Neocons’ Trojan Hearse: Faux humanitarian aid for fascist takeover of Venezuela

“...why will men fight and suffer to advance the interests of their masters, who fling them aside when they have no further use for them?” ― Arthur Findlay

Gawd the crap they try to sell to us is insane, but then so are they.  First of all there are no people dying of starvation in the streets of Venezuela.  They are not eating their pets and President Madero is not a dictator stealing oil revenues from the people of Venezuela, it is quite the opposite.  The shortages and high prices of goods in Venezuela are the result of the neocon Zionist cabal’s “sanction regime” and outright theft of the bank accounts of the elected Bolivarian government.  The “crisis” in Venezuela is another false flag bullshit justification to invade a resource rich, cash poor country to steal their resources and enslave their indigenous population for the enrichment of the white rich upper class. 

Here in America the land of the free we are subjected to slavery by the ruling class.  We are fed a steady stream of propaganda telling us that the motivation for the neocon Zionist cabal that seized power over America in 2000 that brought us the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Libya, Georgia, Burkino Faso, etc. were to advance democracies.  Bullshit!  In the following video Representative Tulsi Gabbard tells Tucker Carlson the truth about America’s regime change wars.

  

The American government could give a shit less about our citizens let alone those citizens of countries that have been invaded and ravished by the same demonstrably insane merchants of death.  What America offers to the people of those countries is what has happened in America since the “2000 coup” enslavement of the people in service to the ruling class. 

We are fed a steady diet of “the dangers of socialism” when socialism is not a threat to the American people the real threat is “untethered fascistic capitalism.”  So now we want to “restore” democracy to Venezuela by installing an “unelected CIA trained economic hitman” to put Venezuela’s vast resources up for grabs for the global fascists.  So here’s what the merchants of death have to offer Venezuela:  From Geopolitics:

Excerpt:

America is a Socialist Country… for the Rich

“America will never be a socialist country,” Donald Trump declared in his State of the Union address. Someone should alert Trump that America is now a hotbed of socialism. But it is socialism for the rich. Everyone else is treated to harsh capitalism.

In the conservative mind, socialism means getting something for doing nothing. That pretty much describes the $21 billion saved by the nation’s largest banks last year thanks to Trump’s tax cuts, some of which went into massive bonuses for bank executives. On the other hand, more than 4,000 lower-level bank employees got a big dose of harsh capitalism. They lost their jobs.

Banks that are too big to fail—courtesy of the 2008 bank bailout—enjoy a hidden subsidy of some $83 billion a year, because creditors facing less risk accept lower interest on deposits and loans. Last year, Wall Street’s bonus pool was $31.4 billion. Take away the hidden subsidy and the bonus pool disappears.

Trump and his appointees at the Federal Reserve are easing bank requirements put in place after the bailout. They’ll make sure the biggest banks remain too big to fail.

Trump is promoting socialism for the rich and harsh capitalism for everyone else in other ways. Since he was elected, GM has got more than $600 million in federal contracts plus $500 million in tax breaks. Some of this has gone into the pockets of GM executives. Chairman and CEO Mary Barra raked in almost $22 million in total compensation in 2017 alone.

But GM employees are subject to harsh capitalism. GM is planning to lay off more than 14,000 workers and close three assembly plants and two component factories in North America by the end of 2019…

Now, all over America, executives who run their companies into the ground are getting gold-plated exit packages while their workers get pink slips.  Sears is doling out $25 million to the executives who stripped its remaining assets and drove it into bankruptcy, but it has no money for the thousands of workers it laid off.

As Pacific Gas and Electric hurtles toward bankruptcy, the person who was in charge when the deadly infernos roared through Northern California last year (caused in part by PG&E’s faulty equipment) has departed with a cash severance package of $2.5 million. The PG&E executive in charge of gas operations when records were allegedly falsified left in 2018 with $6.9 million.

Under socialism for the rich, you can screw up big time and still reap big rewards. Equifax’s Richard Smith retired in 2017 with an $18 million pension in the wake of a security breach that exposed the personal information of 145 million consumers to hackers.

Wells Fargo’s Carrie Tolstedt departed with a $125 million exit package after being in charge of the unit that opened more than 2 million unauthorized customer accounts.

Around 60 percent of America’s wealth is now inherited. Many of today’s super rich have never done a day’s work in their lives.  Trump’s response has been to cut the estate tax to apply only to estates valued at over $22 million per couple. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is now proposing that the estate tax be repealed altogether.

What about the capitalist principles that people earn what they’re worth in the market, and that economic gains should go to those who deserve them?  America is on the cusp of the largest inter-generational wealth transfer in history. As rich boomers expire over the next three decades, an estimated $30 trillion will go to their children…

To the conservative mind, the specter of socialism conjures up a society in which no one is held accountable, and no one has to work for what they receive. Yet that’s exactly the society Trump and the Republicans are promoting for the rich. 

Meanwhile, most Americans are subject to an increasingly harsh and arbitrary capitalism in which they’re working harder but getting nowhere, and have less security than ever.  They need thicker safety nets and deserve a bigger piece of the economic pie. If you want to call this socialism, fine. I call it fair.

The Bush tax cuts along with endless wars have sent America into a financial death spiral.  That same crowd has infiltrated the Trump Administration and is now putting the last nails in the coffin of the American people.  It is difficult to figure out what Donald Trump is doing by surrounding himself with “never-Trump war criminals” but Justin Raimondo at InformationClearing House has an interesting take:

Excerpt:

The Chef Boyardee War: Venezuela’s Clueless Opposition

My contrarian view of Venezuela’s regime change drama – that it’s regime change theater put on by President Trump for purely domestic political reasons – was confirmed on the big day when the conflict was supposed to come to a head, when the looming confrontation proved to be … dueling concerts! Regime change as entertainment – there’s something so American about that.

What the heck, a little music is what every regime change operation needs: however, the theme song of this one is turning out to be more John Cage than John Philip Sousa. Instead of “President” Guaidó rallying his forces and leading them into battle, he’s trying to cross a bridge that has never been used with 1000 cans of Chef Boyardee, 500 cartons of mac-and-cheese, and enough airline “food” (courtesy of Richard Branson) to kill off a number of Chavistas.

That flopped big time, with the trucks transporting this culinary Trojan Horse set on fire and the whole incident degenerating into an argument over who lit the match.

What did neocons expect? Did they really think the Venezuelan army, at that dramatic moment, would lay down their arms and defect to the opposition? The whole thing was a farce, and I mean that literally – in the sense that this stunt was never meant to succeed, or even to be taken seriously. It’s all a show, produced and directed by that expert showman: Donald J. Trump.

As I explained in a previous column, this fake regime change campaign is a ploy by Trump to stick the neocons with a well-publicized failure. After all, his newly-appointed special envoy to Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, declared Trump “unfit” to be President: the rest of the neocon network is now marching at the head of the “Resistance.”

It sure is fun watching Trump destroy his enemies. Extra added fun: watching the hysterics on the left go ballistic at my suggestion that the conflict in Venezuela is unlikely to result in all-out civil war, with the US fully participating. Oh no, it must end in massive slaughter.  Gee, whatever happened to “Give peace a chance”?

Wars and the threat of them invariably expose the hypocrisy and true allegiances of both sides, and this Venezuelan brouhaha yields some prime examples. On the left we have the ideologues in denial as the government jails opponents, and cracks down on the opposition with violence in the streets. On the right, we have “anti-communist” conservatives who have already forgotten the lesson of Iraq. “Send in the Marines!” they cry. To which one can only reply “And then what?”

That’s a question they assiduously avoid for the same reason it’s the first thing the generals want to know. And that’s the core reason I think there will be no military conflict involving the US: the Pentagon will never allow it. With our terribly over-stretched forces – some soldiers going four or five deployments without a break – and our ever-expanding list of enemies, another front in our foreign policy of endless war is the last thing the military wants.

As the opposition falters, they are increasingly calling for outside intervention: a multilateral OAS force with the US doing the heavy lifting.  Which once again proves how clueless they are. Here we are experiencing a worldwide rebellion against unelected self-proclaimed leaders and “experts,” and the neocons want us to fight a war on behalf of some guy named Juan who has no more claim to the Venezuelan Presidency than I do.

Trump loves to ask the audience at his rallies “Are you tired of winning yet?” In the case of the neocons’ Venezuelan adventure, you can count on us folks in the peanut gallery asking them: Are you tired of losing yet?

What a joke the neocon Zionist cabal has become.  If they weren’t aided by a corrupt bunch of media whores they’d be laughed off the world stage.  Thank God for alternative brave reporters staying on top of world news to debunk corrupt big media.  From Stephen Lendman:

Excerpt:

Major Media Rage Over the Thwarted Trump Regime’s Trojan Horse Aid Scam

Whenever the US goes to war, plans one, or stages color revolutions or old-fashioned coups to try toppling sitting governments, establishment media can be relied on to cheerlead what demands denunciation, operating as supportive imperial tools.

Venezuela is in the eye of US rage to topple its democratic government, wanting equity and justice in the country eliminated, replaced by corporate power looting its resources, enforcing serfdom on its people, transforming the state into a plantation for profit-making, police state harshness targeting nonbelievers.

With Venezuela’s borders blocked to prevent entry of Trump regime Trojan horse “aid,” a political stunt unrelated to helping its people, DLT hardliners knew in advance their scheme would fail.  It was prelude for the next round of war on Venezuela by other means, likely greater violence than already planned – to be wrongfully blamed on Maduro, US imperial victims consistently blamed for high crimes committed against them.

Commenting on what happened over the weekend, the self-styled newspaper of record NYT laughably called the stunt “badly needed food and medicine” – failing to explain the Trump regime’s motive or that the amount was a virtually meaningless gesture.

The Times ignored over 1,000 tons of genuinely welcomed legitimate aid supplied by Russia, China, Cuba and other countries, not an imperial stunt, more to come, donating countries wanting to help Venezuelans – countering the Trump’s war by other means, largely responsible for economic hard times.

The Times and other major media refuse to recognize Maduro’s legitimacy. Supporting usurper in waiting Guaido shows allegiance to the Trump regime’s coop plot, an affront to what democracy is all about.

Pathetic Times videos moaned about “hope thwarted along with aid at Venezuela’s border,” another falsely accusing Maduro of “denying Venezuela’s US aid” – deplorable propaganda rubbish no responsible editors would tolerate. Times editors featured them to their disgrace.

The neocon/CIA house organ Washington Post pretended that the Trump regime’s border stunt was legitimate aid, along with blaming Maduro for US-orchestrated violence, as well as torching two USAID trucks he and Venezuelan security forces had nothing to do with.

WaPo compounded its Big Lies by falsely accusing Venezuelan soldiers of using “live fire” – “according to some reports” it said without explaining they were fabricated on the Colombian and Brazilian side of Venezuela’s border – anti-Maduro propaganda, not credible information.  Thuggish US proxies bore full responsibility for live fire and other violence. Government forces responded in self-defense, largely with tear gas, no live fire intending to kill or injure.

The Wall Street Journal unleashed its paranoid propagandist/notorious history reinventor/pseudo-journalist Mary O’Grady – cheerleading usurper in waiting Guaido, denouncing Bolivarian social democracy, pretending Trump’s Saturday stunt was a genuine humanitarian effort.

She supports Latin and Central American tinpot despots, notably Colombian narco/terrorist president Ivan Duque, and Brazil’s tyrant Jair Bolsonaro. She abhors legitimate democrats like Maduro, turning truth on its head calling him a “dictator.”

Like all her rubbish, her latest propaganda piece was a litany of beginning-to-end bald-faced Big Lies, including falsely accusing Venezuelan security forces of “unleashing brutality against unarmed civilians.”

US proxies bear full responsibility for weekend violence, orchestrated by Washington, a familiar stunt, similar ones staged time and again in many countries, victims blamed for high crimes committed against them – including Pentagon terror-bombing on the phony pretext of combatting ISIS the US created and supports.

Mary what’s-her-name is a pathetic figure, unable even to lie well. Take everything she says with a grain of salt, best to avoid her altogether. 

If the Whore Street Journal and the Washington Whore Post were actually “real newspapers” with “real journalists” they’d be printing headlines like this from RT:

US sending ‘spoiled food’ and ‘expired medicine’ as aid – Venezuelan ambassador

Venezuela’s ambassador to Russia discussed his government’s rejection of American ‘foreign aid’, pointing out that aside from coming with dangerous strings attached, the so called ‘aid’ is unfit for consumption.  “We don’t perceive what the United States and its satellites offer as humanitarian aid,” Ambassador Carlos Rafael Faria Tortosa explained in an interview with Russian media.

He added that International Committee of the Red Cross agreed with his position, referring to recent incidents of opposition figures using fake Red Cross credentials at the Colombian border.  “Since we refuse to accept these goods, the States want to force them into our territory”

Venezuela has closed several borders in order to enforce a ban on “aid” packages from the US, an order which he says Washington has all but ignored in order to “create a tense situation on the border” which it uses to justify intervention.   

Aside from the broader political considerations, he said that Venezuela has also attempted to halt supplies from the US based on health and hygiene standards.

“The USA sends products that no one has tested. From our sources we know that their boxes have contained spoiled food, expired medicines and drugs, unsuitable for use. They have not been tested by a single one of the organizations that conduct these kind of checks around the world,” he noted.

Whereas Venezuela rejects aid from Washington, Tortas made it clear that it accepts humanitarian supplies from other countries Caracas feels can be trusted not to exploit the situation in order to push an anti-government agenda. Meanwhile, the essential supplies situation in Venezuela is not as desperate as it has been portrayed in Western media.

Asked if Venezuela was prepared to deal with an outright foreign invasion, Tortosa said that he still believes in a peaceful solution. He couldn’t say the same however, about US Vice President Mike Pence and US special envoy for Venezuela Elliot Abrams who visited US-allied Colombia on Monday.

 “We remember what this man did in Central America in the 1980s. This is a man who thinks only of military solutions,” Tortosa explained.  On Tuesday, Russia’s Security Council announced that the US was preparing for an invasion after American special forces units began amassing in Puerto Rico and Colombia. The US has utilized recent clashes over aid at the border to justify its aggressive maneuvers.

In the following video clip you will see what socialist government aid looks like.

The saddest part of this whole episode is that both parties in are equally corrupted and will eagerly support expanding wars on behalf of their corporate paymasters.  Senator Marco Rubio is a bought and paid for whore whose allegiance is to the Zionist billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.  He is front and center along with religio-crazy Mike Pence in leading the charge for regime change in Venezuela.  From Lew Rockwell:

Excerpt:

Psychopathic US Senator Openly Calls For Maduro To Suffer Gaddafi’s Fate

Influential US Senator and 2016 presidential candidate Marco Rubio has tweeted a blatant death threat and incitement of violence against Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. As of this writing the post has 13 thousand shares and counting.

The tweet consists of a “before” and “after” photo of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who in 2011 was mutilated to death in the streets following a US-led NATO intervention in Libya which was launched on false humanitarian pretexts. The first photo depicts Gaddafi alive and confident with a smile on his face, the second depicts him covered in blood following his capture by a militia group minutes before his death…

Senator Rubio has been Capitol Hill’s single most virulent advocate of US interventionism in Venezuela, and has been tweeting about it constantly. Since Washington’s bogus “humanitarian aid” delivery sparked violence on the borders of Columbia and Brazil, as it was intended to, Rubio has cranked his interventionist cheerleading up to eleven.

The fact that Maduro would not allow a government that is openly staging a coup in Venezuela to hand a large unchecked delivery over to opposition factions within that very nation has been used to sell a narrative that Venezuela’s Evil Dictator is deliberately cutting off aid to a needy populace, which was of course planned.

This narrative has been helped along by highly suspicious photo-friendly fires, and has been injected into mainstream consciousness with hysterical urgency by the likes of Rubio, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Dianne Feinstein, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris and the entire Trump administration. And it is completely false.

Firstly, Maduro is not refusing humanitarian aid for his people. Only an idiot would believe that the latest Official Bad Guy (who coincidentally happens to be sitting on top of the largest oil reserves on earth) is intentionally starving and depriving his people, and anyone who makes such claims should have to explain how they make that work in their minds.

What’s the idea behind that, exactly? Is he starving them all and cutting them off from medical supplies because he hates them? Is he trying to kill everyone in Venezuela so that he can have the entire country to himself? Does he have some strange sexual fetish for the slow starvation of an entire citizenry? How specifically does this work?

In reality, Maduro has been accepting aid from everywhere except from the government that is openly staging a coup in his country in gross violation of its national sovereignty. Just last week Caracas accepted 933 tons of food and medical supplies from China, Cuba, India and Turkey, and Russia has shipped in 300 tons of aid on its own.

President Nicolás Maduro announced that 7.5 tons of medical aid arrived in Venezuela from Russia.  Secondly, the paltry $20 million in food, medical and hygiene supplies sent via USAID pales in comparison to the $30 million per day the new US oil embargo will be costing Venezuelans this year. If the US wanted to help the Venezuelan people, the best thing it could do is end its crushing economic warfare upon them, which experts say has made economic recovery all but impossible.

Believing the CIA/CNN narrative that US sanctions only impact a nation’s leadership is dumber than believing that US bombs only kill bad guys; former UN special rapporteur Alfred de Zayas has said that US-led sanctions are killing Venezuelans and could be tried under international law as crimes against humanity. The best way for the US to help Venezuelans would be to cease all interventionism and end its economic warfare upon them.

Thirdly, there’s not actually anything stopping the US from giving the aid shipment it claims it wants to deliver to Russia, China, Turkey or India, for example, and having them deliver it. It could do the same with the UN or the Red Cross. There are many ways in which the US government which claims to care so much about the Venezuelan people could get its “humanitarian aid” to them which does not include highly provocative deliveries via military craft and aggressive stand-offs at Venezuelan border towns. The fact that Washington refuses to take those routes is an admission that the goal was always provocation and never humanitarianism.

Marco Rubio does not give a shit about the Venezuelan people. Like all Capitol Hill war whores, he only cares about advancing the hegemony of the US-centralized empire. Rubio endorsed the overthrow of both Gaddafi and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad in 2011; now half a million are dead in Syria as a result of the empire’s failed regime change intervention there, and the “humanitarian intervention” in Libya created a humanitarian catastrophe where people are openly sold as slaves.

“I was just in Venezuela where I heard many people voice fears that the US wants to turn their country into another Libya,” journalist Aaron Maté reported in response to Rubio’s tweet. “I’d say their concerns are well-founded…”

This is the face of the US regime change intervention in Venezuela, everyone. Donald Trump, John Bolton, Elliott Abrams, and a war pig senator who calls for the torturous lynching of the leader of a sovereign nation. Whenever someone supports any part of this coup agenda, this is the side that they are standing on. This is the flag that they are flying.

Everyone knows on some level that the US government has a consistent and indisputable track record of lying about the leaders of nations in geopolitically crucial strategic locations when they refuse to bow to the demands of US interests…

No matter how many Venezuelans you tell me you’ve talked to, how evil you tell me Maduro is, how awesome you tell me Trump is, or how bad you tell me socialism is, this will still be true. And you know that it is true. Stop compartmentalizing away from facts you know to be true and turn and face the reality of what’s going on here.

Since the coup of 2000 with the insane, disgusting neocon Zionist cabal the faux humanitarian aid has consisted of arms, bombs and crap.  The Trojan Hearse of shit sent to Venezuela to give cover for the arms sent to CIA backed “rebels” is disgusting.  Sending “Death Squad Elliot Abrams” to the UN to gin up support for a US backed war in Venezuela seems about right for this deadly cabal.  From Stephen Lendman:

Excerpt:

Dueling Russia/US SC Resolutions on Venezuela

Reportedly they’ll be introduced at a Thursday Security Council session, neither with a chance for adoption.  

The Trump regime resolution expresses phony “deep concern that the presidential elections of May 20, 2018 were neither free nor fair.” 

Fact: Whenever Venezuelan elections are held, international monitors call them scrupulously open, free and fair. The Trump regime resolution lied claiming otherwise.

It “calls for the immediate start of a political process leading to free, fair and credible presidential elections, with international electoral observation.”

Fact: All Venezuelan elections abide by this standard, including Maduro’s reelection by an overwhelming majority last May.

AP News quoted the above statements after seeing the draft US resolution. The neocon/CIA house organ Washington (Whore) Post added that the Trump regime seeks “ ‘the peaceful restoration of democracy’ in Venezuela (sic), free and fair presidential elections (sic), unhindered delivery of humanitarian aid to all people in need (sic),” expressing support for usurper in waiting Guaido, a traitor to his country, a figure with no legitimacy.

The Trump regime’s agenda is all about wanting Bolivarian social democracy eliminated, Venezuela transformed into a US client state under puppet rule, control gained over its oil, gas and other valued resources. There’s no ambiguity about what’s going on.

Venezuela’s electoral process is the world’s best, polar opposite the money-controlled sham US system – one-party rule with two extremist right wings, waging forever wars on humanity at home and abroad, wanting all nations subordinated to its interests, by brute force if other tactics fail.

Russia’s draft resolution slams attempts to illegally interfere in Venezuela’s internal affairs, expressing concern over US threats to topple Maduro forcefully.

Kremlin UN envoy Vassily Nebenzia called the US draft resolution “completely unbalanced,” expressing Russian “support (for) the territorial integrity, unity, (and) sovereignty of Venezuela.”

It calls for its people alone to resolve internal issues “with no hint of (foreign) military intervention” – by “dialogue (and) negotiation.”

According to the text seen by Sputnik News, it also “reaffirms the primary role of the Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in the initiation, organization, coordination and implementation of international assistance efforts and initiatives within its national territory, and recalls that such assistance should be provided with the consent of and on the basis of an appeal by the Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.”

On Wednesday, Maduro cited polling data showing 86% of Venezuelans support dialogue to resolve internal issues – 92% against US military intervention.  Venezuelan ruling authorities “have shown great strength,” Maduro added, stressing that his government has no intention of surrendering to US imperial interests.

Most Venezuelans oppose the Trump regime’s diabolical aims. “(W)e are real. We are the majority,” Maduro stressed.  Usurper in waiting Guaido said he intends returning to Venezuela. Last week, he illegally entered Colombia, violating his travel ban.

On Tuesday, Venezuelan Supreme Court Deputy Judge Juan Carlos Valdez said Guaido is “hiding from justice. What is happening with runaways, who are reentering the country and found by the authorities? They must be caught and sent to a prison…He may face up to 30 years in jail…”

What a joke, how do they keep a straight face?  Maybe Justin Raimondo is right and Trump is letting the Zionist neocons run wild to set them up for the big fail.  How much longer is the world going to allow these lunatics a stage?  Thank God Russia is there to stop these fools.  From Strategic Culture:

Excerpt:

Charging into Venezuela – Disastrous Overstretch for US

Are Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, National Security Adviser John Bolton and (farcically titled) Special Envoy for Restoring Democracy to Venezuela Elliott Abrams agents of influence for Russia and China? The idea has a lot more going for it than most of the ridiculous paranoia sweeping Washington over the past years.

If Russia and China really wanted to subvert the national security of the United States, they would seek to plunge Washington into a completely new, open-ended war with no practical resolution in sight on another continent far away from either of them where the United States itself had absolutely no major strategic interests at all, apart from fantasies of domination and greed.

Repeated congressional testimony over the past two years by Service chiefs confirms that these forces remain woefully aging and out of date despite record size defense budgets. This is testimony to the incompetence, corruption and sheer wastefulness of the military-industrial-congressional-complex (MICC).

Most of all, such a war would weaken the US armed forces and distract them from what is now supposed to be their primary strategic goal, as set out by the Trump administration itself of focusing on great power competition, primarily with Russia and China.

The sudden obsession with provoking a full-scale military confrontation with Venezuela does not fit this ambitious agenda: Instead it subverts it and guarantees US failure and defeat…

However, it is clear that Trump was sold a bill of goods and that Bolton and Pompeo are energetically pushing for mission creep to eventually insert major US military forces in Venezuela to topple legitimate President Nicolas Maduro and replace him with the farcical National Assembly Speaker Juan Guiado.

The US Fourth Fleet has been activated in the Caribbean and Bolton has been preparing to deploy thousands of US ground forces in neighboring Columbia – which incidentally continues to pose a far greater threat to US national security by its cocaine production and exports than Venezuela has ever done.

But why are they doing it? Venezuela’s vast oil supplies certainly make a tempting target. But previous US efforts at regime change, most notably in Iraq and Afghanistan have proven woefully incompetent in securing control of their victims’ strategic resources, much less organizing them for profit…

On the other hand, the recklessness and indeed plain stupidity of charging into Venezuela and risking opening up an endless war in a tropical jungle environment for the first time in half a century since Vietnam ought to be obvious to the National Security Adviser of the United States…

The US armed forces desperately need a time of peace and retrenchment such as they enjoyed under President Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s and President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s to rest, recover and re-equip themselves. But Bolton, with his usual explosive cocktail combination of recklessness, gambling and hard-charging ignorance is not giving them that.

Bolton and his neocon coconspirators have always narcissistically prided themselves on being strategic “geniuses” much as Wile E Coyote, the endlessly hapless comic buffoon of the classic Warner Brothers Road Runner cartoons always did. Instead, in reality they have always been catastrophic clowns who did not have a clue what they were stumbling into. Venezuela is repeating that classic nightmare pattern…

Bolton and his friends have become victims of their own rhetoric, drunk on their own mad delusions. They really believe that the United States has become an eternal hyper-power, virtually omnipotent and inexhaustible – able to project limitless power in every direction simultaneously.

Friedrich Nietzsche was right: Those who the gods would destroy, they first make mad.

What America and the world needs is a regime change in Washington, clear out the Senate, clear out the House and restore our government of representation of the American people.  Get rid of the “Stink Tanks”, get rid of the military industrial complex, get rid of the CIA controlled big media and let’s start over.  From Information ClearingHouse:

Excerpt:

Regime Change Is Urgently Needed In Washington

February 28, 2019 "Information Clearing House" -  I am surprised that no one else is saying it, writing it, shouting it at each and every corner:  It is not Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Iran that are in dire and crucial need of ‘regime change’. It is the United States of America, it is the entire European Union; in fact, the entire West.

And the situation is urgent.

The West has gone mad; it has gone so to speak, bananas; mental. And people there are too scared to even say it, to write about it.  One country after another is falling, being destroyed, antagonized, humiliated, impoverished. Entire continents are treated as if they were inhabited by irresponsible toddlers, who are being chased and disciplined by sadistic adults, with rulers and belts in their hands yelling with maniacal expressions on their faces: “Behave, do as we say, or else!”

It all would be truly comical, if it weren’t so depressing. But… nobody is laughing. People are shaking, sweating, crying, begging, puking, but they are not chuckling.  I see it everywhere where I work: in Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East.

But why?

It is because North American and European countries are actually seriously delivering their ultimatum: you either obey us, and prostrate yourself in front of us, or we will break you, violate you, and if everything else fails, we will kill your leaders and all of those who are standing in our way.

This is not really funny, is it? Especially considering that it is being done to almost all the countries in what is called Latin America, to many African and Middle Eastern nations, and to various states on the Asian continent.

And it is all done ‘professionally’, with great sadistic craftsmanship and rituals. No one has yet withstood ‘regime change’ tactics, not even the once mighty Soviet Union, nor tremendous China, or proud and determined Afghanistan.

Cuba, Venezuela, DPRK and Syria may be the only countries that are still standing. They resisted and mobilized all their resources in order to survive; and they have survived, but at a tremendous price…

People talk about ‘peace’. Many are begging the brigands to ‘to stop’, to ‘have mercy’, to show some compassion. But, neither Europe nor North America has ever shown any compassion, for long, terrible centuries. Look at the map of the beginning of the 20th century, for instance: the entire world was colonized, plundered and subjugated.

Now it is all moving in the same direction. If the West is not stopped, our planet may not survive at all. And let us be realistic: begging, logical arguments and goodwill will not stop Washington, Paris or London from plundering and enslaving. 

Is Venezuela going to be the last straw? And if not Venezuela, that is if Venezuela is allowed to fall, is it going to be Nicaragua, Cuba or Iran next? Is anything going to propel people into action?

Are we all just going to look passively how, the socialist Venezuela, a country which has already given so much to the world, Venezuela which managed to create beautiful visions and concepts for our humanity, is going to be burned to ashes, and then robbed of all of its dreams, its resources and of its freedom?..

This world is being brutalized and controlled by the fascist clique of Western nations. There is no ‘democracy’ left in this world, as there is near zero respect for international law in North American and European capitals…

One cannot negotiate with a group of countries which are already bathed in the blood of some 80% of the planet. If it was to happen, it would just be a mockery and it would simply humiliate everyone that is sincerely trying to stop the assassins.

Right now, Venezuela needs solidarity. It requires direct help, actions; not words. And so do many other countries.  Instead, it gets an endless avalanche of best wishes, as well as premature obituaries.  The Bolivarian Revolution has gotten plenty of colorful words. But what it urgently needs is volunteers, money, and internationalist brigades!

Who is going to face the Western spooks implanted into the Caracas and the Venezuelan borders with Colombia and Brazil? A few RT and TeleSur reporters, those true heroes, yes, but who else?  Only direct action can save Venezuela, and the world.  This is no time for debates.

This is worse, much worse than the late 1930’s.  The proverbial crocodile is here; its enormous ugly mouth open, ready to devour yet one more brilliant, proud country.  It is time to stick a big metal rod into its mouth. Now, immediately; before it gets too late.  Let us shout LONG LIVE VENEZUELA! But with our hands, muscles and purses, not just with our mouths.

And let us not be scared to declare: if anywhere, it is Washington where regime change is truly and urgently needed!

Amen, wake up America the neocons’ Trojan Hearse’s last stop will be here at home.  The fascist takeover began after 5 corrupt Zionist whores on the Supreme Court along with their cohorts in the Republican and Democratic Parties overthrew the American government and installed a CIA controlled government that still exists today. 

There will be no happy ending, there may not even be elections in the future.  The dollar is worthless, our treasury has been stripped and all the wealth has gone to fascist corporations and their Wall Street Banks.  Our infrastructure is that of a third world country. Our social safety net is on the chopping block and all to wage more wars.  Venezuela will be the new Vietnam War, is that what we voted for??

America needs a new Revolution and all we see on the horizon is a Trojan Hearse carrying the real Brutal Dictators of the West.  God Help Us!

The Devil goes down to the Caribbean, as the Mideast smolders in ruins the blood drenched neocons set sights on oil and resource rich Venezuela

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.