By Pepe Escobar – posted with permission and x-posted with Strategic Culture Foundation
Neoliberalism is – literally – burning. And from Ecuador to Chile, South America, once again, is showing the way. Against the vicious, one-size-fits-all IMF austerity prescription, which deploys weapons of mass economic destruction to smash national sovereignty and foster social inequality, South America finally seems poised to reclaim the power to forge its own history.
Three presidential elections are in play. Bolivia’s seem to have been settled this past Sunday – even as the usual suspects are yelling “Fraud!” Argentina and Uruguay are on next Sunday.
Blowback against what David Harvey has splendidly conceptualized as accumulation by dispossession is, and will continue to be, a bitch. It will eventually reach Brazil – which as it stands continues to be torn to pieces by Pinochetist ghosts. Brazil, eventually, after immense pain, will rise up again. After all, the excluded and humiliated all across South America are finally discovering they carry a Joker inside themselves.
Chile privatizes everything
The question posed by the Chilean street is stark: “What’s worse, to evade taxes or to invade the subway?” It’s all a matter of doing the class struggle math. Chile’s GDP grew 1,1% last year while the profits of the largest corporations grew ten times more. It’s not hard to find from where the huge gap was extracted. The Chilean street stresses how water, electricity, gas, health, medicine, transportation, education, the salar (salt flats) in Atacama, even the glaciers were privatized.
That’s classic accumulation by dispossession, as the cost of living has become unbearable for the overwhelming majority of 19 million Chileans, whose average monthly income does not exceed $500.
Paul Walder, director of the Politika portal and an analyst for the Latin-American Center of Strategic Analysis (CLAE) notes how less than a week after the end of protests in Ecuador – which forced neoliberal vulture Lenin Moreno to ditch a gas price hike – Chile entered a very similar cycle of protests.
Walder correctly defines Chile’s President Sebastián Piñera as the turkey in a long-running banquet that involves the whole Chilean political class. No wonder the mad as hell Chilean street now makes no difference between the government, the political parties and the police. Piñera, predictably, criminalized all social movements; sent the army to the streets for unmitigated repression; and installed a curfew.
Piñera is Chile’s 7th wealthiest billionaire, with assets valued at $2.7 billion, spread out in airlines, supermarkets, TV, credit cards and football. He’s a sort of turbo-charged Moreno, a neoliberal Pinochetist. Piñera’s brother, Jose, was actually a minister under Pinochet, and the man who implemented Chile’s privatized welfare system – a key source of social disintegration and despair. And it’s all interlinked: current Brazilian Finance Minister Paulo Guedes, a Chicago boy, lived and worked in Chile at the time, and now wants to repeat the absolutely disastrous experiment in Brazil.
The bottom line is that the economic “model” that Guedes wants to impose in Brazil has totally collapsed in Chile.
Chile’s top resource is copper. Copper mines, historically, were owned by the US, but then were nationalized by President Salvador Allende in 1971; thus war criminal Henry Kissinger’s plan to eliminate Allende, which culminated in the original 9/11, in 1973.
Pinochet’s dictatorship later re-privatized the mines. The largest of them all, Escondida, in the Atacama desert – which accounts for 9% of the world’s copper – belongs to Anglo-Australian giant Bhp Billiton. The biggest copper buyer in world markets is China. At least two-thirds of income generated by Chilean copper goes not to the Chilean people, but to foreign multinationals.
The Argentine debacle
Before Chile, Ecuador was semi-paralyzed: inactive schools, no urban transport, food shortages, rampant speculation, serious disturbances on oil exports. Under fire by the mobilization of 25,000 indigenous peoples in the streets, President Lenin Moreno cowardly left a power void in Quito, transferring the seat of government to Guayaquil. Indigenous peoples took over the governance in many important cities and towns. The National Assembly was AWOL for almost two weeks, without the will to even try to solve the political crisis.
By announcing a state of emergency and a curfew, Moreno laid out a red carpet for the Armed Forces – and Piñera duly repeated the procedure in Chile. The difference is that in Ecuador Moreno bet on Divide and Rule between the indigenous peoples’ movements and the rest of the population. Piñera resorts to outright brute force.
Apart from applying the same old tactics of raising prices to obtain further IMF funds, Ecuador also displayed a classic articulation between a neoliberal government, big business and the proverbial US ambassador, in this case Michael Fitzpatrick, a former Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere matters in charge of the Andean region, Brazil and the Southern Cone up to 2018.
The clearest case of total neoliberal failure in South America is Argentina. Less than two months ago in Buenos Aires, I saw the vicious social effects of the peso in free fall, inflation at 54%, a de facto food emergency and the impoverishment of even solid sectors of the middle class. Mauricio Macri’s government literally burned most of the $58 billion IMF loan – there’s still $5 billion to arrive. Macri is set to lose the presidential elections: Argentines will have to foot his humongous bill.
Macri’s economic model could not but be Piñera’s – actually Pinochet’s, where public services are run as a business. A key connection between Macri and Piñera is the ultra-neoliberal Freedom Foundation sponsored by Mario Vargas Llosa, who at least boasts the redeeming quality of having been a decent novelist a long time ago.
Macri, a millionaire, disciple of Ayn Rand and incapable of displaying empathy towards anyone, is essentially a cipher, pre-fabricated by his Ecuadorian guru Jaime Duran Barba as a robotic product of data mining, social networks and focus groups. A hilarious take on his insecurities may be found in La Cabeza de Macri: Como Piensa, Vive y Manda el Primer Presidente de la No Politica, by Franco Lindner.
Among myriad shenanigans, Macri is indirectly linked to fabulous money laundering machine HSBC. The president of HSBC in Argentina was Gabriel Martino. In 2015, four thousand Argentine accounts worth $3.5 billion were discovered at HSBC in Switzerland. This spectacular capital flight was engineered by the bank. Yet Martino was essentially saved by Macri, and became one of his top advisers.
Beware the IMF vulture ventures
All eyes now should be on Bolivia. As of this writing, President Evo Morales won Sunday’s presidential elections in the first round – obtaining, by a slim margin, the necessary 10% spread for a candidate to win if he does not obtain the 50% plus one of the votes. Morales essentially got it right at the end, when votes from rural zones and from abroad were fully counted, and the opposition had already started to hit the streets to apply pressure. Not surprisingly, the OAS – servile to US interests – has proclaimed a “lack of trust in the electoral process”.
Evo Morales represents a project of sustainable, inclusive development, and crucially, autonomous from international finance. No wonder the whole Washington Consensus apparatus hates his guts. Economy Minister Luis Arce Catacora cut to the chase: “When Evo Morales won his first election in 2005, 65% of the population was low income, now 62% of the population has access to a medium income.”
The opposition, without any project except wild privatizations, and no concern whatsoever for social policies, is left to yell “Fraud!”, but this could take a very nasty turn in the next few days. In the tony suburbs of southern La Paz, class hate against Evo Morales is the favorite sport: the President is referred to as “indio”, a “tyrant” and “ignorant”. Cholos of the Altiplano are routinely defined by white landowning elites in the plains as an “evil race”.
None of that changes the fact that Bolivia is now the most dynamic economy in Latin America, as stressed by top Argentine analyst Atilio Boron.
The campaign to discredit Morales, which is bound to become even more vicious, is part of imperial 5G war, which, Boron writes, totally obliterates “the chronic poverty that the absolute majority of the population suffered for centuries”, a state that always “maintained the population under total lack of institutional protection” and the “pillaging of natural wealth and the common good”.
Of course the specter of IMF vulture ventures won’t vanish in South America like a charm. Even as the usual suspects, via World Bank reports, now seem “concerned” about poverty; Scandinavians offer the Nobel Prize on Economics to three academics studying poverty; and Thomas Piketty, in Capital and Ideology, tries to disassemble the hegemonic justification for accumulation of wealth.
What still remains absolutely off limits for the guardians of the current world-system is to really investigate hardcore neoliberalism as the root cause of wealth hyper-concentration and social inequality. It’s not enough to offer Band-Aids anymore. The streets of South America are alight. Blowback is now in full effect.
Never has the world felt the need for a global revolution ! We,people from all continents ,must get rid once and for all of this inhumane,sadistic system that is ravaging our nations accross the globe .This system is mass murdering so one degenerate elite can profit .This has to stop .
This is it.In the next few decades humanity must choose whether to survive, or be force-marched into a global gas-chamber, like a universal Auschwitz or Jonestown. That requires capitalism and the psychopaths who profit from it, being removed from power, everywhere and forever. Good luck!! Interesting times right ahead.
”When Evo Morales won his first election in 2005, 65% of the population was low income, now 62% of the population has access to a medium income.”
Totally anathema to some people. Watch out for ”reports” and ”documentaties” presenting Bolivia as the most corrupt/dictatorial/dysfunctional state on the planet or at least in Latin America.
Exactly, the elites have been hellbent on destroying all middle classes. They even are resentful of the low GDP middle class of China. And want no more sharing and cooperating such as the BRI and EAEU. The BRICS and RIC and SCO are anathema to the Globalist Feudal Lords of Liberalism.
A classic example of how they regard middle class, look more closely at Hong Kong. Who will lose bigtime? A prosperous Westernized society is being immolated and torn to shreds by the West’s leading Intel agencies and NGO fronts like NED. What is the lesson from this? Nothing will stand because in a Feudal system of the NWO of Liberalism, only the elites shall possess all wealth and the survivors at the bottom shall serve the Lords (if all they do is provide kidneys and other vital organs).
Very true. And the moronic idiots in HK have their peers in other places such as Venezuela and Bolivia. Mostly well-to-do young adults looking down upon their poorer compatriots with profound contempt. Deluded and fooled so easily.
Not fooled, I would say. The spawn of the compradores, the losers in China’s Revolution, Chinese criminals fleeing justice and other vermin, full of class and ideological hatred of China, the CCP and their own civilization. One of their exemplars, Liu Xiaobo, thankfully still dead, summed up their groveling compradore mentality, when he asserted that the Chinese would never be fully human until they Westernised. Is it any wonder that the Western supremacists granted him the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in promulgating racial and civilizational hatred?
It’s called class warfare Nussimen. And whose side do the cops and army take in times of mass struggle? Certainly not those being crushed and pauperised by Neoliberalism. You’re right about the profound contempt as well. The ‘values’ and mores of the Bourgeoisie…. revolting.
I also expect Evo Morales to be fully demonised and smeared in the coming weeks as well, even by alleged ‘progressives’. Cough.
The most pristine example of this deliberate destruction of the global middle class by the malign cancer of neoliberalism is given precisely by the case of Chile, even more when we have here a dramatic way of comparison.
Contrary to what most believe, the core reason why Allende was evicted so brutally from power in Sept., 11, 1973, was not a CIA staged coup but a massive social revolt engineered by the Chilean elites to which the Chilean middle class gave their enthusiastic approval and backing. That was known by everyone in Chile at the time, that the middle class would be the one to decide the fate of his government, most likely in a destructive way. The reasons for this profound hostility of the Chilean middle class towards the poor and the Left was brilliantly exposed by a U.S. sociologist which name I don’t remember, who wrote, 12 years before the Once, that the Chilean middle class showed strong aristocratic tendencies, that their members felt like something unique, special, and that as the result they hated the poor (i.e. they hated poverty) with the result that historically they had always sided with the local elites against them. Because of those observations he made a prediction that would take little more than a decade to become reality: he said that this uppity behavior of the Chile middle class would bring one day disastrous consequences for Chile. As we knew too well now, he was spot on.
Now, what has changed in all these years, in the 46 years from sept. 1973 to this 18 of October…? To put it graphically, that for all this time the Chilean elite has wiped its butt with the middle class. From day one of the Pinochet dictatorship the middle class has been abused, marginalized, humiliated, and deprived of its rights. That the Pinochet regime lasted 17 years because of its intolerance and cruelty, the terror it spread on the population, is another one of the myths of this story. That was mostly, or only, for the poor and the Left. For the society at large it was the simple fact that the middle class was so terrified of Socialism, which for them meant poverty, rationing cards, that they were ready to accept all the abuse and humiliation that Pinochet was ready and willing to shower on them. So there is no coincidence in the fact that his unwilling exit coincided with the end of the USSR in 1991. With the Red Peril out of the realm of possibilities the Chilean middle class was ready to wave him good bye and to embrace their democratic rights back.
The problem is, THEY NEVER GOT THEM BACK. Because under the same social and political structures, not to mention military and police, of the dictatorship the neoliberal system continued unabated. The Chile of 2019 is the same one it was under Pinochet, the abuse and the humiliation are still there. Even worse, they have not only continued under this “democracy” but intensified. It has even become more blatant and cynical. In what country is it elected twice as a president a known inside trader, a man who swindled thousands in the well-known Banco de Talca affaire and who should be by now wearing a suit with dark strips and not the presidential sash..? ( https://www.infogate.cl/2015/08/29/8-de-agosto-de-1982-el-dia-en-que-sebastian-pinera-se-fugo-de-la-justicia-por-el-caso-banco-de-talca/) As most Chileans know, this man shouldn’t be now anywhere near the Moneda Palace but behind bars because he is no different from the Bernie Maddoffs and Charlie Ponzis of this world. Yet, there he is. And that brings us to this date, October 26 of 2019.
Massive protests they have had them all the time in Chile, we could go back a century and we will find them. But ALWAYS the protests against a government came from that part of the population most affected or most hostile to the people in power. So during the Allende government the protests centered mostly in upper middle class and high class neighborhoods, in the so called Barrio Alto in Santiago, Providencia, Las Condes, Vitacura, Nunoa. When the target of the protests was a right wing regime, government, they were centred mostly in very low income “poblaciones”, Renca, San Miguel, La Pintana. Now, what Piñera and neoliberalism have achieved in Chile after decades of abuse and exploitation is the miracle of joining ALL CHILEANS in the same protests, under the same political umbrella, that is why these demonstrations are so massive, because they include in the same march and slogans those who went out one day to show their backing of Allende and his Socialist experiment and those who came out to demolish it. That is what best shows the incredible destruction that the neoliberal curse has brought upon Chilean society, his corrosive and inhuman nature. The uppity middle class is not anymore the same, it is now a ruined, humiliated, over exploited middle class. But even the elite has suffered, as the number of the owners of the power and wealth in the country has dramatically shrunk and now they can be counted as a handful. Karl Marx wrote once that every social and political system carries the seeds of its own destruction and that can be clearly seen in Chile now, why the neoliberal doctrine is going down in flames taking the Piñera regime with it.
”Contrary to what most believe, the core reason why Allende was evicted so brutally from power in Sept., 11, 1973, was not a CIA staged coup but a massive social revolt engineered by the Chilean elites to which the Chilean middle class gave their enthusiastic approval and backing.”
Middle class crackpots in service of reaction are not able to play any decisive role anywhere. A corollary of this is Nussiminen’s law:
The petty bourgeoisie in Chile is in the process of being utterly destroyed — a similar case in Europe would be Greece. Contrary to classical fascism, neoliberalism is unapologetically and utterly elitist.
Last but not least: It was US imperialism (Kissinger) who masterminded the putsch. Pinochet was no Franco, even though the latter also was to become an insignificant US puppet (post WW2).
The disappearance of the Soviet Union is the same reason why apartheid South Africa thought it safe to release Mandela, and St. Nelson did the quid pro quo by handing the country over to the neo-liberals, which is why the people are even worse off now than then, while Mandela swanned around the world receiving the hosannas of the Meanswells and bien pensants.
Indeed. The predator class’ greed and inhumanity knows no bounds. Whether referred to as jews, zionists, satanists, sabbatean death cult, elites, etc. etc. etc., their sole power comes from creating currencies from nothing. Worldwide. By creating the principle but never the interest on every loan made on the planet they have created the greatest wealth transfer system in the history of mankind. Every single interest payment made anywhere is taking somebody’s principle away from them. Can’t pay the loan AND interest? That’s when the bank takes your house, car, business, farm, machinery, and property.
Their biggest problem is finding enough psychopaths to staff the governments and corporations to do the dirty on their fellow humans for their masters.
Lies, deception, and subterfuge are the tactics used so that the people never suspect that every single segment of society is completely owned and controlled by this group while they pretend not to. The media, academia, governments, corporations, entertainment complex, and of course, the banks all work against humanity in Dumbing us down, Dividing us, Distracting us, and making us Dependent. The result is a system of legally sanctioned theft and moral decay promoted by institutions we are supposed to trust.
World : Had enough yet?
Alohajim, nice comment. However, you should change the word ‘principle’ used in the sentence “By creating the principle but never the interest on every loan made on the planet…” because principle refers to a natural, moral, legal rule or standard… The right word to use is ‘principla’, so “By creating the principal but never the interest on every loan made on the planet”, where the word principal refers to a loan amount requiring repayment…
One of the best titles to an article I have seen this year – thanks Pepe.
Essentially Neoliberalism is the cult of greed, with its relentless propaganda, attendant vacuous celebrity culture and the incredibly divisive identity politics – cynically used to create division by the zombified ideologues and academics who serve this warped ideology.
Class politics is jettisoned. When was the last time you heard anyone in the media use the term ‘working class’?
In fact, how often do you hear the term ‘Neoliberalism’ used in the media? “the ideology that dare not speak its name is a new dangerous form of Corporatism” to quote the excellent and voluminous Neoliberalism Softpanorama website.
According to Oxfam, the richest 26 people now own as much wealth as the bottom 50% of humanity.
The privatisation of everything, user pays, financialisation, crushing austerity for the vast majority, the offshoring of millions of jobs, while the parasites at the top rake in billions and billions.
Along with this is the pathological callousness and cruelty shown towards the victims of Neoliberalism – the many living in dire poverty, and millions homeless. These people are discarded as disposable…. derided as Losers. I’ve been told parts of Los Angeles, for example, is completely dystopian with whole tent cities of homeless people.
The people of Chile, Ecuador, Argentina and elsewhere in South America have shouted… YA BASTA! When will people en masse in the West start doing the same?
”The people of Chile, Ecuador, Argentina and elsewhere in South America have shouted… YA BASTA! When will people en masse in the West start doing the same?”
Gezzah, the West’s majority populations ( = Pindos & Euro-trash) are in for a very ”funny ride” — in fact, it has already begun.
In Western Europe, it was a slow but sure mortal blow to imperialism’s prestige when European Big Business and its monstrous European Union opened up ”Fortress Europe” to ’the great unwashed’ back in 2015. This has been fatal to the chauvinistic labour aristocracy and the middle classes who now have to confront the raw Elite hatred they thought was only for the world’s downtrodden and oppressed peoples who were to be ”kept out forever”. As the situation matures, there will be violent confrontations between popular forces and the rotten EU regime.
The Pindos will, amusingly, stick to their old deluded psychobabble about being exceptional, indispensable, and what-have-you. They are all but finished as a people and will improve their already impressive track record in the field of gun violence as the imperialist loot from abroad dries up. Sincerely, I can’t help feeling big Schadenfreude as they start cannibalizing their own society from within. Their sense of solidarity with the world’s oppressed peoples is absolutely zero. Well, let them take care of their own destruction. It’s long overdue.
The chickens are coming home to roost Nussimen…. Delusional thinking and Denialism in bucket loads in the ‘civilised’ West. In for a very rude awakening. And you’re correct about the sense of solidarity being Zero. Complete callous indifference as I’ve found out when I’ve mentioned Palestine, Yemen or Syria with people I know. They wouldn’t even reply. Nothing is happening. Nothing to discuss.
That’s Nussiminen :-)
Actually, they tend to turn hostile as soon as the Ziomedia start slandering whomever is perceived (correctly so or not) to cause problems to imperialism. So their indifference is not unshakeable after all. Tulsi Gabbard is indeed playing with fire as she makes noises about the West’s illegal wars while happily sticking to the Zio-tripe on key subjects such as Crimea, Donbass, and Syria. Of course this is precisely what Euro-trash Leftists do as well, but Europeans are not as ”combustible” as the Pindos when it comes to narcissistic rage, meaning that the average EU subject is not turning stark, raving mad at aforesaid Leftists.
Agree with you Nussiminen. Such is the vile work of the mainstream presstitutes in instilling the Empire’s narrative in many people. I’ve seen it myself often with friends and acquaintances espec regards Julian Assange, Syria & Assad, Venezuela, Putin & Russia, China, etc.
Also agree that Tulsi is stirring the hornets nest, perhaps unwittingly. I’m not sure she realises what monsters she’s dealing with.
Thems ain’t ‘chickens, Gezzah-they’s vultures, by golly!
@Gezzah Pots
Neo-whatever since Ronnie Raygun and Thatcher has one single purpose – to wipe out the middle classes and replace them with drug addicted slobs who with fifty can’t spell their names anymore – it was that well educated class who could have been dangerous to the very top of the pyramid – a risk which could not be tolerated.
That was until all went wrong 2014/15….
Now the world is a different one, and they will have to compromise for the moment (they won’t give up ever, unless being totally wiped out, which will take a century or more).
What is occurring in Latin America, and which will spread, is, in my opinion, just humanity at the end of its tether. Certain traits of the species H.sapiens sapiens were always antithetical to Life, and we had a few millennia to work out some sort of operating system for how to live at peace with one another, and other life forms, into an extended future-and we seem, definitively, to have blown it.
The apotheosis of the failure to construct a Life-affirming, sustainable, human system is capitalism, particularly the neo-liberal Market Fundamentalist type now afflicting the world. This system, enforced by ‘men with guns’ ie the Pentagon and the economic hit-men of the Washington Consensus of the IMF, World Bank, WTO etc, and the private bankster oligarchies, is absolutely totalitarian, despite the ludicrous assertions that it produces ‘freedom’. Only ‘freedom’ as defined as the freedom to steal, loot, sanction, subvert, lie, exploit and generally act as a psychopath, the ideal capitalist type and the very epitome of the Rightwing Authoritarian Personality.
The total global dominance of capitalism has produced, as Marx foresaw, massive inequality, gargantuan private wealth, growing poverty and ecological devastation. In the next few decades the collapse of the US petrodollar and neo-liberalism, under the weight of debt and inequality, and the ecological collapse driven primarily, but not solely, by anthropogenic climate destabilisation, and the geo-political conflict caused by Western racists and supremacists dedicated to destroying the world if they can no longer control it totally, which is their response to China’s rise (daily growing into a real frenzy of racist hatred)will all combine to end human civilization, perhaps forever, but certainly for millennia. If things go as I expect, ie that the rich Western ubermenschen and various self-Chosen Peoples will destroy humanity in a delirium of perverted End Times religious eschatology, and sheer hatred in response to the eclipse of their power over humanity, through biowarfare and other techniques ot mass and total destruction, we will at least have resolved the Fermi Paradox. No doubt, at the end, Pence, Bolsanaro and Morrison’s psychotic ‘God’ will smile on them as they reach their hearts’ desire-non-existence.
how fast are the Russian/Chinese tandem evolving scientifically relative to the west?
is it possible to achieve such distance that the Russian/Chinese may be able to neutralize the west, to render all the west can do moot, and so facilitate their change from outside?
by which I mean of course to neutralize any/all capacity the west has to affect others in the world.. then leave the region’s people to deal with their cultures as they see fit, as independent nations, responsible for their own living in the world as every other nation is.
the point is to remove the west’s capability of harming the planet then leaving the alone. other than that I see no way out for humanity. we are toast as a species in the face of psychotic western elitism/racism
by the way Mumblebrain, how does human demise deal with this: “we will at least have resolved the Fermi Paradox.” ?
Of course China and Russia will leave the West for dead technologically. The Chinese are training more scientists, technologists and engineers etc than anyone else, and investing tens of billions in those fields. The Chinese have been the world’s technological leaders for the vast majority of history. Russia, too, has a long tradition of scientific/technological advances, but the real reason for those two leaving the USA behind is that the USA has become a thoroughly financialised and therefore parasitised economy and society. The only priority in the US system is profit, preferably without effort, through financialised blood-sucking. Hence the USA is the only major rich economy without decent health-care for the population, but a system that delivers mega-profits to insurance, private hospitals and doctors and BigPharma, while much of the population is unserviced or very badly serviced, and the amount of money spent dwarfs all other states as a percentage of GNP. And the same can be said of the massive military budget, 90% waste or pillage, transport, infrastructure as a whole, even R & D and the cyber-economy, as we can see from farces like WeWork, Uber, fracking etc, all money sinks that have never made a profit.
thanks for that response..that is precisely what I had in mind: the hollowing out of western society by their financial paradox, consistent with the end of empire by the combined rise and general advance of the eastern world and former colonies shaking off imperial control.
this includes technological advance that would likely soon become capable of neutralizing stagnating western technological capability.
we are all looking for a way(s) humanity may survive..this is one direction that may be as potential as any
Mulga…. You can only keep screwing people down, and backing them into a corner for so long. Sooner or later, they will explode, as we are now seeing in Chile, in Ecuador, and in France with the long running Gilets Jaunes protests.
Which, oddly enough, the presstitutes basically ignore. They’re obviously way too busy covering the Hong Kong protests.
Neoliberalism is the antithesis of ‘Life Affirming’. It enslaves the vast bulk of humanity while, as you point out, creating massive environmental destruction and massive inequality.
Neoliberalism is the religion of the Rightwing Authoritarian Personality, and therefore perfectly expresses the RAP’s hatred of others. That is it, pure and simple. Much of humanity, and certainly those in power in capitalist ‘liberal democracies’ hate and fear other people and draw much of their psychological pleasure and self-justification from treating them with sadistic cruelty.
Correct. I missed this, sorry Mulga. Agree with everything you write on this thread. I’m not sure about the language allowed in the comments section but…. Screw Neoliberalism To Hell.
Just bought copies of Pedadogy Of The Oppressed by Paolo Friere and Culture & Imperialism by Edward Said. Time to do some serious reading methinks.
Sidenote: There is no “Nobel Prize” in Economics. Alfred Nobel never instituted a prize for economists.
Much later the Sveriges Riksbank – Swedens national bank – instituted a prize they called
“THE SVERIGES RIKSBANK PRIZE IN ECONOMIC SCIENCES IN MEMORY OF ALFRED NOBEL”
to leech on the fame of the real Nobel prizes. There is absolutely no reason to name such a prize after Nobel other than leeching and propagandizing.
Not that the real Nobel prizes are necesseraly better (the “peace prize” is a joke) but still one should not perpetuate the neoliberal propaganda by calling that fake Nobel “Nobel prize”. Better call it “Riksbank prize”.
They should rename it by substituting ”Milton Friedman” for ”Alfred Nobel”. Pepe’s headline is spot-on: Burn, Neoliberalism, Burn.
I am trying to be precise. I know a bit about it as I was there after all and I participated in the process. Also, I do know a bit about Chilean History and Politics. Many people abroad who don’t know better have the tendency to paint everyone with the same brush unaware as they are of the particularities of every situation given the local culture, History and traditions.
When the duo Kissinger Nixon saw that Allende had won the presidential election the night of the 4th of Sept. 1970, they decided to send the CIA to Chile TO TALK WITH THE CHILEAN POLITICAL RIGHT TO SEEK A WAY TO PREVENT ALLENDE FROM TAKING OFFICE. They didn’t send them with tons of money to buy some Chilean general so he would march on the presidential palace and take power. Washington was aware that, despite all its faults, Chileans in general and the middle class in particular, were extremely proud of their Constitutional system (the only Latin American nations without military coups in living memory so that was anathema to them). Furthermore, during the current Frei government (1964-70) Chile was the poster boy in the Americas for social and political change without blood being spilled. They called it Revolution En Libertad, to showcase it to the rest of the Americas as the alternative to the Cuban Revolution. So at the time the Chilean middle class felt on top of the world and also there was at the time in Washington some respect for the Chilean political class which spilled down to the middle class, the social base for the Frei government which underscored every of their moves related to Chile. They were aware that their Chilean showcase depended on the approval of the Chilean middle class.
The CIA went to Chile after Allende’s victory, I say, and they started testing the waters in the Right but they didn’t find a positive response. No one wanted to risk losing their Chilean system only to get rid of Allende which whom they thought they could deal adequately because after all they had the Congress, the Judiciary and above all, the military. They didn’t see him as a big danger. So in desperation the CIA gave some weapons to the few right wing wackos they could find so they’d kidnap none other than the Chief of the Army, Gen. Rene Schneider, and then blame the Extreme Left. They botched the job, killing Gen. Schneider: Chilean military Justice did its job, the U.S. role in the event was blown wide open, a wave of anti-U.S. swept the land and as the result Allende got a dream honeymoon with the Chilean populace that lasted months. In March 1971 the popular backing for the Allende government had risen to 51% from 36% in Sept. 1970.
I know it is great knowing the world by books and film documentaries, or essays, thinking one has truly come to know it, but reality is the best teacher of all and there is nothing to know about such a complex and delicate subject as this one as HAVING BEEN THERE AND PARTICIPATED IN IT. Everyone in Chile knew at the time that the Allende government represented a minority, the minority of the weakest in society, the working poor and the totally poor, and that its chances were pretty slim to realize its social experiment, but everyone also knew that if he, his government, did the right moves he could rally also a sizable part of the middle class so to have the majority of the population on his side. It has worked for others, Ortega, Chavez, Morales, and that is how the real world works, no matter what thick essays written by self-important academics pretend. You rally a sizable majority behind you and you are into safe territory. BTW, it is funny to see this typical First World arrogance, the patronizing idea that the same middle class that can be such an important actor in U.S. or European politics, becomes just an afterthought, a tool, a worthless bunch of dupes when it comes to Latin America. So, is the Chilean middle class any less worth than the one in the U.S…?
Anyway, anyone may believe whatever they want. When someone lives in a particular cultural, especially in the U.S., it is easy to fall into the usual mental and cultural traps, in this case generally the idea peddled by Hollywood, that pretends that History is made by the fight between good guys and bad guys. Batman VS the Joker, Superman VS Lex Luthor, etc,. (That if only someone had killed Hitler, how much suffering the world would have been spared…!) In Latin America people live in the real world, not in Cartoon land. Reality is far more complex than that, to discard a valuable human resource for a process such as that one Chile lived in those years and the one which is living now implies a complete ignorance of the political process going on in those countries. When one ACTUALLY participates in a process such of this, one realizes that the masses, the people, including that “worthless middle class” can be educated and convinced of where their interests are, they learn to leave aside their own petty individual interests and start thinking like part of a big entity, what we fools in Latin America call THE PEOPLE. People can be actually brought to work the interest of the whole of society no matter which social class they belong to It is sad that so many in the US don’t know of this experience and will never know it, they too deep already in their own culture. So please don’t bring your own disillusionment and skepticism because of what is happen in your own country where it doesn’t belong.
To put it simply, master coup builder Henry Kissinger would have gone nowhere with his Master Plan had the Chilean political class left their petty interests aside and started working for the general good.
The nominally Christian Nations dismiss Christ saying, ‘hardly ever will a rich man enter the kingdom of heaven, and it’s easier for a camel to enter through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter heaven.
Then there is Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus.
Christ is even more explicit in the Revelation,
These things say the Amen, the Faithful and True witness, the Beginning of the Creation of God;
I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot: I would you were cold or hot.
So then because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue you out of my mouth.
Because you say, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and know not that you are wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:
I counsel you to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that you may be rich; and white raiment, that you may be clothed, and that the shame of your nakedness do not appear; and anoint your eyes with eye salve, that you may see.
This line in their Bibles is meaningless, For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
To the Christian mind Today, it’s ‘Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.’ We’re not going to do what it takes to change this Worldly system run by the rich men Christ and the Bible admonishes in so many places.
In lots of regimes that could get you killed as we have smart phones and dumb people in our Pyramid system with the 1% minority at the top.
As an old wise man once said, their is too much money in the pulpit, and not enough money in the pews.
Immense , Stupendous , Stupidistan , or Subzooological , what he calls Trump for not agreeing with the Bankers of Davos and their carbon-reduction tax-increasing schemes . Such superlatives in regular usage require vulcanization to withstand the inflation .
Jet setting hipster Marxist , gotta have that lithium , to text about Bolivia , to disparage subzooological fascists , promote revolution , campaign against Global Warming , make the next international hotel and flight reservations …… breathlessly earnest about it all .