Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and the other
countries south of the border could learn a lesson from Venezuela where the
people are fighting to keep their sovereignty in defiance of the American
neocon war criminals who are trying to oust their elected leader. The U.S. government, acting in the interests
of the international banks and corporations that would exploit and ravage the
substantial natural resources of Venezuela that currently pay for their social
programs, has declared some guy who didn’t even run for president,
President.
Having lost the CIA-instigated civil war in Syria, the
neocons refuse to admit defeat and have doubled down on failure in defiance of
the will of the American people. The
“representatives of the people” in America don’t give a flying rip about what
the American people want, a peaceful just society in the world. No they want endless killing and destruction
which enriches them financially and politically while destroying America. That is what our “elected” officials care
about. From Marjorie Cohn at Truthout:
Excerpt:
The US Is Orchestrating a Coup in Venezuela
Human Rights and Global Wrongs
As Venezuela’s second president,
Simon Bolivar, noted in the 19th century, the
US government continues to “plague Latin America with misery in the name of
liberty.”
From engineering coups in Chile and
Guatemala, to choreographing a troop landing at the Bay of Pigs intended to
establish an exile government in Cuba, to training Latin American strongmen at
the School of the Americas in torture techniques to control their people, the United States has meddled, interfered,
intervened and undermined the democracies it claims to protect.
Now, Vice President Mike Pence, CIA
Director Mike Pompeo, National Security Adviser John Bolton, Sen. Marco Rubio
(R-Florida) and the infamous Elliott Abrams are working with opposition groups in Venezuela to carry out a coup
d’état.
In 2002, the George W. Bush administration, through the CIA, aided and
abetted an attempted coup, according to attorney Eva Golinger, an
award-winning author and journalist. Golinger, a close confidante of former
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, obtained evidence of US intervention from
multiple Freedom of Information Act requests, which she discusses in her new
book, Confidante of ‘Tyrants’: The Inside Story of the American Woman Trusted
By the US’s Biggest Enemies.
There is a major difference,
however, between the 2002 coup attempt and the Trump administration’s current
effort to change the regime in Venezuela, Golinger says. She told Truthout that
unlike the situation in 2002, “when the Bush administration worked behind the
scenes to back a coup d’état against Chávez with multimillion-dollar funding
and political support to the opposition,
the Trump administration is now pursuing regime change in Venezuela in plain
sight.”
Golinger came to Chávez’s attention
after her investigation revealed proof of US involvement in the 2002 attempted
coup. Since Chávez was elected president of Venezuela in 1998, the United
States tried overtly and covertly to overthrow his “Bolivarian Revolution” by
furnishing opposition groups working for regime change with millions of
dollars, Golinger writes. Chávez used
Venezuela’s vast oil wealth to eradicate illiteracy and poverty, and to provide
education and universal health care.
After Chávez’s death in 2013,
Nicolás Maduro was elected president after promising to carry on the Bolivarian
Revolution. But the punishing sanctions
President Obama imposed in 2015, combined with corruption, mismanagement and
autocratic leadership, caused economic hardship. Falling oil prices in 2016
led to hyperinflation two years later, and Venezuela’s economy collapsed.
Nevertheless, Maduro was re-elected in 2018. The opposition’s
boycott of the election and the US government’s support of that boycott
resulted in Maduro’s victory over Henri Falcón.
Team Trump Is Engineering Regime
Change in Venezuela
Elliott Abrams is a disturbing, but not surprising, choice
to serve as US special envoy to Venezuela. Abrams was convicted of lying to
Congress about the Iran-Contra scandal and later pardoned by George H.W. Bush. The new envoy supported General
Efraín Ríos Montt, the Guatemalan dictator who directed the torture and mass
murder of Indigenous people in the 1980s, and was later convicted of
genocide. Moreover, Abrams was linked
to the 2002 attempted US coup in Venezuela.
The Trump administration is now
pursuing regime change in Venezuela in plain sight.
“The naming of notorious ‘dirty war’ expert Elliott Abrams to oversee
the Venezuela operation, the public threats against Venezuela of
‘consequences’ should they defy the US made by Trump’s hawkish John Bolton, and
Trump’s own multiple statements that a military option is ‘on the table’ for
Venezuela, clearly show that the table is set,” Golinger told Truthout.
The “US is not just ‘behind’ this
coup,” Ben Norton wrote in a series of tweets. “The US is openly leading the coup.”
Indeed, The Wall Street Journal reported
that on January 22, Pence called Juan Guaidó and “pledged” US support “if he
seized the reins of government from Nicolás Maduro.” Guaidó was a little-known player whom the United States had long
cultivated to undermine the Bolivarian Revolution. Guaidó swore himself in
as “interim president” of Venezuela the following day.
“That late-night call set in motion
a plan that had been developed in secret over the preceding several weeks,
accompanied by talks between U.S. officials, allies, lawmakers, and key
Venezuelan opposition figures, including Mr. Guaidó himself,” according to the
Wall Street Journal. “Almost instantly,
just as Mr. Pence had promised, President Trump issued a statement recognizing
Mr. Guaidó as the country’s rightful leader.”
“Opposition leaders have already
met in the White House with Pence, and Trump himself telephoned Guaidó to
express US support for his de facto regime. If this is what they are doing overtly, we can only imagine the depth
of their covert ops in Venezuela,” Golinger told Truthout…
Sanctions Hurt the Venezuelan
People
On January 28, the Trump
administration imposed sanctions against Venezuela that amount to an oil
embargo. They forbid Venezuela’s
state-owned oil company from doing business with most US companies (except
Chevron and Halliburton). These
penalties are projected to deprive Venezuela of $7 billion in assets,
resulting in $11 billion in export losses during the next year. That’s on top
of the $6 billion that Trump’s August 2017 financial sanctions cost Venezuela
in one year.
The new sanctions against Venezuela “could turbocharge what is already
the world’s worst inflation, worsening fuel shortages and compromise the
state’s ability to buy and distribute food,” the New York Times reported.
“[A] problematic idea driving
current US policy is the belief that financial sanctions can hurt the
Venezuelan government without causing serious harm to ordinary Venezuelans,”
Francisco Rodríguez, a Venezuelan economist, wrote in Foreign Policy. “That’s
impossible when 95 percent of Venezuela’s export revenue comes from oil sold by
the state-owned oil company. Cutting off
the government’s access to dollars will leave the economy without the hard
currency needed to pay for imports of food and medicine.”
As a result, Rodríguez, added, “Starving the Venezuelan economy of its
foreign currency earnings risks turning the country’s current humanitarian
crisis into a full-blown humanitarian catastrophe…”
In addition to the oil sanctions, the US State Department turned over control
of Venezuela’s property and bank accounts in the United States to Guaidó,
in what The New York Times called “one of Washington’s most overt attempts in
decades to carry out regime change in Latin America.”
Regime Change and Sanctions Are
Illegal and Unwanted
Forcible regime change in Venezuela is illegal under international law.
“The shocking aggression and illegal interference against a sovereign
nation by the Trump administration is a blatant violation of the charters of
the United Nations and Organization of American States, which recognize the
principles of national sovereignty, peaceful settlement of disputes, and a
prohibition on threatening or using force against the territory of another
state,” the National Lawyers Guild said in a statement.
Moreover, the organization states, “directly fomenting a coup in a sovereign
nation is not only illegal and outright shunned by the international community,
it fundamentally undermines any pretextual concern about interference by other
nations in U.S. elections.”
Venezuela has the world’s
largest oil reserves, and the United States is its biggest customer…
US imposition of economic sanctions against Venezuela is also illegal.
The OAS Charter proscribes the use of coercive economic or political measures to
force the sovereign will of another country and obtain any advantages from it.
“Coercion, whether military or economic, must never be used to seek a
change in government in a sovereign state,” said Idriss Jazairy, a UN
special rapporteur concerned with the negative impact of sanctions. “The use
of sanctions by outside powers to overthrow an elected government is in
violation of all norms of international law.” Jazairy also noted that,
“Precipitating an economic and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela is not a
foundation for the peaceful settlement of disputes.”
Former UN Special Rapporteur
Alfred-Maurice de Zayas says the United States is waging “economic warfare”
against Venezuela. In his report to the Human Rights Council, de Zayas
recommends that the International
Criminal Court investigate whether “economic war, embargoes, financial
blockades and sanctions regimes amount to geopolitical crimes and crimes
against humanity under Article 7 of the Rome Statute.”
Moreover, in order to impose
sanctions under US law, the president must declare a national emergency and
state that Venezuela constitutes an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to
the national security of the United States. That claim is patently false.
De Zayas is a signatory to an open
letter released last week, signed by 70 experts and academics who condemned the
US-backed coup attempt against the Maduro government. Although ostensibly aimed at helping the
Venezuelan people, Team Trump’s sanctions and threats of military invasion
are overwhelmingly unpopular in Venezuela. Eighty-six percent of Venezuelans oppose US military intervention and
81 percent are against sanctions.
It’s the Oil, Stupid
Why is the United States so intent
on regime change? Because Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves, and
the United States is its biggest customer.
Within two days of his self-inauguration as “interim president,”
Guaidó began a process to RESTRUCTURE AND PRIVATIZE VENEZUELA’S OIL INDUSTRY
for the benefit of multinational corporations.
Drawing a parallel with George W.
Bush’s Iraq war, Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) tweeted, “It’s about the oil …
again.” Indeed, Halliburton, exempted
from the new sanctions against Venezuela, is once again benefitting from regime
change, like it did in Iraq.
Bolton didn’t pull any punches when
he stated at a press conference that, “We’re in conversation with major
American companies now. … It would make
a difference if we could have American companies produce the oil in Venezuela.
We both have a lot of stake here.”
The Trump administration appears intent on privatizing Venezuela’s oil
in order to maximize the profits of US oil companies at the expense of the
Venezuelan people and the rule of law.
After almost 20 years of nonstop wars, America has been laid
to waste. Trillions in debt to the
Federal Reserve Bank and a collapsing infrastructure the same architects of the
Iraq War now want to attack the people of Venezuela and steal their resources
to hand them out like party favors to their multinational corporation paymasters.
The CIA-controlled media is already firing up the War Wurlitzer
propaganda machines to justify their outright, illegal overthrow of the elected
government in Venezuela. Trump has now
surrounded himself with war criminals who should be in The Hague not running
America’s foreign policy.
The Trump
Administration has brought in one of the worst war criminals in American
history, Elliot Abrams the architect of the New World Order, and proponent of
South American death squads to “restore democracy” in Venezuela. Much like the neocons “restored democracy” in
Ukraine after the people elected the wrong person as their president. Elliot Abrams is part of the shadow
government that is the CIA and the entire “intelligence” apparatus. From Edward Curtain at Lew Rockwell:
Excerpt:
The CIA Then and Now: Old Wine in New Bottles
“And
as the flames climbed high into the night
To
light the sacrificial rite
I
saw Satan laughing with delight
The
day the music died”
–
Don McLean, “American Pie”
The Nazis had a name for their
propaganda and mind-control operations: weltanschauungskrieg – “world view warfare.” As good students, they had learned many
tricks of the trade from their American teachers, including Sigmund Freud’s
nephew, Edward Bernays, who had honed his propagandistic skills for the United
States during World War I and had subsequently started the public relations
industry in New York City, an industry
whose raison d’ȇtre
from the start was to serve the interests of the elites in manipulating the
public mind.
In 1941, U.S. Intelligence translated
weltanschauungskrieg as “psychological warfare,” a phrase that fails to grasp
the full dimensions of the growing power and penetration of U.S. propaganda,
then and now. Of course, the American
propaganda apparatus was just then getting started on an enterprise that has become the epitome of successful world view
warfare programs, a colossal beast whose tentacles have spread to every
corner of the globe and whose fabrications have nestled deep within the psyches
of many hundreds of millions of Americans and people around the world.
And true to form in this circle
game of friends helping friends, this
propaganda program was ably assisted after WW II by all the Nazis secreted into
the U.S. (“Operation Paperclip”) by Allen Dulles and his henchmen in the OSS
and then the CIA to make sure the U.S. had operatives to carry on the Nazi
legacy (see David Talbot’s The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, The CIA, and
The Rise of America’s Secret Government, an extraordinary book that will make
your skin crawl with disgust).
This went along quite smoothly
until some people started to question
the Warren Commission’s JFK assassination story. The CIA then went on the offensive in 1967
and put out the word to all its people in the agency and throughout the
media and academia to use the phrase “conspiracy theory” to ridicule these
skeptics, which they have done up until the present day…
The CIA Exposed – Partially
But back in the mid-1960s to the
mid-1970s, some covert propaganda
programs run by the CIA were “exposed.”
First, the Agency’s sponsorship of the Congress of Cultural Freedom,
through which it used magazines, prominent writers, academics, et al. to
spread propaganda during the Cold War, was uncovered.
Then in 1975 the Church Committee hearings resulted in the exposure of
abuses by the CIA, NSA, FBI, etc. In
1977 Carl Bernstein wrote a long piece for Esquire – “The CIA and the Media” –
naming names of journalists and publications (The New York Times, CBS, etc.)
that worked with and for the CIA in propagandizing the American people and the
rest of the world…
By the late 1970s, it seemed as if
the CIA had been caught in flagrante delicto and disgraced, had confessed its
sins, done penance, and resolved to go and sin no more. Seeming, however, is the nature of the CIA’s
game. Organized criminals learn to adapt
to the changing times, and that is exactly what the intelligence operatives did.
Since the major revelations of the late sixties and seventies – MKUltra,
engineered coups all around the world, assassinations of foreign leaders,
spying on Americans, etc. – no major
program of propaganda has been exposed in the mainstream media…
Revealing books about certain CIA
programs have been written – e.g. Douglas Valentine’s important The Phoenix
Program being one – and dissenting writers, journalists, researchers, and
whistleblowers (Robert Parry, Gary Webb, Julian Assange, James W. Douglass,
David Ray Griffin, Edward Snowden, et al.) have
connected the U.S. intelligence services to dirty deeds and specific actions,
such as the American engineered coup d’état in Ukraine in 2013-14, electronic
spying, and the attacks of September 11, 2001.
But the propaganda has for the most
part continued unabated at a powerful and esoteric cultural level, while illegal and criminal actions are
carried out throughout the world in the most blatant manner imaginable, as if
to say fuck you openly while insidiously infecting the general population
through the mass electronic screen culture that has relegated intellectual and
literary culture to a tiny minority.
Organizations like the CIA are
obviously fallible and have made many mistakes and failed to anticipate world
events. But they are also very powerful, having great financial backing, and do
the bidding of their masters in banking, Wall St., finance, etc. They are the action arm of these financial
elites, and are, as Douglass Valentine has written, organized criminals.
They have their own military, are joined to all the armed forces, and
are deeply involved in the drug trade. They control the politicians.
They operate their own propaganda network in conjunction with the private mercenaries they hire for their operations.
The corporate mass media take their
orders, orders that need not be direct, but sometimes are, because these media are structured to do the
bidding of the same elites that formed the CIA and own the media. And while their ostensible raison d’ȇtre is
to provide intelligence to the nation’s
civilian leaders, this is essentially a cover story for their real work that is propaganda, killing, and conducting coups d’états
at home and abroad.
Because they have deep pockets, they can afford to buy all sorts of
people, people who pimp for the elites… They
come from different fields: history, anthropology, psychology, sociology,
political science, cultural studies, linguistics, etc. They populate the think
tanks and universities. They are often
intelligent but live in bad faith,
knowing they are working for those who are doing the devil’s work. But they
collect their pay and go their way straight to the bank, the devil’s bank. They often belong to the Council of
Foreign Relations or the Heritage Foundation. They are esteemed and esteem
themselves. But they are pimps.
El Diablo
Ah, the devil! He’s their man. A man of many names, but
always an impostor. These pimps know his story and how he works
his magic, and this is what their paymasters want from them: ways to use
the old bastard’s bag of tricks to conjure confusion, and sow fear and
paranoia. And to do this slow and easy
in ways no one will recognize until it is too late…
Tell people endless tales of the
good guys and the bad, of how the bad are out to get you and the good to save
you… Stories are told to accompany the
symbols; stories, narratives, or myths
tell of how the good guys are fighting to hold the group together and the bad
guys are trying to rip the community apart.
The symbolic and its opposite – the
diabolic (to throw apart) – the angels against the devils – el diablo. Very simple, very old. The aliens are out to get us. And el
diablo is always the ultimate other, the man in red, the reds, the commies,
the Russians, the others, immigrants, the blacks who want to move next door,
Muslims, gays – take your pick. Satanic rituals. Black magic.
Witchcraft…
The purpose of the long-term propaganda is to create certain
predispositions and weaknesses that can be exploited when needed. Certain events can be the triggers to induce
the victims to react to suggestions.
When the time is ripe, all that is needed is a slight suggestion, like a
touch on the shoulder, and the hypnotized one acts in a trance. The gun goes off, and the entranced one can’t
remember why (see: Sirhan Sirhan). This is the goal of mass hypnotization
through long-term propaganda: confusion, memory loss, and automatic reaction to
suggestion.
The CIA, satanic cults, and UFOs,
the mythology of the late twentieth century is surprisingly coherent even
though the masks change from case to case, from victim to alleged victim. The
CIA, of course, does exist; their mind control programs from BLUEBIRD to
ARTICHOKE to MK-ULTRA are a matter of public record.
Their history of political assassinations and the overthrow of various
foreign governments is also a matter of record…
But many are catching on and
realizing that what seems strange but innocent is part of a much larger effort to hypnotize the public to agree to their
own destruction through the ingestion of what can only be called black
magic.
That is what the gist of the New World Order is about,
getting Americans to agree to their own destruction through trillion dollar
wars that are unwinnable therefore must maintained with trillions of dollars a
year to infinity. The Federal Reserve
Bank continues to print trillions of their worthless notes and charge the
American taxpayer’s interest. The
American people have been told by the CIA-run-media that Venezuela is a
dictatorship run by a tyrant.
When Hugo Chavez was elected President he nationalized the
oil reserves and the CIA has been trying to overthrow the elected government
since. After Chavez was assassinated
Maduro was elected vowing to maintain the Bolivarian style of socialism. Maduro also has defied the US “sanctions of
mass destruction” against them and recently signed an energy deal with
Russia. Much like Viktor Yanukovich in
Ukraine made an energy and loan deal with Russia instead of the crappy World
Bank steal-your-assets deal and was ousted by the neocons in the CIA.
Armed with the RAND Corporation’s blueprint for “restoring
democracy” the neocons removed the elected president of Ukraine and installed a
president approved by the Zionist neocons.
From Global Research:
Excerpt:
President Poroshenko Uses RAND Corporation “Action Plan” for Eastern
Ukraine including Ground Assaults and Air Strikes
Confidential
document on Ukraine by the RAND Corporation leaked. Ukrainian President
Petro Poroshenko follows the action plan proposed by RAND analysts. This Memorandum on the “advisable course of
action” automatically means that the
peace plan confirmed by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is slated to fail.
The document provides three stages
for the conduct of a military operation in eastern Ukraine. The first stage implies total
isolation of the region considering that
all local citizens are terrorists or sympathizers.
The Region should be encircled with troops and sealed off entirely from
any flow of goods and persons. Broadcasting
services, Internet connection, telephone and mobile communications in the
region shall be shut down.
The second stage is named Mop-up.
Ground assaults shall be preceded
by air strikes against the strategic facilities. The use of non-conventional arms is allowed. The document also provides for internment camps outside the cleared settlements. People featuring traces of combat
engagement shall be tried in court for terrorism.
During the third stage Back to Normal power supplies and
communications shall be restored. The borders shall be strengthened to avoid
possible provocations. All the refugees should
be checked for possible support for separatists
in internment camps.
So how does Ukraine look today after the neocon Zionist
cabal restored “democracy” after ousting their elected leader? From Stephen Lendman:
Excerpt:
Rampant Torture and Abuse in Ukraine
Ukraine is a fascist police
state – run by US-installed,
Nazi-infested putschists, a cancer in Europe’s heartland.
Washington and EU nations support
its naked aggression on Donbass,
ignoring cold-blooded murder, rampant torture and other abuses by illegitimate
junta officials running things – according to the European Committee for
the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
(CPT).
According to its report, “a
considerable number of credible allegations from detained persons (including juveniles, revealed severe) physical
ill- treatment by police officers, consisting mainly of slaps, punches, kicks
or blows with a truncheon or a plastic bottle filled with water.”
“In (some) cases, ill-treatment was
of such severity that it could be considered as amounting to torture. Most of the allegations concerned
ill-treatment during initial questioning by operational police officers in an
attempt to obtain confessions or other information…”
The frequency of torture and ill-treatment “remains at a worrying
level.” Unrecorded detentions continue, including individuals held
without charge handcuffed to fixed objects without food or water at times for
days. Treatment ignores rule of law
safeguards, prohibiting brutal treatment for any reason at all times, with no
allowed exceptions…
Iron discipline enforced is
“grossly excessive,” punishment meted out for minor rules violations or indiscriminately.
Conditions in many prisons are
“appalling…inhuman and degrading,” in some cases with little or no heat in
winter. Police states aren’t known for
kind and gentle treatment within or free from confinement.
Ukraine is Europe’s worst. Its Kiev Obolonsky district kangaroo
court intends trying coup d’etat toppled former President Viktor Yanukovich in
absentia – on fabricated treason charges.
In Russia for his safety, his request to take part in the automatic
guilt by accusation trial by video link-up was denied.
Kiev putschists fear damning
evidence of their February 2014 coup might come out in trial proceedings – including neocon assistant State
Department secretary Victoria Nuland’s involvement in orchestrating what
happened.
That is what evil does, in Iraq we were told the Iraqi
people wanted America to kill their leader and replace him with a Washington
puppet. For years it was drilled into
our heads that Saddam was a monster, making his people live in poverty while he
stole all their oil money. A half
million Iraqi’s have been killed and that’s not counting the ones who died from
contaminated water or the horrific birth defects from the illegal use of
depleted uranium. Iraq is now a failed
state. Elliot Abrams was one of the
architects of the Iraq “restoration of Democracy” experiment.
Libya was the richest African nation, whose people had free
healthcare and a great standard of living until the neocon Zionists told us we
needed to free the Libyan people from “a brutal dictator” now look at Libya,
it’s a failed nation with their natural resources being stolen. That is what we are planning on bringing to
Venezuela. From Global Research:
Excerpt:
– we think the price is worth it.”
Clearly, U.S. sanctions policies are nothing short of state-sanctioned
genocide.
Over the last five years, sanctions have caused Venezuelan per capita
incomes to drop by 40 percent, which is a decline similar to that of war torn
Iraq and Syria at the height of their armed conflicts. Millions of
Venezuelans have had to flee the country.
If America is so concerned about refugees,
Trump should stop furthering disastrous foreign policies that actually create
them. Under Chavez, Venezuela had a policy of welcoming refugees. President Chavez turned Venezuela into the
wealthiest society in Latin America with the best income equality.
Another much vilified leader who
used oil wealth to enrich his people, only to be put under severe sanctions, is
Muammar Gaddafi. In 1967 Colonel Gaddafi
inherited one of the poorest nations in Africa; however, by the time he was
assassinated, Gaddafi had turned Libya into Africa’s wealthiest nation.
Perhaps, Gaddafi’s greatest crime,
in the eyes of NATO, was his quest to
quit selling Libyan oil in U.S. Dollars and denominate crude sales in a new
gold backed common African currency.
In fact, in August 2011, President Obama confiscated $30 billion from
Libya’s Central Bank, which Gaddafi had earmarked for the establishment of
an African Central Bank and the African gold-backed Dinar currency.
Africa has the fastest growing oil
industry in the world and oil sales in a
common African currency would have been especially devastating for the American
dollar, the U.S. economy, and
particularly the elite in charge of the petrodollar system…
Not so long ago, Iraq and Libya were the two most modern and
secular states in the Middle East and North Africa, with the highest regional
standards of living. Nowadays, U.S.
Military intervention and economic sanctions have turned Libya and Iraq into
two of the world’s most failed nations.
“They want to seize Libya’s oil and
they care nothing about the lives of the Libyan people,” remarked Chavez during
the Western intervention in Libya in 2011.
In September 2017, President Maduro made good on Chavez’s promise to list oil
sales in Yuan rather than the US dollar. Weeks later Trump signed a
round of crippling sanctions on the people of Venezuela.
On Monday, U.S. National Security
adviser John Bolton announced new
sanctions that essentially steal $7 billion from Venezuela’s state owned oil
company. At that press conference Bolton brazenly flashed a note pad that
ominously said “5,000 troops to Colombia”. When confronted about it by the
media, Bolton simply said, “President Trump stated that all options are on the
table”.
America’s media is
unquestionably the most corrupt institution in America. The
nation’s media may quibble about Trump’s domestic policies but when it comes to
starting wars for oil abroad they sing in remarkable unison. Fox News, CNN
and the New York Times all cheered the nation into war in Iraq over fictitious
weapons of mass destruction, whilst America was actually using sanctions of
mass destruction on the Iraqi people.
They did it in Libya and now they are doing it again in Venezuela.
Democracy and freedom have always been the smoke screen in front of capitalist
expansion for oil, and the Western Media owns the smoke machine. Economic
warfare has long since been under way against Venezuela but military warfare is
now imminent.
Trump just hired Elliot Abrams as
U.S. Special Envoy for Venezuela, who has a long and torrid history in Latin
America. Abrams pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the Iran Contra
affair, which involved America funding deadly communist rebels, and was
the worst scandal in the Reagan Era.
Abrams was later pardoned by George Bush Senior. America’s new point man on
Venezuela also lied about the largest mass killing in recent Latin American
history by U.S. trained forces in El Salvador.
There is nothing more
undemocratic than a coup d’état. A UN Human Rights Council Rapporteur,
Alfred de Zayas, pointed out that
America’s aim in Venezuela is to “crush this government and bring in a
neoliberal government that is going to privatise everything and is going to
sell out, a lot of transitional corporations stand to gain enormous profits
and the United States is driven by the transnational corporations.”
Ever since 1980, the United States
has steadily devolved from the status of the world’s top creditor country to
the world’s most indebted country. But thanks to the petrodollar system’s huge
global artificial demand for U.S. dollars, America
can continue exponential military expansion, record breaking deficits and
unrestrained spending.
America’s largest export used to be
manufactured goods made proudly in America. Today, America’s largest export is
the U.S. dollar. Any nation like
Venezuela that threatens that export is met with America’s second largest
export: weapons, chief amongst which are SANCTIONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION.
So now a truly, brutal, inhumane admitted war criminal has
been put in charge of “restoring democracy” to Venezuela by bringing in death
squads to neutralize those who refuse to allow the US to kill their leader and
steal their natural resources. From
Russia Insider:
Excerpt:
Donald Trump Is Making America Great Again With Elliot 'Death Squads'
Abrams
Neocon warmonger, backer of
Central American death squads, Iraq war engineer and Never Trumper -- you gotta
be kidding
President Donald Trump’s handling
of personnel has been a constant Achilles heel for achieving his agenda. He has allowed many globalists into his
administration, the latest being disgraced neocon warmonger Elliot Abrams who
will handle relations with Venezuela as their socialist regime teeters on
the brink of collapse.
Russia Today reports on the
horrifyingly bad record of Abrams going back to the Reagan administration and
the Iran/Contra affair:
“As the Reagan administration’s
assistant secretary of state for human rights in the 1980s, Abrams
supported the US-backed dictators in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras in
their campaigns of repression, including death squads. He was also
involved in working with Iran to arming the US-backed rebels in Nicaragua, the
infamous Iran-Contra scandal.
Abrams was eventually convicted of
lying to Congress about Iran-Contra, but was pardoned right away by President
George H.W. Bush. In the 1990s, Abrams
became a founding member of the Project for a New American Century, a hawkish
neoconservative think-tank.
He returned to the corridors of
power in 2001, as a director on the National Security Council for President
George W. Bush. He played a key role in
the 2002 attempted coup in Venezuela against President Hugo Chavez, and was one
of the architects of the 2003 Iraq war.”
Making matters even worse, Abrams is an avowed Never Trumper. He
bashed the President throughout his 2016 campaign and even pined for Hillary
Clinton to be in the White House! Specialists in the 'dirty wars' of the
Eighties encouraged the plotters who tried to topple President Chavez.
Neoconservatives who support costly nation-building efforts overseas to
enrich defense contractors at the expense of the taxpayer are certainly very
happy about this appointment while everyone else groans in disgust at the
hire.
The naming of Elliot Abrams as
Special Envoy on Venezuela is great news. He
is an tough & experienced foreign policy expert with a long history of
supporting democracy, liberty & the national interest of the United States.
Yet again, Trump has been played by the swamp. If there is
anyone who could mess things up in Venezuela, it is Abrams who quite literally
represents everything that Trump was elected to destroy. If Trump loses in
2020 to his Democratic challenger, it will be because of boneheaded mistakes
like continuously hiring disgraced GOP
establishment hacks like Abrams!
If the goal in Venezuela is a failed state quagmire costing
Americans trillions of dollars, Abrams is your guy! These neocons can’t even clean up one of
their messes before starting another.
But then there’s tons of money to be made in the midst of a quagmire. From Eric Margolis at Lew Rockwell:
Excerpt:
Mr President. End This Shameful War Now!
An ancient Hindu prayer says, ‘Lord
Shiva, save us from the claw of the
tiger, the fang of the cobra, and the vengeance of the Afghan.’
The United States, champion of
freedom and self-determination, is now in its 18th year of colonial war in
Afghanistan. This miserable, stalemated conflict is America’s longest and most
shameful war. So far it has cost over $1
trillion and killed no one knows how many Afghans.
This conflict began in 2001 on a lie: namely that Afghanistan was
somehow responsible for the 9/11 attacks on the US. These attacks were planned in Europe and the
US, not Afghanistan, and apparently conducted (official version) by
anti-American Saudi extremists. This
writer remains unconvinced by the official versions.
We still don’t know if Osama bin
Laden instigated the attacks. He was murdered rather than brought to
trial. Dead men tell no tales. However, Mullah Omar, leader of
Afghanistan’s Taliban movement, told my late friend journalist Arnaud de
Borchgrave that bin Laden was not involved in 9/11. Who benefited? Certainly not the Afghans. They have been at war for the past 40 years.
As I wrote in my first book, ‘War
at the Top of the World,’ Afghanistan’s Pashtun tribal majority were fierce
fighters and were incredibly brave.
Their Taliban movement was a tribal-nationalist-Islamist force devoted
to fighting communism, drug dealing and foreign influence. Taliban stamped out the Afghan opium trade
and had just about crushed the drug-dealing Russian-backed Tajik northern
alliance – until the US invaded in 2001. The Afghan drug lords quickly became US
allies and remain so today.
Taliban was not a ‘terrorist movement,’ as western war propaganda
falsely claimed. Twenty years
earlier their fathers were hailed ‘freedom fighters’ by President Ronald Reagan
when they were fighting Soviet occupation.
Taliban’s Pashtun warriors wanted all foreigners out of their nation and
the right to run their own affairs according to Islamic principles.
The US has savaged Afghanistan, one of the world’s poorest countries. US B-52 and B-1 heavy bombers are razing
tribal villages, predator killer drones attack most road movement, US-paid
Afghan puppet forces, many former Communists, routinely torture and murder. All this while the US-installed yes-man
regime in Kabul does nothing to halt massive drug dealing and human rights
abuses.
In fact, dealing in opium and morphine is the primary business of Afghanistan. This cash crop could not be exported to
Pakistan, India, Iran and Russia without the connivance of the Kabul regime and
its US military protectors. When the full truth about the war is
finally written, the US will be in the deepest shame over involvement in the
drug trade.
Washington, which has done as much as the former Soviet invaders to
ravage Afghanistan, has no clear idea
what to do next. President Trump
announced withdrawal of some of the 14,000 US troops (and large numbers of
mercenaries) from Afghanistan.
But then the pro-war neocons at
State and the Pentagon sought to veto the president’s statement. Meanwhile, desultory talks are droning on in
Doha, Qatar, between the US and Taliban, led
by the US ‘special envoy’ (read proconsul) Zalmay Khalilzad, a neocon who
played an important role in promoting the invasion of Iraq.
Why is the US still at war in
Afghanistan after 18 years? First,
because the politicians and generals involved won’t accept responsibility for a
defeat and its huge cost. There is
nothing more wasteful than a lost war. Second, because imperial-minded circles
want to keep bases in Afghanistan to menace China, Iran and Pakistan.
There
are huge profits to be made from this endless war with its $400 per gallon gasoline trucked in from Karachi and 24-hour on
call air support. Plus the
bases and fleet that support the war and promotion for the senior officers involved.
To keep this useless war against
lightly armed Pashtun tribesmen going, the US must massively bribe Pakistan to
maintain the military’s supply routes into that isolated nation.
The absurd waste of US money in Afghanistan and Pakistan has been fully
documented by the US government’s audit agencies.
President Trump is right to talk
about ending this ignoble conflict. But the neocon fifth column he has
foolishly helped install keeps thwarting his aspirations.
Trump should order the fighting
ended and all US troops out of Afghanistan within 90 days. End US
involvement in the drug trade. Tell
India to butt out of Afghanistan. That would be statesmanship. Afghanistan must be allowed to return to its
former obscurity.
Yep, Elliot Abrams is your guy. He has a long record of failure and crimes to
ensure the plunder of Venezuela will go on for years. It’s all part of the New World Order plan to
destroy America as a world power. Abrams
should be tried for treason instead of “restoring democracy” to Venezuela. It’s amazing that according to Abrams and his
ilk, the only way to restore democracy is to view the citizenry as “terrorists”
and kill anyone not on board with the U.S. installed government.
The problem with the neocon plan for Venezuela is that it is
just like the plan that they carried out in Ukraine, they are a one trick
pony. They used the same blueprint for
Iraq, and tried and failed in Syria with the same plan. As usual these horrific plans to destroy
Venezuela are heartily supported by the right-wing governments in the UK and
Canada. From Op Ed News:
Excerpt:
Venezuela, and Canada's Duplicitous Criminality
Socialism isn't the problem. The problem in Venezuela is the cancer of
Western-supported deep state agencies that are subverting its political
economy for the perceived benefit of a tiny transnational oligarch class.
The same agencies which helped to
renovate the post 9/11 Canadian government,
by ushering in the Harper Regime[1]- arguably a soft coup - and the on-going
coup beneath the progressive veneer of the Trudeau regime, are hard at work
in Venezuela.[2]
The Canadian government's support for Juan Guaido in the name of
democracy and freedom is beyond absurd because he has almost no support
in Venezuela, and he was not elected to lead the country.
#Maduro got a higher competitive vote and a greater proportion of all
possible votes than any of his key detractors: #Trump #Macri #Santos or
#Piñera . The plain truth about #Venezuela- Prof. Tim Anderson
The Canadian government's actions
demonstrate clearly that it denies and negates democracy and freedom as policy.
Nation-state sovereignty, ideological
pluralism, and international law are all proven enemies to the Canadian
government.
This is amply demonstrated, not
only in its support for the imperial puppet opposition in Venezuela, but also in the Canadian government's support for
ISIS, al Qaeda and assorted terrorists in Syria[3], as well as the government's support for a neo-Nazi
infested coup government[4] in Kiev.
Nation-state self-determination,
ideological pluralism, democracy, and
the rule of international law should be values that Western countries support rather
than destroy.
Syria: The White Helmets Are Terrorist Auxiliaries
Venezuela and its allies are
fighting for us all when they oppose the deep state anti-democratic cancer
of lawless imperialism.
America’s coup in Venezuela is being conducted by persons
who are not answerable to anyone.
America’s values were murdered along with the Twin Towers when Elliot
Abrams and his cohorts infested our intelligence agencies and used them against
the American people. The Venezuelan Supreme
Court is fighting back. From
Geopolitics:
Excerpt:
Venezuelan Supreme Court Fights Back Deep State Regime Change
The Maduro government is imperfect.
The Venezuelans are just like the Americans, and the rest of the global
population. They can easily be manipulated through economic pressures, and
black propaganda. Fortunately for the
Venezuelans, their Supreme Court is standing up to the developing Deep State
incursions into their domestic affairs.
According to media reports, the Venezuelan Supreme Court has blocked
all of the self-proclaimed interim president’s bank accounts and financial
transactions within its jurisdiction after the Venezuelan authorities have
launched the preliminary investigation into the activities of the country’s
opposition leader Juan Guaido,
Reuters reported Tuesday, citing a
statement of the Venezuelan Supreme Court’s president. In particular, the court’s ruling imposes a travel ban on
Juan Guaido until the completion of the investigation.
The country is further tethering
into a full blown economic recession as
the Bank of England refused to release its gold deposit amounting to US$1.2
billion. The Deep State is hoping that by
squeezing the Venezuelan government from accessing the much needed funds that
the military will have no other choice but to side with the foreign
interventionists.
The weaponization of the banking system by the Western robber barons is
what triggered in part the establishment of various development banks to
finance the One Belt One Road global economic initiative of China under its
president Xi Jinping, to help its
neighboring countries achieve their own economic development with relative
independence from the financial oligarchs whose exercise of absolute power is without any sense of
wisdom and accountability…
Russia, for its part, is also unloading its US dollar denominated
assets in response to a decade of economic sanctions against its citizens and
companies…
The capitalist monetary based
economic systematic has just reached its new shameful milestone when Oxfam reported that only 26 billionaires
own more than half of the world’s population.
President Trump ran on a platform of ending nation building
abroad and beginning nation building at home.
It is difficult to understand what has changed that Trump would bring in
the criminals from Bush I and II Administrations. This will not end well for America. From Strategic Culture:
Excerpt:
Venezuela: Let’s Cut to the Chase
Cold War 2.0 has hit South America
with a bang – pitting the US and expected minions against the four key pillars
of in-progress Eurasia integration: Russia, China, Iran and Turkey.
It’s the oil, stupid. But there’s way more than meets the (oily)
eye.
Caracas has committed the ultimate
cardinal sin in the eyes of Exceptionalistan; oil trading bypassing the US dollar or US-controlled exchanges. Remember Iraq. Remember Libya. Yet Iran
is also doing it. Turkey is doing it. Russia is – partially – on the way. And
China will eventually trade all its energy in petroyuan.
With Venezuela adopting the petro crypto-currency and the sovereign bolivar,
already last year the Trump administration had sanctioned Caracas off the
international financial system. No
wonder Caracas is supported by China, Russia and Iran.
They are the real hardcore troika –
not psycho-killer John Bolton’s
cartoonish “troika of tyranny” – fighting against the Trump
administration’s energy dominance strategy, which consists essentially in
aiming at the total lock down of oil trading in petrodollars, forever.
Venezuela is a key cog in the machine. Psycho killer Bolton admitted it
on the record; “It will make a big difference to the United States
economically if we could have American oil companies invest in and produce the
oil capabilities in Venezuela.” It’s not a matter of just letting ExxonMobil
take over Venezuela’s massive oil reserves – the largest on the planet. The key is to monopolize their
exploitation in US dollars, benefitting a few Big Oil billionaires.
Once again, the curse of natural
resources is in play. Venezuela must not
be allowed to profit from its wealth on its own terms; thus,
Exceptionalistan has ruled that the Venezuelan state must be shattered. In the end, this is all about economic war.
Cue to the US Treasury Department imposing new sanctions on PDVSA that amount
to a de facto oil embargo against Venezuela.
Economic war redux
By now it’s firmly established what
happened in Caracas was not a color revolution but an old-school US-promoted regime change coup using local comprador
elites, installing as “interim president” an unknown quantity, Juan Guaido,
with his Obama choirboy looks masking extreme right-wing credentials.
Everyone remembers “Assad must go”.
The first stage in the Syrian color
revolution was the instigation of civil war, followed by a war by proxy via
multinational jihadi mercenaries.
As Thierry Meyssan has noted, the
role of the Arab League then is performed by the OAS now. And the role of
Friends of Syria – now lying in the dustbin of history – is now performed by the Lima group, the club of Washington’s vassals.
Instead of al-Nusra “moderate rebels”, we may have Colombian – or assorted
Emirati-trained – “moderate rebel” mercenaries.
Contrary to Western corporate media
fake news, the latest elections in Venezuela were absolutely legitimate. There
was no way to tamper with the made in Taiwan electronic voting machines. The
ruling Socialist Party got 70 percent of the votes; the opposition, with many parties
boycotting it, got 30 percent. A serious delegation of the Latin American
Council of Electoral Experts (CEELA) was adamant; the election reflected
“peacefully and without problems, the will of Venezuelan citizens”.
The American embargo may be vicious.
In parallel, Maduro’s government may have been supremely incompetent in not
diversifying the economy and investing in food self-sufficiency. Major food importers, speculating like
there’s no tomorrow, are making a killing. Still, reliable sources in Caracas
tell that the barrios – the popular neighborhoods – remain largely peaceful.
In a country where a full tank of gas still costs less than a can of
Coke, there’s no question the chronic shortages of food and medicines in
local clinics have forced at least two million people to leave Venezuela. But
the key enforcing factor is the US embargo.
The UN rapporteur to Venezuela,
expert on international law, and former secretary of the UN Human Rights
Council, Alfred de Zayas, goes straight to the point; much more than engaging
in the proverbial demonization of Maduro, Washington
is waging “economic war” against a whole nation.
It’s enlightening to see how the “Venezuelan people” see the charade.
In a poll conducted by Hinterlaces even before the Trump administration
coup/regime change wet dream, 86% of Venezuelans said they were against any
sort of US intervention, military or not, and 81% of Venezuelans said they were
against US sanctions. So much for “benign” foreign interference on behalf of
“democracy” and “human rights”.
The Russia-China factor
Analyses by informed observers such
as Eva Golinger and most of all, the Mision Verdad collective are extremely helpful.
What’s certain, in true Empire of Chaos
mode, is that the American playbook, beyond the embargo and sabotage, is to
foment civil war.
Dodgy “armed groups” have been
active in the Caracas barrios, acting in the dead of night and amplifying
“social unrest” on social media. Still, Guaido
holds absolutely no power inside the country. His only chance of success is
if he manages to install a parallel government – cashing in on the oil revenue
and having Washington arrest government members on trumped-up charges.
Irrespective of neocon wet dreams, adults at the Pentagon should know that an invasion of Venezuela may indeed
metastasize into a tropical Vietnam quagmire. The Brazilian strongman in waiting, vice-president and
retired general Hamilton Mourao, already said there will be no military
intervention.
Psycho killer Bolton’s by now infamous notepad stunt about “5,000
troops to Colombia”, is a joke; these would have no chance against the
arguably 15,000 Cubans who are in charge of security for the Maduro government;
Cubans have demonstrated historically
they are not in the business of handing over power.
It all comes back to what China and
Russia may do. China is Venezuela’s largest creditor. Maduro was received by Xi
Jinping last year in Beijing, getting an extra $5 billion in loans and signing
at least 20 bilateral agreements. President Putin offered his full support to
Maduro over the phone, diplomatically stressing that “destructive interference
from abroad blatantly violates basic norms of international law.”
By January 2016, oil was as low as
$35 a barrel; a disaster to Venezuela’s coffers. Maduro then decided to
transfer 49.9% of the state ownership in PDVSA’s US subsidiary, Citgo, to
Russian Rosneft for a mere $1.5 billion loan. This had to send a wave of red lights across the Beltway; those
“evil” Russians were now part owners of Venezuela’s prime asset.
Late last year, still in need of
more funds, Maduro opened gold mining in Venezuela to Russian mining
companies. And there’s more; nickel, diamonds, iron ore, aluminum, bauxite,
all coveted by Russia, China – and the US. As for $1.3 billion of Venezuela’s
own gold, forget about repatriating it from the Bank of England. And then, last December, came the straw that broke the Deep State’s back;
the friendship flight of two Russian nuclear-capable Tu-160 bombers. How dare
they? In our own backyard?
The Trump administration’s energy
masterplan may be indeed to annex Venezuela to a parallel “North American-South
American Petroleum Exporting Countries” (NASAPEC) cartel, capable of rivaling
the OPEC+ love story between Russia and the House of Saud. But even if that came to fruition, and adding
a possible, joint US-Qatar LNG alliance,
there’s no guarantee that would be enough to assure petrodollar – and petrogas
– preeminence in the long run.
Eurasia energy integration will
mostly bypass the petrodollar; this is at the very heart of both the BRICS and
SCO strategy. From Nord Stream 2 to Turk Stream, Russia is locking down a
long-term energy partnership with Europe. And
petroyuan dominance is just a matter of time. Moscow knows it. Tehran
knows it. Ankara knows it. Riyadh knows it.
So what about plan B, neocons? Ready for your tropical Vietnam?
It’s hard to fathom why President Trump has brought all
those losers into his cabinet. One thing is for certain, the people of Venezuela
have much to fear from that cabal but the people of America have even more to
fear. This debacle has the potential to
crush the American economy and destroy the dollar. From Russia Insider:
Excerpt:
How Would Bolton's '5,000 Troops to Colombia' Fare in Invasion of
Venezuela?
It's impossible for the US to
truly take over Venezuela but it could easily destroy it, and, unlike in
Syria, Russia could do nothing about it
The Neocons never cease to amaze me
and their latest stunt with Venezuela
falls into this bizarre category of events which are both absolutely
unthinkable and simultaneously absolutely predictable. This apparent
logical contradiction is the direct result of a worldview and mindset which is,
I believe, unique to the Neocons: a mix of
imperial hubris and infinite arrogance, a complete lack of decency, a total
contempt for the rest of mankind, crass ignorance, a narcissist/sociopath’s
inability to have any kind of empathy or imagine another guy’s reaction and,
finally, last but most certainly not least, crass stupidity…
“In your face” stupidity or
bootcamp-like deliberate public humiliation?
Remember
the almost universal reaction of horror when Bolton was appointed as National
Security Advisor? Well, apparently, either the Neocons completely missed
that, which I doubt, or they did what they always do and decided to double-down by retrieving Elliott Abrams from storage and
appointing him US Special Envoy to Venezuela.
I mean, yes, of course, the
Neocons are stupid and sociopathic enough not to ever care about others, but
in this case I think that we are dealing with a “Skripal tactic”: do something so ridiculously stupid and
offensive that it places all your vassals before a stark choice: either submit
and pretend like you did not notice or, alternatively, dare to say something
and face with wrath of Uncle Shmuel (the Neocon’s version of Uncle Sam).
And it worked, in the name of
“solidarity” or whatever else, the most
faithful lackeys of the Empire immediate fell in line behind the latest US
aggression against a sovereign nation in spite of the self-evident fact
that this aggression violates every letter of the most sacred principles of
international law. This is exactly the same tactic as when they make you clean
toilets with a toothbrush or do push-ups in the mud during basic training: not
only to condition you to total obedience, but to make you publicly give up any
semblance of dignity.
MAGA really?
This is not just a case of history
repeating itself like a farce, however. It is hard to overstate how totally
offensive a character like Elliott Abrams is for every Latin American
who remembers the bloody US debacle in Nicaragua. US vassals now have to
give up any type of pretend-dignity in front of their own people and act as if Abrams was a respectable
and sane human being.
I believe that this kind of
“obedience conditioning by means of humiliation” is not just a case of the
Neocons being idiots, but a deliberate
tactic which will, of course, backfire and end up hurting US puppets worldwide
(just like the pro-US Russian “liberal” opposition was eviscerated as a result
of being associated by the Russian public opinion with the US policies against
Russia, especially in the Ukraine).
Finally, these appointments also
show that the senior-Neocons are frightened and paranoid as there are still
plenty of very sharp junior-Neocon folks to choose from in the US, yet they felt the need to get Abrams from
conservation and place him in a key position in spite of the strong smell of
naphthalene emanating from him. This reminds me of the gerontocrats of the
Soviet Politburo in the worst stagnation years who had to appoint the likes of
Chernenko to top positions.
The one thing the Mr MAGA’s
administration has in common with the late Brezhevian Politburo is its total
inability to get anything done. My wife refers to the folks in the White House
(since Dubya came to power) as the “gang that couldn’t shoot straight” and she
is right (she always is!): they just
can’t really get anything done anymore – all their half-assed
pseudo-successes are inevitably followed by embarrassing failures.
As I wrote in my article “The good
news about the Trump Presidency: stupid can be good!” these folks will only precipitate the collapse of the AngloZionist
Empire, which is a very good thing. The bad thing is, of course, that the
Neocons are negating any chance for a gradual, phased, collapse and are,
instead, creating a dynamic in which a sudden, catastrophic, collapse becomes
much more likely.
Now we have all seen the latest
antic from Bolton: showing up with a yellow pad with “5,000 troops to Colombia”
written on it. Again, this might be a case of Bolton being senile or not giving
a damn, but I doubt it. I think that this is just another oh-so-subtle way to
threaten Venezuela with a US-led invasion. And, really, why not? If the Empire thinks it has the authority
and power to decide who the President of Venezuela should be, it has to logically
back up this stance with a threat, especially
since there is no US authority, moral or otherwise, left…
The state of the Venezuelan
military
A military, any military, is always the product of the society which
produces it and this is also true of Venezuela. It would be silly to admit
that the Venezuelan economy is a total mess while expecting the Venezuelan
armed forces to be a shining example of professionalism, honesty and
patriotism. The sad reality is very different.
For one thing, much of the
Venezuelan military is hopelessly corrupt, as is the rest of society. In a
country whose economy is imploding, this is hardly surprising. Furthermore, for
years both Chavez and Maduro have fought
an uphill battle to remove as many potential traitors and class enemies (in
a Marxist sense of the word) from the Venezuelan military and replace them with
“socially close” (a Bolshevik concept) elements from the poorer sections of
society.
Truth be told, this was a partially successful strategy as seen by the fact that
during this latest coup attempt the Venezuelan military overwhelmingly
supported the Venezuelan Constitution and the legitimacy of Maduro. And
yet that kind of loyalty often comes at the costs of professionalism and at the
risk of corruption as seen by the case of the Venezuelan military attache to
the US who clearly was a US agent.
I am afraid that the current
situation in Venezuela might be similar to what it was in Syria in the very early stages of the AngloZionist war against
this country when scores of top officials of the Syrian government proved to be
traitors and/or US agents. In Syria the government eventually re-took
control of the situation, but only with a great deal of help from Iran and
Russia and after almost being toppled by the US-run Takfiri forces.
The good news here, according to my
friend, is that the Venezuelan special
forces (army special forces, jungle infantry troops, “Caribe” counter
insurgency units, airborne units, etc) are in a much better shape and that they
could form the core of a resistance force to the invasion, not unlike
what the Republican Guard eventually did in Iraq. But the biggest difference
with Iraq is that in Venezuela the
majority of the people are still backing Maduro and that any invasion force
should expect to meet a lot of resistance of the type which the US
encountered in Iraq after the invasion of the country.
Also, there was a fragile truce of
sorts between Hugo Chavez and various Left-wing guerillas who agreed to stop
their military operations, but who also kept all their weapons “just in case”.
This “case” has now happened and we can expect that any US invasion will trigger an immediate re-emergence of a Left-wing
guerilla force which, combined with popular support and the key role of a
core of patriotic Venezuelan special forces could form a very dangerous
combination, especially in the mid to long term…
Comparisons are necessarily tricky and
crude, but with this caveat in mind,
don’t think “Syria” but rather think “Iraq” when considering the possible
outcomes of a US invasion…
This is really crucial. Hugo Chavez’ reforms alienated a lot of
Venezuelans, especially those who made their fortunes by servicing US
interests and who became your typical Latin American version of a
comprador class. Much of the middle-class also got hurt and are angry. However, these same reforms also empowered huge numbers of destitute and poor
Venezuelans who, for the first time, felt that the government stood for
their interests and who remember what it was like to live in abject poverty
under a US-backed regime.
These folks probably have no illusion about what the toppling of this
government would mean for them and they are likely to fight hard, if not
necessarily competently, to keep the little rights and means they acquired
during the Chavez years…
Whatever may be the case, Hugo
Chavez’ pro-popular policies left a very
profound mark on the country and you can expect that a lot of Venezuelans will
take up arms and resist any US/Colombian invasion.
Here I think we can all
express our heartfelt gratitude to Mr MAGA whose appointment of Elliott
“Iran-Contra” Abrams has done more than any government sponsored propaganda to
clearly and bluntly explain to the Venezuelan people who is doing what to them
and why.
Seriously, Ron Paul or Tulsi
Gabbard speaking of democracy is one thing, but having gangsters and psychopathic thugs like Pompeo, Bolton or
Abrams in charge really sends a message AND THAT MESSAGE IS THAT WE ARE
DEALING WITH A BANAL CASE OF HIGHWAY ROBBERY TRIGGERED BY TWO VERY CRUDE
CONSIDERATIONS:
First, to re-take control of Venezuela’s immense natural resources.
Second, to prove to the world that Uncle Shmuel can still, quote, “pick
up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to
show the world we mean business“, unquote.
The obvious problem is that 1) nobody takes the US seriously because 2)
the US has not been capable of defeating any country capable of resistance
since many decades already. The
various US special forces, which would typically spearhead any invasion, have
an especially appalling record of abject failures every time they stop
posing for cameras and have to engage in real combat…
President Macrobama?
Last but not least, there are a
lot of weapons in circulation in Venezuela and which the various popular
militias and National Guard would be more than happy to further distribute
to the local population if any invasion appears to be successful…
Does this bizarre mix of Neocons, gerontocrats and deepstaters really,
sincerely, believe that this time around they will “win” (however you
define that)?!
More relevantly – has this recipe
ever worked in the past? I would say that if we accept, for argument’s sake,
that the goal is to “restore democracy” then obviously “no”. But if the goal is to wreck a country, then
it has worked, quite a few times indeed…
So we should have no Pollyannish
notions about all the reports about the economic and social collapse in
Venezuela as only “US propaganda”. Sadly, much of it is true even if often
exaggerated, lopsided and missing all the very real successes of the Chavez
reforms, hence the continuous popular
support, in spite of it all, the Maduro government continues to enjoy.
Still, the overall picture is very bleak and it will take Venezuela consistent
and correct action to recover from the current plight.
So is there still hope? Yes,
absolutely!
I recently replied the following to
a friend asking me about a possible Russian intervention in Venezuela “I place my own hopes not in the
Venezuelan military, or in Chinese or Russian help, but on the amazing ability
of the Americans to f*** up. At
the end of the day, that is our biggest ally: the US stupidity, ignorance,
arrogance and cowardice“.
Think of what currently passes as a
“policy” of the US in Venezuela as a diagnostic tool.
Not just to diagnose the moral degeneracy and mental pathology of the
leaders of the AngloZionist Empire, but also to diagnose the very real
state of despair and chaos of the Empire itself. Under Obama, for all his
faults and weaknesses, the US succeeded in subverting a list of crucial Latin
American countries (like Brazil or Argentina) but now, with Mr MAGA, it can’t
even do that.
The kind of antics we see from the Pompeo, Bolton & Abrams gang is
amazing in its crudeness and, frankly, makes a supposed “indispensable nation”
look absolutely ridiculous. These losers already had to fold several times,
in spite of equally hyperbolic threats delivered with maximal gravitas (think
DPRK here), and yet they still think that crude bullying methods can yield
success. They can’t. Immense firepower
is not a substitute for brains.
In its short and blood-soaked history, the US has pretty much always
acted like some criminal enterprise run by brutal gangsters, but in the
past some of these gangsters could be extremely well educated and intelligent
(think James Baker here). Today, their guns are still lying around (albeit in
various states of disrepair), but they
are wielded by ignorant retards. Yes, ignorant retards with guns can be very
dangerous, but they can never be effective!
Conclusion
Right now the US, backed by its various colonies and vassal states,
appears to be ready to deliver a death blow to Venezuela and, truth be
told, they might be able to do just that. But, for whatever it is worth, my gut feeling is that they will fail
again, even against the weakest countries of the Axis of Resistance.
That is not to say that Venezuela
is not in a heap of critical problems. But I believe that in spite of being in a critical condition, Venezuela will be able to
bounce back, just like Syria did. After all, the Syrian example proves that
it *is* possible to resist a superior invading force while at the same time
successfully engaging in critically needed reforms.
Yes, today’s Caracas is in very bad
shape, but the city of Aleppo was in a much worse shape until it was liberated,
and now quasi-normal life has returned to it
(in sharp contrast to the US liberated devastated city of Raqqa which still
lies in ruins). Yankees (to use the usual Latin-American expression) are just like their Israeli overlords: they are
capable of devastating violence but they have no staying power: if things
don’t go their way fast, really fast, they run and barricade themselves
somewhere faraway from danger…
In our case, they might even do
what they did in Iraq and Afghanistan:
build obscenely huge embassies, create a special zone around them, and sit
tight while the country is engulfed in a bloody civil war. This way, they
can provide CNN & Co. with footage of a “peaceful neighborhood” while still
claiming that the Stars and Strips are still proudly flying high over the
enemy’s capital and that “these colors don’t run”. This would be a disastrous outcome for the Venezuelan nation and
this is why we all have to try to prevent this, by speaking out before the US
further wrecks yet another country.
Hopefully the memory of past completely failed, humiliating and bloody
invasions will convince the right people at the Pentagon to do whatever it takes
to prevent the US from launching yet another stupid and immoral war of choice
on behalf of the Neocons.
The real danger these lunatic pose is to the American
people. Since they seized power in 2000
they have destroyed our nation. All of
these military adventures have destroyed America and the overuse of sanctions
to destroy any nation who refuses to knuckle under to America’s demands and led
to the destruction of the dollar.
If the Trump Administration attacks the Venezuelan people it
will be the end of the American Imperialism foisted upon us in 2000 when a
consortium of Republicans and Democrats stole the election for George W.
Bush. This misadventure will be the nail
in America’s coffin. From OpEd News:
Excerpt:
Goodbye to the Dollar
The inept and corrupt presidency of
Donald Trump has unwittingly triggered
the fatal blow to the American empire-the abandonment of the dollar as the
world's principal reserve currency. Nations around the globe, especially
in Europe, have lost confidence in the United States to act rationally, much
less lead, in issues of international finance, trade, diplomacy and war.
These nations are quietly
dismantling the seven-decade-old alliance with the United States and building
alternative systems of bilateral trade. This
reconfiguring of the world's financial system will be fatal to the American
empire, as the historian Alfred McCoy and the economist Michael Hudson have
long pointed out. It will trigger an economic death spiral, including high
inflation, which will necessitate a massive military contraction overseas and
plunge the United States into a prolonged depression. Trump, rather than
make America great again, has turned out, unwittingly, to be the empire's most
aggressive gravedigger…
When George W. Bush unilaterally invaded Iraq, defying with his doctrine
of preemptive war international law and dismissing protests from
traditional allies, he began the
rupture. But Trump has deepened the fissures. The Trump administration's
withdrawal from the 2015 Iranian nuclear agreement, although Iran had abided by
the agreement, and demand that European nations also withdraw or endure U.S.
sanctions saw European nations defect
and establish an alternative monetary exchange system that excludes the United
States.
Iran no longer accepts the dollar for oil on international markets
and has replaced it with the euro, not a small factor in Washington's deep
animus to Teheran. Turkey is also abandoning the dollar. The U.S. demand that Germany and other European states halt the
importation of Russian gas likewise saw the Europeans ignore Washington.
China and Russia, traditionally antagonistic, are now working in tandem to free
themselves from the dollar.
Moscow has transferred $100 billion
of its reserves into Chinese yuan, Japanese yen and euros. And, as ominously, foreign governments since 2014 are no
longer storing their gold reserves in the United States or, as with Germany, removing
them from the Federal Reserve. Germany has repatriated its 300 tons of
gold ingots. The Netherlands repatriated its 100 tons.
The U.S. intervention in Venezuela,
the potential trade war with China, the withdrawal from international climate
accords, leaving the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, the
paralysis in Washington and disruptive government shutdown and increased
hostilities with Iran bode ill for America. American foreign and financial policy is hostage to the bizarre whims
of stunted ideologues such as Mike Pompeo, John Bolton and Elliott Abrams.
This ensures more global chaos as
well as increased efforts by nations around the globe to free themselves
from the economic stranglehold the United States effectively set in place
following World War II. It is only a
question of when not if the dollar will be sidelined.
That it was Trump, along with his fellow ideologues of the extreme right,
who destroyed the international structures put in place by global capitalists,
rather than socialists these capitalists invested tremendous resources to
crush, is grimly ironic…
The dollar, because of astronomical government debt now at $21
trillion, a debt that will be augmented by Trump's tax cuts costing the U.S.
Treasury $1.5 trillion over the next decade, is becoming less and less
trustworthy. The debt-to-GDP ratio is now more than 100 percent, a flashing red
light for economists.
Our massive trade deficit depends
on selling treasury bonds abroad. Once
those bonds decline in value and are no longer considered a stable investment,
the dollar will suffer a huge devaluation. There are signs this process
is underway. Central-bank reserves hold fewer dollars than they did in 2004.
There are fewer SWIFT payments-the exchange for interbank fund transfers-in
dollars than in 2015. Half of international trade is invoiced in dollars,
although the U.S. share of international trade is only 10 percent.
"Ultimately, we will have
reserve currencies other than the U.S. dollar," the Bank of England Gov.
Mark Carney announced last month.
Sixty-one percent of foreign
currency reserves are in dollars. As
these dollar currency reserves are replaced by other currencies, the retreat
from the dollar will accelerate. The recklessness of America's financial
policies will only exacerbate the crisis.
"If unlimited borrowing, financed by printing money, were a path
to prosperity," Irwin M. Stelzer of the Hudson Institute said
recently, "then Venezuela and Zimbabwe would be top of the growth
tables." McCoy explains what a
world financial order untethered from the dollar would look like:
For the majority of Americans, the 2020s will likely be remembered as a
demoralizing decade of rising prices, stagnant wages, and fading international
competitiveness. After years of
swelling deficits fed by incessant warfare in distant lands, in 2030
the U.S. dollar eventually loses its special status as the world's dominant
reserve currency…
Unable to pay for swelling deficits
by selling now-devalued Treasury notes abroad, Washington is finally forced to slash its bloated military budget. Under
pressure at home and abroad, its forces begin to pull back from hundreds of
overseas bases to a continental perimeter. Such a desperate move, however,
comes too late.
Faced with a fading superpower incapable of paying its bills, China,
India, Iran, Russia, and other powers provocatively challenge U.S. dominion
over the oceans, space, and cyberspace. The collapse of the dollar will mean,
McCoy writes, "soaring prices, ever-rising unemployment, and a
continuing decline in real wages throughout the 2020s, domestic divisions
widen into violent clashes and divisive debates, often over symbolic,
insubstantial issues…"
The deep disillusionment and
widespread rage will give an opening to Trump, or a Trump-like demagogue, to lash out, perhaps by inciting violence,
against scapegoats at home and abroad. But by then the U.S. empire will be
so diminished its threats will be, at least to those outside its borders,
largely meaningless…
Yep, its already starting, the end of the Federal Reserve
Notes backed by nothing but a wish and a prayer. The corrupt Federal Reserve Bank will be
sitting on trillions of tons of worthless paper that no one is willing to
accept. All thanks to the George W. Bush
Administration and the Barack Obama Administration’s reckless war
mongering.
Now America is insisting that the European Union follow
their lead and recognize Guiado as Venezuela’s president. No one gives a shit what America wants, they
are a morally and financially bankrupt shell of a nation thanks to the
neocons. From RT:
Excerpt:
Italy vetoed EU recognition of Venezuelan opposition leader Guaido –
M5S source to RT
Rome has effectively derailed an EU statement meant to recognize Juan
Guaido as Venezuela’s interim leader if President Nicolas Maduro fails to
set up snap elections, a Five Star Movement source confirmed to RT.
Italy announced the veto at an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers
that started on January 31 in Romania, the source said. The statement,
which was supposed to be delivered by EU foreign affairs chief Federica
Mogherini recognized Guaido as interim president if snap elections were not
held.
We must avoid mistake of Libya: Italian deputy FM speaks out against
Venezuela regime change…
The parliament urged the EU to
follow suit but the effort stalled due to internal discord. A range of European nations have separately recognized the opposition
chief as Venezuela’s acting president, including the UK, France, Sweden, Spain,
and Austria. The coordinated move came after an eight-day deadline for
Maduro to call presidential elections expired on Monday.
The US announced that it is backing
the new interim leader and pledged their full support immediately after what
has been labeled “a coup” by officials in Caracas. However Russia, China, Turkey and Iran said they see Maduro as the only
legitimate leader, warning against meddling in Venezuela’s domestic affairs.
Maduro himself rejected the EU ultimatum but promised to push for
political reform. He suggested that parliamentary elections be held earlier
than 2020, arguing that the National Assembly – a legislative body dominated by
the opposition and headed by Guaido – needs to be “re-legitimized.”
Following the announcement,
Venezuela witnessed massive rallies, both for and against Maduro. Some of the
country’s high-ranking officials, including a defense attaché in the US, voiced their support for Guaido,
but the majority remained loyal to Maduro, including the army.
So that’s where America stands, broke and desperate to steal
the resources of Venezuela to cover their war debts. It’s time for the Devil to go down to the
Caribbean now that their failed wars across the Middle East have bankrupted the
Empire. The neocon cockroaches care not
for America or Americans, their plan was always to bankrupt America, and that
is the only thing they have succeeded in doing.
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