From jacobin.org: ‘The Latin America WikiLeaks Files’; US diplomatic cables reveal a coordinated assault against Latin America’s left-wing governments’, authored by Alexander Main & Dan Beeton of CEPR (the Center for Economic Policy and Research). These are excerpts from their new book ‘The WikiLeaks Files: The World According to US Empire, in which they put paid to the farcical State Department claims that ‘the US doesn’t interfere with the internal politics of other countries’, and man, do you have to be a clueless dupe to believe that. But then, some hellish percentage of USians will go to their graves believing that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, so…
The authors describe how baked in neoliberalism was in Latin America by the 1980s, through IMF loan coercion and the US-backed training of local ‘Chicago Boys’ economists (Milton Friedman and friends). The gospel of fiscal austerity, deregulation, “free trade,” privatization, and draconian public sector downsizing brought the same conditions for the citizenry Greece experienced: rising poverty, stagnant growth, but open fields for the heat-seeking missiles of foreign investors and mega-corporations to make a killing. But oh, my; the oppressed began to push back against the capitalist neoliberal machine, and some elected candidates began to keep their promises to the people, using ‘heterodox’ economic policies to reduce poverty by asserting the state’s role in economics.
“From 1999 to 2008, left-leaning candidates won presidential elections in Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Honduras, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Paraguay.
Much of the story of the US government’s efforts to contain and roll back the anti-neoliberal tide can be found in the tens of thousands of WikiLeaked diplomatic cables from the region’s US diplomatic missions, dating from the early George W. Bush years to the beginning of President Obama’s administration.”
But oh, no; the Empire couldn’t countenance Leftish populist movements, much less socialism that worked for the poor, the indigenous, or in some cases, the planet itself. They were duly terrified of Hugo Chavez’s ‘alleged “aggressive plans … to create a unified Bolivarian movement throughout Latin America.”
So by State Department threats of with-holding promised debt relief or canceling loans from the World Bank, the IMF, the International Development Bank, or sundry other ‘helpful programs’, or in so many cases using a plethora of NGO ‘democracy promotion for some™ tools to fund rightwing opposition parties or military regimes, and support violence and coups. You’ll want to read the entire exposé for the full effect, including their links to the cables themselves. The authors start with Evo Morales, and the ‘not blackmail’ ‘play ball’ threats to his government. When Morales metaphorically gave the US the finger, re-nationalized the hydrocarbon industry, re-regulated the labor markets, and went into a deeper alliance with Chavez. He announced that Bolivia was ‘nolonger beholden to the IMF’, which he advised Greece to do during their ongoing tribulations with ‘their creditors’.
“Unable to force Morales to do its bidding, the State Department began focusing instead on strengthening the Bolivian opposition. The opposition-controlled Media Luna region began receiving increased US assistance. A cable from April 2007 discusses “USAID’s larger effort to strengthen regional governments as a counter-balance to the central government.”
A USAID report from 2007 stated that its Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) “ha[d] approved 101 grants for $4,066,131 to help departmental governments operate more strategically.” Funds also went to local indigenous groups that were “opposed to Evo Morales’ vision for indigenous communities.”
A year later, the Media Luna departments would engage in open rebellion against the Morales government, first holding referenda on autonomy, despite these having been ruled illegal by the national judiciary; then supporting violent pro-autonomy protests that left at least twenty government supporters dead.”
Morales survived a true coup with the help of other South America countries, but it’s not over even yet; State is still attacking him as a narco-baron. There’s more ugliness in the cables, and remember: these cables aren’t top secret, just ‘everyday bidness’ or some such.
In Nicaragua in 2007 the the US embassy in Managua went into high gear to bolster support for right-wing opposition party Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance (ALN) since the Sandinistas returned to power. Coyly stating that the US didn’t provide ‘direct support’ to political parties, she’d forward some useful NGO suggestions that would/could/should er….channel US funding to the ALN. Had better? Yes indeed.
“The ALN leader said she would “forward a comprehensive list of NGOs that indeed support ALN efforts” and the embassy arranged for her to “next meet with IRI [International Republican Institute] and NDI [National Democratic Institute for International Affairs] country directors.” The cable also noted that the embassy would “follow up on capacity building for [ALN] fundraisers.” [snip]
“Cables like this one should be required reading for students of US diplomacy and those interested in understanding how the US “democracy promotion” system really works. Through USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), NDI, IRI and other para-governmental entities, the US government provides extensive assistance to political movements that support US economic and political objectives.”
Then Ecuador, of course, regarding Rafael Correa:
“Two months before those elections, the embassy’s political counselor alerted Washington that Correa could be expected to “join the Chavez-Morales-Kirchner group of nationalist-populist South American leaders,” and noted that the embassy had “warned our political, economic, and media contacts of the threat Correa represents to Ecuador’s future, and had actively discouraged political alliances which could balance Correa’s perceived radicalism.”
There’s more, of course, post-Correa-election, US base-closing, a new Constitution including economic justice and life guarantees for his people, food sovereignty, adding control over Ecuador’s central bank. Oh, no; we can’t have that as a precedent!
And we know some of what the WikiLeaks concerning Chavez’s administration demonstrated, but I’ll note a few particulars these authors have found in their search.
Hugo was close to Castro, and abjured neoliberalism, dissed Dubya’s war adventures, and mentioned ‘the smell of sulphur in the air’ after he spoke at the UN. Ooopsie. He exerted state control over the oil sector, using increased foreign rate revenues in aid of the poor, etc.
“In April 2002, the Bush administration publicly endorsed a short-lived military coup that removed Chávez from power for forty-eight hours. National Endowment for Democracy documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act showed that the US provided “democracy promotion” funding and training to groups that backed the coup and that were later involved in efforts to remove Chávez through a managerial “strike” that paralyzed the oil industry in late 2002 and plunged the country into recession.
WikiLeaks cables show that, following these failed attempts to topple Venezuela’s elected government, the US continued to back the Venezuelan opposition through NED and USAID. In a November 2006 cable, then Ambassador William Brownfield explained the USAID/OTI strategy to undermine the Chávez administration…” (cable language)
And of course, VZ’s Maduro had recently attempted to throw some of those ‘democracy’ NGOs out of the country, but funding for a second attempt by the Rightists have found a way to Lopez, et.al., and many have been killed under their covert auspices. And yes, we remember that Obama declared Venezuela to be a national security threat to the US of A. Perhaps, but not for the reasons he supposes. ;-)
“In August 2009, Venezuela was rocked by violent opposition protests (as has occurred a number of times under both Chávez and his successor Nicolas Maduro). One secret cable from August 27 cites USAID/OTI contractor Development Alternatives, Incorporated (DAI) referring to “all” the people protesting Chávez at the time as “our grantees”… (cable language, then more) [snip]
“In Venezuela, where a dysfunctional currency control system has generated high inflation, violent right-wing student protests seriously destabilized the country. The odds are extremely high that some of these protestors have received funding and/or training from USAID or NED, which saw its Venezuela budget increase 80 percent from 2012 to 2014.”
The authors note that:
“Largely as a result of these governments, from 2002-2013 the poverty rate for the region fell from 44 to 28 percent after actually worsening over the prior two decades. These successes, and the willingness of left leaders to take risks in order to break free of the neoliberal diktat, should be an inspiration for Europe’s new anti-austerity left today.” Unfortunately, their link goes to a pdf on how NAFTA screws everyday Mexicans.
I’d hoped the authors would have shown cables concerning Honduras, especially, but it seems not, and I know I’d seen some of them, so I let my fingers do the walking.
From commondreams.com: ‘Wikileaks Honduras: State Dept. Busted on Support of Coup’
Here is the gist of it, my bolds:
“By July 24, 2009, the U.S. government was totally clear about the basic facts of what took place in Honduras on June 28, 2009. The U.S. embassy in Tegucigalpa sent a cable to Washington with subject: “Open and Shut: The Case of the Honduran Coup,” asserting that “there is no doubt” that the events of June 28 “constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup.” The Embassy listed arguments being made by supporters of the coup to claim its legality, and dismissed them thus: “none … has any substantive validity under the Honduran constitution.” The Honduran military clearly had no legal authority to remove President Zelaya from office or from Honduras, the Embassy said, and their action – the Embassy described it as an “abduction” and “kidnapping” – was clearly unconstitutional.
It is inconceivable that any top U.S. official responsible for U.S. policy in Honduras was not familiar with the contents of the July 24 cable, which summarized the assessment of the U.S. Embassy in Honduras on key facts that were politically disputed by supporters of the coup regime. The cable was addressed to Tom Shannon, then Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs; Harold Koh, the State Department’s Legal Adviser; and Dan Restrepo, Senior Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs at the National Security Council. The cable was sent to the White House and to Secretary of State Clinton.
But despite the fact that the U.S. government was crystal clear on what had transpired, the U.S. did not immediately cut off all aid to Honduras except “democracy assistance,” as required by U.S. law.
Instead, a month after this cable was sent, the State Department, in its public pronouncements, pretended that the events of June 28 – in particular, “who did what to whom” and the constitutionality of these actions – were murky and needed further study by State Department lawyers, despite the fact that the State Department’s top lawyer, Harold Koh, knew exactly “who did what to whom” and that these actions were unconstitutional at least one month earlier. The State Department, to justify its delay in carrying out U.S. law, invented a legal distinction between a “coup” and a “military coup,” claiming that the State Department’s lawyers had to determine whether a “military coup” took place, because only that determination would meet the legal threshold for the aid cutoff.”
Naiman calls bullshit on that parsing of course, but reasons the differences between this illegal coup and others as: because our backyard, plus:
“The U.S. moved to support elections under the coup regime which were not recognized by the rest of the hemisphere, and today the U.S. is lobbying for the government created by that disputed election to be readmitted to the Organization of American States, in opposition to most of the rest of the hemisphere, despite ongoing, major violations of human rights in Honduras, about which the U.S. is doing essentially nothing.”
Closely Related:
‘Hillary Clinton’s Emails and the Honduras Coup’, by Alexander Main at CEPR.
The gist:
“One of the first big issues to hit Clinton’s desk was the June 2009 coup d’etat in Honduras that forced democratically-elected president Manuel Zelaya into exile. Officially the U.S. joined the rest of the hemisphere in opposing the coup, but Zelaya—who had grown close to radical social movements at home and signed cooperation agreements with Venezuela—wasn’t in the administration’s good books.
The released emails provide a fascinating behind-the-scenes view of how Clinton pursued a contradictory policy of appearing to back the restoration of democracy in Honduras while actually undermining efforts to get Zelaya back into power.
A number of Clinton emails show how, starting shortly after the coup, HRC and her team shifted the deliberations on Honduras from the Organization of American States (OAS)—where Zelaya could benefit from the strong support of left-wing allies throughout the region—to the San José negotiation process in Costa Rica. There, representatives of the coup regime were placed on an equal footing with representatives of Zelaya’s constitutional government, and Costa Rican president Oscar Arias (a close U.S. ally) as mediator. Unsurprisingly, the negotiation process only succeeded in one thing: keeping Zelaya out of office for the rest of his constitutional mandate.”
(substitute ‘the coup against Zelaya’ for ‘Benghazi’)
Well this is just a tremendous GIF. #BenghaziCommittee https://t.co/Bnpi6rcQ43—
Dan Zak (@MrDanZak) October 22, 2015
From telesur.net/english ‘Bolivia to Investigate Alleged US Plot to Kill Evo Morales’.
“Bolivia is calling for investigations into cables leaked by WikiLeaks that reveal the U.S. had plans in 2008 to either topple the government of Evo Morales, or allow his assassination. “This requires an in-depth investigation.” said Bolivia’s minister of the presidency, Juan Ramon Quintana, “We need to do an investigation to subsequently take decisions with regard to the United States government.”.
It includes the DEA kinda calling Evo a narco-barren; Evo twiddles his middle fingers…once again, and says ‘Nope’.
And last, but certainly not least: ‘Socialism is the Radical Transformation of Democracy,’ Says Bolivian Vice President, telesurtv.net
The gist, and there are more related stories on the right sidebar, as well.
“Vice president says Latin America does not want to follow the model of the “false democracies of the North.”
Democracy is in need of a major overhaul and the socialist movements of Latin America are the ones to deliver it, Bolivian Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera said Tuesday.
Speaking at the Meeting for Latin American Progressives conference in Quito, Ecuador, the Bolivian leader criticized the way democracies operate in the world today.
RELATED: El Salvador’s Right Employs New Tactics to Oust the Government
The vice president listed two main areas of concern: a lack of citizen participation in decision making processes and the monopolization of power by elites.
“In many societies, not even 2 percent of the population participate in making decisions,” said Garcia Linera. These include the “false democracies of the North … and it is not a model we want to imitate or follow,” he added.
In his two hour talk, the vice president “assessed” the last 15 years of governance in Latin America, praising the socialist revolutions in places like Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Argentina, which have all taken major steps in eradicating poverty, increasing access to education and healthcare, and improving infrastructure in the region.”
And that’s just it: socialism should be about equally shared political power, not some theoretical textbook economic system or other. And of course capitalism creates a class system, and the higher an elected official rises and sees what wealth and power the oligarchs command, well…most are willing to sell out wholesale. The US is now a banana republic, in which the oligarchy rules, and even seems to decide which way, and how high, our military jumps (with a few notable exceptions at times.)
But I’d laughed when a commenter under one of these Telesur stories claimed that socialism doesn’t work in a democracy.
‘We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.’
~ Martin Luther King
Yes, and even around the globe. Playing For Change – Lean on Me | The Art of Saving a Life
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
Claimed “socialism doesn’t work in a democracy”. No, no, comrade. It was a corpulent, facebooked, reality-gatekeeper quibbling over “Real democracy”.
HA HA HA HA HA HA.
i have too many unused links on this word doc. to find it, but under one a commenter or two went berserk yelling “You don’t believe in free market enterprise and competition!” but in long paragraphs.
i’d forgotten to see if anyone had looked into the cables on ukraine, wondering about pierre omidyar’s bucks to center ua, another democracy project. only found useless scuttlebutt.
but i did find ‘‘Wikileaks Cables: Ukraine Elected “Our Ukraine Insider”‘; it’s funny in the same sick way as so many are. i loved this, too; you’ll remember ‘julia the braided one’.
“Poroshenko, however, isn’t the only Ukrainian politician mentioned. For example, the cables mention the scandal surrounding Oleksandr Turchynov’s destruction of SBU documents tying Julia Tymoshenko to organized crime, and note that the accusation that Tymoshenko wanted Turchynov get the Interior Minister position so that she could gather damaging information on her enemies. The cable refers to this accusation as “not farfetched”. Turchynov went on to be installed as the acting president of Ukraine in the provisional government.
In order to grasp the extent of the U.S. government’s tinkering in Ukraine it is worth reading the documents for yourself.”
I got sidetracked looking into former Deputy Nat Sec Advisor James Wood. In reading his sophistry on the “inherent order to things that exists beyond our own capacity to create or reorganize [which] includes an end, or telos, to human life”, “Greek to me”, I arrived at this:
The classical demagogue summons the demonic will of the demos; Hitler was a modern demagogue. To blame the German poor for the atrocities of Hitler is a baffling perversion. My conjecture is the NatSec thought collective is insane.
plato apparently wrote that the five types of regimes were (and oy, i remember none of it): Aristocracy, Timocracy, Oligarchy, Democracy, and Tyranny; the devolution steps.
but holy hell; when the Rabble win power, it’s anarchy!!! dude didn’t think much of democracy because: no philosopher kings and reasoned aristocrats (the gold?). my goodness.
but remember: ours is not a democracy, but an alleged republic, but it’s god to know where the good ambassador was comin’ from.
this seems to be the interview in case others want to read it; pavlovsy claims putin’s sort of revanchism isn’t ‘quite cynical’ or some such. ignorant question, though. china’s economy is called ‘state capitalism’; is russia’s?
Israhell:
The swaying leaders will not be swayed.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.
The West is built on fraud; the exoteric ideology is manipulated by an esoteric cadre. Plato’s police/enforcers are now tasked to denounce the mass of people (who were used to convert resources into property) as liabilities. Thus the poor are blamed for Hitler and
Yes, of course that’s an objective. Under variant guises, policing as profession is a growing opportunity. Krist’s police, for example, are eager for the Kwistian Republic:
The West is mad.
cripes; i’ve been combing through the other links on my word doc for this post and found: ‘Top Ten Ways You Can Tell Which Side The United States Government is On With Regard to the Military Coup in Honduras’. dayum, i knew i’d seen this stuff somewhere. O, for a memory!
10. The White House statement on the day of the coup did not condemn it, merely calling on “all political and social actors in Honduras” to respect democracy. Since U.S. officials have acknowledged that they were talking to the Honduran military right up to the day of the coup – allegedly to try and prevent it – they had time to think about what their immediate response would be if it happened.
9. The Organization of American States (OAS), the United Nations General Assembly, and other international bodies responded by calling for the “immediate and unconditional” return of President Zelaya. In the ensuing five months, no U.S. official would use either of those two words.
8. At a press conference the day after the coup, Secretary of State Clinton was asked if “restoring the constitutional order” in Honduras meant returning Zelaya himself. She would not say yes.
7. On July 24th, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denounced President Zelaya’s attempt to return to his own country that week as “reckless,” adding that “We have consistently urged all parties to avoid any provocative action that could lead to violence.”
6. Most U.S. aid to Honduras comes from the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a U.S. government agency. The vast majority of this aid was never suspended. By contrast, on August 6, 2008, there was a military coup in Mauritania; MCC aid was suspended the next day. In Madagascar, the MCC announced the suspension of aid just three days after the military coup of March 17, 2009.
5. On September 28, State Department officials representing the United States blocked the OAS from adopting a resolution on Honduras that would have refused to recognize Honduran elections carried out under the dictatorship.
4. The United States government refused to officially determine that there was a “military coup,” in Honduras – in contrast to the view of rest of the hemisphere and the world.
3. The Obama administration defied the rest of the hemisphere and the world by supporting undemocratic elections in Honduras.
2. President Zelaya visited Washington six times after he was overthrown. Yet President Obama has never once met with him. Is it possible that President Obama did not have even five minutes in all of those days just to shake his hand and say, “I’m trying to help?”
1. The Obama administration has never condemned the massive human rights violations committed by the coup regime. These have been denounced and documented by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the OAS Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), as well as Honduran, European, and other human rights organizations. There have been thousands of illegal arrests, beatings and torture by police and military, the closing down of independent radio and TV stations, and even some killings of peaceful demonstrators and opposition activists.
These human rights violations have continued right through election day, according to Amnesty International and media reports, and beyond, including the killings of two activists opposed to the coup – Walter Trochez and Santos Corrales García – in recent days.
The United States government’s silence through more than five months of these human rights crimes has been the most damning and persistent evidence that it has always been more concerned about protecting the dictatorship, rather than restoring democracy in Honduras.
The majority of American voters elected President Obama on a promise that our foreign policy would change. For this hemisphere, at least, that promise has been broken.
The headline from the latest Time Magazine report on Honduras summed it up: “Obama’s Latin America Policy Looks Like Bush’s.”
aaaaaaaand: ‘The Legacy of Che Guevara, 48 Years After His Death; The legacy of Che Guevara continues across Latin America and the world.telesurtv.net
‘Leaked Audio Reveals Venezuelan Opposition in Secret Talks with IMF’
“A leaked audio of a conversation between Venezuelan businessman, Lorenzo Mendoza, and former politician, Ricardo Hausman, has revealed Venezuela’s political and business opposition to be seeking collaboration with the IMF (International Monetary Fund) ahead of the country’s parliamentary elections on December 6th.
In the phone conversation, leaked in Venezuela last Wednesday, both men speak about the possibility of IMF intervention in the Venezuelan economy and frequently refer to each other as “mate”.
Mendoza currently ranks as one the wealthiest businessmen in the world and controls key areas of the Venezuelan economy, such as the production of cornflour, beer and other household staples. Government supporters hold him responsible for the widespread shortage of key products, which they say is an attempt to destabilise the administration of current leftwing President Nicolas Maduro.
….
“The economist also assures Mendoza that he is committed to the “war in Venezuela” despite his absence, stating that “there is no exit for Venezuela without substantial international help,” appearing to reference the opposition’s violent street campaign to unseat the government last year, entitled La Salida (the exit).
Specifically Hausman recommends a 40-50 billion dollar loan from the IMF, which he says will entail a significant restructure of the country’s “debt profile” and “what they euphemistically term, private sector involvement”. The two men also reference a group of Hausman’s students in the US, who appear to have been pinned by both men to carry out the economic restructuring in a post-Chavista government.
The conversation finishes with Hausman revealing that he has “projects” in Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Albania, and confirming that the time is right for “carrying out an adjustment plan in Venezuela”.
Then, shockwaves among the people, etc.
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/11581
I don’t understand this situation well but it appears that Hausmann is signalling Mendoza to provoke a financial crisis to cause a collapse of Venezuelan government. Hausmann pretends he’s only repeating public declarations of the inevitable submission to the IMF while conspiring with Mendoza to foreclose options for VZ gov.
Hausmann seems to have expertise in attacking “developing” economies.
What is the status if these conspiracies did not occur? Is VZ doomed and this is an attempt by the VZ government to name scapegoats?
the rightists have been very busy for years trying to create a crisis to hasten the Exit of the chavistas. maduro has made some mistakes as a newbie, of course. but along with lopez and friends creating false flags in student riots (burning colleges, for instance), there was apparently ample evidence that they hired colombians to raid warehouses full of staples and trucked them across the border, leaving things like food, toilet paper, diapers, and dry milk scarce. the long lines for shoppers made maduro’s regime a global laughing stock, of course. and main and beeton, the CEPR authors note:
““In Venezuela, where a dysfunctional currency control system has generated high inflation, violent right-wing student protests seriously destabilized the country. The odds are extremely high that some of these protestors have received funding and/or training from USAID or NED, which saw its Venezuela budget increase 80 percent from 2012 to 2014.”
more on the currency control issues is here. but for all the hysterical western media reporting, venezuelans still vacation at the seashore as usual. ;-)
It appears that VZ is suffering a trade imbalance due to low petroleum prices and Hausmann and others are expecting it to inflate prices or run out of reserves around the end of the year. Perhaps this interception will be used to justify some inflation.
inflation has been very high, but yes, the maduro G had meant to diversify, as had chavez, but….sadly no. but from oct. 23’s guardian: ‘Venezuela sues currency website over claims of cyberterrorism; Complaint filed in US accuses Venezuelan exiles of sowing economic chaos through website DolarToday which tracks black market value of bolivar’
it’s attributed to AP caracas, and the food fight in the comments seems to include a number of those voluntary vz exiles, perhaps being schooled by more US ‘chicago boys’ intent on fixing things?
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/23/venezuela-sues-dolartoday-currency-website-cyberterrorism
Jah. The Crooks In America are supporting the currency arbitrage Dollar -blackmarket-> Bolivars -VZsubsidizedgoods-> Dollars which VZ wingnut parasites are exploiting. Who is subsidizing the “blackmarketers” for this attack?
long list of possible coalition partners, i reckon. but this is an odd one, and i’ve run myelf outta time for now to make it neat. i clicked into ian welsh’s, and found ‘Eurocrat Coup in Portugal’ quoting ambrose evans-pritchard’s Telegraph column on the same ‘crossing the rubicon’ outrage.
“Portugal has entered dangerous political waters. For the first time since the creation of Europe’s monetary union, a member state has taken the explicit step of forbidding eurosceptic parties from taking office on the grounds of national interest.
Anibal Cavaco Silva, Portugal’s constitutional president, has refused to appoint a Left-wing coalition government even though it secured an absolute majority in the Portuguese parliament and won a mandate to smash the austerity regime bequeathed by the EU-IMF Troik
He deemed it too risky to let the Left Bloc or the Communists come close to power, insisting that conservatives should soldier on as a minority in order to satisfy Brussels and appease foreign financial markets.”, etc.
it now has 2555 comments, many calling out pip-pit AEP for being a euro-hater. i looked at varoufakis’s ‘open demoracy’ site, his twitter and tsipris’s, nuttin’, though yannis said he’d just come back from portugal, tra la la. i went back to ian’s, and there were comments from folks in portugal telling him that he and EAP have it all wrong. beats me; i admit i found the story outrageous…but it may be as different as the AP coverage on of his commentariat brought.
This is clearer.
ta; it is clearer. still, so messed up.
Jah. Dividing and conquering the masters reject coalitions, The law under crapitalism will never allow mass self-expression (see my previous comment about DNSA goofball conflating Nazism with democracy).
Watching a slow motion tragedy wreck, comrade.
More:”All signs from the Portuguese bourgeoisie were that there should have been a government of the PS and PSD. That possibility no longer exists. Now that the political center is shattered, the left needs to push and make sure that the centre is just quicksand from now on. The class struggle scenario in the Portuguese Parliament has unified all the reactionary voices. The desperate actions of the President of the Republic to safeguard the status quo of misery, austerity, precarity and the massive theft of wealth from the workers to capital show how much they were caught off guard by an emboldened left. The time will soon come to once again push all these contradictions back in the streets and destroy once and for all the “arc of power” and the end of history.”
No guns, see.
what an interesting site, indicated by the right sidebar. i’m fading fast tonight, but another country heard from: ‘‘British Euroskeptics Go Off the Deep End, Flog Bogus Portugal “Coup” Meme’
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/10/british-euroskeptics-go-off-the-deep-end-flog-bogus-portugal-coup-meme.html
opps, thanks for the cliff notes from the yani-video below. i did scan his twitter links yeserday, and had backed out without collecting any.
O my goodness, naked crapitalism goes smarty pants again. I didn’t catch where the naked crapitalist demonstrated that the PS party was either insincere or incapable of holding a coalition together. I guess the naked crapitalists will forever say investors have first right to decide over citizens.
HA HA HA HA HA HA. Please correct me if I skimmed too fast.
Good report, WD the internal contradictions of the Bolivarian Revolution may be even more dangerous than the external threats. The often corrupt bureaucratic, statist counterrevolutionary forces are quite powerful and seem to be in control of much of the decision making in the Maduro government. There are two articles at VA that show this problem clearly, one about the new budget, focused on debt payment and the other a response from a young Marxist to and old guard’s paternalist prattle and Red Baiting, this reminds me somewhat of the old BAR attacks on the young BLM movement.
i’ll try to suss out the links and read, wayoutwest, but life has thrown me a few ringers today. nooa says we’re gonna have a killing frost tonight, alhough (holy crow) it’s about six weeks later than usual (or before climate change perhaps). halloween, apples, grandchirren, yada, yada. ;-)
i dunno what sky you can see at first light, but if ya can see east by northeast, venus, jupiter, and mars, and regulus, the brightest star in leo, the backward question mark, are breathtakingly visible, and close together, and quite close to earth. the rising full moon at night is also at perigee. kinda gives one some perspective, ya know?
Our first frost is about two weeks tardy these years but your GW delay has really extended your growing season.
I observed the planetary/stellar display you describe this morning, quite a sight from my northeast door just above the Manzano Mts.
Apparently the red baiting is deserved. The convert to from Marx to Chavismo seems to have lost his perspective since VZ was able to exploit some of the resource windfall.
This blanket dismissal of Chavismo and denial of 21st Century Venezuelan realities is typical of some ridged authoritarian minds and seems to me to be a near reflection of the authoritarian Right.
The old Soviet model is a failed model that can be learned from but not slavishly followed and much if not most of Venezuela’s challenges are rooted in the blessing/curse of oil wealth and the corruption this rentier dependency produces.
The incessant external threat feeding the internal fascist threat has made the forces who do want accelerated progressive change timid and defensive allowing the counter-revolutionary forces to grow inside the government.
One positive sigh is that enough of the Venezuelan people seem willing to continue the struggle against all the forces internal and external that seek the destruction or cooptation of the Bolivarian Revolution.
You seem confused. It appears that Chavismo had not progressed from a cult of personality at his death.
Is this “paternalist” one of those “who do want accelerated progressive change” or is he of the “counter-revolutionary forces to grow inside the government”? If he were the former, why would he be so condescending rather than explain again the difficult constraints they have? Perhaps because they are so threatened that they cannot confide the truth to their replacements (whom Chavez might have encouraged)?
Perhaps that’s why you are so abusive, too. You know “comrade” “anarchist”, that you back absurd causes, so you are constantly on the attack.
I just want to make it clear to you that I thought the young Marxist had the clear advantage in that exchange, in case you didn’t pick that up. You comparison to BAR vs. BLM, however, did not hold up. You must be confused.
Sorry gospodin Bolsheviki but you outrank me in the confused oldster continuum.
For there to be contradictions inside Chavismo there must be two or more factions and I didn’t identify the paternalist as being one of the progressive forces nor do I recognize him as a true Chavista.
I did recognize your support for the young Marxist’s critique but it was buried under that cut and paste pejorative filled rant. My comparison with the BAR/BLM conflict was about the ossification of thinking by older Leftists when confronted by renewed Anarchist or other radical ideas.
The cult of the leader is a dangerous form of paternalism but it has its uses and in the case of the Venezuelan Revolution it was probably necessary taking into account the condition and conditioning of the Venezuelan population. Chavez did seem to understand this paradox and succeeded somewhat in transferring the power the cult bestows on the Leader/State back to where it belongs, with the people.
Maduro does not enjoy this cult of personality yet the Revolution survives although it needs continuing confrontation from young revolutionaries such as the Marxist we’re discussing, now more than ever.
I attack ideas and positions so your feigning being abused is weak and a bit pathetic for an old campaigner such as yourself.
“I didn’t identify the paternalist as being one of the progressive forces nor do I recognize him as a true Chavista.”
O, maybe not, maybe not, but he was clearly the protagonist under discussion; so you are off on a technicality. But he is clearly defensive, in a reactionary way, as you seem to be when one threatens “Chavismo”.
It is revealing that you insist that BLM and this young Marxist are aligned by youth when politically they are adversely aligned, given that BLM avoids class issues. In fact, it is not likely that ossification is the root of criticism by BLM and neither is “renewed Anarchism” a threat. Why does your “anarchism” happen to line up with the Hegemonster’s objective, on one hand, and NGO interests, on the other?
Also paradoxical that an anarchist makes an exception for Chavez’s paternalism and especially now that that “asset” has become liability.
You say you “attack ideas and positions” but too often you’re slinging labels and neglecting your own dissonances.
Ah, Carlos Sabino “is also a member of the [Mont Pelerin Society]]”. You nailed that one, “comrade” “anarchist”. However, you confirm that VZ’s “third way” is a very mixed bag. It also appears that the “third way” is becoming schlerotic: the Chavismo proponent, Iturriza, dispensed with Marx so he counsels that young Marxists must dispense with Marx too. But the saddest is that the diminishing of the oil bounty does not impel commiseration with the young Marxist.
So, while Chavismo inspired VZ people, there’s reasonable doubt that the “third way” was a reliable route.
now if you want/wanted to argue that evo morales is ‘third way’ (whatever that specifies), i might have to agree, but the Empire should be aware of it, and leave off trouncing/subverting his administration, imo,
as far back as my.fdl, i brought op-eds by chellis glendinning reporting from the ground her holy-hell witnessing of evo’s essential duplicity, especially as an indigenous. she reported some of the ugliest disrespect to other Inigenous out of his mouth, and his burgeoning fealty to neoliberalism
when i read a headline in the past couple days that Evo plans to build nuclear reactors, it was impossible not to recall his EO to the effect that ‘i grant the environment personhood’.
a recent post of glendinning’s i didn’t seek far. things fall apart.
I don’t believe the “third way” (between capitalism and state socialism} is inherently duplicitous. It is, however, suspect, especially when you have an oil bonanza to experiment with..
ke-rist; what tripe. the site must be funded by USAID and NED. gotta love their equating capitalism and the rule of law, though. a pretense of democracy, sheldon wolin would call it, afraid of anything that smacks of democracy…you know…the people?
Lost Greek interlecturer plays ultimate tragedy:
“Technology” is biased towards (population) control, so V has has left out that his merger will proceed under machine-aided class war. In this tragedy, the dialogue through machines favors destruction. The rational optimism of the ancient Greeks thus fails totally and VeryFuckedUs betrays his ancestors.
An interesting, if muddled, comment from the prior interview upload:
Is “their plan to decrease the population and fight poverty”? Maybe their poverty!
Let the apocalypse proceed!
There goes the Revolution: