Tag: South America

21 November 2019

There was a coup in Bolivia which has had minimal coverage in Oz, but I have 3 worries:

1. Australian media coverage is very distorted in the interests of US foreign policy
2. Facebook bans sites that do not suit US interests and
3. The pattern of the US waging economic war on South American countries that do not allow their multinationals to plunder the resources, and arranging coups seems almost standard.

The SMH coverage was from Bloomberg and seemed unable to figure out why there were two governments in Bolivia:

For all reasonable observers Morals won the election with 47% of the vote and with more than 10% lead over his nearest rival, should not have needed a run-off election.  Irregularities were alleged, (but then again they always are when foreign interests are threatened).  Morales offered a re-run, but was not allowed to stand by the guy who came second and the Army!!  So Morales fled, which is very odd thing for a President to do if it were not a coup.

But the SMH article is written as if the Bolivian coup is very hard to understand.

www.smh.com.au/world/south-america/bolivian-crisis-there-are-two-groups-of-people-claiming-to-be-the-government-20191115-p53b01.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed

Consider the following:
The article has two journalists, Matthew Bristow and John Quigley but is attributed to Bloomberg, a US media company. Bloomberg  owned by Michael Bloomberg, who is publicly contemplating standing as a Democrat presidential candidate, but is considered too right wing.
It talks about the ‘interim ‘President’ Jeanine Anez, who was an ‘Opposition Senator’. How did she get to be ‘interim President’ when the government has a majority in both houses? How is she ‘appointing her Cabinet’- with what legitimacy?
Why is the information sourced from the ‘Andean Information Network’, a ‘Think tank’? Who pays for ‘think tanks’? Are there no journalists in Bolivia?
Why were their riots just after the election, when the economy was doing quite well?
Why are the leaders of the government in power all resigning?
Why is Morales not allowed to stand for the run-off election?
Why is the army not supporting the existing elected government? Who trained them?
Why did the President Evo Morales, who just won the presidential election by more than 10% ahead of his nearest rival flee to Mexico? For no reason? He was standing for a 4th term. which had been challenged in the High Court but he had won there. Presumably the Army was against him and in favour of the opposition.

President Evo Morales had nationalised a big oil company, and wanted his people to get a larger share of the country’s big lithium deposits. He claimed that this was why he was deposed.

A Venezualan perspective is given at

https://orinocotribune.com/the-coup-in-bolivia-five-lessons

I tried to post this on my Facebook page and it was denied as offending ‘Community Standards’!  I just put the name of the paper, Orinoco Tribune, not the url and it was still denied with the same- ‘Community Standards’.

So what with the major media giving very one-sided coverage and Facebook censoring material, presumably for being anti-US, how do the Australian public ever get to know what is going on. 

I will attach what I attempted to post separately..

I did manage to post some material critical of the SMH article and the RT article and they have remained there.

(A more radical view is at:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52534.htm)