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Lula’s Release Will Only Reinvigorate the Pink Tide Against U.S. Hegemony in Latin America

By Paul Antonopoulos | November 11, 2019

The Workers Party (PT) ruled Brazil, mostly under the leadership of the charismatic Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, or simply known as Lula, from 2003 until his successor’s impeachment in 2016. This period saw Brazil undergo major changes and advancements with an emphasis on educating the poor, providing access to healthcare for all Brazilians, poverty reduction and Latin American integration. Although the PT did not challenge the capitalist system entirely, there was an emphasis on reducing the neoliberal model that has exploited South America since Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet allowed his country to be economically ruled by this U.S.-endorsed system since the 1970’s.

The progress made by Lula saw a great reversal after his controversial arrest for allegedly engaging in corrupt practices. However, after only 580 days of incarceration in what was supposed to be a near decade long sentence, the Federal Supreme Court released the former president on Thursday from prison. His release, although initially a joyful event for progressives into South America, was quickly overshadowed by the coup taking place in Bolivia that has seen Evo Morales resign as president.

The successful coup against Morales is a setback for the re-emergence of the socialist Pink Tide order in Latin America. However, the release of Lula is likely to re-energize the entire cultural space against U.S. hegemony that has nearly completely dominated region since the mid-2010’s when the “Blue Tide” (Conservative Wave) took over Brazil, Argentina, Peru and other Latin American states in the aftermath of the Pink Tide.

There is little doubt that the news has become not only the political event of the year in Brazil, but in all of Latin America. The second half of 2019 has seen major changes and polarizations occur with major revolts in Ecuador and Chile against the ruling governments, Mauricio Macri’s failure to be re-elected in Argentina, and the likelihood of a Leftist election victory in Uruguay later this month.

The majority of analysts who believe Lula is innocent claim the reason he was imprisoned was to prevent his election victory in 2018. Lula often claims that he is more than a man, but “an idea.” However, if Lula is “an idea,” this also begs the question on why the “idea” was not successful when represented by Fernando Haddad, the PT presidential candidate who failed against Jair Bolsonaro in last year’s election.

Rather, people are more likely to follow people than ideologies. Lula is incorrect to call himself “an idea,” and rather he is an icon or a symbol. The symbol of Lula is one of hope for the poorest and progressives of Latin America, and his “idea” can only be continued through him since he has built a symbology behind his persona. Therefore, the meaning behind his release, many years earlier than originally sentenced, has a tremendous meaning across the region. Even Bolsonaro had to resign to the fact that he “would not be here” as president if Lula had not been imprisoned by then judge Sérgio Moro – Brazil’s current Minister of Justice.

Lula’s freedom is without a doubt a major shock to the reactionary forces operating in Brazil with full encouragement and endorsement by Bolsonaro. It is for this reason that former U.S. President Donald Trump’s strategist and adviser Steve Bannon criticized the release of Lula, calling him “one of the most cynical and corrupt politicians in the world,” claiming the release of Lula will bring a return of corruption to Brazil. Although Bannon is a former adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, he still wields a great amount of influence and power in Washington DC and recently even cancelled trips to Brazil, England, Italy and Australia to structure a task force to fight against the impeachment process against Trump.

And of course, the “return of corruption” to Brazil is a ludicrous claim made by Bannon, especially when considering he has been a staunch defender and endorser of Bolsonaro and has elevated Eduardo Bolsonaro, a son of the Brazilian president, to the main representative of South America in “The Movement,” a consortium of European representatives who support right-wing nationalist populism while defending exploitative economic policies. Bannon’s ideological extremism defends “economic nationalism,” but it is not confused with neoliberalism or globalism. His extremist economic nationalism conceptually cannot cross the borders of the American empire, but as mere rhetoric, as it is incompatible with economic policies that promote the economic and social development of any other state. However, Bannon of course did not mention that Bolsonaro, his sons and his aides have been involved in endless scandals and corruption cases since January this year.

Although Bannon may not be involved with the Trump administration at an official level, there is little doubt that he has always been the bridge between Trump and the Bolsonaro family. Therefore, Bannon quickly coming out to denounce Lula after his release from prison can suggest that his release will be a major concern for Washington.

Why?

Lula certainly did not wait long before firing shots at the defenders of U.S. unilateralism in Latin America after his release from prison, stating: “The so-called Left that Bolsonaro fears so much will defeat the extreme Right – Brazil does not deserve the government it has,” citing unemployment rates, attacks on education and the poor, and the “lies” by Bolsonaro. He also had a look at the Latin American situation, praising Chile’s protests and called for solidarity with the Chilean people, while also showing his support for Evo Morales and denouncing Trump.

This was the Lula that Brazilians had fallen in love with. They fell in love with a leader who had no fear to speak his mind. It is not the destructive Bolsonaro’s way that attacks Brazil’s minorities and most vulnerable, but Lula’s way that attacks the forces that kept Brazil poor and subservient to Washington, and those who also prevent efforts for Latin American cooperation and integration.

It is for this reason that Lula also immediately addressed the Puebla Group, a regional body that brings together 32 progressive leaders from twelve countries that held its second meeting in Buenos Aires over the weekend.

In his message to the Puebla Group, Lula was firm in announcing that he will fight “the rotten side of the Judiciary, the rotten side of the Federal Police, the Public Ministry and Brazilian companies,” and that “It is important that we have courage and face them, because the Latin American elite is a very conservative elite and does not accept the idea of ​​a poor people up the ladder of social conquests.”

However, his most startling revelation was that he has “the objective of constituting a very strong Latin American regional integration […] with the dream of building our great Latin America.”

It is this very goal of uniting Latin America to ensure the regions sovereignty and economic independence that has U.S. puppets like Bolsonaro and international populists like Bannon critically worried about Lula’s release. With Bolsonaro and Bannon worried by Lula, it can only be a matter of time until we see efforts to put Lula back in prison, potentially with Trump’s endorsement.

Although there are real efforts in maintaining the Blue Tide in Latin America, especially with the latest coup against Morales, it appears that the path towards Pink Tide 2.0 is still firmly paved, especially with Lula’s release from prison. Not only was he a symbol in Brazil, but he was a symbol of unity and integration across Latin American, alongside the equally charismatic Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. There can be little doubt that Lula’s release from prison will not only embolden progressive leaders in Latin America, but it will help reduce U.S. hegemony in the region.

Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies.

November 11, 2019 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

Ex-Ecuador leader Correa: Bolivia’s Morales was forced out in ‘coup’, OAS is ‘an instrument of US domination’

RT | November 11, 2019

Former leader of Ecuador Rafael Correa said the resignation of Bolivian President Evo Morales was the result of a coup d’etat and that events could have ended in worse violence, if the socialist leader had not resigned.

“Of course there was a coup d’etat,” Correa told RT Spanish in an exclusive interview on Monday, explaining that such an insubordination of the country’s armed forces “cannot exist in a constitutional state of law” or democracy. “If Evo Morales did not resign, there would have been a bloodbath because there was no public order,” he said.

Morales resigned on Sunday at the demands of Bolivia’s military chief, following weeks of protests and only hours after he had promised fresh elections. Morales previously proclaimed he had won the October 20 general election with a 10-point lead, a result which was quickly contested by the opposition, who accused him of tampering with the vote.

There can be no true democracy until the arbitrators are the citizens and “not the uniformed,” Correa said, adding that he would not be surprised if there were foreign forces behind the efforts to oust Morales.

Correa said that the Organization of American States (OAS), which encouraged Morales to call for new elections, did not condemn events in socialist Bolivia because democracy is only valid when it serves the interests of the right.

“You can see the double standards that exist in all this. For the right, democracy is valid as long as it meets its interests,” Correa said. When those interests stop being fulfilled, suddenly democracy is not enough and “the situation must be changed to blood and fire, as we are seeing in Bolivia.”

Correa said the Bolivian people have experienced dignity and prosperity under Morales’ leadership and that after recent events, people across Latin America will soon be convinced that the OAS is “useless” and nothing but “an instrument of US domination.”

He said that the OAS wants elections in Bolivia but only without Morales because they know that he was democratically elected by the people already. “They have just forcibly removed a president who has won the election widely, with more than 10 points,” he said, insisting that Morales is the rightful leader of Bolivia.

Morales called for new elections on Sunday with the aim of “seeking peace” in Bolivia — yet the opposition would not accept Morales’ participation in the new elections and urged protesters to continue mobilizing in the streets until he resigned. On Twitter, Morales said the coup attempt “destroys the rule of law.”

November 11, 2019 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

‘Morales’ resignation undermines claims he is dictator, US may be behind push to oust him’

RT | November 10, 2019

Washington has played a hand in the resignation of Bolivia’s president Evo Morales, human and labour rights lawyer Dan Kovalik told RT. The US has been stirring unrest for years with millions of dollars in democratic aid, he said.

“I think this is a bad thing that’s happened and I see the hands of the US behind it,” Kovalik said, adding that there has been “evidence released of conversation between the White House and opposition leaders,” indicating that anti-Morales protests might have been a “coordinated” campaign.

“And we know that the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has been spending millions of dollars in Bolivia for years trying to undermine Evo Morales.”

A CIA offshoot of sorts, the NED channeled nearly $1 million into the South American country in democracy promoting aid in 2018 alone. A huge chunk of the funds was used by International Republican Institute (IRI), in charge of promoting a right-wing agenda.

Kovalik said that more proof of the US involvement in the Bolivian turmoil is bound to come out with time.

Morales’ decision to resign rather than cling to power while risking lives of his supporters, who turn out for mass rallies in his name, “undermines the claims that he is some sort of a dictator,” Kovalik said.

“That shows a lot about who he is. That shows that Morales cares about his own country… he’s shown himself to have the well-being of his own people at heart.”

Noting that Morales, first indigenous leader in the history of his country, has vastly improved the living standard for regular people and the indigenous population, Kovalik argued that his departure might spell trouble for the South American country.

Kovalik believes that while right-wing parties might try to capitalize on Morales’s resignation, they do lack grassroots support.

“I’m not sure they have much popular support, so we’ll have to see if Evo Morales’s party can go on and win without him.”

Thousands of people flooded the streets to protest what the opposition called a rigged election on October 20, in which Morales secured a 10 percentage point gap, that allowed him to avoid a run-off. Morales, once a very popular leader, was faced with a wave of unrest and mutiny from the military. Kovalik believes that outside interference might have played a role in such a change of heart.

“Of course, people change their minds about things, but I also think there’ve been some manipulations of the public in Bolivia.”

November 10, 2019 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Leave a comment

Bolivia: President Evo Morales Resigns Amid Right-Wing Coup

teleSUR | November 10, 2019

Bolivian President Evo Morales was forced to resign Sunday after senior army and police chiefs called on him to do so following weeks of right-wing unrest and violence against his Oct. 20 elections victory, in what his government has called a coup by opposition forces in the country.

“I decided to resign from my position so that Carlos Mesa and Luis Camacho stop abusing and harming thousands of brothers … I have the obligation to seek peace and it hurts a lot that we face Bolivians, for this reason, so I will send my letter of resignation to the Plurinational Assembly of Bolivia,” the former president of Bolivia said in a press release.

Bolivian Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera also said that he was resigning from his position. The two leaders said that they would be handing their resignation letters to the country’s National Assembly.

Since both President and Vice Presiden resigned, the president of the Senate, a position held by Adriana Salvatierra of the MAS party was supposed to assume the post but she later issued her resignation as well as the president of the Chamber of Deputies.

Currently, the line of succession is broken in Bolivia.

Morales and Garcia Linera will stay in Chimore in the central Department of Cochabamba to work with the people. “We will come back and we will be millions as Tupac Amaru II said,” Morales declared.

The resignation comes after Morales proposed a dialogue process with the opposition parties but was rejected and even accepted the Organization of American States’ (OAS) call for new elections.

However, due to strong violent onslaughts against militants and leaders of the Movement To Socialism (MAS), intimidation of journalists, burning of residences and betrayal of political allies and members of the National Police, Morales and his Vice President decided to leave the government in order to prevent more violence.

In the interview with teleSUR’s correspondent in Bolivia Freddy Morales, the former president said the decision to call new elections was to preserve the peace in Bolivia “so that we do not confront the Bolivian family,” while calling on the opposition protesters to end the strikes and remove roadblocks in order to not harm the economy of the country.

November 10, 2019 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Lenin ‘Judas’ Moreno – Ecuador’s Story of Betrayal and Resistance

By Joaquin Flores | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 27, 2019

On October 3rd, countless tens of thousands of Ecuadorian citizens began a general strike and occupation of public spaces, throughout the country but targeting the capital of Quito. President Lenin Moreno has made himself one of the most hated men in the history of the country in the course of his rule, and was forced to flee as a consequence, and re-establish the capital in Guayaquil. In addition, facing a larger and wider revolution all together, Moreno was forced to rescind Decree 883 – the new law which appears to have been the straw that broke the camel’s back in Ecuador.

But this is far from over, and Moreno’s continued existence as head of government threatens to see the expansion of this newly awakened movement. Internationally too – for it is Moreno who also betrayed Julian Assange, after Raphael Correa offered him protection.

Media are accurately reporting the obvious, but in limited context: Moreno enacted Decree 883, which brought an end to the popular fuel subsidies. As the story goes, this was part of an austerity agreement made with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in return for a loan. Decree 883 threatens the country’s most vulnerable and historically marginalized cross-sections of Ecuadorian society, indigenous communities in particular. These indigenous communities, along with labor and citizen’s group, were at the forefront of these protests and the general strike, leading and organizing them. Moreno accuses his popular predecessor Correa for planning and executing the protests, with assistance from Cuba and Venezuela. The ‘random Soros guy’ from Brazil, Juan Guaido, has echoed Moreno’s accusation.

The Looming Econocide which Decree 883 Threatened

Beyond this, however, is the real story of Decree 883 and the recent history of Ecuador, and the real betrayal represented by Mr. Moreno – a visceral hatred he has earned for himself, which extends far beyond Decree 883.

Mr. Moreno baffled the public when he announced that the subsidies policy introduced in the 70’s, which if accounting in a very narrow and segregated way, appear to ‘cost’ the government some $1.3bn annually, were no longer affordable. But what macroeconomists and the public both understood, and what was particularly outrageous, was this: these subsidies, based on Ecuador’s socialized gas industry, in fact made possible all sorts of economic activity; risk taking and opportunity making, and consumption in other sectors of the economy – not possible without such a subsidy.

And so the ripple effect of Decree 883 would result in pessimism and a bearish national economy, all around. The cognitive and theoretical deficiency of believing that one can shore up nominal debts that exist under certain conditions of subsidy, by eliminating an economy enhancer like an energy subsidy, without this in turn deleteriously effecting overall GDP indices, to in turn qualify for a loan which would in all obvious reality create further balance of payment and debt problems, is itself either negligent, criminal, or both.

The real consequence would be that it would place the Ecuadorian economy further in debt, which means in further reliance on the IMF, which means further loans will be needed, which means further austerity, and ultimately privatization of the public weal. Upon such a cycle, creating permanent servitude and insolvency, the final aim on the part of the IMF cannot be simply a vicious debt cycle, (as this is ultimately unpayable) but the total private and foreign ownership of Ecuador, with some sort of mass impoverishment, even genocide of its indigenous people, as an obvious – if not wanted – consequence. At this point it becomes perhaps secondary to note that none of these ‘IMF loans’ will be used to develop the country’s physical economy – the only real signifier of wealth building for a whole society, if viewed scientifically and rationally as an organic unit with mutually interrelated symbiotic components.

There are few words to describe such aims as Decree 883 without delving into deep, profound, philosophical and theological questions about the nature of the forces of good and evil in the world. Questions which force us to ask what universal principles give meaning to our lives as human beings, and what really and fundamentally motivates those with such a blatant misanthropic agenda.

But at any rate, it is more than obvious how this move by Moreno, in the name of Decree 883, had led to the near toppling of the Ecuadorian government – leading to Moreno declaring a state of emergency.

A success so far for the people has been the apparent repeal of Decree 883, but why Moreno is so very much hated deserves our attention, as this is only the beginning. During his tenure, Moreno has gained himself the nickname among the opposition ‘Judas’: a name necessary as it distinguishes that he is ‘no Lenin’.

What Moreno has done has resulted in the largest popular uprising the country has seen in many years. After years of working to reverse the progress and stability brought by the noble and just government of Raphael Correa, Moreno brought about a condition of instability and ignobility. Within months of assuming office, he disavowed Correa who had brought him where he had arrived, and began to work under the orders of Washington to undo Correa’s social and legislative reforms that had been aimed at deepening the strength of Ecuador’s civil society, labor, and justice. Under Correa, poverty would see a 30% decline.

Despite this obvious reality, this obvious truth, Moreno doubles-down on his contempt for reason and rationality, by accusing the protestors of being agents of Correa, even of Maduro (!). This affront to the wisdom of the people of Ecuador is comparable to blaming the blood for the wound, or for blaming the wound for the accident which causes these.

The gas itself is largely owned by and for the people, through EP Petroecuador

The latest affront to dignity and fairness, in the form of yet another IMF sell-out from Moreno, came in the form of the elimination of gas subsidies for people most in need. And one cannot offer any real logic or reason for ending these subsidies, for the gas itself is largely owned by and for the people, through EP Petroecuador, the state oil firm.

But this deep-seated scorn is not simply related to contempt for his policies, but much more profoundly for his betrayal. Because we might expect such austerity from a centrist or right-wing candidate, given the history of politics in Latin America – there is something honest in this; they deliver what they campaign on. But given that Correa had essentially groomed Moreno, and Moreno in turn endorsed the policies of Correa – we encounter the crux of the matter, and how Moreno turned from Lenin to Judas.

To wit, it was Raphael Correa’s broad plan to rescue Ecuador from the predatory claws of the IMF, by fomenting a public campaign, a brilliant simulacrum strategy of sorts, borrowed from Venezuela, that an entire program of socialist revolution was underway, such that it had the effect of lowering the value of Ecuador’s bonds, owned by foreign interests. This made it so that Ecuador was able to succeed in buying back some 91% of these bonds, and made possible Ecuador’s thumbing the IMF and not taking on new debt. This was done by intelligently weaponizing Ecuador’s apparent weakness in not having its own real national currency, as this was dollarized by corrupt national leaders in 2000, using the excuse of the damage caused by Hurricane ‘El Niño’, to eliminate Ecuador’s monetary sovereignty. It had been widely believed that without a national, sovereign currency, that Ecuador could have no sovereign monetary policy – Correa proved this wrong by turning expectations and dynamics on their respective heads. While this dictum is true in the long-term, Correa used the dollarized nature of Ecuador’s currency values in a gambit to buy-back Ecuador’s bonds.

When Correa was elected president of Ecuador, it had come as the result of years of struggle by the popular forces of resistance, against all odds, and overcoming a particularly unstable and disastrous period were Ecuador had seen come and go some ten presidents in the period of just eleven years.

Correa would go on to serve for a decade, and continued to build popular support, and this had signaled the realization of an even broader dream of social and economic justice in Ecuador, but also a visionary long-term plan to integrate the Latin American economy into a single civilization-wide economic bloc.

The history of modern Ecuador is one of tragedy, hope, and never lacking in contradictions. During the time of Correa he was faced with the strongest opposition from the most intransigent and short-term thinking, narrowest in scope and vision, of the country’s billionaire class.

And it only so happened to be that this same class, who had been responsible for the years of instability and rampant poverty, were also those closest to Washington DC and New York City – placing the country at the hands of the Washington Consensus – the IMF, City Bank, JP Morgan Chase, and the rest of the “usual suspects”.

Rejecting this, in February 2007 that Correa’s economy minister Ricardo Patiño stated: “I have no intention […] of accepting what some governments in the past have accepted: that [the IMF] tell us what to do on economic policy.” “That seems unacceptable to us,” Patiño concluded.

The U.S and the IMF hated this, and hated Correa for this. Correa confused many –at first seeming to be a center-leaning social-democrat reformist. His biography and optics were misleading: young and well groomed, with waxed hair and Spanish features, he appeared very much like the kind of candidate historically installed by Ecuador’s wealthy comprador class. His credentials in governance had come about through being Ecuador’s finance minister under the prior neo-liberal government of Alfredo Palacio. And yet Correa was a man of the people and once in office quickly became allies with the Castros of Cuba and also Chavez, and then Maduro of Venezuela.

Correa understood he would be termed-out eventually, under Ecuador’s constitutional provisions, and had worked early on to groom a successor.

Again, the biography and optics were misleading: this successor was Lenin Moreno, the son of a communist teacher; Moreno inspired empathy with his soulful eyes, reminiscent of Iran’s Ahmadinejad, and being wheelchair-bound, he inspired sympathy.

The people had expected that a man who inspired such sympathy and empathy, would himself be capable of tremendous sympathy and empathy for the people in turn.

And yet the people were wrong. Instead, what lurked in the heart of Lenin Moreno was so dark, so depraved, so shallow and so selfish, that it exploded the left’s understanding of character.

It would turn out that Nietzsche’s dictum that weakness lays at the root of evil, and strength at the root of good, was true. If the apparent meekness of Moreno would allow him to inherit the world of Ecuador, then it was his cruelty and hatred, his resentment born of weakness, for those healthy and happy people, even if poor, that would threaten to destroy it.

The government of Moreno has been a betrayal so monumental and significant to the living history of Ecuador, that it has indeed earned him the name ‘Judas Moreno’, an allusion both to Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus Christ to the wishes of the Sanhedrin, and also to Leon ‘Judas’ Trotsky, who is believed by mainline communists internationally to have conspired to betray the Russian Revolution through his alleged conspiracy with the forces of Fascism in Europe.

And this leads us to the real heart of our investigation, for the apparent revolution that Judas Moreno has betrayed was the popular democratic, electoral ‘revolution’ of Correa. And this is why Moreno is so hated, and lacks any mandate. And this is also why his power decreases by the day, as his legitimacy in question after his first months in office, and his actions against the people – the repression, arrests, and persecutions which have heightened in the last ten days of protests against his regime, are only but the culmination of several years of the same.

Now there are dead, martyrs in this struggle, murdered by Moreno’s security forces.

Decree 883 may have been repealed, but coming about on the precipice of a broader revolution, the coming weeks and months only promise more conflicts, surprises – and we should expect yet another betrayal from Judas Moreno, and another explosion in response.

October 27, 2019 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

The Russians are meddling again, this time in Chile, warns US diplomat

RT | October 26, 2019

Guess who’s stirring mass anti-government protests in Chile? Anybody? That’s right, it’s the Russians, at least according to Washington’s chief Latin American diplomat.

Speaking before a congressional committee hearing on Wednesday, State Department diplomat Michael Kozak suggested that “foreign actors” were stoking protests in Chile. Pressed on the statement by Latin-American news agency EFE on Friday, Kozak elaborated further.

“We have identified on social networks false accounts that emanate from Russia, which are people who pretend to be Chilean, but in reality all the message they are doing is trying to undermine all Chilean institutions and society,” he was quoted on Friday by Chilean media.

Kozak didn’t provide evidence, but if he did, it likely wouldn’t prove anything. Accusations of Russia’s social media meddling have been chucked around Washington for nearly three years now, and the best that social media ‘bot hunters’ have managed to come up with is lists of meme posting accounts that they “believe” are “potentially” Kremlin-backed, based on the claims of NATO-backed think tanks, professional ‘Russiagaters’ and Democrat intelligence officials.

In Chile, the protests were not sparked by Moscow-based trolls, but by a planned public transport fare hike. They have since evolved into a nationwide show of rage against the neoliberal policies of President Sebastian Pinera, whose proposed reforms have failed to tamp down public anger. At least 19 people have died over the last eight days, and more than 6,000 have been arrested, as protests descended into riots and clashes with police.

“Chile has a constitutional problem in terms of laws in terms of assigning a budget to the social sector and the non-social sector,” political analyst Francisco Coloane told RT. “There is a very strong pressure from the private sector not to make structural change.”

As the country’s first right-wing president since the end of US-backed dictator Augusto Pinochet’s government in 1990, Pinera has previously attempted to privatize Chile’s education system, resulting in student demonstrations in 2011. The country’s pension system, water supply, and healthcare system are all fully or almost fully privatized.

The result is a country that enjoys Latin America’s highest per-capita income, yet the highest inequality in the OECD.

But why dig into systemic factors and risk undermining the neoliberal consensus? Better to dust off the tinfoil hat and blame Russia instead.

October 26, 2019 Posted by | Deception, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Whitewashing Neoliberal Repression in Chile and Ecuador

By Lucas Koerner | FAIR | October 23, 2019

Throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, people are rising up against right-wing, US-backed governments and their neoliberal austerity policies.

Currently in Chile, the government of billionaire Sebastian Piñera has deployed the army to crush nationwide demonstrations against inequality sparked by a subway fare hike.

In Ecuador, indigenous peoples, workers and students recently brought the country to a standstill during 11 days of protests against the gutting of fuel subsidies by President Lenín Moreno as part of an IMF austerity package.

One might expect these popular rebellions to receive unreservedly sympathetic coverage from international media that claim to be on the side of democracy and the common people. On the contrary, corporate journalists frequently describe these uprisings as dangerous alterations of “law and order,” laden with “violence,” “chaos” and “unrest.”

This portrait contrasts remarkably with coverage of anti-government protests in Venezuela, where generally the only violence highlighted is that allegedly perpetrated by the state. In the eyes of Western elite opinion, Venezuela’s middle-class opposition have long been leaders of a legitimate popular protest against an authoritarian, anti-American regime. Poor people rebelling against repressive US client states are considered an unacceptable deviation from this script.

‘Crackdown’ in Venezuela

Corporate journalists have never been able to contain their enthusiasm for the right-wing Venezuelan opposition’s repeated coup attempts, which are regularly cast as a “pro-democracy” movement (FAIR.org, 5/10/19).

In 2017, Venezuela’s opposition led four months of violent, insurrectionary protests demanding early presidential elections, resulting in over 125 dead,  including protesters, government supporters and bystanders. It was the opposition’s fifth major effort to oust the government by force since 2002.

Despite the demonstrations featuring attacks on journalists, lynchings and assassinations of government supporters, they were depicted as a “uprising” against “authoritarianism” (New York  Times, 6/22/17), a “rebellion” in the face of “the government’s crackdown” (Bloomberg, 5/18/17) and a David-like movement of “young firebrands” facing down a sinister regime (Guardian, 5/25/17). Reporters frequently attributed the mounting death toll to state security forces (France 24, 7/21/17; Newsweek, 6/20/17; Washington Post, 6/3/17), while generally ignoring opposition political violence reported to be responsible for over 30 deaths.

The pattern was repeated in January, when deadly clashes broke out across the country  in the days before and after opposition leader Juan Guaidó declared himself “interim president” with the US’s encouragement. Corporate outlets described the events as a “violent crackdown” (Independent, 1/24/19), with security forces “spreading terror…to target critics” (Reuters, 2/3/19) and “soldiers and paramilitary gunmen…hunting opposition activists” (Miami Herald, 1/27/19). International journalists based their accounts largely on pro-opposition sources, suppressing inconvenient details that complicated their Manichean narrative, such as the fact that some 38% of protests were violent and at least 28% featured armed confrontations with authorities.

Unlike in Chile and Ecuador, corporate outlets have consistently vilified Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro—who won 6.2 million votes, or 31% of the electorate last year—as an “authoritarian” (FAIR.org, 4/11/19, 8/5/19) or a “dictator” (FAIR.org, 4/11/19), justifying the latest coup effort.

Chile ‘Riots’ 

In recent days, Chileans have taken to the streets in mass demonstrations against the Piñera administration, following a further increase in Santiago’s exorbitant subway fare.

Beginning as high school student–led protests, the movement has escalated into a full-scale rebellion against the savagely unequal neoliberal order, prompting the government to militarize the streets and impose a curfew for the first time since the Western-backed Pinochet dictatorship (1973–90).

Despite the largest protests since the return of democracy, the international corporate media have largely referred to them in pejorative terms such as “riots” (CNN, 10/19/19; CNBC, 10/21/19), “violent unrest” (New York Times, 10/19/19) and “chaos” (NPR, 10/19/19; Vice, 10/21/19), providing a moral casus belli for war against the people.

Revealingly, no major outlets have described the government’s brutal repression as a “crackdown,” nor called into question the legitimacy of Piñera, who was elected in 2017 with the backing of 26% of registered voters.

It’s true that international journalists are beginning to reference allegations of human rights violations reported by Chile’s National Human Rights Institute, including, as of October 23, 173 people shot and 18 dead, among them at least five presumably at the hands of authorities.

However, the victims of state violence in Chile have not received anywhere near the amount of attention international outlets have dedicated to protester deaths in Venezuela, where the dead have been movingly profiled (New York Times, 6/10/17; BBC, 5/14/17)—provided they were not lynched by the opposition.

In two emblematic cases, Manuel Rebolledo, 23, died on October 21 after being run over by a navy vehicle near Concepción, while Ecuadorian national Romario Veloz, 26, was shot dead the day before at a protest in La Serena. Neither men have been mentioned by name in Western press reports.

It would appear that the only worthy victims, in the eyes of US corporate journalists, are those that have propaganda value from the standpoint of Western foreign policy interests. Reporters spontaneously empathize with neoliberal technocrats like Piñera, even as they occasionally chide them for “excesses.”

“Mr. Piñera said that he is mindful of the broader grievances that fueled the unrest… But he seemed to have difficulty coming to grips with the real source of the population’s frustrations,” the New York Times (10/21/19) sympathetically observed, before going on to note that the president has declared “war” against his own people.

The paper of record suggested that Chileans might find the imposition of martial law “jarring,” given that “the military had killed and tortured thousands of people just decades ago in the name of restoring order.” But despite the article being headlined “What You Need to Know About the Unrest in Chile,” the Times did not find it relevant to mention anywhere that state security forces were currently maiming and killing demonstrators in the streets, and allegedly torturing detainees.

The dominant narrative fed to the public is that Piñera’s government has been “inept” in responding to the protests (Economist, 10/20/19; Reuters, 10/21/19; New York Times, 10/21/19), but never criminal or cruel.

No Western newspapers have published scathing op-eds calling Piñera a “dictator” and demanding their government take action to “restore democracy,” as they have done regularly in the case of Venezuela (FAIR.org, 4/11/19). Rather, they counsel the billionaire president to address “inequality,” barring any reference to what is increasingly coming to resemble state terror (New York Times, 10/22/19; Guardian, 10/23/19; Bloomberg, 10/23/19).

Corporate journalists continue  to whitewash Piñera, describing him as “center-right” (Guardian, 10/21/19; CNBC, 10/19/19; Reuters, 10/21/19) and concealing his personal ties to murderous dictator Augusto Pinochet and those of his top cabinet members.

Ecuador ‘Violence’ 

Corporate journalists have shown only marginally more sympathy to Ecuador’s recent indigenous-led uprising against IMF-imposed austerity measures, frequently described in headlines as “violent protests” (CNN, 10/8/19; Guardian, 10/8/19; USA Today, 10/9/19; Financial Times, 10/8/19).

President Moreno has yet to be labeled by the international media as “authoritarian,” despite ordering soldiers to repress demonstrators in the streets, imposing a curfew, suspending basic civil liberties and arresting rival politicians.

Since betraying his campaign promise to continue his predecessor Rafael Correa’s left-wing policies. and embracing the oligarchy he ran against, Moreno has become the darling of Western elite opinion (FAIR.org, 2/4/18).

Like in Chile, corporate outlets have whitewashed Moreno’s vicious crackdown, which left seven dead, around a thousand arrested and a similar figure wounded. However, corporate outlets have been even more nefarious in obfuscating the origins of the crisis in Ecuador.

As Joe Emersberger has recently exposed for FAIR (10/23/19), Western journalists’ favorite lie is that Moreno “inherited a debt crisis that ballooned as his predecessor and one-time mentor, former President Rafael Correa, took out loans for a major dam, highways, schools, clinics and other projects” (New York Times, 10/8/19). In fact, the country’s debt-to-GDP level remains low, though it has increased slightly under Moreno, due not to public works but to his pro-elite policies.

Corporate outlets have for the most part admitted that Moreno has presented no evidence to back his ludicrous claims of Correa and Maduro supporters orchestrating the protests; nonetheless, they have, with few exceptions (DW, 10/14/19; Reuters, 10/12/19), shamefully ignored Moreno’s draconian persecution of Correaist politicians (including elected representatives), which he justifies on the basis of the very same conspiracy theory. This coverage contrasts sharply with the red carpet treatment regularly provided to Venezuela’s US-friendly opposition politicians, regardless of how many coups they perpetrate (Reuters, 4/30/19; LA Times, 4/30/19; Guardian, 2/6/19).

Western Media Gendarmerie 

It is not coincidental that Western journalists stand aghast at the violence of the excluded and exploited in Chile and Ecuador, while rationalizing that spearheaded by Washington-backed opposition elites in Venezuela.

This bias has nothing to do with any actual amount of looting or arson. Rather, it is the eruption of the racialized poor into polite bourgeois society’s technocratic body politic that is viscerally violent to local neocolonial elites and their Western professional-class backers.

Ecuador’s protests are the latest in a long line of anti-neoliberal uprisings, which brought down three presidents between 1997 and 2005.

The rebellion exploding in Chile is the largest in over a generation, evidencing the terminal legitimacy crisis of the “low-intensity democracy” crafted by Pinochet to maintain the neoliberal model imposed at gunpoint. The Chilean uprising has genuinely terrified elites, leading  the right-wing president to wage war on his own people. At stake is not just the stability of a key Western ally, but more crucially, neoliberalism’s ideological narrative that has upheld Chile as a “success story.”

Corporate journalists will most likely continue to muffle themselves vis-a-vis repressive US client states, in the same way that they systematically conceal the impact of Washington’s sanctions on Venezuela (FAIR.org, 6/26/19), which are estimated to have already killed 40,000 Venezuelans since 2017.

If the first casualty of war is truth, its self-anointed purveyors in the international media have much blood on their hands indeed.

October 25, 2019 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

The Neoliberal Ghost of Pinochet Is Finally Being Exorcised From Chile

By Paul Antonopoulos | October 25, 2019

More than 46 years of initially military imposed neoliberalism has finally exploded into widespread frustration, protest and violence. This neoliberalism culminated in 2017 with twelve businessmen, among them Chilean President Sebatián Piñera, monopolizing at least 17% of the national GDP, demonstrating the huge gap in wealth equity. There is little doubt why the latest protests have exploded violently, with 18 dead so far – Piñera had declared war on his own people to protect his lucrative monopoly racket.

It is without surprise he had declared war. The aggressive neoliberalism that has dominated Chile since the 1973 Chilean coup d’état when socialist President Salvador Allende was killed and eventually replaced by neoliberal Augusto Pinochet, with the backing and blessing of U.S. President Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, the CIA and the so-called “Chicago Boys” neoliberal economic team.

Although the so-called communist threat was defeated in Chile, it was not until 1990 for the kinder face of neoliberalism to return to the country, with the first democratic election taking place since the coup. The return to democracy had not meant any differences to the economic system.

The appearance of GDP growth in the South American country created the mythology of the Chilean miracle, ‘thanks’ to the Chicago Boys, the group of young Chilean economists who studied at the University of Chicago under the adviser to U.S. President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, professor Milton Friedman. They were the so-called economic liberators and advised Pinochet on applying complete free-market policies, essentially to privatize state-owned industries and companies, and to open the economy.

The pernicious globalist model was applied and deemed a miracle because of significant GDP growth. However, this is only to the benefit of shareholders and private companies and does not reflect on the average Chilean experience. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the Gini coefficient value, a method to measure wealth distribution, stood at a record 0.50 in 2017, one of the highest inequality coefficients in the world.

This is because the incomes of the richest 10 percent of Chile are 26 times higher than the incomes of the poorest 10 percent of the population. This is partly also due because the of an unfair taxation system that creates a massive tax burden on the poor as Chile’s government earns less from income taxes than any other country in the 35-member OECD. Despite praises of the supposed fantastic economic performance, almost a third of Chilean workers are employed in part-time jobs, with one in two Chileans having low literacy skills, according to the OECD.

And now as Chile literally burns and 18 people are dead, we cannot forget that former president Michelle Bachelet grotesquely dedicated lessons on “human rights” against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Although Piñera apologized, it was not for his declaration of war against the people, but rather for the decades of unresolved problems, followed by an announcement for a new social and economic program.

A reversal of the crippling neoliberal economic system? Highly doubtful and probably more a Band-Aid option.

Neoliberal propagandist Enrique Krauze Kleinbort – accused of the coup attempt to overthrow Mexican President López Obrador – proclaimed that Chile was ‘the role model’ for Latin American economic growth. If the inequality is considered a ‘role model,’ it shows that the oligarchs of Latin America have not realized a growing trend of violent opposition to neoliberalism, as the recent case in Ecuador demonstrates.

The very fact that Piñera attempted to increase transportation and energy costs in Chile demonstrates his lack of knowledge on international outrage to neoliberalism. The French Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) in France began their actions 12 months ago, which also spread across Europe, when neoliberal President Emmanuel Macron attempted to increase gasoline taxes. In 2018, Brazilian truck drivers blocked roads in a demand for a decrease in diesel prices. Mexico in 2017 saw a 20% rise in fuel prices that exploded into riots.

However, the attempted increase in transportation and energy costs was only the spark that lit the fire. As Piñera, the male part of a monopoly over the Chilean economy, was forced to admit this is an explosion after decades worth of frustration, neglect and abuse. Candida Cecilia Morel, the wife of the billionaire Piñera, sent a WhatsApp message that was leaked in the media, in which she comments on the violence and the protests shaking her country – and it certainly does show the disconnect that the elite of Chile have with the common Chilean. The message said that “we are absolutely overwhelmed, it is like a foreign invasion, alien,” and that “we will have to decrease our privileges and share with others.” Her suggestion to decrease “privileges and shares” is a stark reminder of Charles Dickens 1800’s Britain.

With such elitist comments and referring to Chileans as aliens, there is little wonder that there has been little calm despite Piñera’s half-done apology and promises of more neoliberalism with a softer punch.  Although circles close to the Chilean Presidency affirm that the disturbances and destabilization are orchestrated from abroad, it is unlikely to be true. We can of course expect that Venezuela will be the scape goat by some Chilean oligarchs, just as the oligarchs in Ecuador and Colombia do, but there remains little evidence that this is the case.

Rather, as Piñera has had to attest, decades of neoliberalism is the cause of this. However, perhaps inspired by events in Ecuador, it appears that the Chilean people are finally exorcising the neoliberal ghost of Pinochet from its country. It appears that the violence will not end unless the Chilean president makes drastic changes to the Chilean economy. Whether he does this or not remains to be seen.

Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies.

October 25, 2019 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

US Renews Chevron License as European Refiner Cuts Venezuela Ties over Sanctions

By Lucas Koerner | Venezuelanalysis | October 23, 2019

The US Treasury Department has allowed Chevron to continue its operations in Venezuela for a further 90 days.

One of the few remaining US petroleum companies still in Venezuela, Chevron currently produces around 200,000 barrels per day (bpd) in several joint ventures with Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA. The California-based energy giant had its Treasury-issued sanctions waiver extended on Monday.

The Trump administration imposed an oil embargo in January, barring dealings with Venezuela’s oil sector, including US imports of Veneuzelan crude, which then stood at 586,000 bpd. At the time, Chevron was issued a six-month license to wind down its Venezuela operations, which was renewed in a last-minute late July decision after months of lobbying. Other beneficiaries of the renewal are Haliburton, Schlumberger, GE’s Baker Hughes, and Weatherford International.

The license does not cover sales of diluents to PDVSA, which were outlawed by the Treasury Department in June. Venezuela relies on imports of diluents to blend its heavy crude into exportable grades, as well as produce gasoline and diesel for internal consumption.

Venezuela’s oil production has plummeted over the past two years since the US began imposing economic sanctions. According to OPEC secondary sources, output fell to just 644,000 bpd in September, down from an average of 1.911 and 1.354 million bpd in 2017 and 2018, respectively.

Caracas has scrambled to find new crude buyers, reportedly selling shipments to Russian state energy company Rosneft which then reroutes them to other customers. PDVSA has also moved to convert its heavy petroleum upgraders into blending facilities so as to produce lighter Merey grade crude favored by Asian markets.

In August, Washington upgraded its sanctions regime to a general embargo, prohibiting all US dealings with the Venezuelan state and its associated entities as well as authorizing secondary sanctions against third party actors.

The Trump administration has been reluctant to renew Venezuela operating licences, insisting on the need to deprive the Maduro government of export revenues in the hope of removing it from power. Venezuela depends on oil sales for over ninety percent of its hard currency earnings, which it uses for vital imports of food, medicine, and all classes of inputs.

Despite opting to greenlight Chevron’s operations for three additional months, the Treasury Department moved last week to modify the license of a European refining company prohibiting new purchases of Venezuelan crude.

Jointly owned by PDVSA and Finland’s Neste Oil, Nynas AB operates speciality refineries in Sweden, Germany, and the UK geared mainly towards asphalt production.

Under the terms of the new license, Nynas is authorized to sell Venezuelan oil or petroleum products already in inventory but is barred from making new purchases.

Nynas is one of only two remaining buyers of PDVSA’s lighter, Western-sourced crudes following Washington’s ratcheting up of sanctions this year, which have led most cash-paying customers to cut ties with the Venezuelan state oil firm.

Reuters reports that the move could lead Petrozamora, a Venezuelan-Russian joint venture in the western border state of Zulia, to cut production by 50,000 bpd in order to avoid overflowing oil stocks.

With additional reporting by Ricardo Vaz from Caracas.

October 24, 2019 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , , | Leave a comment

US DOJ Refuses To Cooperate With Colombia In Uribe Trial

teleSUR | October 22, 2019

The United States Department of Justice has told the Colombian judiciary that they will not cooperate with them in their investigation into disgraced former right wing President Alvaro Uribe. This is despite Colombia believing that the DOJ hold information about Uribe’s contact with paramilitaries and drug traffickers.

Supreme Court magistrate Cesar Augusto Reyes requested that the DOJ hand over records they have about such calls and visits that Uribe held.

Reyes believes that the US could hold key information that would either corroborate or disprove central claims made by Uribe’s defense attorneys.

According to the magazine La Semana, Reyes has written letter to the DOJ condemning them as ‘disrespectful’ for refusing his “appropriate request.”

Among the charges he must answer to is that he paid for false testimonies to “politically finish off” left-wing lawmaker Ivan Cepeda, who had been exposing his links to paramilitarism. Congress threw out the case against Cepeda and pursued an inquiry into Uribe instead.

Another one of the serious charges he faces is that he bribed former paramilitaries huge amounts to testify that Uribe was not involved in the death squad known as ‘Bloque Metro’.

During Uribe’s time in power, he was a close ally of then president George Bush, and of US interests in the region.

October 23, 2019 Posted by | Corruption | , , | Leave a comment

Ecuador’s Mobilisation Against Moreno’s Invitation to US and IMF Interference

By Ramona Wadi | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 16, 2019

In Ecuador, the recent indigenous revolt against President Lenin Moreno’s neoliberal policies was instrumental in the repealing of a law which would have terminated fuel subsidies and plunged the most vulnerable into additional deprivation. The Ecuadorean government’s announcement, however, must not be misread as victory. It is the beginning of a long struggle which the people will face as Moreno maintains his commitment to the $4.2 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund, granted as he waived Julian Assange’s right to refuge at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London.

US influence at the IMF must not be underestimated. It owns 17.46 per cent of shares in the institution. Yet under the pretext of the institution being allegedly “governed by and accountable to the 189 countries that make up its near-global membership,” the US has another platform it can monopolise when it comes to foreign intervention tactics. Then, it can substantiate its IMF role with the country’s official foreign policy, as evidenced by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s press statement over Ecuador’s violent repression of the recent protests: “The United States supports President Moreno and the Government of Ecuador’s efforts to institutionalise democratic practices and implement needed economic reforms.” In the words of Andres Arauz, a former Ecuadorean Central Bank official, “what the IMF does in Western hemisphere is US foreign policy.”

To safeguard his complicity with the US and the IMF, Moreno declared a national state of emergency, pitting the police and the military against Ecuador’s civilians. Thousands of protestors were met with state violence and an indigenous leader, Inocencio Tucumbi, was killed by government forces. An official statement brings the injured toll to 554 and 929 people were arrested. CONAIE President Jaime Vargas’s count of injured, killed, detained and disappeared, however, exceeds what has been reported by the government.

In typical dictatorial attitude, Moreno has inflicted several rounds of human rights violations upon the people: targeting the weakest sectors with price hikes due to the removal of subsidies and punishing rebellion with state repression to cement allegiance with the IMF. Within the international arena, where the IMF enjoys its privilege, any talk of preserving human rights is unlikely to make the correlation between Moreno’s violence and his monetary bondage as part of his neoliberal legacy.

The mobilisation at grassroots level by the indigenous communities and the workers is part of a wider historical context in Ecuador’s anti-neoliberal struggle. In the 1980s indigenous communities in Ecuador clamoured for land and cultural rights, while denouncing neoliberalism. The protests brought indigenous communities together as a unified voice and soon mobilised to demand bilingual education and agrarian reform, placing the indigenous at the helm of mass mobilisation. As a result, CONAIE established itself as a political party.

For now, the mobilisation at a national level has forced the government to repeal its initial declaration. According to the UN Representative in Ecuador Arnaud Peral, Moreno’s decree will be replaced by a new draft with the input of indigenous movements and the government, also with the input of the UN and the Catholic Church.

While celebrating this initial victory, caution is required. It is unlikely that the new bill will repudiate the onslaught of repercussions as a result of Moreno coercing Ecuador into IMF allegiance. For the time being, Latin America is indeed in the clutches of right-wing leadership. Yet the people are facing similar struggles and the possibilities for regional unity are endless. This accelerated phase of neoliberal exploitation, in Ecuador and elsewhere, is igniting a movement which is taking the struggle right to its roots – to the people. Moreno will not back down from his policies, yet the people of Ecuador have equally displayed their resilience.

October 16, 2019 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , , | Leave a comment

Protests over fuel prices escalate in Ecuador, oil facilities seized

Press TV – October 8, 2019

Hundreds of people in Ecuador have clashed with security forces as they marched toward the country’s capital of Quito to protest soaring fuel prices.

Riot police and military forces used tear gas to disperse the protesters on Monday after they blocked roads with burning tires and other barricades in the town of Machachi on the outskirts of Quito.

Chanting anti-government slogans, the protesters also attempted to force their way into the National Legislative Assembly in the capital.

Thousands of indigenous people are due to converge on Quito for a protest on Wednesday.

“More than 20,000 indigenous people will be arriving in Quito,” said Jaime Vargas, the leader of the umbrella indigenous organization CONAIE, which was key to driving then-president Jamil Mahuad from office during an economic crisis in 2000.

The protesters, some armed with sticks and whips, hail from southern Andean provinces and are heading to the capital aboard pick-up trucks and on foot.

Meanwhile, Ecuador’s Ministry of Energy said in a statement on Monday that activities in three oil fields in the Amazon region had been suspended “due to the seizure of the facilities by groups of people outside the operation,” without identifying the groups responsible.

The seizures affected 12 percent of the country’s oil production, or 63,250 barrels of crude per day, according to the ministry statement.

The Latin American country has been rocked by days of mass demonstrations since increases of up to 120 percent in fuel prices came into force on October 3.

President Lenin Moreno scrapped fuel subsidies as part of an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to obtain loans despite Ecuador’s high public debt.

The Ecuadorian government says the protests have so far left one civilian dead and 77 injured, the majority of them security forces. A total of 477 people have also been detained.

In a radio and television address on Sunday, Moreno blamed the deterioration in the country’s finances on his predecessor, Rafael Correa, also accusing him of an “attempted coup” and of “using some indigenous groups, taking advantage of their mobilization to plunder and destroy.”

The Ecuadorian president called for dialog with the indigenous community to alleviate their grievances.

“I am committed to a dialog with you, my indigenous brothers, with whom we share so many priorities,” Moreno said in his address. “Let’s talk about how to use our national resources to help those in the greatest need.”

But his plea was met with harsh opposition from Vargas, the indigenous leader.

“We are sick of so much dialog… There have been thousands of calls, thousands and thousands of calls, and until this point, we have not brought out our response,” he said.

Moreno declared a state of emergency in indigenous areas on Thursday, allowing the government to restrict movement and to use the armed forces for maintaining order as well as censoring the press.

October 8, 2019 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , , , | Leave a comment

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