The US meddling in Venezuela’s political crisis continues
unabated. The latest episode being
the predictable and hypocritical violence created by the USAID delivery
at the Colombian border. The CIA, which is backing the National Assembly pretender
Juan Guaido, knew that an attempt to provide humanitarian aid against the
orders of President Maduro had a
high probability of fomenting violence.
Guaido and his supporters had no way of getting the aid into Venezuela--an
air drop within Venezuela's borders might have been more effective, but the optics of
such a clear violation of national sovereignty would, at this point, be unacceptable. Nevertheless, the meddlers got the intended result when
four protesters were killed by the Venezuelan military, which overwhelmingly supports
the elected president of their country.
Even the International Red Cross would not sanction the politicized aid,
criticizing the creation of a media spectacle. Given the deaths, cue statements from Hair Further about
“all options being on the table”, codewords for US military intervention. Make no mistake, Venezuela is no Grenada--its military is well-equipped and loyal to the Bolivarian revolution. It is all so disgusting, repetitious, and anti-democratic.
The United States has a history of interfering in Venezuela’s
affairs stretching back to 1895 when Secretary Richard Olney extended the 1822
Monroe Doctrine to include determining a boundary dispute between Venezuela and
British Guiana. Olney felt no
qualms about respecting other nation’s sovereignty when he said, “Today, the United States is
practically sovereign on this continent, and its fiat is law…” Thus, the empire and its southern protectorate
began. The United States has militarily invaded Latin American and Caribbean
countries 96 times, including 48 times in the 20th century. That total
constitutes only direct interventions and doesn’t include coups fomented
by the U.S., such as Guatemala in 1954 and Chile in 1973. Fast-forward to this
century when the CIA attempted to overthrow hugely popular Hugo Chavez in 2002,
a coup that lasted three days before fizzing out. An estimated $100 million has been poured into Venezuela to
subvert its elected government.
Venezuela is not long for the Grenada-Panama treatment, overseen by
the Reagan-era war criminal, Elliot Abrams, and extreme neo-conservative John Bolton.
Apologists for US intervention this time point to the
economic mess and human suffering caused by a corrupt economy, a near worthless
currency, and falling oil prices.
No mention is made of the crippling US sanctions against the national oil
company contributing to the economic crisis in a country heavily dependent on oil revenue. They claim the repeated election of President Nicolás Maduro
is illegitimate because the elections were not fair. No less a figure than former president Jimmy Carter said
Venezuelan elections are among the fairest in the world. A coalition of Canadian unions, church
leaders and other officials declared the last election of Maduro to be
“transparent, secure, democratic and orderly.” The fact is that the political
opposition lead by Juan Guaido boycotted the election they agreed to and then asked the UN not
to send observers. Juan Guaido
has never run for the presidency and is largely unknown to the public, but is known
to the CIA which funds his conservative Voluntad Popular party. No wonder Maduro calls him the “US
Puppet”.
At the base of the Venezuelan political system are communal councils, a participatory democracy, enshrined in its constitution that was amended
during Hugo Chavez’s tenure in office.
Before those, two political parties of racial elites and friends of the imperium
ruled for forty years. Torture,
corruption and assassinations were rife.
Eighty percent of the population made up of indigenous and African descent
lived in abject poverty. However, it is nothing new for the imperial United States to
exercise a hypocritical “fiat” against democratically elected governments its does not
like. Enshrined in its Declaration
of Independence, are the words “all men are created equal”. Perhaps that should
have read, “All landowning, white males are created equal”; that language would have been closer to the truth. So now Hair Further is president of a 'democracy' having lost the last popular referendum by 3
million votes. "Regime change" should begin at home. Tell the Very White House: hands off Venezuela!