@Pluto's Republic

Here are two companion articles that show what our goals are in the Middle East. Most of it I already knew, but I still learned a lot from them.

Funding ISIS

This one has kept me busy all afternoon following the links in it. The brutal devastation, misery and death that we and our allies have brought to countless countries is staggering and hard for me to comprehend. What makes people decide to be involved in this just so they can get richer? I absolutely cannot fathom being like them.

The “ISIS Resurgence” is Fake News

...one must be familiar with PROSUR, a new international organization created in March 2019 in Santiago, Chile. This will explain the protests we see in Latin America, which will engulf the entire continent in the coming years, as SA's indigenous tribes are exterminated and the people thrown into poverty while the continent is being stripped of its natural resources.

The United States’ interest in Venezuela and the emergence of PROSUR come in the context of a reorientation of U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America. The United States has a long history of imperialist intervention in Latin America, through both military coups and economic pressure. PROSUR is the intensification of U.S. politics in the region with full-on imperialist initiatives by the Trump administration and by Deep State advisors like John Bolton.

The recent U.S. administrations focused on the military aspects of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. The Bush administration, for example, fought the “war on terror” in the Middle East in an attempt to take control of the world’s largest oil reserves. The Obama administration maintained the U.S. gaze on the Middle East in its attempt to end the Arab Spring with the interventions in Libya and Syria. While U.S. imperialism never left Latin America, with coup attempts organized against Venezuela, and the support for the coup in Honduras, it was not at the center of U.S. foreign policy or rhetoric.

This has changed with the Trump administration, singling out the “Troika of Tyranny”: Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba as a focus of U.S. foreign policy. The justification for the Trump administration’s pivot toward Latin America is that the United States has neglected its backyard, allowing Russia and China to strengthen their hold on Latin American resources. John Bolton, Trump’s national security advisor, described this shift in U.S. foreign policy as a reinvigoration of the Monroe Doctrine, saying “In this administration, we’re not afraid to use the phrase ‘Monroe Doctrine.’ … This is a country in our hemisphere. It’s been the objective of presidents going back to Ronald Reagan to have a completely democratic hemisphere.” By “democratic,” Bolton and the Trump administration mean “subservient to U.S. imperialism”: There is nothing democratic about Guaidó’s self-proclamation as president.

PROSUR is an organizational measure that will support U.S. intervention in Latin America, organizing countries that have already been at the forefront of supporting U.S. intervention.

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It also helps to understand the US Pivot to Latin America, a policy that was quietly proposed and enacted while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State and the poison was flowing freely. It has now taken center stage in Deep State foreign policy (State Department, CIA, and Pentagon Special Operations) once it was recognized that China was heavily loaning to countries throughout South and Central America, without the nightmare conditions that the World Bank imposes. The Deep State went into frenzied mode, making abrupt and awful decisions that result in the worst possible unintended consequences for the US.

Deep State political philosophy believes that every resource in the Western Hemisphere rightfully belongs to the United States. Every life can be exterminated at will by the US military. Their US Pivot to Latin America policy based on Monroe-Doctrine principles, was kicked into high gear just as Barack Obama's Presidency was winding down and his legacies were being locked in place. Obama planned a visit to Argentina on March 24, 2016, which caused an uproar in that country. That day happened to be the 40th anniversary of the U.S.-backed coup that installed a brutal military government that ruled viciously from 1976 to 1983. Thanks to backing by the U.S. compatible with its Cold War policy against the Soviet Union — and as a result of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's approval of using "dirty war" tactics to restore civil order — Argentina's military government killed or disappeared as many as 30,000 civilians.

The President came and left Argentina; the ensuing protests were not covered in the US news. Obama carried the TPP trade agreement and deflected interview questions with the local press to restate the US commitment to human rights, while suggested that Argentina look toward the future for prosperity and peace.

Now, three years later, the Argentinians have been economically flattened by their US-backed, right wing Neoliberal President, just as they feared. Meanwhile, under the current Trump administration, the Deep State successfully launched PROSUR in March 2019. South America nations are being weaponized and diverted into a long term, manufactured, humanitarian crisis that is targeting China's business in the region. Fingers are crossed that the contagion will not only sour China's investments in the Americas, but will follow China home.

The further expansion of U.S. economic power and control in Latin America would be peril for the Latin American population. The days leading up to the PROSUR meeting various protests, meetings were held across Chile in an effort to resist this advance of the right wing. The same protests, conversations and anger should have been present in the United States as well. The populations of Latin America are organizing and mobilizing to confront U.S. imperialism, but it is not their struggle alone. It is critical that from within the United States we organize a powerful anticapitalist and socialist workers party, independent of both the Republican and Democratic parties, in solidarity with the working class of Latin America and with an anti-imperial demand at its core.

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What ever it costs, you're paying for it with your taxes and increasing austerity. Profits go to the billionaires.

Also see, Obama’s pivot to Latin America

@Cassiodorus @Cassiodorus

Dear ronnie,

I’m incredibly proud to announce our victory! Together, we defeated the determined efforts of the world’s richest man to buy Seattle City Hall. Thank you for all your support and sacrifices.

With mail-in ballot returns as of Friday night, we’ve surged from being eight points behind on election night to leading by 3.6% and 1,515 votes, with that number likely to rise even further as the final thousand ballots are counted.

These election results are a repudiation of the relentless attacks of the billionaire class and the lies of the corporate establishment. Working people have stood up and said loud and clear: Seattle is not for sale! We want to keep our socialist voice in City Hall.

We won a stunning 60% of the later ballots, which come overwhelmingly from young and working-class people. While our district includes some of the wealthiest parts of the city — and is home to many members of the corporate elite like billionaire Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz — more working-class areas and neighborhoods with many young people and people of color, like Seattle’s Central District and Capitol Hill, voted decisively for our campaign. Many such precincts voted for us by more than 70% even on election night's initial returns.

Our votes also show support amongst those who may not themselves be struggling but who share our vision for a city that is affordable for all working people and reject Seattle being a corporate tax haven for big businesses like Amazon.

We should be incredibly proud of what we accomplished in the face of a record-breaking corporate onslaught.

Amazon dropped a staggering $1.5 million to stop taxes on big business. Vulcan and the Washington Association of Realtors spent a combined $380,000 against rent control. And Puget Sound Energy, one of the region’s biggest polluters, spent $30,000 to stop a Green New Deal.

But we didn’t back down. Instead, we built the most powerful grassroots campaign Seattle has ever seen.

Over 1,000 volunteers helped us knock on over 225,000 doors and make 200,000 phone calls. 7,900 working people chipped in to the campaign. We raised $570,000 with a median donation of just $20, smashing all previous records for both the number of donors and the total amount raised.

But our work is not over — it is just beginning.

Our campaign was a referendum on the Amazon Tax. I look forward to working with this new, progressive Council to pass a tax on Amazon and Seattle’s biggest businesses. This Council has a responsibility to the working people who elected it. There is huge momentum citywide to fight for rent control and a Green New Deal for Seattle.
......
https://mailchi.mp/9cd900ab1704/seattle-needs-rent-control-rally-saturda...

After all, we know only now that Kshama Sawant is likely to have won her City Council race despite her opponent being backed by Jeff Bezos. Sometimes the helpers win.