It doesn’t really matter who is at the helm in the US, the foreign policy remains the same. Central/South America has been deemed within the sphere of influence of the United States and states resisting vassal status are punished for their crimes.
I’m guilty of not looking past the news coverage on this one was getting the impression that Maduro was not only suspect in this leadership of the country, but that his election was somehow illegitimate. However the electoral system in Venezuela is quite doing well and possesses a fair amount of resiliency, if we are to take the Carter Centre’s word for it:
“Of the 92 elections that we’ve monitored,” said former President Jimmy Carter, whose Carter Centre is a respected monitor of elections around the world, “I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.” By way of contrast, said Carter, the US election system, with its emphasis on campaign money, “is one of the worst”.
The picture presented to us by more mainstream media doesn’t seem to reflect the Carter Centre’s statement. There are other incongruities in coverage as well as evinced by much of what John Pilger writes in his article on Counterpunch.
“A war has been declared on Venezuela, of which the truth is “too difficult” to report.
It is too difficult to report the collapse of oil prices since 2014 as largely the result of criminal machinations by Wall Street. It is too difficult to report the blocking of Venezuela’s access to the US-dominated international financial system as sabotage. It is too difficult to report Washington’s “sanctions” against Venezuela, which have caused the loss of at least $6billion in Venezuela’s revenue since 2017, including $2billion worth of imported medicines, as illegal, or the Bank of England’s refusal to return Venezuela’s gold reserves as an act of piracy.
The former United Nations Rapporteur, Alfred de Zayas, has likened this to a “medieval siege” designed “to bring countries to their knees”. It is a criminal assault, he says. It is similar to that faced by Salvador Allende in 1970 when President Richard Nixon and his equivalent of John Bolton, Henry Kissinger, set out to “make the economy [of Chile] scream”. The long dark night of Pinochet followed.
The Guardian correspondent, Tom Phillips, has tweeted a picture of a cap on which the words in Spanish mean in local slang: “Make Venezuela fucking cool again.” The reporter as clown may be the final stage of much of mainstream journalism’s degeneration.
Should the CIA stooge Guaido and his white supremacists grab power, it will be the 68th overthrow of a sovereign government by the United States, most of them democracies. A fire sale of Venezuela’s utilities and mineral wealth will surely follow, along with the theft of the country’s oil, as outlined by John Bolton.
Under the last Washington controlled government in Caracas, poverty reached historic proportions. There was no healthcare for those could not pay. There was no universal education”
The situation in Venezuela is indeed looking grim. We are being misdirected (again) as to how and why events are unfolding as they are. We not forget the lessons of Chile (1974) and should be wary of our media coverage that is filtered through the ideological lens of American foreign policy directives.
8 comments
February 26, 2019 at 6:09 am
Bob Browning
This Piger piece is excellent. The CIA and corporate media are ramping up efforts to get public acceptance for this ruthless 20 year old project.
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February 26, 2019 at 8:18 am
Bill Malcolm
Dead on.
There have been at least four articles right here on ProgBlog since late last week from Canadian Dimension on Venezuela, most of them going into more detail than Pilger has done. They include two that detail Trudeau and Freeland’s clandestine setting up of the Lima Group which includes the right wing strongarm dictators of Central and South America, America’s toadies. So Trudeau is behind the takeover attempt of Venezuela. He handed over the group to Trump and Bolton.
The implication is that Canadian mining companies operating in Venezuela were highly disturbed by Chavez and Maduro’s policies. So, not unlike SNC-Lavalin today, our dear PM went to battle for corporate interests, but this time actively assisted in the interference in the affairs of a sovereign state. He has incorrectly called Maduro a dictator and his election illegitimate on numerous occasions, and our corporate media coverage has been 100% behind his statements. There has been a united front of fake news and utter horse manure.
Complicating the situation in Venezuela is the class/race divide. The white Spanish descent middle and old ruling classes are besides themselves at the Bolivarian revolution of Chavez and Maduro. The vast majority of mixed race and native population was treated like dirt until Chavez took over, when oil revenues were no longer used exclusively for the benefit of the Euro-Venezuelans. They were used instead to reduce poverty for the masses, which is why these two men got re-elected time and again.
The former rulers never diversified the oil economy; all manufacturing was foreign-owned as were the extractive industries. So when US sanctions took hold, the foreign companies left due to poor sales and many wealthy Venezuelans did as well because we all need toilet paper, one item running short. Now they bleat on cue for US, Canadian and European TV and press reporters and complain about the socialist dictators who took over Venezuela and “ruined it”. Ruined it for them anyway.
Yesterday, our Chief Foreign Dinglebat Freeland chaired a meeting of the Lima Group, studying how to really overthrow Maduro. That was on the “news” we get fed daily. So-called US humanitarian aid, and its refusal by Maduro, is a ploy to show him as a nutter who doesn’t care about his people, and how charitable we are in the West. The Red Cross is annoyed with the US attempts to usurp its role there. And so on. It’s classical attempt to overthrow a government and grab a country’s resources by slow-motion lies fed to a public who doesn’t care. That’s how the big boys get away with it.
Nobody’s claiming Chavez and Maduro were/are perfect, but they were legitimately elected, not by fake elections but real ones.
The details of this unfolding disaster are in those recent Canadian Dimension articles here on ProgBlog. I urge you to read them.
Meanwhile I retch at my government’s actions in this filthy game. I am both disgusted and ashamed. Liberal? My foot. Corporate neoliberal shills is what they are, and they lie to keep us all in the dark on Venezuela, while pretending they’re angels.
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February 26, 2019 at 5:03 pm
Jesus
Just be glad HRC isn’t president. She wanted war in Syria, a new Cold War with Russia.
Her and Obama spread war and terrorism across the Middle East and North Africa, simultaneously killing and arming the terrorists. Bombing weddings with million-dollar missiles to create more terrorists to kill with million-dollar missiles.
If she didn’t manage to bring nuclear Armageddon by now, she’d be making some move on Venezuela like how Obama overthrew the democratic government of Ukraine. A much more provocative action than Russia putting nukes in Cuba.
The American Deep State waged wars on socialism and then drugs beginning on 9/11, 1973. They used Latinos as guinea pigs in their neocon macroeconomic experiments and torture-chamber laboratories.
IMO, The Donald does not have the same interests as the Anglo Deep State which botched the creation of Israel, overthrew Iran in 1953 and Iraq 50 years later. He’s mopping up the war on terror and getting out of the wars. (All the Western jihadists fighting alongside ISIS now want back home.)
Notice The Donald threatened to wipe North Korea off the map. Managed to get China, Japan and South Korea on board in an alliance against the boy dictator – while simultaneously fighting a trade war with China and the rest of the world. (Which he won.) Now he wants to make Kim a hero by turning NK into an electronics super-power like SK. (Art of the Deal, baby!)
Also note that the filthy economic warfare Anglo oligarchs are waging against Venezuela, Euro oligarchs did the same to Greece when they voted to reject a Euro-debt prison. Shut down their banks and their economy. The Evil Empire is a vicious entity!
HRC would also have waged a war on “fake news.” Brought Orwellian cultural Marxism like you see in Britain and Australia. Plying kids into gender-bending surgery. Bringing trans-athletes like Hannah Mouncey to America.
(Now if you have a wicked sense of humor like I do, he/she/it makes for a very entertaining google image search!)
All and all, I think people should be grateful I brought The Donald to power. Trump is like democracy: the best of all worse alternatives – by far.
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February 26, 2019 at 8:00 pm
makagutu
I have mistrust for the Carter centre as neutral observers of elections.
One hardly gets any news critical of what the west is doing to Venezuela. It’s all blamed on socialism
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February 27, 2019 at 9:28 am
The Arbourist
@makagutu
Only a dirty socialist would say something like that!
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February 27, 2019 at 9:33 am
The Arbourist
@Jesus
*backs away slowly*… Err… Welcome to DWR. :>
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February 27, 2019 at 10:10 am
makagutu
I know.
Then someone will say socialism can’t work and forget to mention imperialism
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February 27, 2019 at 10:35 am
The Arbourist
@makagutu
The first system we need to criticize harshly is our own, capitalism. It is far from perfect and the resulting inequality and associated misery it creates should be dealt with before we start throwing stones at other political systems.
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