Political Upheaval: Latin America Challenges the U.S. Corporate Trade Regime

Throughout Latin America (and much of the rest of the world), whether revolution by force or revolution at the ballot box, citizens are ousting leaders aligned with the U.S. dominated global corporate trade regime which has forced hundreds of millions of people into poverty worldwide since the 1980s. Already, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela have moved left. Peru is poised to move left, and even Costa Rica and Mexico may also.

Also, in recent months or years, Israel, Germany, and Spain moved left. Presently, the millions of people in the streets of France just gained labor concessions from their rightwing government which itself may soon be ousted. Near the Balkans, Italy's right-wing corporatist supporter of U.S.-war profiteering, Silvio Berlusconi, is poised to be ousted by leftist Romano Prodi. Also, the U.S. sponsored Orange revolution in Ukraine was just reversed so that alignment shifts away from the west and back to Russia.

U.S. access to petroleum may grow limited. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez has indicated he's looking to expand his huge reserves of petroleum to markets other than the U.S. Mexico's leading candidate for president, the leftist mayor of Mexico City, "LÃpez Obrador has pledged to block attempts to open the oil and gas industry --which is state-owned--to private investment." As far as access to the Caspianean oil region, on the southern side, Afghanistan and Iraq haven't yet proved hospitable to pipelines, and Iran is but a pipe dream. Already, other small countries south of the Caspianean Sea have already begun ousting U.S. military bases, a necessary response to popular discontent with the U.S. And, experts are saying the Pakistani military is on the brink of swinging in favor of the people who are largely opposed to their president's close relations with the U.S., and specifically his allowing U.S. military to operate within Pakistan.

UAE and Saudi Arabia have indicated they may shift away from the petro-dollar to the Euro. China, the top financier of the U.S.'s 9 trillion dollar deficit, has said it is considering no longer propping up the U.S. economy by purchasing treasury bonds. If all these overtures come to fruition and the trend continues to sweep the world, the U.S. may soon become politically and economically isolated, even unable to dominate militarily without access to cheap oil. The good news is that this will allow the people within the U.S. a chance to establish social and economic justice which was prevented by the unjust corporatism propagated by rightwing regimes from Reagan through Clinton. For the first time in a quarter of a century, there is light at the end of the dark tunnel of U.S. sponsored corporate fascism that has left tens of millions dead and hundreds of millions in poverty.