, then who is moving drugs in this country? Who has the ability to allow the entry of planes, load them, pay the money, and take the coca..”

Peru Libre’s candidate for President, Pedro Castillo, has run on a platform which promises to leave the Lima Cartel, expel USAID and close U.S. military bases within the first 100 days of government. Other proposals include nationalizations, a constituent assembly and the procurement of Cuban and Russian vaccines.

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A Peru Libre publication from March lists the priorities of Pedro Castillo’s government if elected.

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Guillermo Bermejo and Pedro Castillo have called for the expulsion of USAID from Peru.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/04/ ... l-the-dea/

Almost suicidally bold, absolutely correct. May Bermejo and Castillo live long and prosper, cause these bastards will not take this lightly.
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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Mon Apr 26, 2021 1:29 pm

Southern Command Goes to War
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on APRIL 25, 2021
Jorge Elbaum

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Last week, the head of the Pentagon’s Southern Command, Admiral Craig Faller, concluded his farewell tour in the Dominican Republic, participating in the Caribbean Nations Security Conference (CANSEC) together with military leaders from countries committed to Washington’s objectives of isolating Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, and at the same time hindering and/or restricting the cooperation links of China and Russia with the region.

A month ago, Admiral Faller appeared before the Senate Defense Activities Oversight Committee in Washington to offer his vision of the situation in the area that the Pentagon claims to be its sovereign responsibility, as shown on the shield displayed by the Command.

South America in the clutches of SOUTHCOM

In a March 16 report, the SOUTHCOM chief warned lawmakers: “This hemisphere is under attack. The democratic principles and values that unite us are being actively undermined by violent Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs), the People’s Republic of China and Russia.” He further added: “We are losing our positional advantage in this hemisphere and immediate action is needed to reverse this trend.” According to Faller’s position, the threats identified include malevolent Regional State Actors (RSAs) – such as Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua – that perpetuate corruption and challenge freedom, opening the door to Russia and China.

Faller asked the Senate for specific funding to deploy military attachés to embassies, given that “in the hemisphere it is better not to have permanent bases but places where we can move in and out and work with our partners in their training and readiness.” In the same report, he warned that “another capability needed to outmaneuver our adversaries in the region is intelligence. We must gather intelligence across the board and share it with our partners if possible.”

The report provided by Faller was the last of his tenure. President Joe Biden announced last March 8 that the next head of Southern Command will be retired Lt. Gen. Laura Richardson.

SOUTHCOM is one of the nine military commands into which the U.S. military force is divided, and comprises an area of influence from Mexico to Antarctica, with headquarters in Miami (Mexico corresponds to the Northern Command). On the day of Richardson’s nomination, during an event at the White House attended by Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, efforts were made to portray a false gender perspective, in keeping with the current emblems of cultural neoliberalism. The presentation of Richardson and the new head of the Air Force, General Jacqueline Von Ovost, were part of that effort to disguise the explicitly warlike emphasis of Washington’s foreign policy, totally alien to an ethic of care, the historical praxis of women’s resistance to the model of appropriation and control of territories and bodies.

The globalist model of the Democrats seeks to legitimize itself on the basis of the promotion of diversity and the validation of human rights, while overacting an argumentative firmness apt to be digested by the still-embattled Trumpism. From this perspective, Biden appeals demagogically – as Obama did before him – to the iconography of civil liberties in order to encourage the agitators of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and to promote, at the same time, the secessionism of the Muslim minority of the Uyghurs, in the Sinkiang region. To this end, different NGOs and foundations are working intensively in both territories, empowering and financing disgruntled groups and the media that provide them with coverage and dissemination.

The geopolitical confrontation has been raised by Washington in the face of the incessant growth of Beijing’s economy and the strengthening of its technological capabilities. While the State Department seeks to make invisible the deterioration of its competitiveness in the most dynamic productive areas, it persists in covering up the conflict as a clash of civilizations between democracies and autocracies. However, the causes that explain the State Department’s positioning basically refer to the fact that in 2019 China surpassed the United States as the main trading partner of four countries in the region (Brazil, Chile, Peru and Uruguay), and that Beijing climbed to second place as the region’s global partner behind Washington.

Arms and economy

Between 2002 and 2019, Beijing’s trade with Latin America and the Caribbean rose from $17 billion to $315 billion. And since the pandemic set in in 2020, China committed $1 billion in loans to purchase health supplies, improve medical infrastructure and provide vaccines to deal with Covid-19. During the same period, Washington provided the region with financing for a tenth of the amount granted by Beijing, some 100 million dollars. Faller’s visits to Uruguay, Argentina and the Dominican Republic did not include the donation or provision of vaccines, despite the fact that Washington has a higher vaccination rate than China. China inoculated 16% of its population and the United States 60%. Since the approval of vaccines by the World Health Organization, the Asian country has diverted 50% of its total production to Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Despite formidable military spending, Washington is the only member of the club of 36 richest countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) that does not offer universal health coverage. Nearly 30 million lacked health insurance before the pandemic and another 25 million dropped coverage during the pandemic due to layoffs.

U.S. hostility toward the Asian giant goes back more than two decades. In the early years of this century, George W. Bush (Jr.) financed the military rearmament of Taiwan in order to generate fratricidal disputes. In 2009 Barack Obama engaged in obstructing Sino-Japanese cooperation and the Pentagon opposed Tokyo’s aspiration to close the military base in Okinawa. During Donald Trump’s presidency, the trade and technology war intensified and sanctions against companies and corporate officials multiplied. Among the latter, the board members of Huawei, the company with the largest number of patents linked to 5G technology. In order to disrupt the development of Southeast Asia, the current Biden administration continues with the objective outlined by Trump to form a Pacific NATO, articulating the 25 bases that Washington has in Japan together with the 15 it maintains in South Korea. It is intended to complete this military network with the contribution of Australia and India.

At the end of 2019, the U.S. military budget reached 732 billion dollars and that of China a third, 261 billion. Washington possesses 4,500 nuclear warheads against Beijing’s 260. The investments in military equipment made by the White House amount to more than the ten countries that follow it in terms of military financing. Its budget is 10 times higher than Russia’s and, for fiscal year 2021, it is expected to spend more than Donald Trump’s four-year term. Washington is presumed to have 800 military bases scattered around the world, dedicated to managing varied projects.

Despite the danger alleged by the leaders of the Southern Command with respect to China, in Latin America and the Caribbean, only U.S. military forces are deployed. There are seven bases in Colombia, and two in Aruba and Curacao. In Honduras, the Soto Cano Air Base operates; in Lima, the Naval Medical Research and Development and in Chile, the Fort Aguayo Training Center located in Valparaiso. They have also developed innovative programs such as the one offered at the Law International Enforcement Academies (ILEA), directly financed by the State Department, with academic support from the Department of Justice and the Pentagon, which offers training for judges, security agencies, journalists and political officials in the most innovative of the instructions deployed in the continent: legal-media warfare. Another ILEA site is in Bangkok, Thailand, where hundreds of students from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region are trained in the art of defending human rights and resisting Beijing’s policies.

The Cold War of the 20th century was expressed in military, geographic and ideological terms, although it included the obvious structural components of an economic nature. The current conflict posed by the United States is clearly presented as productive and technological. This scenario calls into question the financial-neoliberal leadership established since the mid-1970s, when the aim was to annihilate the Welfare State and the working class that was growing within it.

During the last two centuries, capitalist logic has appealed to war in order to maximize its accumulation models. Today, this design is limited, as in the Cold War, by the overabundance of nuclear missiles. But unlike the confrontation with the USSR, when productive structures had dissimilar speeds and complexities, time does not seem to be playing in Washington’s favor. Innovation, productivity and the synergy between Science and Technology have moved from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Antonio Gramsci objectified times of transition such as those being observed: “The old world is dying. The new is slow to appear. And in that chiaroscuro monsters emerge”.

These are the nightmares of imperialist reason.

Translation by Internationalist 360°

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Wed May 05, 2021 1:04 pm

Ecuador: Right-Wing Populism or Proto-Fascism
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 4, 2021
Alejandro Salazar

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Protesters take to the street of the Ecuadorean capital Quito against the policies of the government of President Lenin Moreno. | Photo: Reuters 2018

No one should be oblivious to what is happening, and probably will happen in Ecuador politically in the short, medium and long term. I am referring to the rise to power of the ultra-right, represented by the alliance between the oligarchy and financial capital. The 21-6 government does not bode well for a country that has already been hit hard by the neoliberal model, which has democratically renewed its contract to continue 4 more years in power.

Reduction of the education budget -which has meant the desertion of thousands of children and young people from the educational system. Mutilation of the health budget -which has meant the loss of thousands of lives in an unprecedented health crisis. Excessive spending in the repressive apparatus -which evidently does not translate into a reduction of crime and violence rates. Elimination of fuel subsidies -which continue and will continue to increase, making products, services and the cost of living more expensive. Reduction of the employment rate and exponential increase of unemployment, and many other anti-popular measures that the country is now suffering and will continue to suffer the next 4 years of deepening of the neoliberal model.

However, and although it may seem daring to say so, the economic consequences are perhaps the least worrisome, if we are aware of the social cost of living under this model of government.

Guillermo Lasso -the right-wing populist, as many categorize him- came to power with proposals that, although being an evident and cynical exercise of demagogy, did not fail to deeply penetrate the ears, minds and hearts of a country submerged in ignorance, fear and hopelessness.

Five hundred dollars minimum wage, elimination of the higher education regulatory body SENESCYT, 9 million vaccinations in the first one hundred days of government, one million jobs, regularization -deportation?- of migrants, and other unrealistic delusions won the souls of Ecuadorian men and women. These same souls have not realized the real danger that this type of discourse represents in deeply conservative and fearful societies such as ours.

Lasso, together with the social Christian clique, headed by Jaime Nebot, represent the true danger of fascist discourse and exercise, which is increasingly on the rise in our society. How can we forget Nebot’s famous words, when he encouraged the flying squads to “use their weapons” because “if a rotten portion of the citizenry must fall down, then it will fall down”.

For practical purposes I will resort to the definition of fascism coined by the XIII Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International in 1935. It points us to fascism as: “the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, the most chauvinistic and imperialist elements of finance capital”. A definition quite applicable to our future ruler.

Some will say, no, that does not apply here, does it? Let’s review. A short time ago, the same dangerous banker and university graduate who is now president-elect, touted and defended the proposal to legalize the carrying of weapons. He himself asked -and they complied- for the veto of the Organic Health Code, because the Catholic discourse for life comes before public health. The friend and coideario of the rector of the USFQ, an honorable man with the last name of Gangotena, who says that the poor should not vote. The same one who wants to include Ecuador in the Pacific Alliance -at the cost of liquidating the small national industry- and who has shown himself as a carpet ruler for the North American interests and whims in the country, announcing the signing of an FTA.

The worrying thing about all this, however, is where these situations are nurtured. Fascism, hate speeches, xenophobia and the supremacy of capital are discourses that are sustained by the population itself. It is impossible to think that Lasso’s triumph was possible if many compatriots did not blindly believe in the banker and what he represents. Fascism -what some intellectuals naively or cowardly call “right-wing populism”- is a project above all of the masses. We have the nearby example of Brazil with Jair Messias. It is evident that Bolsonaro counts on people willing to defend him at the ballot box, in the courts and in the streets, if necessary.


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We know that the fight will be difficult, far from the false encounter proposed by the ultra-right that governs with 53% of popular support. At the same time, the field of action will be limited because the camouflage of statesmanship will not be permanent and will soon reveal its true face: repression, extermination of the popular classes, persecution and imprisonment.

The social fabric -which is badly wounded at present- will eventually break down, because there are those who, in the name of freedoms they do not have and properties that are not theirs, will support and legitimize the control and systematic exercise of violence. There will also be those who will resist, only to suffer the obvious consequences, because we know that the ultra-right is anything but tolerant.

Calling things by their name is one of the first steps to face what is coming. Survival as a slogan and solidarity and mutual care as a practice will allow us to understand what will happen with the Ecuador of tomorrow, something that, for now, does not bode well for the vast majority of the people.

Translation by Internationalist 360°

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Mon May 17, 2021 1:39 pm

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South America’s ‘Business Friendly’ Bloodbath

International Business and Banking support for the most repressive regimes in Latin America is even more evident than it was during the original cold war. Now, Wall Streetʼs three main men in South America all face charges of crimes against humanity, even genocide, at the International Criminal Court.

Whilst the anglosphere regularly attacks governments of the left in Latin America on human rights grounds, it is its pliant business friendly U.S. regional allies; Brazilʼs Bolsonaro, Chileʼs Piñera, and Colombiaʼs Duque, who face being sent before the Hague.

All three countries face crucial elections over the next eighteen months.

Colombia: See no evil

A graduate of Georgetown University, the notorious hotbed for CIA recruitment, Colombian president Ivan Duque and members of his government will now face charges of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court.

In April 2021, Trade Union-organised protests began in Colombia against planned tax reforms which threatened to hit the country’s poorest hard. Demands for “simplified tax code” are often a euphemism for an easier ride for foreign investors and the wealthy.

What followed was a campaign of state terror; repression of the protests, violence and killings, involving both state forces and paramilitaries.

According to human rights organisations Temblores and Indepaz, from 28 April to 8 May, violent actions of the state security forces resulted in the death of at least 47 people, the arbitrary detention of 963 people, 28 victims of eye-related injuries, and 12 victims of sexual violence. In total, they registered 1,876 cases of police violence.

Media coverage was subdued compared to that which accompanies demonstrations in neighbouring Venezuela, with reporters complaining that international media outlets were not interested in the story.

Laura Capote and Zoe Alexandra write: “After several nights of terror, the silence of the international community was broken. The United Nations Human Rights Office released a strong statement on the morning of 4 May expressing that it is ‘deeply alarmed’ at what is happening in Cali where ‘police opened fire on demonstrators protesting against tax reforms, reportedly killing and injuring a number of people.’”

As a result, Colombian politicians and human rights groups are preparing an official complaint to the International Criminal Court against the Ivan Duque regime. Kawsachun News reports: “Senator Iván Cepeda Castro announced that he would be relaying the information alongside the organizations Defender la Libertad, Temblores, and La Coordinación Colombia-Europa-Estados Unidos, “informing the possible responsibility of President Duque, Uribe, Minister Molano, Gr. Zapateiro and Gr. Vargas in crimes against humanity committed during the strike.””

In 2012 the Wall Street Journal celebrated Colombia as a new Latin American tiger economy, in a report noted by CIA think tank CSIS. Long the biggest recipient of military aid in the hemisphere, on the pretext of fighting the so called war on drugs, Colombia occupies a very special position for the United States in the region. Plan Colombia, the multi-billion aid package which ran for fifteen years, means that US Southern Command now enjoys free use of military facilities in the country, although a formal agreement to establish seven permanent bases was struck down by legislators in 2010 as unconstitutional. Despite this, US presence in Colombia is key to its strategy to suppress progressive movements in the region, and in 2017 it became a NATO partner member, with its adjunct think tank the Atlantic Council, speaking glowingly of the US-Colombia partnership. This partnership has resulted in a blind eye being turned to state abuses in the country.

In spite of international condemnation which followed the Duque regime’s violent reaction to the protests, Brazil’s foreign ministry chose that moment to reaffirm its shared values with Colombia, whilst Wall Street lobby and think tank Council of the Americas, the main conduit between private corporations and U.S. foreign policy in Latin America, attempted to deflect blame onto armed left-wing groups such as FARC and ELN for the violence.

A recent Amnesty International report “Why do they want to kill us?” observes that murders of Colombian human rights defenders have intensified under Duque, and the 2016 peace deal between the government and FARC guerrillas. As the FARC moved out, the remote areas became more dangerous: “Things have got even worse, particularly for those living in geographically strategic and natural resource-rich areas,” said Amnesty’s Americas Director Erika Guevara-Rosas. According to the UN, at least 107 social leaders and human rights activists were killed in 2019. This number doubled in 2020.

Multinationals are known to collaborate with Colombian paramilitaries in the extermination of those opposing land seizure for projects such as mining.

Council of the Americas member Chiquita, formerly the hated United Fruit Company, has a infamous history of political interference and abuses in Latin America. In Colombia, Matt Kennard writes that Chiquita “[…] were giving millions of dollars to mass-murdering paramilitaries, who had been emboldened by political protection during the civil war […]The major paramilitary group in Colombia, the AUC, has a long history of violence against peasants, trade unionists, Afro-Colombians and indigenous communities. Chiquita has admitted that it made at least 100 payments to the AUC in the period from 1997 to 2004, a total of $1.7 million.” The AUC (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia) was designated a terrorist group by the US in 2001, and was responsible for grotesque and widespread abuses including kidnapping, extortion, murder, and rape.

Council of the Americas’ vice president of policy, Brian Winter, was ghostwriter for Duque’s predecessor and mentor, former president Alvaro Uribe, president of Colombia from 2002-2010. In the WSJ review of ghostwritten autobiography ‘No Lost Causes’, Uribe is depicted as the “man who saved Colombia” and it served to whitewash the former president’s image abroad.

A Council on Hemispheric Affairs report however called Uribe “the most dangerous man in Colombian politics” and notes the Uribe’s administration’s ties to the far right paramilitary AUC. His own brother Santiago was jailed for right-wing paramilitary involvement.

US intelligence documents declassified during his presidency revealed Alvaro Uribe listed among “important Colombian narco-traffickers”, in a 1991 communique which noted his dealings with the Medellin Cartel, and his close personal friendship with Pablo Escobar. As a key partner in the war on drugs, the cable was damaging to Uribe, as he mobilised Plan Colombia’s massive military aid in an effort to crush the FARC, who just years earlier looked on the brink of winning the civil war.

The Colombian Peace Tribunal (JEP) has recently released findings that, during Uribe’s crackdown on the FARC and other groups, the army murdered 6,402 civilians and presented them as guerrillas killed in combat between 2002 and 2008, in the ‘false positives’ scandal.

But Uribe is now under house arrest on charges relating to other massacres, which left between 150 and 200 people dead during his time as governor of Antioquia province. The series of massacres, which took place between 1996 and 1998, have been declared crimes against humanity by the Colombian Supreme Court. Despite his right wing paramilitary links being revealed in State Department cables during his presidency, the United States opposes Uribe’s investigation.

Left wing Senator Gustavo Petro, the ex-mayor of Bogota and one time member of revolutionary group M-19, who was defeated by Ivan Duque in the 2018 presidential runoff, currently leads polls for the 2022 election.

Chile: The blueprint

Chile was of course the original blueprint for US-enforced neoliberalism in South America.

Current President Sebastian Piñera was a supporter of General Augusto Pinochet and the bloody 1973 coup which installed his dictatorship with the help of the CIA and Council of the Americas, whose staff and functions were interchangeable, as documented in Seymour Hersh’s Price of Power. It was the threat that a democratic and socialist Chile could set an example to the region which motivated US plans for the coup against Salvador Allende, and it was instead turned into an open laboratory for Milton Friedman’s laissez-faire economic theories. Council of the America’s Brian Winter once called neofascist Pinochet “a revolutionary” rather than U.S. backed neofascist dictator.

The Wall Street Journal’s Mary Anastasia O’Grady, a backer of Latin America’s far right governments, had long championed Piñera, who upon taking office promised to privatise Chilean copper interests which lay behind the 1973 coup.

Some members of Piñera’s coalition served in the Pinochet government, and the New York Times reported that “his brother, José Piñera, helped install the nation’s neo-liberal economic program as the general’s labor minister and today is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian research group in Washington.”. With hundreds of women kidnapped, tortured, raped and murdered under the Pinochet regime, Piñera enraged Chile’s feminist movement by naming the General’s great niece, Macarena Santelices, who has has praised the “positives” of the dicatorship, as minister for women.

In 1998, Sebastian Piñera opposed Judge Balthazar Garzon’s attempt to have Pinochet extradited to Spain to face trial for human rights violations during his dictatorship, for which he had been implicated in over 300 criminal charges.

Following his security forces’ violent repression of mass protests which exploded around Chile in 2019, Sebastian Piñera himself now faces charges of crimes against humanity, following in the footsteps of Pinochet.

Earlier in 2019, a delegation representing the Mapuche indigenous people presented a petition at the Hague accusing the Piñera government of genocide. Six months later as mass demonstrations erupted across the country, their brutal repression led to further charges at the ICC.

And it was again Baltasar Garzón who filed the accusation before the International Criminal Court against Piñera for his alleged involvement in crimes against humanity during the 2019 protests.

”Garzón, the Chilean Human Rights Commission (CCHDH) and other organizations today sent a letter to the attorney general of the International Criminal Court (ICC), lawyer Fatou Bensouda, in the Dutch city of The Hague for the court to investigate, accuse and initiate a trial of President Sebastián Piñera for crimes against humanity that have been committed since October 2019,” reported the Center for Journalistic Investigation (Ciper).

It called for the prosecution of Piñera and all officials and members of the security forces involved in the repression of the 2019 protests, in the belief that widespread and systematic crimes against humanity were committed, and contained more than 3,000 cases of human rights violations Repression of the protests left about thirty dead, 460 people with eye injuries and more than 8,800 complaints about crimes committed by state security forces.

The complaints were confirmed by reports from the United Nations, Amnesty International, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Human Rights Watch and the National Institute for Human Rights.

Progressive International writes: “There have been a series of systematic violations of human rights in Chile, especially during the period of the “social outbreak”. National and international human rights organisations have recorded eye injuries caused by the impact of rubber bullets, torture, deaths, sexual abuse and a series of other abuses and serious violations. These have been compiled into a dossier of evidence to take Sebastián Piñera to the International Criminal Court.”

The violence meted out to protesters was particularly horrific, with a police strategy to target the eyes of demonstrators with rubber bullets, designed to terrorise the population and clear the streets.

Senator and Chilean Upper House Human Rights Commission president, Alejandro Navarro, insisted that President Piñera “will not die without first paying for his responsibility.” after Santiago’s 7th Court of Guarantees admitted a complaint of crimes against humanity against Piñera. “He will be punished with imprisonment in any of its grades, the maximum degree being a penalty ranging from 15 to 20 years,” Navarro said.

Council of the Americas personnel tried to insinuate that “foreign forces” were behind the Chilean protests, and those which rocked Ecuador in the same period, without presenting evidence. In contrast, when these kind of allegations happens under left governments or those not allied to the United States, skeptics are frequently accused of “denying agency” by questioning what might be behind such destabilising movements, such as the involvement of foreign or foreign funded non-governmental organisations.

In October 2020, one year after the protests, 78% of Chileans voted to rewrite the constitution – one of the vestiges of the Pinochet era.

The Communist Party’s Daniel Jadue, currently mayor of Recoleta, leads most opinion polls for Chile’s 2021 presidential election.

Brazil: The image problem

In May 2019 the United States’ biggest banks sponsored a lavish New York gala event for Brazil’s new president Jair Bolsonaro, held at the Marriott Marquis hotel. Six months later Bolsonaro faced the first of a series of charges at the international criminal court, for crimes against humanity and incitement of genocide.

The New York event was sponsored by Council of the Americas patron member Citigroup whose CEO Michael Corbat defended its sponsorship of the gala in the face of a well organised protest campaign to cancel it. It was originally scheduled to take place at the American Museum of Natural History but was cancelled due to public outrage that the museum would host a man intent on dismantling protections of the Amazon for foreign mining and agribusiness corporations.

Whilst other companies withdrew, Council of the Americas members who sponsored the event included Credit Suisse Group AG, JPMorgan Chase & Co., BNP Paribas SA, HSBC, Bank of America. and Morgan Stanley. Corbat told CNBC’s Carl Quintanilla: “We spend a lot of time making sure our people understand the values of our company, and I hope in the case of that, there’s no question in terms of our support, our unwavering support, for our LGBT community,” in an attempt to pinkwash their endorsement of Bolsonaro’s necropolitics.

Bolsonaro’s well publicised history of not only homophobic, but violent, racist, misogynistic and genocidal statements made a mockery of these corporations facile appeals to LGBT customers, and they knew full well what he was before he was elected. On two occasions he made threatening rape related remarks to Workers Party congresswoman Maria do Rosario.

Despite this, Council of the Americas normalised Bolsonaro extreme right positions by calling him an “arch-conservative”. In 2017, following behind closed door meetings with the Bolsonaro clan at COA New York headquarters, Brian Winter referred to what assumedly were its members, as “some previously skeptical business leaders, in Brazil and abroad, were starting to come around. One described Bolsonaro as a “defense of last resort” if Lula were not prevented from running by his legal troubles and still led polls by mid-2018.”. Operation Lava Jato prosecutor Deltan Dellagnol called the jailing of Lula, “a gift from the CIA“.

“No room for feelings” the investors said, of a man who claimed on television that 30,000 needed to be killed for Brazil to function properly.

Council of the Americas member, Barings Bank, could not contain their enthusiasm for the election of Bolsonaro, calling it “a new frontier”. “Jair Bolsonaro’s election as Brazil’s president in October 2018 was momentous: this was the first time since the establishment of the country’s 1988 constitution that a clear right-leaning mandate had won a national vote. Many market commentators have recognized that his appointment has the potential for positive economic transformation,” it proclaimed.

The propaganda-laden statement paid gushing tributes to Economy Minister Paulo Guedes and now disgraced Justice Minister Sérgio Moro, even lauding his politically-motivated imprisonment of former President Lula da Silva, which enabled Bolsonaro’s victory.

Guedes “Pro-Business” economic policies, delivered by a monster like Bolsonaro, was acceptable to them, as it had been many times in the past. A veteran of Pinochet’s Chile, Paulo Guedes reduces the atrocities under his rule to a “political point of view”.

The Wall Street Journal explicitly endorsed Jair Bolsonaro during the 2018 election, and lauded his spurious anti-corruption rhetoric.

The magazine gloated: “Global progressives are having an anxiety attack over the near-triumph Sunday of Brazil’s conservative presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro. After years of corruption and recession, apparently millions of Brazilians think an outsider is exactly what the country needs.”

“[…] Mr. Bolsonaro, who has spent 27 years in Congress, is best understood as a conservative populist who promises to make Brazil great for the first time. The 63-year-old is running on traditional values and often says politically incorrect things about identity politics that inflame his opponents. Yet he has attracted support from the middle class by pledging to reduce corruption, crack down on Brazil’s rampant crime and liberate entrepreneurs from government control. He has stopped short of promising to fully privatize Petrobras, the state-owned oil giant, but his chief economic adviser says he would sell its subsidiaries, deregulate much of the economy and restrain government spending. On crime he has promised to restore a police presence in urban and rural areas that have become lawless.”

On May 5, Jair Bolsonaro met new Rio de Janeiro governor Cláudio Castro at his official residence, the Laranjeiras Palace. Castro took office after the impeachment of far-right Wilson Witzel, whom he served as vice.

The next day saw the worst massacre by Rio de Janeiro police in history, with 28 killed at the Jacarezinho favela. The previous worst was the Vigário Geral massacre in 1993, with 21 victims.

Brazil’s Federal Supreme Court ordered suspension of police operations in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas in June 2020, but the state government has failed to comply. Jurema Werneck, executive director of Amnesty International Brazil said: “It’s completely unacceptable that security forces keep committing grave human rights violations such as those that occurred in Jacarezinho today against residents of the favelas, who are mostly Black and live in poverty.”

Bolsonaro’s rhetoric on police killings has been a trademark , with the motto “a good thief is a dead thief”, and advocating clearing favelas of gangs with gunfire from helicopters. During the 2018 election he also spoke of machine gunning Workers Party members at a campaign rally.

He congratulated Rio de Janeiro police following the Jacarezinho massacre. Whilst Rio police abuses have continued for decades, Brazil has never had an elected president who celebrates them.

An admirer of Chile’s Pinochet, it is with the Brazilian president’s brazen necropolitics that those promoting the interests of Wall Street investors have their major image problem in South America. Their 2018 pick soon became an international bogeyman, and distancing from the neofascist by those who once lauded his “good ideas” has been visible since the moment he took office.

As even the CIA embarks on a cringeworthy corporate embrace of “diversity”, that image problem has led to the financial press now attempting to instead bracket Brazil’s Bolsonaro together with left wingers Mexico’s Amlo and Argentina’s Fernandez, classifying them all as “populists”, when in fact he is in open ideological alliance with their preferred regional leaders, such as Chile’s Piñera and Colombia’s Duque.

With Bolsonaro’s support from the Atlantic Council, a pledge to make it a NATO associate member, and broadening of cooperation with Southcom, Brazil, like Colombia, is central to any U.S. strategic plans in South America. Bolsonaro became the first Brazilian leader in history to visit CIA headquarters, two months after his inauguration.

Latin America’s largest economy has been in steep decline since the U.S.-backed lawfare operation Lava Jato first froze its civil construction and energy sectors in 2015. Already suffering from the global commodities slowdown, this economic sabotage was overlooked, and instead used to build a secondary pretext for the removal of Dilma Rousseff, along with the systemic corruption the same Lava Jato was supposedly pursuing. As many predicted then, this was used to turn Brazil’s vast public sector into low hanging fruit for private and foreign investors.

Brazil’s situation was depicted bombastically as the worst economic crisis in history when it was nothing of the sort. Bridge to the future was to be the “solution” to this crisis when it was classic economic hit job of the wrong policy, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

Rousseff calls her impeachment the opening act, or the original sin of Brazil’s catastrophe. Michel Temer admitted at a special Council of the Americas meeting in September 2016, shortly after her ouster, that she had been removed for her refusal to adopt ‘bridge to the future’, an austerity policy manifesto, and not for the minor budgetary infraction for which she was officially impeached.

Bridge to the future, which was suspected to have been drawn up by Council of the Americas and Paulo Guedes’ Instituto Millenium, enforced a twenty year freeze on Brazil’s public education and health investment. These policies continued and intensified under COA darling Guedes, which has exacerbated the country’s Coronavirus pandemic. At the time of publication, 1 in 500 Brazilians have already died of Covid-19. A University of São Paulo report conducted with NGO Conectas found that the Bolsonaro government had encouraged pandemic deaths through intentional spread of the virus and refusal of measures to control it, up to and US encouraged including suppression of vaccines. Guedes ally Solange Viera who had been involved in pension reforms pushed the previous year, remarked in a meeting: “It is good that deaths are concentrated among the elderly … This will improve our economic performance, as it will reduce our pension deficit”. There is now a Senate inquiry into Brazilian government handing of the pandemic which could yet sink the Bolsonaro-Guedes regime.

In 2019, Council of the Americas’ Brian Winter told World Economic Forum attendees to “prepare to be dazzled” by Bolsonaro’s new Minister of the Economy. The economy tanked, dazzlingly, long before the Coronavirus pandemic, with flat to negative GDP, capital flight and devaluation of the Real.

Now, Council of the Americas and the same Wall Street interests which backed Brazil’s coup of 1964, Chile’s in 1973, Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment, the jailing of Lula da Silva and the election of Bolsonaro and Guedes, now seek continuation of the ultraliberal project with a ‘Bridge to the future 2.0’, this time seeking to solve the image problem by marrying it to a more acceptable face.

Former president Lula of the Workers Party leads polls for the 2022 election commandingly, as he did before being removed from the race in 2018.

Rebuilding hegemony

Redemocratised Latin America eventually rejected both the IMF-enforced neoliberalism which terrorised the region economically, and its past subservience to U.S. foreign policy.

Since the defeat of the FTAA or free trade area of the Americas, and the ascendence of the so-called pink tide, there have been ongoing efforts to establish a new hegemonic order to succeed the Washington consensus of the 1990s through economic and strategic blocs like the Pacific alliance, the Lima Group, and direct intervention through the U.S. dominated Organisation of American States.

These have stood counter to regional integration efforts like UNASUR, ALBA and CELAC, the protagonists of which were depicted by financial press as the “bad” South America; one of “populism” and “statism”, i.e. obstacles to low wages and privatisation.

From Honduras in 2009 and Paraguay in 2012, there have been a succession of coups, coup attempts, destabilisations and reversed elections; Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua. The failure of Argentinian neoliberal Macri to be re-elected punctured U.S. vision for the southern cone, as did the overthrow of the Bolivian coup regime both they and the IMF backed. The coup government led by CIA-connected Jeanine Añez now face punishment for massacres and torture during their putsch.

In Ecuador, home to the U.S. Manta airbase, and under the shadow of Council of the Americas patron Chevron, a combination of lawfare, proxy spoiler/splinter opposition, and disinformation against the left candidate most recently helped bring COA-lauded banker Guillermo Lasso to power. Lasso, neoliberal former head of Ecuador operations for the Coca-Cola company, succeeds ‘Shakespearean villain’ Lenin Moreno. Moreno was elected on a left-wing ticket to succeed Rafael Correa, only to quickly switch to a U.S. allied position once in office, engage in persecution of former allies, and encourage brutal repression of anti-austerity, anti-IMF protests. This led him too to face a lawsuit from indigenous organisations for crimes against humanity.

Two new Brazilian books ‘Ninguém regula a América‘ by Ana Penido/Miguel Enrique Stédile and ‘Brasil no espectro de uma guerra híbrida‘ by Piero C. Leirner both detail how beneath a veneer of public diplomacy, lawfare, encouragement and utilisation of the far right, along with other components, have been used by the United States over the past decade or more to wage an undeclared hybrid war across the region, in order to install governments aligned with U.S. interests; put simply it is the old empire with new weapons.

Anti-Corruption in particular went from a standing start in the early 1990s to become a principal tool of US statecraft, capable of swinging elections and toppling presidents. In Brazil’s case this had global dimensions via BRICS and its relations with China and Russia.

These kind of campaigns in Latin America are backed by Council of the Americas, NATO’s Atlantic Council, AEI, Transparency International, the libertarian Atlas Network and other NGOs, think tanks, and foundations, which act as US / FVEY government cutouts, providing strategic planning, material support, and editorial cover via clusters of locally stationed flacks. There has been little distinction between governmental agency and outsourced corporate activity in this area.

It is wrong to assume there was ever pause from the role U.S. corporations played in the horrors of 1960s and 70s Latin America, when the very same organisation that binds them, Council of the Americas, has been a constant, pulling political strings to provide an environment that is friendly to business, and swimming in blood, ever since.

With elections imminent in Brazil, Chile and Colombia, this malign influence should be central to any serious reporting.

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Sat May 22, 2021 1:06 pm

DUQUE, BOLSONARO AND PIÑERA: BETWEEN GUARDIANSHIP AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
May 21 , 2021 , 9:51 am .

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From the right the presidents of Chile, Sebastián Piñera; from Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro; and from Colombia, Iván Duque together with the former presidents of Argentina, Mauricio Macri; from Ecuador, Lenín Moreno; and from Peru, Martín Vizcarra (Photo: Esteban Félix / AP)

Days ago some news portals reported that Colombian President Iván Duque was denounced before the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity. This report was made by Senator Iván Cepeda and social organizations due to the demonstrations in the context of the National Strike that began last month and is still ongoing in Colombia.

Duque joins the list of presidents denounced in that international court who belong to the expired Lima Group, since the triad of accused is led by Jair Bolsonaro, president of Brazil, and Sebastián Piñera, his counterpart from Chile.

These facts appear cautiously in the global press; different case if it were Venezuela. We deploy some keys on the medical record of each of these characters, connections, interests and what brings them to this judicial arena.

DUQUE: VIOLENCE MADE IN THE USA

Iván Duque, a pupil of Álvaro Uribe Vélez and president of Colombia, has not stopped with the attacks, accusations and threats against Venezuela. It was 2017 when Duque launched the complaint, together with Chilean and Colombian congressmen, against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in the International Criminal Court for "violations of international law."

The story is different: as a result of the tax reform project, made up as the "Sustainable Solidarity Law", which would notably hit the Colombian people due to the increase in taxes on services and others, the opposition to Duque plus the unions called the National Strike on April 28 . In this way, events have developed like this:

1.The demonstrations spread throughout the territory, both in the capital and in cities such as Cali, Bucaramanga and Medellín.
2.Colombian Vice President Marta Lucía Ramírez visited the ICC in an attempt to calm the waters.
3.Duque withdraws the tax reform , giving as an option the will to "agree" with all political actors for a new reform. But the demonstrations continue the social and health crisis that Colombia is experiencing in the hands of Duque has worsened since the beginning of the pandemic.
4.Almost at the end of a week of protests, Alberto Carrasquilla , Minister of Finance and promoter of the reform in question , resigns . Then Chancellor Claudia Blum resigns.
5.Juan Alberto Londoño is appointed to that position and resigns after a few days, leaving Juan Manuel Restrepo as the incumbent.
6.The Anonymous group hacked the Colombian Army website, revealing the personal emails and passwords of more than 100 officials. All this in rejection of the human rights violations in the demonstrations in Colombia.
7.Lenín Moreno of Ecuador and Marta Lucía Ramírez accused President Maduro of alleged "interference" in the demonstrations in Colombia.

Those were the pieces that were moving from the outside, but in the interim of the protests, multiple acts of repression and violence against the Colombian people have been the daily bread.

On May 10, the Colombian National Police, with armed infiltrators and civilians, decided to attack with shots a group of indigenous people who were demonstrating on the outskirts of the Colombian city of Cali. The Association of Indigenous Cabildos del Norte del Cauca (ACIN) reported that "the harassment of armed civilian individuals persists, with the complicit accompaniment of the army, the police and the Esmad (Mobile Anti-riot Squad)."

Likewise, the Cauca Regional Indigenous Council (CRIC) alleges that the attack by armed "civilians" on the protesters is a repressive tactic very typical of paramilitarism.

By May 11, the Institute for Development and Peace Studies (Indepaz) published its data record on these protests and their unfortunate outcomes:

*To date, protests have been carried out in 800 municipalities of the 1 thousand 122 of Colombian territory.
*They estimate that more than 15 million people have participated and according to surveys they have the support of more than "70% of the population over 16 years of age, in all social sectors and especially among the most impoverished and in the middle classes."
*Iván Duque's response has been one of brutal repression and stigmatization of the protest. Between April 28 and May 10, in the midst of the mobilizations, 47 people have been murdered, 39 of them due to police violence and 28 correspond to the murders of young people in Cali .
*The Attorney General's Office recognizes that there are more than 540 missing protesters .
*Indepaz as of May 12 registered 2,110 cases of violence by the Colombian Public Force. Including 30 victims of eye assaults and 16 for sexual assault.

A few days after the protests began, the United Nations spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, reported that the Secretary General of that multilateral instance, António Guterres , is "following the situation in Colombia with great concern, including the violence that we have seen, the human rights violations reported in the context of these protests. "

False positives , assassinations of peasant leaders, links with paramilitaries and drug trafficking, glyphosate spraying, and consent to a US military presence in Colombian territory are part of the main characteristics in Iván Duque's resume.

That tax reform, applauded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), was just the icing on the corporate cake that Duque has been cooking for a long time, since his training and connections with the US economic lobby have been going on for years.

In December 2020, Duque told the American Jewish Committee (AJC) that "Colombia is Israel's number one ally in Latin America and the Caribbean (…) We want Colombia to become the Silicon Valley of Latin America." Colombia recently signed a free trade agreement with Israel and intends to open an innovation office in Jerusalem soon.

Despite the fact that the rejection pronouncements in the international system have been restrained, the moderate position of the United States in this situation has not been surprising: the statements of the Deputy Spokesperson of the State Department, Jalina Porter, showed support for the government of Duque.

The United States maintains strong ties with Colombia. And the evidence refers it: just to name a few, it is recalled how in 2007 Chiquita Brands International (former United Fruit Company) had to pay a fine of 25 million dollars for doing business with paramilitaries in Colombia, which according to the plea agreement, This US company paid more than 1.7 million dollars from 1997 to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). However, the fine is not enough for the murders of more than 10,000 people under the finances of that corporation to the AUC.


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Colombia receives one of the three C-130 Hercules from the United States (Photo: Presidency of Colombia)

From this conception and financing was born Esmad , a Colombian counterinsurgent security force that has been the executor of countless human rights violations.

Year after year these war ties have been strengthened. In 2018, the entry of Colombia as a global partner of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) escalated and was formalized , being the first South American country to join that organization.

Today, Duque has the current complaint before the ICC for crimes against humanity, in the midst of a political and social cataclysm as a consequence of his management that is alien to the well-being of the Colombian population.

BOLSONARO: THE AMAZON, TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS AND THE PANDEMIC

It went under the table in the media sphere that in 2019 an event was held in New York in honor of Jair Bolsonaro, president of Brazil, where he was going to be awarded as the person of the year. This event was organized by the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce and brought together large corporations, such as Delta Air Lines, The Financial Times and Bain & Co., which were acting as sponsors of that gala.

In this context, other entities refused to comment to the press if they had withdrawn from the event, that included Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, HSBC, BNP Paribas, Credit Suisse, Citigroup Inc and JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Later, the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce published on its website that it had chosen Bolsonaro as its person of the year due to his " intention to foster closer commercial and diplomatic ties between Brazil and the United States ."

Bolsonaro was forced to cancel his trip to the United States business center due to protests by environmental groups and organizations that raised their rejection of the destruction of the Amazon that the Brazilian president led and accelerated. However, what matters in that account are Bolsonaro's obvious connections to the American economic elite.

In an investigation by The Guardian on the deforestation and livestock business in Brazil, some keys are pointed out that orbit in the financial dynamics of resources of the Latin American country:

*AgroSB has large hectares that devour the rainforest in Brazil.
*AgroSB supplies livestock to JBS, which is the world's largest meat packaging company and the world's largest supplier of beef, chicken and leather, with 350,000 customers in more than 150 countries.
*The investigation indicates that AgroSB is a powerful agricultural empire owned by the Opportunity group, co-founded by Daniel Dantas, a controversial businessman who Bloomberg described as the "bad boy" of Brazilian finance.
*JBS has the endorsement of Bolsonaro to deforest the Amazon.

This is one of the many companies that are promoting their business and interests in the green gold of Brazil. Large companies supported Bolsonaro's presidency. Americas Society, the Wall Street think tank whose founder was David Rockefeller, published an article by Brian Winter , where the praises of the Bolsonaro government surpassed the lines of that portal. Winter told the World Economic Forum that Paulo Guedes, the economic architect of Brazil's policies, was "a man who seems destined to change Brazil for the better. Brilliant and disciplined."

Faced with the pandemic, Guedes emphasized that his ultra-liberal reforms were the solution, and in this he was accompanied by the Minister of the Environment Ricardo Salles, who saw the pandemic as an opportunity for the accelerated abandonment of the regulations that protected the Amazon.

Another company that joins the pro-Bolsonaro list, Cargill Corporation, the most active foreign company in the Amazon agribusiness, announced its support for the now president since the presidential campaign , they knew him very well from Congress. This corporation is the spearhead in soybean production in Brazil. Likewise, Cargill announced its explicit support for deforestation in an open letter to soy producers in Brazil, and its opposition to environmental protection projects.

Even the Barings Bank applauded Bolsonaro's victory in the presidential elections, because having Sergio Moro and Paulo Guedes in the cabinet ensured fluidity in their business. Barings Bank described Brazil as the " new frontier " for the world economy.

Since Michel Temer took power, in 2016 the ground has been prepared to relax the application of federal laws against deforestation, in addition to cutting the budget of the Ministry of the Environment. The fire that subsequently occurred only catalyzed corporate cannibalism for the resources of that Amazonian space.

The resources of the Amazon region are highly coveted, the agricultural potential and mineral wealth is unmatched. The levels of access to it for foreign capital under the government of Bolsonaro, a Wall Street ally, are unmatched.

Currently, Bolsonaro does not have one lawsuit in the ICC, but four :

In 2020, he was denounced for crimes against humanity and genocide, due to his irresponsible stance on the pandemic. This complaint was presented by organizations made up of professionals in the health area.
Three of the complaints are related to the role of the president in the health crisis caused by the new coronavirus.
The remaining complaint was filed by the indigenous leader Raoni Metuktire, defender of the Amazon. It was made for crimes against humanity and acts that lead to the genocide of indigenous and native communities, in addition to the destruction of habitat in the Amazon rainforest.
Bolsonaro not only faces the ICC complaint, the Brazilian Senate also initiated the investigation into the absence of management to control the contagion and spread of Covid-19. To date, the health crisis in Brazil registers more than 400 thousand deaths as a result of the pandemic, not to mention the Brazilian variant that was generated this year.

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One of Bolsonaro's complaints before the ICC is for handling the pandemic (Photo: Zuma Press)

PIÑERA: AT THE CROSSROADS

Although the complaints before the ICC and the closeness to the United States unite these leaders, another factor that connects Bolsonaro and Sebastián Piñera is the admiration of the dictator Augusto Pinochet.


In 2019, protests flared in Chile as a result of an increase in the number of passengers on the public transport system. Faced with the protests that began to develop, Sebastián Piñera, president of Chile, decreed the State of Emergency in the capital as well as the curfew. This did not stop the demonstrations, which were also repeated in other cities such as Valparaíso, but it was on October 25 , 2020 when more than a million people gathered in Santiago de Chile in rejection of these new policies.

Prior to this event, the Mapuche indigenous people had already denounced the Chilean government before the ICC for violence, genocide and also for the stolen Mapuche babies destined for adoption by foreign families.

Regarding the protests that broke out that year, the Chilean national police, known as the Carabineros, committed serious human rights violations and abused the use of force. Weeks later, the process for a new Constitution is convened through a Constituent Congress.

In April of this year, the former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón, of the Chilean Human Rights Commission (CHDH), asked the ICC to investigate, accuse and initiate a trial of the Chilean president , due to the events that began in 2019.

The main argument, as it is written in the document delivered to the ICC, is that there are "3 thousand 50 causes for human rights violations that should be investigated by the Public Ministry." In the file delivered, more than 400 people injured in the eyes by the Carabineros are specified.

Days ago, in the elections for the Constituent Convention, the progressive forces achieved a significant advance, the opposite case for Piñera's party, which only won 38 seats .

On the other hand, if any president violates human rights and the media coverage is almost nil and the indignation of the current US administration is undeterred, it is certain that he is an ally of the United States. Piñera is not far behind: analysts from JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs estimated that this politician would achieve an acceleration in the Chilean economy that has not been possible.

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Sebastián Piñera, faithful to the United States (Photo: Reuters)

In short, the support of the western financial power to these governments in this delicacy of resources called Latin America is evident. Large corporations continue to have a space on the geopolitical board, and more so when it comes to strategic sectors. As long as that interest remains present, it does not matter if they perform poor management in the management of the pandemic, or if they murder the civilian population that claims their rights, the important thing in this context is that each puppet moves to the sound of the puppeteer.

In the near future, these three countries will experience electoral elections that may change the current political scenario, without ruling out the appropriation of resources and the political apparatus that allows American looting and collusion as a nucleus of confrontation.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/du ... -humanidad

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Sat Jun 05, 2021 1:41 pm

A PATH OF VICTORY FOR CHILE
Sergio Rodriguez Gelfenstein

4 Jun 2021 , 12:06 pm .

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The Chilean people have the constituent impulse to consolidate their own path (Photo: Rodrigo Garrido / Reuters)

The recent political events in Latin America have generated a new subject that is the protagonist of the events based on novel behaviors not always understood by their predecessors. Now, it is young people, women, environmentalists and indigenous peoples, among others, who are pointing the direction and pace of the social struggle.

It is not feasible to establish generalizations for all countries. Each has its own history, idiosyncrasies, organizational practice and experience in popular struggles that make it useless to copy models and methods of action. The peoples, starting from their own exercise, will point out the course that the path of liberation must follow.

The democratic, progressive and revolutionary forces (which are not the same) forged coalitions at the end of the last century that brought popular leaders to the government that in almost all cases did not come from the traditional parties. The organizations and militants who survived the struggles of the second half of the 20th century were incorporated as the caboose of these overwhelming processes that broke out in the region after the electoral triumph of Commander Hugo Chávez in 1998.

The left in government in several Latin American countries during the first fifteen years of this century produced profound political, economic and social changes that contributed to the improvement of the living conditions of millions of citizens… but they did not come to power. However, there is no doubt that the balance of these three decades is highly positive in terms of democratic advances, more equitable redistribution of income, defense of sovereignty, inclusion and social participation.

But they could not overcome some of capitalism's woes that are culturally entrenched in the psyche and conscience of many who, reaching public office, did not establish clear differences with the past. The bureaucracy, administrative inefficiency, nepotism, governmental mediocrity in some cases and especially corruption, permeated and minimized the great transformative work they did in each country, and as a whole gave Latin America and the Caribbean the possibility of being a leading actor present and active in international dynamics for the first time in history.

It should not be forgotten that, in the face of the impossibility of competing on equal terms with the right due to its overwhelming economic, military and institutional power, the most powerful weapon that the left has wielded for decades is its unequaled ethical character, its moral superiority and its high political consciousness that allows extraordinary sacrifices to be made, without asking for anything material in return. When these virtues are lost, we are disarmed.

I do not underestimate the undermining work carried out by the United States and the powers, but it cannot be assumed that it is possible to carry out a process of transformation of society with the imperial approval. This would even be dangerous. In its DNA, the United States brings its interventionist and interventionist vocation. Whoever assumes the cause of the peoples in the face of the system of domination, must know that he is going to face the brutal reaction of those who seek to maintain the system of dominance and control at any cost.

In recent months, the libertarian sentiment of the peoples has erupted again, a new democratizing, popular and anti-neoliberal wave is crossing all the latitudes of Our America. It would be a mistake to want to characterize current events from the values ​​and categories of the past.

All youth is essentially transformative. Salvador Allende put it bluntly: "Being young and not being a revolutionary is even a biological contradiction." To this extent, young people are eternally and naturally misunderstood when they assume - in their own way - the conduct of social processes. It has always been this way, the difference with what happens today is that the evolution and innovation so deep and accelerated in communications and technologies has made that distance more overwhelming.

It is not about considering the emancipatory struggle in generational terms, nor falling into the extremes of rejecting the elderly or, what is worse, being a veteran who promotes young people while despising other equals. Whoever is truly revolutionary fights for his space and is going to prevail if his ideas are just, and the analysis he makes of the concrete situation is correct. It is normal for the archaic to resist changes and for the new to want to overwhelm everything that faces it, but worse is immobility, paralysis in action and an accommodating lethargy to hold better positions of power.

The tricky thing is finding the right measure between one thing and another. Asian countries and indigenous peoples in our region make daily practice of this apparent contradiction. Although it is the young who make the decisions, they never discard the old because they consider that they are carriers of the knowledge and ancestral wisdom so necessary for correct decision-making.

A few days ago, I heard an interesting interview conducted by the Argentine radio FM de la Azotea de Mar del Plata with the Chilean pre-presidential candidate Daniel Jadue, current mayor of the Recoleta commune of the capital of that country. This interview joins others in which I have listened to Jadue attentively, being positively surprised to discover in his speech answers to several of the concerns expressed above.

"ALL THE STRENGTH OF THE CHILEAN YOUTH IN FAVOR OF THEIR STRUGGLE TOGETHER WITH THE PEOPLE: CHILE IS ALIVE"

Although Jadue was over 50 years old, I perceived in him a fresh rhetoric that reels the journalist's questions with surgical meticulousness without avoiding any of them. That wouldn't be so relevant if it weren't for the fact that I found a dialectical look at issues that go beyond the strict margins of Chile and its vicissitudes.

In the first place, and given the obvious successes of his municipal administration, Jadue evades the self-praise so typical of "professional" bureaucrats. Time and again it is assumed as part of a group of high political level and high professional and technical capacity that has managed to build a popular and anti-neoliberal model of development, which was believed impossible in Chile. In the same vein, rejecting individual protagonists and caudillisms of any kind, he attributes the merit of the political moment of flux that his country is experiencing to the Chilean people, their popular and social organizations. I do not think I am confused, I have many years not to be able to distinguish the populist charlatan from whom -like Jadue- with arguments he contributes in favor of the true sense of the popular in the daily work of politics.

On another plane, referring to the current reality. Daniel Jadue rejects the idea of ​​"outburst" and that it all started on October 18, 2019 when students jumped the turnstile of underground public transport to express their rejection of the increase in said service. He explains with many historical details and with passionate vehemence that these events came to reveal a long process of accumulation of forces that began after the fascist civic-military coup of 1973. With this, he interprets the feelings of those who fought and fought in different ways to the dictatorship, those who resisted the neoliberal and anti-popular offensive in the 30 years of governments of the two right-wing duopoly of power that gave shelter and support to the model developed by Pinochet and his clique and, of course,

In this sense, and perhaps without intending to, Jadue becomes a hinge that articulates the struggle of different generations who have dissimilar views in the face of the future of probable events. It is not closed to the participation of anyone, it gives a leading role to social movements, giving precise answers to the journalist's questions about what measures should be taken by a government with a different orientation to make an alternative model viable. for this Chile that was presented as the pinnacle of neoliberal success.

And here another very interesting facet is revealed that emerges from his strange professional training that overlaps his condition as architect and sociologist. The current mayor of Recoleta exposes a high theoretical level regarding the modern management of science and technology placed at the service of the public administration. Thus, he brings together the scientific and technical aspects in terms of their necessary link with the social.

Finally, another aspect that I find comforting when studying Jadue's speech is to find a politician of his time, but also one who links yesterday with today to project tomorrow by exposing aspects of politics at all levels. In response to questions from the journalist, Jadue deepened his knowledge of the local administration, which, however, did not prevent him from explaining in great detail the way in which he plans to expand such successful apprenticeships throughout the country - if he is elected president- without resorting to convoluted, unintelligible formulas, or worse, unrealizable. In plain language, he demonstrates the feasibility of demolishing the neoliberal model to make Chile once again a democratic and supportive country.

At the regional and global level, the candidate -without ambiguity- assumed the flags of the left, without doubts, without questioning, with a critical spirit but respectful of previous experiences, but with a firmness that denotes his will to put Chile -another once- on the path of integration with their Latin American counterparts, assuming the principles of non-interference, non-intervention in the internal affairs of other countries and respect for sovereignty and the right to self-determination.

Ten years ago when I began to write periodically, in light of what was happening in the southern country in those days, my first article was titled "'By reason or by force', Chile is alive." He began by saying: "Without any electoral registration, Pinochet fraudulently imposed the Constitution that legalized his authoritarian political model of neoliberal market economy. The Pinochetist constitution chained an undemocratic legal framework that enshrined a Gatopardian model in which everything had to change for everything to continue. same".

And he ended: "Today, young people are in the streets and fighting for their rights. They have begun to make valid the motto of Chile's shield, 'By reason or by force'. All the strength of the Chilean youth in favor of their fight alongside the people. Chile is alive. " How happy I am to testify that such a conviction from a decade ago points out a path of victory today.

https://misionverdad.com/opinion/un-cam ... para-chile

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Bigio: Fujimori's Electoral Campaign Is the Dirtiest In History

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In Peru, while Pedro Castillo leads the polls ahead of the June 6th presidential election, the U.S. and its stooges have run a deceptive campaign and used covert dirty tricks, propagating rumours and manipulating the population to vote for Keiko Fujimori, daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori. | Photo: Twitter @AndyVermaut

According to a political analyst, Keiko Fujimori is buying votes with money and trying to polarize the elections to be elected, "a dirty electoral campaign," according to political analysts.


With only a few days left for the second round of Peru's presidential elections, the candidates of Peru Libre and Fuerza Popular, Pedro Castillo and Keiko Fujimori, respectively, have closed their electoral campaigns this Friday, and Peruvians have to choose the next president of the country on June 6.

In an interview granted this Friday to HispanTV, international affairs analyst Isaac Bigio commented on the electoral process in Peru. "Fujimori's electoral campaign is the dirtiest I have ever seen in my life," he said.

The interviewee refers to Fujimori's criminal records and questions the Peruvian Constitution, allowing this candidate to run in the presidential elections. In fact, Fujimori had spent 16 months before the elections in jail accused of laundering 17 million dollars.


The expert also indicated that Fujimori is the candidate of the Popular Force party, which, in his opinion, is a "criminal party" for all that it has done during the history of the South American country.

Intending to win the elections, Fujimori has created a campaign "made up of rivals, terrorists, and communists," trying to polarize the presidential elections even more and has also created a struggle between the rich who are his supporters, and the poorest who are with Castillo, clarified the expert.

Pointing out that all the press and economic powers are on Fujimori's side, he added that, in this way, Castillo had become a "counter-system" character.


In this sense, Lima, the Peruvian capital, was rocked Tuesday by scenes of protests by citizens who expressed their rejection at the possibility that Fujimori could be elected president of Peru in the second round of the elections.

Another low point in her campaign included the assistance of U.S.-sponsored Venezuelan terrorist and coup-plotter Leopoldo López, who has been meddling in Peru's internal politics, traveling there to campaign for far-right candidate Keiko Fujimori, days before the presidential election.

More than 25 million citizens are summoned to the polls for this mandatory voting election. The first official results will be known around midnight Sunday (05h00 GMT Monday).

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Big ... -0024.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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