A color revolution in Bolivia

It appears that the neoliberal imperialist project in Latin America is about to score another victory.

Police guards outside the presidential palace in Bolivia have left their posts, allowing anti-government protesters to walk up to the doors of the building.

President Evo Morales was not in the building when police retreated on Saturday, in a sign of growing discontent among security forces after a disputed election.

Officials in the palace in La Paz were evacuated, leaving only a military presidential guard. Protesters later left the area.

Some police in Bolivia became openly defiant toward the government on Friday, and their protests appeared to be spreading. Their demands include better working conditions and the resignation of their commander.

No word on the loyalties of the military yet, but this is a bad sign.
At the heart of the protests is the recent election.

In an article on the results (New York Times, 10/21/19), the reporter repeats the “damning” allegations of possible fraud by the OAS observer mission, which, he said, “raised the prospect that a victory by Mr. Morales would be regarded by the international community as illegitimate.”

Londoño failed to note that the OAS has presented no hard evidence—statistical or otherwise—to justify its “deep concern” over the supposedly “inexplicable” reversal in the preliminary results that gave Morales the needed edge. Nor did he make mention of the OAS’s ignominious track record of politicized electoral interference, or of the fact that the regional body is currently headed by a conspiracy theorist who has claimed in CIA fashion that Venezuela and Cuba are fomenting mass anti-neoliberal protests in Ecuador, Chile and Colombia. Notwithstanding this blatant bias, Morales has authorized the OAS to carry out an audit of the election results, which the opposition has revealingly opted to boycott.

The Times reporter crucially omits the fact that Morales has long enjoyed overwhelming support in the countryside, where vote tallies are generally delayed, with rural citizens frequently traveling significant distances to cast their ballots. In fact, of the 106,925 new votes counted in Cochabamba by October 22, Morales won by 52.2 percent to his rival’s 35.4 percent.
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Like clockwork, the Western media began pumping out headlines casting the elections as illegitimate. “Bolivia Polls: Morales Claims Victory Amid Fraud Claims,” reported the BBC (10/24/19), while CNN (10/23/19) wrote, “Tensions Boil Over in Bolivia as Protesters Claim Presidential Election Was Rigged.” “Shadow Hangs Over Bolivian Elections as Morales Scores First-Round Win,” announced Reuters (10/24/19).

Long before the election, the opposition had already indicated he would not accept the results if Morales were to win.

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sounds suspicious.

You, gjohnsit, may well be right. OTOH, the protesters may be right and it's just another South American vote scam.

Being born and raised in Chicago, I'm always skeptical of vote counts, especially when they have a very wide or very narrow range. The legacy of Richard J. Daley.

Venezuela is different. Maduro begged for international vote supervision. The world yawned, then declared he cheated after the fact. That sounds like "cheated" was the determination even before the election.

If Bernie is elected, How many (R)'s and (D)'s will say he cheated?

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@The Voice In the Wilderness

I'd say a protest--or a revolution--that begins with the police is pretty suspicious.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal n/t

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal
Most comments I have found on line refer to the President's race in a derogatory manner.
Sounds like a Right Wing revolt to me. Which may or may not be fomented by the CIA, but that's not proven.

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@The Voice In the Wilderness

But, while acknowledging the lack of proof, I must acknowledge the fact that fascist revolutions against left-wing governments in Latin America have rarely proceeded without backing from the CIA. I will also acknowledge the fact that the United States government has, as a whole, taken a hostile attitude toward most of the left-wing governments in Latin America recently, including Venezuela, Ecuador and even Brazil.

These facts don't constitute proof, but they make the hypothesis that the CIA is backing the Bolivian "revolution" far more probable.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Pluto's Republic's picture

...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

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
snoopydawg's picture

@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

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

snoopydawg's picture

as ISIS got bigger and bigger and what the goal was.

Im hoping that one day millions will find justice.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Cassiodorus's picture

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.

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

Lookout's picture

@Cassiodorus

Kshama Sawant is likely to have won her City Council race despite her opponent being backed by Jeff Bezos.

Hooray!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

@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...

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Azazello's picture

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

Deja's picture

We used to have a guy named Alex who posted here, who taught me a lot about Bolivia. Like the fact that they have a 4th branch of the federal government that deals only with elections. Ballots are on paper. Ballots are tallied in public at the locations in which they are cast by citizens chosen via lottery. Admins of voting places are also chosen via lottery, iirc.

It would be very hard for me to believe that the election was rigged or results fraudulent, even if my crooked, scheming, meddling, hypocritical govt officials (and their paid psy-op propaganda rags) hadn't been the ones to try to sell it to me. Total bullshit!

I recently told my boss we'd be spreading our flavor of democracy to Bolivia soon, just like in Venezuela, because they have a lot of tasty lithium for the pillaging. They've already done most of the hard work of putting in rail for its transport too, so BONUS!

It's sickening what is done in my name. It's worse than someone stealing my identity and doing nefarious things in my name. It's people being killed and suffering -- in my name without my permission or any means of stopping it from happening.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Deja

And here I was hoping their poverty would protect them.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

GreatLakeSailor's picture

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from the google machine @ about 3:45pm central time
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SHIT!

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Compensated Spokes Model for Big Poor.

Azazello's picture

@GreatLakeSailor
Bolivian President Morales announces his resignation

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

@GreatLakeSailor
but that's not what usually happens in Latin America.

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GreatLakeSailor's picture

@gjohnsit @gjohnsit

Best case they'll austerity to death 'only' thousands each year.

Edit to add: The more I think about this, the more it breaks my heart.

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Compensated Spokes Model for Big Poor.

Wally's picture

@gjohnsit

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