Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's JournalUndermining Democracy in Latin America: El Salvador, Venezuela and Beyond
Undermining Democracy in Latin America: El Salvador, Venezuela and Beyond
By Michael Welch, Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, and Prof. James Petras
Global Research, March 29, 2014
Having lost eighteen of nineteen elections, their chances of taking power or replacing the government through electoral channels …are virtually nil, and so what I think they’ve decided on as a strategy is to create chaos, insecurity, and especially engage in violence that cuts the link between the government and the people.”
- Professor James Petras
There is a long history of US covert intervention throughout the world in order to overthrow governments which seek to put forward programs or other initiatives which benefit their own citizens over the interests of US-based corporations.
So for instance, in 1953, when the elected Prime Minister Mossadeq of Iran moved to renationalize the country’s oil reserves, thereby undermining the interests of the British controlled Anglo-Persian Oil Company, the CIA in concert with Britain’s MI6 engineered a coup to oust him and install the brutal Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The coup plot included bolstering pro-Shah forces and organizing anti-Mossadeq protests. [1]
Likewise in Guatemala in 1954, the CIA plotted the overthrow of the elected President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán following his initiation of socio-economic reforms, interpreted by the US as ‘targetting directly against American interests in the country.’ [2][3]
Perhaps most famously, the CIA directed the coup in Chile which toppled a democratic government and installed a brutal dictatorship in 1973.
More:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/undermining-democracy-in-latin-america-el-salvador-venezuela-and-beyond/5374824
In Venezuela, a Popular Uprising, or Class Warfare?
In Venezuela, a Popular Uprising, or Class Warfare?
By Kanya D'Almeida
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 27 2014 (IPS)
~snip~
Targeting the poor
Some sources say the above analysis is borne out by protesters’ systematic targeting of public welfare institutions, utilised by the country’s most destitute and marginalised groups, in a deliberate attempt to weaken the nerve center of the Socialist state.
“There have been attacks on government supermarkets that sell food at subsidised prices, on clinics where Cuban doctors provide free medical care, and on educational facilities,” James Petras, professor emeritus of sociology at the Binghamton University in New York, told IPS.
A few nights ago demonstrators torched an experimental university in the western city of San Cristobal, cradle of the protest movement, where several hundred low-income Venezuelan students were receiving subsidised education. Over the last 12 weeks, Petras says, protesters have also targeted “many centres of social gathering and recreational activities, electrical grids – especially those that supply areas where support for Chavez is strong – municipal buildings, local banks that supply microcredit loans to small-scale enterprises, and the list goes on.”
Fire bombings, arson and other acts of sabotage have cost the country about 10 billion dollars in damages, the government said last Friday in a statement that lambasted such tactics as “vandalism” and “terrorism”.
“These are not random acts, this is a deliberate campaign to cut social links between the government and its mass base by blocking the delivery of social services,” Petras said.
More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/03/venezuela-popular-uprising-class-warfare/
The Harder You Work, the Richer They Get
Weekend Edition March 28-30, 2014
Wages, Profits and Productivity
The Harder You Work, the Richer They Get
by PETE DOLACK
It is not your imagination — you are working harder and earning less. Despite significant productivity gains during the past four decades, wages have remained flat.
This is a global phenomenon, not one specific to any country. It is not a matter of the viciousness of this or that capitalist, nor the policy of this or that government. Rather, widening inequality flows naturally from the ideological construct that now dominates economic thinking. Consider Henry Giroux’s succinct definition of neoliberalism:
“It construes profit-making as the essence of democracy, consuming as the only operable form of citizenship, and an irrational belief in the market to solve all problems and serve as a model for structuring all social relations.”
“Freedom” is reduced to the freedom of industrialists and financiers to extract the maximum possible profit with no regard for any other considerations and, for the rest of us, to choose whatever flavor of soda we wish to drink. Having wrested for themselves a great deal of “freedom,” the world’s capitalists have given themselves salaries, bonuses, stock options and golden parachutes beyond imagination while ever larger numbers of working people find themselves struggling to keep their heads above water.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/28/the-harder-you-work-the-richer-they-get/
Death Threats for Lawyer Suing Over Chevron's Toxic Legacy
Published on Wednesday, March 26, 2014 by Common Dreams
Death Threats for Lawyer Suing Over Chevron's Toxic Legacy
"They said to me: 'Think very carefully about what you are doing, because it would be a shame if something happened to you and your family.'"
- Sarah Lazare, staff writer
The lawyer representing villagers in Ecuador suing Chevron for its toxic legacy in the Amazon says he has received multiple anonymous death threats, The Guardian reports Wednesday.
"People are constantly following us in Ecuador," Juan Pablo Saenz, the Ecuadorian lawyer, told The Guardian. He reportedly said that he has received two death threats over the phone. "They said to me: 'Think very carefully about what you are doing, because it would be a shame if something happened to you and your family.'"
Damages of $18 billion were awarded by the Ecuadorian courts in 2011 after villagers sued over the activities of Texaco, which was acquired by Chevron in 2001, including decades of contamination and pollution of the Lago Agrio region in northeastern Ecuador, which has led to a spike in cancer, reported birth defects and ongoing devastation of the environment. Between 1964 and 1992, the oil giant dumped billions of gallons of toxic waste and spilled millions of gallons of crude oil on over 1,700 square miles of land.
The damages were cut to $9.5 billion by Ecuador's highest court in November. Yet, Chevron has repeatedly refused to pay the fine on unproven charges that the trial was corrupt and has removed most of its assets in Ecuador in an apparent bid to avoid paying. Earlier this month, a US judge ruled in favor of Chevron's claims of corruption, declaring that claimants cannot pursue damages through U.S. courts.
Last year, a Canadian court ruled that indigenous and farmer communities in Ecuador can seek enforcement in Canada of $9.5 billion owed to them.
More:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/03/26-5
Giant Kites, Bright Colors, and a Graveyard: Guatemala's Day of the Dead
Giant Kites, Bright Colors, and a Graveyard: Guatemala's Day of the Dead
Submitted by Anders Bruihler on Wed, 03/26/2014 - 20:46
as the huge mass of bamboo poles and tissue paper plummets toward them. At the last moment, it pulls out of the dive and soars back up into the air. Everyone keeps a watchful eye on the giant kite. I’ve heard enough stories to know that these things really can hurt. In Central and South America, November 1st is known as Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), an important holiday in remembrance of the deceased. Today is that special day, and I’m in Guatemala. This country has a very unique way of celebrating this holiday. My eyes follow the shallow steps up the side of the nearly vertical hill. Damp dirt sticks to my hands as I pull myself up the slope. At the top I see a path leading up the hill. Two women cook corn on a grill on one side of the path. Further up the hill, a man sells kites. His kites are quite unusual. They are either hexagons or octagons, very colorful, with streaming tails. The ones for sale here are only two feet across, but the big barriletes gigantes are what we are here to see.
Food vendors
We walk onto a green space on the side of the hill. Families are scattered throughout the field, and some kids are flying, or attempting to fly, the small kites. More vendors sell a rainbow of kites. All colors and designs, they flap in the wind. The reds, browns, oranges, and yellows of candy wrappers fill cheap plastic trash baskets. Traditional foods roast on black coal grills, and blue and yellow tortillas fry on large metal sheets.
More:
http://www.wanderingeducators.com/best/traveling/giant-kites-bright-colors-and-graveyard-guatemalas-day-dead.html#sthash.W7ekBJPT.dpuf
El Salvador opposition admits presidential vote defeat
27 March 2014 Last updated at 15:05 ET
El Salvador opposition admits presidential vote defeat
Salvador Sanchez Ceren, 17 March 14 Salvador Sanchez Ceren will be the first former guerrilla
to serve as president of El Salvador
The main opposition party in El Salvador has said it accepts defeat in the presidential election held on 9 March, after losing several appeals for a recount.
The Arena party says it will make "democratic, serious and honest" opposition to the new president, former rebel leader Salvador Sanchez Ceren.
~snip~
His party, the Farabundo Marti Liberation Front (FMLN), turned from a rebel group into a political party at the end of the conflict.
Since being declared the winner, Mr Sanchez Ceren has made conciliatory remarks, inviting the opposition in his "efforts to rebuild El Salvador".
The president-elect has announced he will visit several Central American countries in the next few days. He said he would visit the United States before taking office on 1 June.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-26778384
Nationwide anti-privatisation strike paralyses Asuncion
Nationwide anti-privatisation strike paralyses Asuncion
Thursday 27th Mar 2014
posted by Morning Star
The strike stopped transport services and closed schools and most businesses
Paraguay's capital Asuncion was paralysed on Wednesday by a nationwide strike against the privatisation plans of President Horacio Cartes. The strike stopped transport services and closed schools and most businesses in the south American country, said union leader Aldo Snead.
The unions want Mr Cartes to roll back a law enabling private companies to invest in government infrastructure. They are also demanding 25 per cent pay raises and more access to credit for poor people to start businesses.
Public Works Minister Ramon Jimenez said the sell-off plan included the international airport that serves Asuncion, state-owned water treatment plants and the construction of toll roads linking the capital with Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia. It also affected the agency that dredges the Paraguay river and keeps the landlocked country with a navigable sea outlet.
President Cartes acknowledged that Paraguay's workers have legitimate complaints, but has shown no sign of backing down.
More:
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-241b-Nationwide-anti-privatisation-strike-paralyses-Asuncion#.UzSGHWePLmQ
The Strategy of the Venezuelan Opposition
The Strategy of the Venezuelan Opposition
and How it Works
Steve Ellner
The strategy and tactics of the Venezuelan opposition is a replay of events that took place leading up to the coup against Hugo Chávez on April 11, 2002 and is similar (although in some ways quite different) from the script that has been used in the Ukraine and elsewhere. The blatant distortions and in some cases lies of the media (CNN in Spanish playing a lead role) represent an essential element in the strategy.
There are two main groups that the opposition has mobilized and from all appearances the two act in coordination even though their style, and even social background, differs from one another. One group is non-violent and the other engages in acts of aggression in some cases endangering lives.
On the one hand, students and other young people carry out protests which the media and the opposition deceptively call “peaceful.” These mobilizations involve to a disproportionate extent students from private universities and operate almost exclusively in wealthy areas whose mayors (and in some cases governors) belong to the opposition. The protests are not legal, even though many of the protesters are convinced (or have been convinced by their leaders) that they are exercising the constitutional right of dissent. However, nearly all of these protests take over main avenues and highways in urban areas, typically forcing traffic to a halt and then having to pass through just one lane. It often takes hours for cars to pass through these points. In most cases the protesters consist of between 15 and 80 people, and in a few cases over one hundred.
The second group sets up barricades using garbage bags, trees, boulders and barbed wire. In addition, they have dispersed oil on roads in some cases causing fatal accidents. For an excellent description of these actions in the city of Merida near the Colombian border where the violence has been most intense, see the article by Miguel Tinker Salas, who resided there over the last month: “What is happening in Venezuela?”
More:
http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/957.php
“The CIA’s Plans in Venezuela Are Far Advanced”
“The CIA’s Plans in Venezuela Are Far Advanced”
By Raúl Capote
Source: Venezuelanalysis.Com
March 26, 2014
In a recent interview in Havana, a former CIA collaborator, Cuban Raúl Capote, revealed the strategy of the CIA in Venezuelan universities to create the kind of destabilizing opposition student movement the country is currently facing. He also discusses media manipulation, and alleges that one of the U.S. diplomats that President Maduro expelled from Venezuela last September was in fact a CIA agent. The following translation and notes were made by Sabina C. Becker. Original interview in Spanish here.
Raúl Capote is a Cuban. But not just any Cuban. In his youth, he was caught up by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). They offered him an infinite amount of money to conspire in Cuba. But then something unexpected for the US happened. Capote, in reality, was working for Cuban national security. From then on, he served as a double agent. Learn his story, by way of an exclusive interview with the Chávez Vive magazine, which he gave in Havana:
Q. What was the process by which you were caught up?
It started with a process of many years, several years of preparation and capture. I was leader of a Cuban student movement which, at that time, gave rise to an organization, the Saiz Brothers Cultural Association, a group of young creators, painters, writers, artists. I worked in a city in southern-central Cuba, Cienfuegos, which had characteristics of great interest to the enemy, because it was a city in which an important industrial pole was being built at the time. They were building an electrical centre, the only one in Cuba, and there were a lot of young people working on it. For that reason, it was also a city that had a lot of young engineers graduated in the Soviet Union. We’re talking of the last years of the 1980s, when there was that process called Perestroika. And many Cuban engineers, who arrived in Cuba at that time, graduated from there, were considered people who had arrived with that idea of Perestroika. For that reason, it was an interesting territory, where there were a lot of young people. And the fact that I was a youth leader of a cultural organization, which dealt with an important sector of the engineers who were interested in the arts, became of interest to the North Americans, and they began to frequent the meetings we attended. They never identified themselves as enemies, or as officials of the CIA.
Q. Were there many of them, or just always the same person?
Several. They never presented themselves as officials of the CIA, nor as people who had come to cause trouble, or anything.
Q. And who do you suppose they were?
They presented themselves as people coming to help us and our project, and who had the ability to finance it. That they had the chance to make it a reality. The proposal, as such, sounded interesting because, okay, a project in the literary world requires that you know a publisher, that you have editorial relations. It’s a very complex market. And they came in the name of publishers. What happened is that, during the process of contact with us, what they really wanted became quite evident. Because once they had made the contact, once they had begun frequenting our meetings, once they began to promise financing, then came the conditions for being financed.
Q. What conditions did they demand?
They told us: We have the ability to put the markets at your disposal, to put you on the markets of books or sculpture or movies or whatever, but we need the truth, because what we’re selling in the market, is the image of Cuba. The image of Cuba has to be a realistic one, of difficulties, of what’s going on in the country. They wanted to smear the reality of Cuba. What they were asking is that you criticize the revolution, based on anti-Cuba propaganda lines, which they provided.
Q. How big was these people’s budget?
They came with an infinite amount of money, because the source of the money, obviously, we found out over time from whence it came. For example, there was USAID, which was the big provider, the overall contractor of this budget, which channeled the money via NGOs, many of them invented just for Cuba. They were NGOs that didn’t exist, created solely for this type of job in Cuba, and we’re talking thousands and thousands of dollars. They weren’t working on small budgets. To give you an example, at one time, they offered me ten thousand dollars, just to include elements of anti-Cuba propaganda, in the novel I was writing.
More:
http://zcomm.org/znetarticle/the-cias-plans-in-venezuela-are-far-advanced/
Alliance for Global Justice Statement on Right-Wing Violence in Venezuela
Alliance for Global Justice Statement on Right-Wing Violence in Venezuela
February 17, 2014
February 17, 2014: Nearly a year ago, March 5, 2013, delegations of world leaders, dignitaries and millions of Venezuelans went to pay their respects at the funeral of President Hugo Chavez. The Bolivarian Process, since 1999, has brought greater equality and happiness to Venezuelans and true solidarity and inspiration to people and nations under the thumb of US hegemony. We knew we would have to defend it. The Venezuelan undemocratic and violent right wing includes US-funded private university students, civil society groups tied to the 2002 coup, and the old political and economic elite. The US government and transnational oil and corporate interests view this year as the time to destabilize and overthrow the new government.
Those of us who have seen directly the empowering changes gained by the Venezuelan people, and who are aware of the thirst of the US for this oil rich country and their need to stamp out its good example, need to stand up together right now and demand hands off Venezuela. The era before President Chavez, ruled by the violent elite interested in oil and blood drenched opulence, is not such a distant past. International solidarity is an important component of the Venezuelan people’s own struggle of defense against all outside interference. The lies and propaganda, effectively delivered through the US corporate media, sound unmistakably like past pretexts the US government has pushed to gain public support for covert war.
Lies must be reinforced over and over again whereas the truth stands out like a candle in the darkness. In the past year we have seen a campaign against the democratically elected socialist government of Venezuela reminiscent to the one of 2002. Then the former oligarchs, backed by the US, staged a violent coup which was quickly reversed by the popular movements. Following that failure, they tried capital strikes and a devastating employee lockout at PDVSA, the state oil company, that was then run to the exclusive benefit of the extreme wealthy. Again they were defeated by the social movement supported government.
With the death of President Chavez, the right has falsely believed that the strength of the Bolivarian Revolution would weaken to their advantage. They came within a couple of percentage points during the election of the presidency of an electoral victory by dressing their wolf (presidential candidate Henrique Capriles) in sheep’s clothing. Falsely promising to continue the programs that Chavez popularly championed, they still lost. Since then they moved on to capital strikes, the hording of commodities and the capital flight of their money to bank accounts in Florida and Panama. In the run up to the recent municipal elections, they thought they could use fear and misinformation to generate an electoral victory. But they were unable to manipulate the electoral system, which has been called, “the best in the world,” by former US President Jimmy Carter.
More:
http://afgj.org/alliance-for-global-justice-statement-on-right-wing-violence-in-venezuela
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