The recent commotion in the South American country of Bolivia may be regarded as an illustration. The potential tragedy part of the drama was the 2019 coup, executed professionally according to the regime change rulebook in order to seize the country’s valuable lithium deposits and incidentally despoil it’s citizens of all their remaining mineral wealth.

In that coup, President Evo Morales, the indisputable champion of the bulk of Bolivia’s majority indigenous population, was ruthlessly deposed. The farce is the amateurishly attempted replay of that episode on 26 June 2024, which in spite of best laid plans unexpectedly went awry. The farce took all of three hours to collapse.

On both occasions, in 2019 and on 26 June 2024, the principal points of contention were Bolivia’s vast lithium deposits, estimated at 21 million tonnes, and for whose benefit they would be exploited.

A related but equally fundamental issue was (and still very much is) Bolivia’s orientation in the geopolitical arena, whether it would side with the BRICS block or the collective West.

In everything but the operation’s outcome in the farcical stage, the symmetry between the two coups was evident.

In 2019 the intended rapine of Bolivia’s natural resources, with lithium deposits at the top of the plunder list, initially was successful but ultimately it failed.

To be sure, the regime change manual was followed faithfully. After shameless electoral interference with abundant cash and a flood of corrupt media disinformation, Evo Morales’s commanding lead in the 2019 elections was whittled down to a manageable level so that his electoral victory could be plausibly portrayed as stolen.

In standard fashion, rented mobs demanded his withdrawal and commissions were set up by vassal entities such as the Organisation of American States to declare that the election process was fraudulent. At the appropriate moment, army officers who almost to a man were graduates of the notorious subversion academy, the School of the Americas (since innocuously renamed Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation to cover up its criminal tracks) were activated to administer the coup de grace to Morales’ presidency, or so it was expected. The legally re-elected, however narrowly, President Morales was compelled to flee for his life into exile.

A dumb and as it turned out also venal, but extremely cooperative, Aryan blonde without a drop of Inca blood, Jeanine Áñez, was invested with the presidential sash and illegally installed to replace him.

The multinational lithium cartel could now rub their hands and gloat over the succulent Bolivian pickings that had fallen into their lap, a booty Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid could only have dreamed of.

But it was a short lived party. Bolivia’s unwashed masses, the Andean “deplorables,” stubbornly refused to play by the script. Following months of civil disobedience by the abused population, Bolivia became virtually ungovernable and it was the coup regime that finally had to give in.

After a new election, Bolivia was returned to constitutional rule under the legally elected current President Luis Arce, Morales’ protégé and former finance minister.

The stage was set for the recent farce the moment Evo Morales announced his intention to run for President in the forthcoming 2025 elections.

His stand-in Luis Arce’s patriotic policies were bad enough for the cabal, particularly his plan to treat Bolivia’s national resources as the common patrimony of its people, to explore the use of safe lithium extraction technologies developed by Russia, and to apply for membership in BRICS.

But the prospect of their charismatic bête noire Evo Morales’ being elected again next year was simply intolerable for both oligarchies, the international and the domestic.

The big lesson of the failed attempted coup in Bolivia is that the hegemon’s bag of tricks is nearly empty and that its technologies of control, which in the past had almost always worked flawlessly, are now faltering badly. It is futile however to try to teach an old dog new tricks.

Taking a leaf from Alexander Lukashenko’s playbook during the foreign orchestrated upheaval in Belarus, instead of fleeing to seek refuge in a foreign embassy, which is what Latin American presidents have traditionally done in similar circumstances, Luis Arce decided to change the paradigm. He came down from his office, personally confronted the rebellious troops, all native Bolivians like himself, informed them that he was their legal President and commander-in-chief, and addressing them over the head of the treacherous School of the Americas graduate, General Juan José Zúñiga, who enticed them to mutiny on the false pretext of protecting democracy, Arce ordered them to return to their barracks. And lo and behold, obediently they did. After a brief stand-off in Plaza Murillo in front of the Presidential palace, the second Bolivian lithium coup fizzled pathetically.

But as the saying goes, you lose some and you win some. Whilst being chased out of proud Bolivia, the lithium cabal are scoring big in servile Serbia.

Compared to Bolivia and other lithium rich countries, Serbia’s reserves are relatively modest, estimated at 1,3 million tonnes. It is nevertheless an attractive venue because its corrupt regime grants foreign concessions on the principle of baksheesh and is always keen to make under the table deals for a cut of the proceeds.

It is as uninterested in the devastating impact of unregulated lithium mining as it is completely indifferent to where its munitions will end up in the Ukrainian conflict. The health of citizens theoretically entrusted to its care or the environment are the least of its concerns.

Mostly unnoticed by the rest of the world, for several years an intense lithium battle has been simmering in Serbia. Spearheading the international mining cartel’s assault on Serbia’s mineral wealth is the predatory Rio Tinto corporation, an outfit with a terrible record for environmentally destructive practices and callous exploitation of human labour.

One suspects that the reason Rio Tinto and the Serbian government are getting on so well is that they are kindred spirits.

The crux of the Serbian situation is that the government does not have a policy of treating natural resources as the inalienable patrimony of the nation not subject to privatisation and which must be administered with regard for the common good.

Rio Tinto’s objective, naturally, is the maximisation of profit for the least investment. There are other European countries, such as Germany, which have considerable lithium deposits but they also have strict environmental laws, high labour costs, and a much more ecologically sophisticated public than is the case in Serbia.

That is why for Rio Tinto a symbiotic relationship with Serbia’s corrupt government is the perfect solution for getting a piece of the electric vehicle battery market at minimum cost. The waste its mining activities would leave behind once they cease to be profitable, having devastated productive agricultural land and contaminating Serbia’s water supply with poisonous substances, is not Rio Tinto’s problem. It should be the government’s concern, of course, but like everywhere else where it operates Rio Tinto has the government in its pocket.

There are indications that sections of the Serbian public are waking up to the existential danger to life and health posed by their government’s shady deal with a predatory corporation whose track record is scandalous even by the abysmally low mining industry standards. Serbs do not have the stamina of Bolivians, but over the next several weeks protests are scheduled in the most endangered areas as well as in the rest of the country.

It is unlikely that the protesters will stray very far from their comfort zone or that a general on a white horse (perhaps this time a graduate of the Suvorov military academy?) will appear to save the day. But as the situation unfolds it bears watching, and we will keep readers abreast of further developments as warranted.

[…]

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/lithium-cabal-bolivia-serbia/5861727

As predicted, there is another attempted coup in Venezuela following President Nicolas Maduro’s victory over the US-Backed Presidential candidate, Edmundo González and opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado. Obviously, Gonzalez and his staunch supporter, Maria Corina Machado, an extremist who in the past asked the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu to help overthrow the Maduro government is the favorite of Washington. But no surprise, the Biden regime now recognizes Gonzalez as the winner.

However, the attempted coup and the mass migration problem of Venezuelan migrants reaching the US southern border was made in the USA.  The US government played a significant role in the surge of Venezuelans entering the US illegally especially since the former US President, Donald Trump imposed the some of the harshest sanctions on Venezuela in efforts to force regime change. 

An article from the mainstream media that is worth mentioning is from The Washington Post, ‘Trump White House was warned sanctions on Venezuela could fuel migration’ focuses on Venezuelan migration to the US borders. There were four reports according to some former and current U.S. government officials specifically on Trump sanctioning Venezuela although their economy was in a dire situation at the time,

“The Trump White House was warned that harsh sanctions on Venezuela could accelerate that country’s economic collapse and speed an exodus of millions of migrants to neighboring nations.”

The classified assessments were delivered by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) office of Intelligence and Analysis from 2017 to 2019. Despite The Washington Post accusing the Maduro government of “human rights abuses, extrajudicial killings and corruption by the regime of dictator Nicolás Maduro” (*notice how the mainstream media likes to use the word “regime” when describing an enemy of the United States). According to the Washington Post observation on the Maduro government:

Today, however, Maduro remains in power, and a surge in Venezuelan immigrants has emerged as a flash point in the U.S. presidential election. Though Venezuelan mass migration to the United States only began after President Biden took office, concern among Trump officials about the sanctions’ potential effects, including on migration, was more extensive than previously known, according to interviews with more than two dozen current and former U.S. officials.

“This is the point I made at the time: I said the sanctions were going to grind the Venezuelan economy into dust and have huge human consequences, one of which would be out-migration,” said Thomas Shannon, who served as undersecretary for political affairs at the State Department under President Donald Trump.  “The sanctions clearly helped generate faster out-migration,” Shannon said. “And you knew it was only going to be a matter of time before these people decided to migrate north”

Today, it is estimated that more than seven million Venezuelans have left the country due to the severe economic situation that has developed since 2012. Neocons such as John Bolton blame the Venezuelan governments “mismanagement” not US sanctions:

Proponents, such as former top Trump aide John Bolton, defend the sanctions as a critically important, though unsuccessful, effort to force out Maduro, or at least limit the funds at his disposal. Venezuelans had already started fleeing before the sanctions were imposed, they stress, escaping an economic crisis rooted not in U.S. penalties but in mismanagement by Maduro and his predecessor, authoritarian leader Hugo Chávez

However, it was the crippling US sanctions imposed on Venezuela that caused the destruction of its economy:

But other former Trump officials, particularly at the State and Treasury departments, say it is clear U.S. sanctions aggravated an already dire situation with little clear upside. Venezuela’s economy contracted by a staggering 71 percent from 2012 to 2020 — the largest such drop in modern history for a country not at war — as the U.S. impeded its oil industry and curtailed access to international markets

Right-wing news propaganda channel, Newsmax, who aspires to become another Fox news network channel also admitted in an article titled ‘Venezuelan Opposition Says It Has Proof Its Candidate Defeated Maduro’ that US sanctions accelerated the flow of Venezuelan migrants to the US southern borders,

“U.S. oil sanctions sought to force Maduro from power after his 2018 reelection, which dozens of countries condemned as illegitimate. But the sanctions only accelerated the exodus of some 7.7 million Venezuelans who have fled their crisis-stricken nation.”

The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) published a report ‘The Human Consequences of Economic Sanctions’ by Francisco Rodríguez, a Venezuelan native and the founder Oil for Venezuela, a non-profit organization dedicated to easing Venezuela’s economic crisis explained the impact of US sanctions and its effects on Venezuela’s oil industry, stated the fact that

“Broad economic sanctions, beginning with limitations on financing, were first imposed on Venezuela in 2017, when the Trump administration barred financing and dividend payments to Venezuela’s government and state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA)” but that was not the only sanctions imposed on Venezuela, the Obama regime also had their hand in destroying Venezuela’s economy, “The US also used personal sanctions — first selectively imposed by the Obama administration in 2015 — to target top government officials and political figures as well as private-sector actors believed to be connected with the Maduro government.”

Rodriquez described the impact of the US sanctions and the decline of oil prices on Venezuela’s economic output:

Each round of sanctions (2017 financial, 2019 primary oil, and 2020 secondary oil) was followed by a decline in Venezuelan oil production, which, as measured by independent agencies, had been stable for an eight-year period starting in 2008. Though it had begun to decline in early 2016, prior to the 2017 economic sanctions, this decline appears to have been a consequence of the collapse in oil prices that occurred at the time and affected most other high-cost producers. But even when oil prices began to recover in 2017, Venezuela’s oil production accelerated its decline even as production stabilized or recovered in comparable economies

This essentially contributed to a decrease in the importation of food, equipment and supplies that supported its agricultural sectors:

The resulting decline in oil exports severely circumscribed the ability of a traditionally import-dependent economy to buy imports of food as well as intermediate and capital goods for its agricultural sector, driving the economy into a major humanitarian crisis. Total imports fell by 91 percent, while food imports declined by 78 percent. The decline in the economy’s capacity to import made it impossible to maintain past levels of essential goods

Another problem that US sanctions and the Venezuela’s decline of oil production in regard to the revenue it once earned from its oil sales is that it had a negative impact of health and food security that contributed to the increase in child and adult mortality rates in the country:

Venezuela’s deep deterioration in indicators of health, nutrition, and food security occurred alongside the largest economic collapse, outside of wartime, since 1950. The collapse in oil revenues drove the economic contraction, which caused the deterioration in socioeconomic indicators. By contributing to lowering the country’s oil production, sanctions also contributed to lowering per capita income and living standards and are a key driver of the country’s health crisis, including its increase in child and adult mortality

Since Maduro declared victory over Edmundo González, the US, its European allies and Venezuela’s right-wing extremists want to get rid of the Bolivarian Revolution, but that won’t happen because the Venezuelan people and the world know that the US government and Big Oil want control of Venezuela’s oil.

In Trump’s State of the Union speech on February 6, 2019, he declared

“We stand with the Venezuelan people in their noble quest for freedom—and we condemn the brutality of the Maduro regime, whose socialist policies have turned that nation from being the wealthiest in South America into a state of abject poverty and despair.”

Anti-Maduro forces all claim that Venezuela was once a wealthy country, but for who?  Trump and others make it sound like all of Venezuela was once wealthy, but that claim is a myth because before the late Hugo Chavez got into office, Venezuela was a basket case of poverty according to Venezuelanalysis.com, a think tank that focuses on Venezuela’s economic history:

In reality, when Chávez was first elected in 1998, Venezuela had a 50% poverty rate, despite having been a major oil exporter for several decades. It started exporting oil in the 1920s, and it was only in the early 1970s that the biggest Middle Eastern oil producers, Saudi Arabia and Iran, surpassed Venezuela in production. In 1992, the New York Times (2/5/92) reported that “only 57% of Venezuelans are able to afford more than one meal a day.” Does that sound like “one of the richest countries in the world”? Obviously not, but it is worth saying more about the statistics that can be used to mislead people about Venezuela’s economic history

Washington’s sanctions have contributed to Venezuela’s economic crisis which is an excuse for Washington to blame it on the Maduro government and call for regime change to install a government that will be subservient to their interests that includes the control of its oil resources and preventing them from joining the BRICS alliance.

The US wants its hegemonic power to remain a dominant force in its “backyard,” so the Maduro government and its supporters will have to remain vigilant.  So far, the coup has failed, but the US and its allies won’t go away quietly, the regime change forces will continue until the people of Venezuela stops them in their tracks and that day will come sooner or later.

Many other countries from around the world besides Venezuela have also suffered from the same US sanctions, wars, regime change and economic exploitation under the US government’s foreign policies especially since the September 11^th attacks under both the Democrats and Republicans.  Washington is to blame for their massive illegal immigration at their southern border caused by their reckless foreign policies that have produced nothing but unintended consequences.

[…]

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-sanctions-backfire-venezuela-mass-migration/5864438