Sunday, November 17, 2019

Foreign Digest: Bolivia, Venezuela, China, Iran, Russia and Ukraine


Bolivia and Venezuela
            After the authoritarian Chavist (inspired by Venezuelan tyrant Hugo Chavez) President of Bolivia resigned and fled the country, he has been fomenting a counter-revolution against the Bolivian people, which has turned deadly.  His government had made dubious claims that he had won a fourth term, despite a constitutional two-term limit. 

            The interim President of Venezuela, Juan Guaido, has called for a mass protest, one year after invoking a constitutional provision to declare himself president.  The tyrannical Chavist Socialist Venezuelan President had supplanted the national legislature after the democratic opposition had won a supermajority with his own loyalist assembly.  Guido, the leader of the original assembly, is recognized as the legitimate President by the United States and many Latin American and European States.

China
Mass protests continue in Hong Kong, the special territory of China, which are being met with violent deadly repression by the Peking-backed territorial government.  Communist China had promised the city-state autonomy and freedom when it reverted from British rule in 1997, but has increasingly reneged on those promises.  The territorial government of Hong Kong rescinded a proposed law to extradite residents to mainland China, which could have been used as a tool to crush dissent.  The proposal sparked the recent protests, but other demands have not been met as the people of Hong Kong fear the loss of their freedom, citing Chinese repression of Buddhist Tibet and Muslim Xinjiang. 

Iran
            The most widespread protests in a decade have broken out in Iran against the Islamist regime, which has responded with lethal force, killing at least one protester.  The tyrannical Iranian theocracy is the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world.  It is currently backing rebels in Yemen, the Syrian Assad regime, and Lebanese and Palestinian terrorists, among others.

Russia and Ukraine
           A Dutch-led international inquiry has found more evidence of coordination between the Russian Federation, led by tyrant Vladimir Putin, and Russian-backed ethnic Russian separatists, in the shoot-down of a Malaysian civilian airliner that originated from the Netherlands over Ukraine in 2014.  Russia denies responsibility, using a variety of conspiracy theories to shield itself from blame.  Just as Putin blames Ukraine for the shoot-down that he is responsible for, he blames Ukraine for his interference in the 2016 United States Presidential election that helped elect Donald Trump, despite overt propaganda and disinformation from state-owned Russian media and all the conclusive proof from American and other intelligence agencies and other cybersecurity experts to the contrary.  Russia invaded the former Soviet Republic of Ukraine in 2014, seizing part of its territory, despite treaties recognizing Ukraines independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.

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