The Empire scores two victories in South America - Venezuela and Argentina

international | anti-war / imperialism | news report

Wednesday December 09, 2015 01:00

by 1 of Indymedia

In the recent elections in Venezuela the right wing opposition long backed by Washington has secured a majority by winning 107 out of 167 seats. This is the first time since the early days of deceased former president Chavez rose to power that the right has had control of the parliament.

This allows them to to remove ministers from the presidential cabinet. Had they won 111 seats, they would have been enough power in the legislative body to dismiss Supreme Court Judges, reform the Constitution and convoke a recall referendum of the national executive without having collected the minimum quota of signatures required by the Bolivarian Constitution. It is likely they will try this anyhow.

In the second victory for the empire, the neo-liberal right wing got back into power in Argentina just two weeks ago in late November with the election of right-wing candidate Mauricio Macri from one of the country's richest families

In the case of Argentina under the previous presidents first of Néstor Kirchner and then his wife Cristina Kirchners a lot of social progress was made since the country went bankrupt in 2001 due to IMF and they managed to reduce poverty by 70% and unemployment was more than halved from 17.2% to 6.9%

For the US capitalist empire these are very significant victories because during the Chavez era they organised one coup d'etat against him which he managed to reverse. Then later Chavez got cancer which he openly stated was due to some kind of biological weapon used on him by the CIA and which led to his death.

Chavez had for the first time in Venezuela compared to the previous long series of right-wing dictatorships, actually used the oil wealth to help the poor and those in extreme poverty through large scale social programs. This was widely hated by the moneyed class and US and they set out a long term plan to reverse all this social progress and achieve this latest goal. It ought to be remembered during the short lived coup by the right-wing, the constitution and parliament was suspend indefinitely and severe crackdown was immediately implemented.

What this change means for Venezuela is the rollback of progress, the retaking of the oil resources back into private ownership and then for free plunder by large corporations. All social, economic and cultural links with Cuba are likely to be under attack.

In Argentina, while the new president hasn't got a majority which is a good thing, as the Huffington Post reports http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-weisbrot/argentine-e....html

Internationally, he has moved immediately to demonstrate his overwhelming loyalty to the United States government, which had been previously demonstrated in confidential U.S. embassy cables published by WikiLeaks. One of his very first statements after being elected was to denounce Venezuela and threaten to have them suspended from Mercosur. Since this is not an issue that was pressing to Argentine voters, it is clear that it is part of the U.S.-led international campaign leading up to Venezuela's December 6 elections, which seeks to delegitimize the government and the elections.

This is a very bad omen given this statement was made before the Venezuela elections while the Socialists were still in power.

For Argentina which was another pillar in the Left alliance of South America, this will be removed. It now means that Brazil -a key member of the BRICS nations is now primarily in the spotlight and will be the next target. The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) are the only opposing block that so far have been any sort of challenge or counter weight to the out-of-control rabid neo-liberal corporate capitalists which now dominate all our lives.

So this is now just a case of the US getting back control in it's own backward -and remaking them as the banana republics but by threatening BRICS it scores a major geo-political victory for them.

Elsewhere the R of BRICS is under attack, through the installation of the neo-nazi thugs in Kiev, Ukraine, and the use of the proxy army known as ISIS funded, trained and armed directly by Turkey and Qatar but with overall guideance and direction from covert forces of the Anglo American empire. The goal there is to use Ukraine as a point of chaos and to forment color revolutions in Russia, while at the same time once Syria is dismembered to move onto Iran and do the same there. The ISIS terrorists would then be redeployed to all the countries of Russia southern borders to basically replay the Chechen war but this time to destabalize and break apart the Russia Federation.

See also:
In Venezuela's Upcoming Election, U.S. Seeks Observers it Can Influence
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-weisbrot/venezuela-e....html

Warning Signs on the Road to 'Change' in Argentina
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-weisbrot/warning-sig....html