Us Foreign Policy 24
The Atlas Network Against Latin America
The Atlas Network Against Latin America
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
The Latin American Freedom Forum, took place in 2017 in Buenos Aires with the participation of President Mauricio Macri and Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa. It discussed a strategy to defeat socialism at all levels, with tactics ranging from camp battles on university campuses to nationwide mobilization to force the removal of a constitutional government as occurred in Brazil shortly thereafter.
The pseudo-academic capitalist offensive was initiated by the capitalist international, an extreme right-wing libertarian movement operating as a conglomerate of centers and societies united by almost undetectable threads, in which the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, or Atlas Network, stands out.
Several of the leaders linked to the Atlas Network are ministers of the conservative Argentine government, ultra-right-wing senators from Bolivia and leaders of the Movimento Brasil Livre (MBL) who helped overthrow constitutional president Dilma Rousseff, and who have recently gained notoriety for their predatory actions.
The network functions as a tacit extension of Washington’s foreign policy. The think tanks associated with Atlas are funded by the State Department and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). They are a crucial arm of the U.S. soft-power strategy sponsored by the powerful ultraconservative multi-millionaires Koch brothers: Charles and David.
The NED and the State Department have public entities that function as centers of operation and deployment of lines and funds such as the Pan American Development Foundation (PADF), Freedom House and the US Agency for International Development (USAID). They are the main actors that distribute directives and resources in exchange for concrete results in the asymmetric war against the peoples of Latin America.
The Atlas Network comprises 450 foundations, NGOs and think tanks with an operating budget of some US $5 million, contributed by their associated “non-profit charitable foundations”. It has served to support, among others, the MBL in Brazil and organizations that participated in the offensive against Argentina. Among these are the Crecer y Pensar foundation, an Atlas think tank that joined the Republican Proposal Party (PRO) created by Mauricio Macri, as well as opposition forces in Venezuela and Sebastián Piñera, a right-wing candidate in the Chilean presidential elections.
Atlas has 13 affiliates in Brazil, 12 in Argentina, 8 in Chile and Peru, 5 in Mexico and Costa Rica, 4 in Uruguay, Venezuela, Bolivia and Guatemala, 2 in the Dominican Republic, Ecuador and El Salvador, and 1 in Colombia, Panama, Bahamas, Jamaica and Honduras.
The MBL and the Eléutera Foundation (a formation of neoliberal experts that was very influential in Honduras after the coup) received payments from Atlas and are part of the new generation of political actors trained in the United States.
The “new” extreme right is the libertarian movement that has now been assimilated into the US Republican Party. It bases its actions on a deliberate strategy of misinforming the masses and imposing its plutocratic policies. It has in the Atlas Network its main propellant in Latin America.
A key promoter of this movement is the multimillionaire Charles G. Koch (one of the two famous brothers who adopted the thesis of James McGill Buchanan, an economist from the University of Chicago and Nobel Prize winner. It was designed to disarm the state with an operational strategy in defense of “sacrosanct private property rights” with the slogan: “for capitalism to thrive, democracy must be put in chains”.
Koch funds some 15 major organizations, plus 60 from the U.S. Policy Network (SPN).
The International Private Enterprise (CIPE), a foundation affiliated with the NED, was created by the U.S. government to advance Washington’s foreign policy objectives. It funds political organizations in the Third World and was established by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, the largest lobbying organization in the country. 96% of its funding comes from the State Department and USAID.
CIPE plays a key role in funding the Atlas network and is the main force in its ongoing strengthening. Since 1991, the Atlas Network has been run by Alejandro Chaufen, an Argentinean apologist for the then bloody Argentine dictatorship.
With data from Aram Aharonian and Álvaro Verzi Rangel, Co-Directors of the Observatory on Communication and Democracy (OCD) and the Latin American Centre for Strategic Analysis (CLAE).
This article may be reproduced by citing the newspaper POR ESTO as the source.
August 27, 2018.
Venezuela Has Been Strengthened
The Bolivarian Revolution Has Been Strengthened
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
The frustrated assassination attempt against President Nicolás Maduro Moros on August 4 in Caracas will decisively strengthen the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela and make it invincible.
It would seem that such a crime was all that was left for the Venezuelan counterrevolution to completely lose the credibility it has enjoyed among the few sectors of the population that have been supporting it. They are interested in recovering the privileges they enjoyed before the Chávez revolution. They also want to win over those who had been won over by the siren songs of Washington, whose endless capitalist propaganda about the possibility of maintaining the social benefits recently achieved by the revolution in a more just, but still unequal, society in which they could already be part of a less poor class.
It is evident that the once-opulent Venezuelan oligarchy – pulling strings from the current violent opposition – in alliance with the mafia, both subordinated to the U.S. strategy and limperialist command, carried out this action. Their objective was of turning history around, regaining control of Venezuela’s oil wealth, and once again returning the homeland of Bolivar and Chavez to the status of a U.S. puppet.
Only problem was that Venezuelan revolutionaries and patriots think very differently. The previously-dispossessed classes, along with advances in their material well-being, have seen their political culture and social consciousness grow. They are and are less polluting and less seduceable by imaginings of material progress. The humble are also the most conscious as members and allies of the working classes in the revolution.
The measures recently announced by Nicolás Maduro, in relation to fuel control, and his new approaches to the country’s economy, have taken a heavy toll on the enemies of the Bolivarian process. It was this which, according to all indications, led them to take action on August 4th. Their foolish calculation was that the elimination of Maduro would put an end to a process whose roots are, in fact, much deeper.
At the time of the failed criminal attack, the President was at a meeting in Caracas, commemorating the 81st anniversary of the Bolivarian National Guard. In the middle of his speech, two strong explosions were heard. “Madurop called for an honest and hard-working Venezuela: let’s bet on the good of our country. The time has come for economic recovery.” Maduro said this at the moment when, according to later unofficial information, a drone with a C4 plastic explosive charge exploded near the presidential box.
The President, his wife Cilia Flores, and members of the Cabinet were not injured. They were quickly moved to safety, according to official information. This act of terrorism sought to overthrow a government that is the result of the democratic will of the Venezuelan people. This people’s support for the Chavista revolution has been reaffirmed on many occasions at the ballot box. It constituted a desperate attempt to achieve, by means of assassination, what they have not been able to obtain in several elections.
Nor have they achieved it through coups d’etat like the one of 2002 against the then President Hugo Chávez. Same with the oil coup of 2003 and the extensive and intense imperialist policy of harassment to overthrow the Bolivarian Revolution. This includes the arbitrary and aggressive US Executive Order describing Venezuela as “an unusual and extraordinary threat to national security and foreign policy” of the superpower. They have unilaterally imposed economic sanctions violating international law. The US Secretary of State declared the full validity of the Monroe Doctrine, He called for a military coup against the constitutional government of Venezuela. Trump warned against “a possible military option” against Venezuela.
The aggression and the coup against Venezuela hurt all of Latin America. It benefitted only the interests of those who are determined to divide the countries and peoples of the region so they can exercise their domination over our nations.
These people support the empire of the North in their maneuvers are using unconstitutional means to overthrow the Bolivarian and Chavista revolution. They don’t care if this generates conflicts of incalculable consequences for this region. Sooner or later they will have to assume a serious responsibility before history and answer for this before their peoples.
Nobody doubts that the failed attempt of assassination in Caracas is a powerful further reason for Latin American and Caribbean unity against imperialist domination!
August 6 of 2018.
NATO is a Gold Mine for the Arms Industry
NATO is a Gold Mine for the Arms Industry
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
President Trump has ordered the NATO countries to increase their arms spending. The reasons for his insistence on doing so are becoming increasingly clear. It has nothing to do with any defense logic. After all, the Secretary-General of the US-NATO military alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, has admitted that “we do not see any imminent threat against a NATO ally”. Also, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute recorded in its 2018 World Report that “at $66.3 billion, Russia’s military spending in 2017 was 20% lower than in 2016”.
Radio Free Europe, the US government’s anti-Russian station, reports repeatedly that Russia has reduced its defense spending.
It has been proven that Russia poses no threat to any NATO country. But even this is considered irrelevant in the context that US arms sales are flourishing and those who carry it out are being encouraged to increase and multiply their business.
On July 12, the second and final day of the recent meeting between the United States and NATO, the British news agency Reuters issued a categorical statement with a clear promotional orientation from Trump: “The United States produces by far the best military equipment in the world: the best planes, the best missiles, the best weapons, the best of all.”
The president then listed by name the major U.S. arms manufacturers: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman.
Trump proudly stated at the NATO conference that the United States has many rich countries as customers, “but we also have some not-so-rich countries and they ask me if they can buy US military equipment and if we can help them, and we tell them that we will help them a little. He added that “poorer countries that want to buy U.S. arms may not have to put cash into their purchases.
That single statement raised the prices of the shares of the three arms manufacturers named by Donald Trump and referred to in the previous paragraph by more than ten dollars.
The State Department, to boost the bonanza, made every effort to facilitate further U.S. arms sales by allowing arms manufacturers to bypass their checks and balances. These had been established to hamper the purchase of weapons from the United States by regimes considered to be of ill-repute in the world who want to buy weapons from the United States to put a fig leaf over some if some of its legal, moral and economic restrictions.
In fact, these regulations no longer apply. On July 13, the State Department announced new measures to “accelerate government approval of proposals from aerospace and defense companies,
Within European NATO, the biggest buyers of US arms are Poland, Romania, Great Britain and Greece, and the quantities involved are colossal.
The message to European NATO is that the US is making every effort to sell weapons and wants to make them see that there is scope to buy more of the “best jets, the best missiles, the best weapons” that Trump has to offer.
As journalist Brian Cloughley defined it on July 30th on the Counterpunch and Strategic-Culture websites, “NATO’s gold mine is there to be exploited and, following Trump’s enthusiastic encouragement of the manufacturers of its weapons, it looks like the extraction will be effective. The U.S. Military Industrial Complex will benefit greatly from its President’s campaign to increase the number of weapons in the world.
Lieutenant General Charles Hooper, Director of the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency, told the Farnborough International Air Show on July 18 that “defense exports are good for our national security, good for our foreign policy… and good for our economic security. He then proposed that his agency reduce the transportation fees charged to foreign military customers, which would be an important stimulus to the sales of “the best jets, the best missiles, the best weapons” so highly valued by Mr. Trump.
This officer, obviously a devoted follower of his President, followed his line of action with dedication, reminding the media that as they have said “administration and our leadership, economic security is national security.”
August 2, 2018.
Trump Rules Out Europe as an Ally
Trump Rules Out Europe as an Ally
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Many observers and U.S. allies calculated that in Helsinki President Trump had intended to achieve the re-establishment of a triangulation between the United States, Russia and China. And there were good reasons for that hypothesis.
At a 2015 press conference, Trump advocated the Hanry Kissinger line: keep Russia and China divided so that they can never unite against Washington.
On that occasion, Trump said: “…One of the worst things that can happen to the US is for Russia to get closer to China. We’ve let them join in with the big oil deals that are being made. That’s a horrible thing for our country. We’ve made them friends because of a incompetent leadership.”
In an essay published by the Strategic Culture Foundation on July 23rd signed by Alastair Crooke, a former M16 agent, and British diplomat, there is speculation that perhaps, in Helsinki, Trump was doing something a little less strategic and more realistic – something more along the lines of The Art of The Deal [Trump’s book].
According to Crooke, “Over the decades, we have developed a model of how “people are supposed to behave when they’re not in a good mood. presidents and in the process of policy formulation. Bush and Obama were fully driven through that process. But obviously, Trump doesn’t fit that model. Trump’s process follows the following order:
1) Identify a major target (tax cuts, trade, etc.) balanced trade, a wall, etc..
2) Identify the points of influence in front of anyone who stands in your way (elections, tariffs, jobs, etc.).
3) Announce any extreme threat aggression to your opponent.
4) If the opponent backs down, mitigate the threat, declare victory and come home with a win.
(5) If the opponent responds, Trump applies the principle of double or nothing.
6) Eventually, the escalation must lead to negotiations with the perception of a victory for Trump – even though this is more apparent than real.
If we frame the Helsinki meeting in the context of this perception of Art of the Deal, we get that the divergences of vision between Russia and the United States are so substantial that the common ground is small and there are very few prospects for an ‘overall strategic agreement’.
In fact, President Trump has little to offer Russia: sanctions relief is not in his power (but in Congress’s), and you could not renounce Ukraine, “even if Trump understood that the US and Europe made a bad buy with their coup d’état.”
According to the Russian journalist specializing in the conflict in Ukraine, Rostislav Ishchenko, “We have a situation where both sides, even before they negotiated, they knew they could not reach an agreement and neither could bes even prepared for such a thing (there was no provision for the signature of a document after the negotiations).
At the same time, both sides needed the event to be successful. Trump, obviously, is blackmailing the European Union with a possible agreement with Russia. But I’ll tell you what, Putin also needs to show Europe that there are other fish in the the sea besides them.”
Europe’s position is clear. Not by chance, Trump, in listing Washington’s enemies (the EU, China and Russia), made it clear that he considers Russia to be a smaller problem than the EU because there are practically no economic contradictions with Moscow.
The main “enemy” of the United States is not China, with whom the US has the largest negative trade balance, but the European Union, which Trump defined as the main commercial competitor and which obtains from the relationship with the United States many unjustified economic benefits through political agreements.
With this, Trump solves his political-military contradictions with Russia and, consequently, reduces the value of the EU as an ally of Washington to zero. Recently, after the NATO summit, Merkel began to speak out clearly about Trump’s hostility to Europe. She considers it unjustified because of how much Europe has fought against Russia for the benefit of the interests of the United States.
Europe, which, unlike China, has not dedicated itself to the diversification of its economic ties in the world and which seemed to depend on access to the U.S. market, is not prepared for a strong confrontation with the United States.
Without running the risk of getting ahead of Trump on the issue of the normalisation of relations with Russia, EU leaders were fatally afraid that Trump and Putin, despite the difficulties, might do the impossible and come to an agreement, because both of them proved to be prepared for decisions that could change the world’s destiny in an instant.
July 30, 2018.
This article may be reproduced by citing the newspaper POR ESTO as the source.
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