‘Sick & twisted’: US Senator Rubio tweets picture of Gaddafi’s murder as a threat to Maduro
Published time: 25 Feb, 2019 00:20
Edited time: 25 Feb, 2019 08:59
‘Sick & twisted’: US Senator Rubio tweets picture of Gaddafi’s murder as a threat to Maduro
US Sen. Marco Rubio at Colombia-Venezuela border, February 17, 2019. © Reuters / Edgard Garrido
449222
US Senator Marco Rubio has posted a picture of the brutal murder of late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in a less-than-subtle threat to Venezuela’s Maduro. Twitter blasted Rubio as a manic warmonger… who has extremely poor taste.
The two pictures –one showing Gaddafi while still in power, the other showing the Libyan leader being tortured minutes before his brutal murder– were posted by Sen. Rubio (R-FL) on Twitter without any caption. Yet, given his open calls for an armed insurrection in the Latin American country to depose President Nicolas Maduro, the message was clear.
Marco Rubio
✔
@marcorubio
· 21h
We can't show you everything!
We automatically hide photos that might contain sensitive content.
View image on TwitterView image on Twitter
WikiLeaks
✔
@wikileaks
Because nothing says human rights like gloating over a human being getting sodomized to death with a bayonet.
12.3K
3:35 PM - Feb 24, 2019
Twitter Ads info and privacy
3,028 people are talking about this
Openly threatening a head of a foreign country with a brutal death at the hands of US-propped militants was, apparently, just a tiny bit off: while a few Twitteratti supported Rubio's vision of Maduro's demise, the majority blasted the senator over an extreme lack of taste or decency.
View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter
Lizzie Phelan
@LizziePhelan
The Venezuelan opposition's most ardent cheerleader is a bloodthristy crackpot. For most of the peoples of the world this pic represents the destruction of a nation, slave auctions, civil war. For Rubio it's a gloating message 2 Venezuela. Toe the line or we'll do this to you too
40
2:18 PM - Feb 24, 2019
32 people are talking about this
Twitter Ads info and privacy
Anya Parampil
✔
@anyaparampil
.@marcorubio horrifically tweets images of revolutionary leader Muammar Gaddafi’s brutal execution at hands of US-backed jihadis in Libya just one day after the US failed to invade VZ under the pretext of humanitarian aid.
The Bolivarian Republic is resisting his sick plan.
Marco Rubio
✔
@marcorubio
We can't show you everything!
We automatically hide photos that might contain sensitive content.
View image on TwitterView image on Twitter
1,206
1:11 PM - Feb 24, 2019
Twitter Ads info and privacy
794 people are talking about this
Some argued that any account spewing warmongering propaganda at such a rate would likely be suspended – if it did not belong to a US Senator, of course. “Marco Rubio just posted a violent, graphic death threat. If any of the rest of us posted this, we'd be suspended for it,” journalist Bill Palmer tweeted.
Palmer Report
✔
@PalmerReport
Replying to @marcorubio
Marco Rubio just posted a violent, graphic death threat. If any of the rest of us posted this, we'd be suspended for it. https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/m ... guy/16225/ …
2,723
3:03 PM - Feb 24, 2019
Twitter Ads info and privacy
778 people are talking about this
Michael Tracey
✔
@mtracey
Marco Rubio's feed has become like a manic, paranoid, regime-change-demanding bot account. Would probably be investigated for suspicious activity by the Twitter authorities if he was not a US Senator pic.twitter.com/sTFfh7QQpZ
372
10:40 AM - Feb 24, 2019
Twitter Ads info and privacy
150 people are talking about this
Many noted that Libya is not the best example of the US bringing its democracy overseas, but arguably the worst one. With the slave trade there on the rise, the country is effectively fractured into several warring statelets, with gangs of armed ‘democrats’ fighting for control.
Ben Norton
✔
@BenjaminNorton
· 19h
Replying to @marcorubio
NATO worked with al-Qaeda-aligned extremists to overthrow the once prosperous, oil-rich nation of Libya and turn it into a failed state with open-air slave markets.
Imperialist sadist Rubio is now threatening Venezuela with the same death and destruction.https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/1 ... 08162?s=19 …
Ben Norton
✔
@BenjaminNorton
Muammar Qadhafi was brutally murdered (sodomized with a bayonet) by Salafi-jihadist NATO proxies (one of whom later blew himself up in Manchester, England, massacring dozens)
Rubio is openly threatening to do the same to the elected president of Venezuelahttps://fair.org/home/media-nato-regime-change-war-libya-slave-markets/ …
3,956
2:04 PM - Feb 24, 2019
Twitter Ads info and privacy
1,409 people are talking about this
Abby Martin
✔
@AbbyMartin
Marco Rubio just posted photos of Gaddafi being lynched in an open death threat to Maduro. Libya is now a slave state thanks to US. Fuck you Marco, you’re a deranged piece of shit who should immediately resign
Marco Rubio
✔
@marcorubio
We can't show you everything!
We automatically hide photos that might contain sensitive content.
View image on TwitterView image on Twitter
19.3K
2:10 PM - Feb 24, 2019
Twitter Ads info and privacy
7,581 people are talking about this
Apart from the pictures of Gaddafi, Rubio posted a similar split of Manuel Noriega – the de facto ruler of Panama in the 1980s. Once a valuable CIA asset who’d helped Washington in arming the Contras of Nicaragua, Noriega was ousted during the US invasion of the country. Needless to say, the invasion claimed many lives, while Noriega spent the rest of his life in prison.
https://www.rt.com/news/452329-rubio-ga ... ela-tweet/
Venezuela
Re: Venezuela
The collapse of shale oil/gas production and companies in the US,_ several oil sources indicating a negative number in new/old wells in 2019 so far and as we all know all the shale companies are beyond fixing in leveraging, any major “storm” on this industry will mean its complete collapse. Without this expensive oil/gas, the US would have to return big time to import oil.
‘Nobody Wants Venezuelan Oil’
Posted on 13 Days Ago by Sassy Sourstein
Just as people scoffed at the very idea of war for oil as Bush’s death machine revved to demolish Iraq, today the same conceit now rules in the discussion of Venezuela, where the United States is focusing its efforts on finally uprooting and death-squadding a genuine socialist movement.
The US has absolutely no interest in securing democracy or freedom in Venezuela or anywhere else. This comically transparent lie is aimed at the armies of TV news-consuming mental defectives; barely anyone else could keep a straight face at the very idea. One only need take one minute to see that the likes of Elliott Abrams is in charge of “restoring democracy” — yes, the same one who oversaw the butchering of hundreds of thousands of peasants and revolutionaries across Central America, not to mention involvement in the short-lived 2002 coup against Hugo Chávez.
If you’re reading this, you probably don’t require that much background, but just in case: In the aftermath of the inauguration of President Nicolás Maduro, certain US political figures began to ramp up the destabilization campaign against Venezuela. Led primarily by VP Mike Pence and Congressman Marco Rubio, the public effort included coercing Juan Guaidó, CIA-manufactured leader of the rival National Assembly, into proclaiming himself president in a speech he made on a highway overpass in Caracas. Dueling marches were held across the country but only the smaller, less frequent anti-Maduro protests were magnified in the imperial press. Several false news items surfaced to stoke global outrage at the chavista government, including a claim that the security services attempted to “kidnap” Guaidó and that Maduro barricaded an international highway from Colombia to prevent humanitarian food aid from reaching starving Venezuelans. This long con seems to have worked, in part: most Latin American and nearly all European governments have recognized Guaidó as president, along with US poodle Canada. Most Global North media consumers believe the sordid tales of Maduro’s mendacity.
My goal in this and hopefully subsequent posts will be to tackle some of the more persistent lies and exaggerations used to derail Western lefts’ solidarity with anti-imperialist states and movements, using Venezuela as a lens. In a social media landscape riddled with cops and bots, it can be difficult to keep your head above the sewage.
One common claim is that the US can’t be in it for oil because the US is oil independent. Below an example of how this plays out:
Screenshot 2019-02-11 at 1.01.07 PM
Screenshot 2019-02-11 at 1.06.07 PM
This is a perfect example of a collection of some popularly disseminated points and counterpoints on this theme. It starts with someone simply saying “they’re coming to take the oil.” Someone replies “Actually Russia and Cuba steal it.” The response is “Americans don’t do anything but shoot bullets and pillage wealth.”
-“And why do the Russians help Venezuela? They’re nice?”
–“Do the Russians steal it for buy it for a good price?”
-“Until now the US has bought most of it.”
–“Well they’ve tired of buying it, they want it as a gift.”
-Then when they realize facts aren’t in their favor, the evergreen: “Whatever you say. Live in Venezuela and then express an opinion.”
–“The US is not going to bring you more wealth, but to take it.”
-And then someone else (a Colombian supporter of that country’s own CIA-agent president) comes to finish with “Obama started fracking in the US, so the gringos produce enough for themselves.”
The absurdity of this is that US foreign policy isn’t run for the interests of the mass of US citizens and consumers, but for those of international corporations who own the levers of power in Washington. “War for oil” isn’t about running our cars, as if a military organization larger and more expensive than all others on earth combined by orders of magnitude was just waiting to be triggered into action by dwindling stocks of the gasoline that powers our Amazon deliveries. No, the US military is simply a tool used to scare and compel other countries into complete integration in our global neocolonial economy. Part of this is not just making sure they allow their oil to be pumped into the global market, but that the specific conduit through which this happens is Western oil corporations, preferably US ones, so that they capture more of the revenues than the country where the oil actually is. They overthrew Iran’s Mossadegh expressly for this reason. It’s about the profit rate of a small group of people and has nothing at all to do with the lives of the end users of the oil.
An even hotter corollary take to the above is that, actually, nobody even wants Venezuelan oil. Yeah. You spend long enough on Twitter and you’ll see everything. The argument is that the country’s heavier crude is more difficult to process than Saudi or North American oil and is “more trouble than it’s worth.”
Brian Payne
@dpgumby6
· Feb 8, 2019
Replying to @rhodeislander @mtracey
Colonization and eventual control of Venezuela's oil reserves by 2 vultures: Russia on the cheap and Trumpco by destabilization.
White Chocolate
@rhodeislander
The US doesn't need Venezuelan oil. You can thank fracking for that. We can get the same heavy, hard to refine crude cheaper and easier from Canada than Caracas.
5
9:29 AM - Feb 8, 2019
Twitter Ads info and privacy
See White Chocolate's other Tweets
“The US doesn’t need Venezuelan oil. You can thank fracking for that. We can get the same heavy, hard to refine crude cheaper and easier from Canada than Caracas.”
There’s a lot here. Possibly the most laughable is that a fresh fash regime in Venezuela would have the same tax rate as Canada. Or ANY tax rate that might apply to the likes of Chevron or Halliburton for that matter. But aside from that, it’s not necessary to go into the finer details of the oil business (as some of us unfortunately did in that thread) because this sort of antfuckery is part of how propaganda works. Focus on alleged mismanagement at PDVSA, politics at work, corruption, and oil infrastructure deterioration rates is the rightful concern only of the Venezuelan people. I don’t have to know ANYTHING about oil at all because I know how to read and what I read tells me, unequivocally, that actual existing US oil companies are still operating even now in Venezuela, in cooperation with the Venezuelan government. I think they know their own interests better than some amateur Twitter oil pundit.
Now. That these companies are still operating in Venezuela doesn’t mean they wouldn’t welcome a coup and regime change. More favorable conditions, free of the use of the proceeds for national development, would benefit their owners and investors. None of this has anything to do with the quality of Venezuelan oil, which has always been considered immensely profitable. In fact, their champion Sen. Marco Rubio made the argument — “saying the quiet part loud” — that refining this oil “supports great jobs in the Gulf Coast.” Rubio is also on record as being against the actual drilling of oil in that same Gulf; he’d rather reap the economic benefits of the oil industry for the US and leave the environmental problems associated with petroleum drilling for the subaltern. Nat. Security Adviser John Bolton openly admitted on Fox Business that “it will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.” If you can stomach it, watch Bolton on Fox News gaslight the universe goaded on by this piece of sentient plastic — while being very frank with his plans for all that oil.
If your appetite for grotesque personalities on television hasn’t been satisfied, I recommend you watch the Bloomberg clip featuring this utter clown, who despite dressing up like a character in The Far Side is an actual expert on commodities. He confirms that The Markets are looking forward to Venezuela going back to “the way things used to be” — that is, US oil companies drinking that heavy crude and pissing out dollars while the peasantry starved.
Embedded video
Adam H. Johnson
✔
@adamjohnsonNYC
Wall Street weirdos foaming at the mouth for Venezuela's resources is my shit, especially the part where they gloss over a coup or civil war as a potential "short term interruption"
1,236
1:05 AM - Feb 5, 2019
525 people are talking about this
Twitter Ads info and privacy
Despite this extreme difficulty in refining that stubborn Venezuelan crude, the revolution managed to make $1.3 TRILLION dollars in revenue from 1999-2013, which finance bros consider to have “vanished” due to their utter waste on “massive social spending.” In fact so large is the proportion of revenues used to directly benefit and uplift the poor of Venezuela that economists use a different set of metrics to determine PDVSA’s productivity because to the Venezuelan government, “profits” from the country’s natural resources aren’t a driver.
And what of Russia, or China for that matter? No doubt they each have their own reasons for supporting the legitimate president and being involved in various ways with PDVSA or other Venezuelan state-owned industries. Since these relationships benefit the Venezuelan people (via those “wasteful” social programs), they are at least far less exploitative than any possible arrangements under a coup-installed right-wing regime. That said, some governments may do things for reasons outside of immediate gain for either the officials involved or corporate backers or even the benefit of their own state-owned industries. A higher aim may be to rebalance global power away from US-dominated unipolarity. The concept of Internationalism is difficult for US Americans to grasp because it is part of our national religion that man only acts according to his own immediate self-interest. This teaches us to be suspicious of people acting in solidarity with others in worse-off positions — even, in the remarkable case of Cuba, when they barely had much to give.
On the other hand we know by the very nature of the United States, capitalism, and imperialism, that there is no way the most murderous people on the face of the planet are interested in the well-being of the Venezuelan people. We don’t have to know their hearts, just witness their actions. Imperialism seeks to corral all the world, every country, every person, into its plot to vacuum wealth from the poorest up to the richest. The particular motivations for a given intervention are different each time, among which the greed for oil wealth is just one. But if you got it, they want it. This is an imperialist operation, which means it is — must be — a war for oil.
Thanks to Tarzie for research and editing, as always, encouragement!
Also thanks to George Bell for research help.
Share this:
TwitterFacebook21Google
Related
What Strange Corruption
With 1 comment
The Agency
In "Aaron Bady"
Cheer Up Liberals: You're Still in Charge
With 10 comments
Venezuela
Post navigation
ON SYRIA: USE YOUR PRINCIPLES, IF YOU HAVE ANYWHAT STRANGE CORRUPTION
3 comments
Tarzie · 13 Days Ago
Reblogged this on The Rancid Honeytrap and commented:
Sassy’s back.
Like
Reply
Tarzie · 13 Days Ago
In ten years, more or less, the conventional wisdom will be that, yes, this disgusting coup attempt was about corporate interests, just as it is now in mainstream accounts of coups against Arbenze, Mossadegh and Allende. So it’s both remarkable and unutterably depressing that this shit has to be litigated every damn time, and particularly bizarre now, when Bolton and others are being so up front about what they’re getting up to. Putting anti-terrorism and its predecessor anti-communism behind us now as pretexts, the vampires are entering a new, more nakedly fascist phase, where they announce the theft outright, but with a shameless Robin Hood spin on it, where US and European corporations seize Venezuela’s wealth in the name of its people, who’ve been robbed by a demonic kleptocrat. I shudder at what they’ve got planned when even the fucking perennial dipshits roll their eyes at the Robin Hood bullshit. What’s left but outright, conquest free of all pretext?
Like
Reply
Meh · 11 Days Ago
I’ve never been one to miss a chance especially to kill two ants with the same stones… peak oil will come in fractions because no oil was made equal. The industry is having a difficult time with diesel because whilst they expand into shale oil, this lighter grade is suited for petrol not diesel. Peak diesel is therefore thought to have occurred in 2015.
Continued demand particularly from haulage (and I would add military vehicles) has meant heavy crude is being increasingly processed into diesel resulting in a lack of heavy crude, itself useful for other products like bitumen, asphalt and marine fuel. The problem is particularly acute for shipping and is an example of one of those rare ruling class disagreements no doubt, shipping vs road haulage. You may perhaps be unsurprised to learn that there are heavy oil shortages and be even less surprised to learn that the biggest reserves at least publicly declared are in a certain South American country.
https://cienflamingos.wordpress.com/201 ... uelan-oil/
‘Nobody Wants Venezuelan Oil’
Posted on 13 Days Ago by Sassy Sourstein
Just as people scoffed at the very idea of war for oil as Bush’s death machine revved to demolish Iraq, today the same conceit now rules in the discussion of Venezuela, where the United States is focusing its efforts on finally uprooting and death-squadding a genuine socialist movement.
The US has absolutely no interest in securing democracy or freedom in Venezuela or anywhere else. This comically transparent lie is aimed at the armies of TV news-consuming mental defectives; barely anyone else could keep a straight face at the very idea. One only need take one minute to see that the likes of Elliott Abrams is in charge of “restoring democracy” — yes, the same one who oversaw the butchering of hundreds of thousands of peasants and revolutionaries across Central America, not to mention involvement in the short-lived 2002 coup against Hugo Chávez.
If you’re reading this, you probably don’t require that much background, but just in case: In the aftermath of the inauguration of President Nicolás Maduro, certain US political figures began to ramp up the destabilization campaign against Venezuela. Led primarily by VP Mike Pence and Congressman Marco Rubio, the public effort included coercing Juan Guaidó, CIA-manufactured leader of the rival National Assembly, into proclaiming himself president in a speech he made on a highway overpass in Caracas. Dueling marches were held across the country but only the smaller, less frequent anti-Maduro protests were magnified in the imperial press. Several false news items surfaced to stoke global outrage at the chavista government, including a claim that the security services attempted to “kidnap” Guaidó and that Maduro barricaded an international highway from Colombia to prevent humanitarian food aid from reaching starving Venezuelans. This long con seems to have worked, in part: most Latin American and nearly all European governments have recognized Guaidó as president, along with US poodle Canada. Most Global North media consumers believe the sordid tales of Maduro’s mendacity.
My goal in this and hopefully subsequent posts will be to tackle some of the more persistent lies and exaggerations used to derail Western lefts’ solidarity with anti-imperialist states and movements, using Venezuela as a lens. In a social media landscape riddled with cops and bots, it can be difficult to keep your head above the sewage.
One common claim is that the US can’t be in it for oil because the US is oil independent. Below an example of how this plays out:
Screenshot 2019-02-11 at 1.01.07 PM
Screenshot 2019-02-11 at 1.06.07 PM
This is a perfect example of a collection of some popularly disseminated points and counterpoints on this theme. It starts with someone simply saying “they’re coming to take the oil.” Someone replies “Actually Russia and Cuba steal it.” The response is “Americans don’t do anything but shoot bullets and pillage wealth.”
-“And why do the Russians help Venezuela? They’re nice?”
–“Do the Russians steal it for buy it for a good price?”
-“Until now the US has bought most of it.”
–“Well they’ve tired of buying it, they want it as a gift.”
-Then when they realize facts aren’t in their favor, the evergreen: “Whatever you say. Live in Venezuela and then express an opinion.”
–“The US is not going to bring you more wealth, but to take it.”
-And then someone else (a Colombian supporter of that country’s own CIA-agent president) comes to finish with “Obama started fracking in the US, so the gringos produce enough for themselves.”
The absurdity of this is that US foreign policy isn’t run for the interests of the mass of US citizens and consumers, but for those of international corporations who own the levers of power in Washington. “War for oil” isn’t about running our cars, as if a military organization larger and more expensive than all others on earth combined by orders of magnitude was just waiting to be triggered into action by dwindling stocks of the gasoline that powers our Amazon deliveries. No, the US military is simply a tool used to scare and compel other countries into complete integration in our global neocolonial economy. Part of this is not just making sure they allow their oil to be pumped into the global market, but that the specific conduit through which this happens is Western oil corporations, preferably US ones, so that they capture more of the revenues than the country where the oil actually is. They overthrew Iran’s Mossadegh expressly for this reason. It’s about the profit rate of a small group of people and has nothing at all to do with the lives of the end users of the oil.
An even hotter corollary take to the above is that, actually, nobody even wants Venezuelan oil. Yeah. You spend long enough on Twitter and you’ll see everything. The argument is that the country’s heavier crude is more difficult to process than Saudi or North American oil and is “more trouble than it’s worth.”
Brian Payne
@dpgumby6
· Feb 8, 2019
Replying to @rhodeislander @mtracey
Colonization and eventual control of Venezuela's oil reserves by 2 vultures: Russia on the cheap and Trumpco by destabilization.
White Chocolate
@rhodeislander
The US doesn't need Venezuelan oil. You can thank fracking for that. We can get the same heavy, hard to refine crude cheaper and easier from Canada than Caracas.
5
9:29 AM - Feb 8, 2019
Twitter Ads info and privacy
See White Chocolate's other Tweets
“The US doesn’t need Venezuelan oil. You can thank fracking for that. We can get the same heavy, hard to refine crude cheaper and easier from Canada than Caracas.”
There’s a lot here. Possibly the most laughable is that a fresh fash regime in Venezuela would have the same tax rate as Canada. Or ANY tax rate that might apply to the likes of Chevron or Halliburton for that matter. But aside from that, it’s not necessary to go into the finer details of the oil business (as some of us unfortunately did in that thread) because this sort of antfuckery is part of how propaganda works. Focus on alleged mismanagement at PDVSA, politics at work, corruption, and oil infrastructure deterioration rates is the rightful concern only of the Venezuelan people. I don’t have to know ANYTHING about oil at all because I know how to read and what I read tells me, unequivocally, that actual existing US oil companies are still operating even now in Venezuela, in cooperation with the Venezuelan government. I think they know their own interests better than some amateur Twitter oil pundit.
Now. That these companies are still operating in Venezuela doesn’t mean they wouldn’t welcome a coup and regime change. More favorable conditions, free of the use of the proceeds for national development, would benefit their owners and investors. None of this has anything to do with the quality of Venezuelan oil, which has always been considered immensely profitable. In fact, their champion Sen. Marco Rubio made the argument — “saying the quiet part loud” — that refining this oil “supports great jobs in the Gulf Coast.” Rubio is also on record as being against the actual drilling of oil in that same Gulf; he’d rather reap the economic benefits of the oil industry for the US and leave the environmental problems associated with petroleum drilling for the subaltern. Nat. Security Adviser John Bolton openly admitted on Fox Business that “it will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.” If you can stomach it, watch Bolton on Fox News gaslight the universe goaded on by this piece of sentient plastic — while being very frank with his plans for all that oil.
If your appetite for grotesque personalities on television hasn’t been satisfied, I recommend you watch the Bloomberg clip featuring this utter clown, who despite dressing up like a character in The Far Side is an actual expert on commodities. He confirms that The Markets are looking forward to Venezuela going back to “the way things used to be” — that is, US oil companies drinking that heavy crude and pissing out dollars while the peasantry starved.
Embedded video
Adam H. Johnson
✔
@adamjohnsonNYC
Wall Street weirdos foaming at the mouth for Venezuela's resources is my shit, especially the part where they gloss over a coup or civil war as a potential "short term interruption"
1,236
1:05 AM - Feb 5, 2019
525 people are talking about this
Twitter Ads info and privacy
Despite this extreme difficulty in refining that stubborn Venezuelan crude, the revolution managed to make $1.3 TRILLION dollars in revenue from 1999-2013, which finance bros consider to have “vanished” due to their utter waste on “massive social spending.” In fact so large is the proportion of revenues used to directly benefit and uplift the poor of Venezuela that economists use a different set of metrics to determine PDVSA’s productivity because to the Venezuelan government, “profits” from the country’s natural resources aren’t a driver.
And what of Russia, or China for that matter? No doubt they each have their own reasons for supporting the legitimate president and being involved in various ways with PDVSA or other Venezuelan state-owned industries. Since these relationships benefit the Venezuelan people (via those “wasteful” social programs), they are at least far less exploitative than any possible arrangements under a coup-installed right-wing regime. That said, some governments may do things for reasons outside of immediate gain for either the officials involved or corporate backers or even the benefit of their own state-owned industries. A higher aim may be to rebalance global power away from US-dominated unipolarity. The concept of Internationalism is difficult for US Americans to grasp because it is part of our national religion that man only acts according to his own immediate self-interest. This teaches us to be suspicious of people acting in solidarity with others in worse-off positions — even, in the remarkable case of Cuba, when they barely had much to give.
On the other hand we know by the very nature of the United States, capitalism, and imperialism, that there is no way the most murderous people on the face of the planet are interested in the well-being of the Venezuelan people. We don’t have to know their hearts, just witness their actions. Imperialism seeks to corral all the world, every country, every person, into its plot to vacuum wealth from the poorest up to the richest. The particular motivations for a given intervention are different each time, among which the greed for oil wealth is just one. But if you got it, they want it. This is an imperialist operation, which means it is — must be — a war for oil.
Thanks to Tarzie for research and editing, as always, encouragement!
Also thanks to George Bell for research help.
Share this:
TwitterFacebook21Google
Related
What Strange Corruption
With 1 comment
The Agency
In "Aaron Bady"
Cheer Up Liberals: You're Still in Charge
With 10 comments
Venezuela
Post navigation
ON SYRIA: USE YOUR PRINCIPLES, IF YOU HAVE ANYWHAT STRANGE CORRUPTION
3 comments
Tarzie · 13 Days Ago
Reblogged this on The Rancid Honeytrap and commented:
Sassy’s back.
Like
Reply
Tarzie · 13 Days Ago
In ten years, more or less, the conventional wisdom will be that, yes, this disgusting coup attempt was about corporate interests, just as it is now in mainstream accounts of coups against Arbenze, Mossadegh and Allende. So it’s both remarkable and unutterably depressing that this shit has to be litigated every damn time, and particularly bizarre now, when Bolton and others are being so up front about what they’re getting up to. Putting anti-terrorism and its predecessor anti-communism behind us now as pretexts, the vampires are entering a new, more nakedly fascist phase, where they announce the theft outright, but with a shameless Robin Hood spin on it, where US and European corporations seize Venezuela’s wealth in the name of its people, who’ve been robbed by a demonic kleptocrat. I shudder at what they’ve got planned when even the fucking perennial dipshits roll their eyes at the Robin Hood bullshit. What’s left but outright, conquest free of all pretext?
Like
Reply
Meh · 11 Days Ago
I’ve never been one to miss a chance especially to kill two ants with the same stones… peak oil will come in fractions because no oil was made equal. The industry is having a difficult time with diesel because whilst they expand into shale oil, this lighter grade is suited for petrol not diesel. Peak diesel is therefore thought to have occurred in 2015.
Continued demand particularly from haulage (and I would add military vehicles) has meant heavy crude is being increasingly processed into diesel resulting in a lack of heavy crude, itself useful for other products like bitumen, asphalt and marine fuel. The problem is particularly acute for shipping and is an example of one of those rare ruling class disagreements no doubt, shipping vs road haulage. You may perhaps be unsurprised to learn that there are heavy oil shortages and be even less surprised to learn that the biggest reserves at least publicly declared are in a certain South American country.
https://cienflamingos.wordpress.com/201 ... uelan-oil/
Re: Venezuela
Dispatch from Venezuela: the government’s massive food distribution apparatus
By Gloria La RivaFeb 25, 2019
629
Dispatch from Venezuela: the government’s massive food distribution apparatus
Volunteers pack food at a CLAP food distribution center for the elderly and disabled who need delivery to their homes. Antímano neighborhood on the outskirts of Caracas, Feb. 16, 2019. Gloria La Riva, Liberation photo
Editor’s Note: this article was written on Feb. 22 as the author, Gloria La Riva, made her way to the Colombian border crossing, to observe the standoff there.
A visit to any social project, walking the streets, seeing Venezuela with one’s own eyes, shatters the demonized images that the U.S. government and media are projecting of the Bolivarian Revolution.
Outrageous lies against the government of President Nicolas Maduro are being published or broadcast on a daily basis by the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, etc., to paint a picture of “humanitarian crisis.” Their role is to justify the U.S. aggression.
Gladys, a woman of retired age recognized me and stopped me in the street yesterday afternoon. I had been a guest on one of the most popular national TV morning shows, speaking of the anti-war efforts in the United States in defense of Venezuela.
She said emphatically, “Please tell the truth so they hear it in the media over there. Tell the truth. We are not starving. Yes, it is true, we have shortages, but the fault is of the United States that has restricted us so. There have been so many lies about us.”
She added, “Even my daughter who lives in Spain called me and said, ‘Mama how many dead people are there?’ That was so ridiculous, I had to hang up on her.”
This battering ram of false propaganda hides a more insidious truth: The U.S. government is the biggest reason for the shortages, with the strangling sanctions it has imposed. Major Venezuelan and U.S. corporations have engaged in a concerted production, an act of war, and in this war the attacks are increasing daily.
This week a medical shipment from Qatar paid for by the Maduro government, was seized by Spain on its way to Venezuela and returned to Qatar.
The seizure of Venezuela’s CITGO property in the U.S. alone will cost the country over $7 billion. The country’s bank accounts are frozen, the Bank of England refuses to release Venezuela’s gold.
Under such conditions, other governments would have collapsed long ago.
Resistance and international solidarity
The government of President Nicolas Maduro has gone into overdrive to help the population resist the economic war, by expanding the scope and reach of the historic missions begun by the revolution’s leader Hugo Chavez.
This expansion didn’t happen overnight. It has been unfolding in the last three years, although certainly at an accelerated pace in recent months.
Education, healthcare, housing, and food sustenance are the pillars of Venezuela’s development towards socializing larger sections of the economy.
Despite scenes of empty shelves of U.S. television, there is not a scarcity of food in Venezuela. Private supermarkets and pharmacies are chock full of products. The problem is that they are largely inaccessible. The problem is the sky-high prices in private markets. A chicken costs 10,000 Bolivares (Bs). while the minimum wage is 18,000 bs.
Vegetable and fruit stands abound on the sidewalks. Most are run by people with limited means. Those prices are much more affordable.
Three years ago, Maduro launched the CLAP program to provide a vital supply of food to six million families, through a system of community organization, census and distribution.
One neighbor in a major housing community, Carmen Requena, showed me the latest CLAP monthly box she received. An architect, she lives alone. Her box contained six pounds of rice, six pounds of black beans, two pounds of lentils, two liter bottles of oil, two bags of milk, 2.2 pounds of sugar, 10 pounds of corn flour, the essential ingredients of arepas, mayonnaise, catsup, two cans of tuna fish. The total cost 500 Bs. The official rate of exchange is 3,000 Bs per 1 USD.
CLAP supplies include chicken, meat, and 36 eggs per month. Instead of 10,000 Bs for a chicken in the private market, the CLAP cost for all the added animal protein is 500 Bs.
CLAP is not just a simple delivery from a truck. There is a high level of community organization, also called CLAPs, within the Communal Councils (consejo comunal). The CLAP coordinator is elected in the community, like all responsible position of the councils.
I attended an evening CLAP meeting in the Caracas parish of Antímano of three CLAPs in which 207 families take part. All the families there are covered, 65,000. The coordinators and families were working closely together to make sure the numbers were exact. And this was in the dark in a schoolyard, each group using the light of a cell phone. The lack of light didn’t dampen their spirit.
The parish census is part of a citywide survey in all of Caracas to assure the exact number of recipients. After completion the CLAPs will be delivered every 15 days instead of monthly, and it is being applied nationally.
As Diosdado Cabello, Vice president of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, PSUV, and President of the National Constituent Assembly, said about the U.S. demand that its military rations of 70 tons of “aid” be accepted by Venezuela: “It is shameful that the U.S. says they want to bring 70 tons, when just in the Andean region alone, we deliver directly 12,000 tons of food. It is a media show.”
Assuring rice supply with expropriation, Vietnamese solidarity
Riding a bus with Venezuelans to Táchira to counter the U.S. Trojan horse operation, we pass immense fields of rice, a large agricultural complex and silos of rice storage.
Fernando Avila explains, “when the Mari company that produces rice began to suppress its own rice production in league with the opposition, the state took control of the factory by the designation of necessity. It is very high quality and now that rice is being used in the CLAP deliveries.”
Yesterday on TV with a team of Vietnamese agronomist and diplomats present, both countries announced a major aggressment to help Venezuela grow rice on a self-sustaining basis.
Russia ships medicine, other countries to help also
Maduro has made clear that Venezuela has the money to buy medicines that the country needs. But again, the purchases are being blocked by Washington’s dictates. Venezuelan government bank accounts and the seizure of the country’s oil reserves in the U.S. are a deliberate weapon to turn Venezuela into an impoverished country.
President Maduro announced on Feb 21 that a shipment from Russia had just arrived of 7.5 tons of essential medicines for cancer, diabetes, and other illnesses. It is part of Russia’s shipments of 300 tons of medicines and equipment. Despite its hostility to the Bolivarian Revolution, the European Union agreed to send medicines through the UN as well. More has recently arrived from China, Cuba and others.
Maduro explained: “Every week in a permanent way the medicines are coming. Who pays? The Venezuelan government. We are not beggars. We are paying for all our obligations. But how criminal it is that the U.S. imperialist government that is blocking our medicines. Trump is violating the human rights of the Venezuelan people when he blocks the entry of medicine.”
One woman I became friend with on the bus on our way to Táchira, Liuska said, “It is more than just our oil the U.S. wants. They are attacking us because of our effort to make a new society.”
https://www.liberationnews.org/dispatch ... rationnews
Not much good to say about PLS, Trot-ish & a disorganized mess(no party line discernible) but this pdf flyer option of this article is a Good Idea.
https://flyer-generator.herokuapp.com/? ... 77410/data
By Gloria La RivaFeb 25, 2019
629
Dispatch from Venezuela: the government’s massive food distribution apparatus
Volunteers pack food at a CLAP food distribution center for the elderly and disabled who need delivery to their homes. Antímano neighborhood on the outskirts of Caracas, Feb. 16, 2019. Gloria La Riva, Liberation photo
Editor’s Note: this article was written on Feb. 22 as the author, Gloria La Riva, made her way to the Colombian border crossing, to observe the standoff there.
A visit to any social project, walking the streets, seeing Venezuela with one’s own eyes, shatters the demonized images that the U.S. government and media are projecting of the Bolivarian Revolution.
Outrageous lies against the government of President Nicolas Maduro are being published or broadcast on a daily basis by the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, etc., to paint a picture of “humanitarian crisis.” Their role is to justify the U.S. aggression.
Gladys, a woman of retired age recognized me and stopped me in the street yesterday afternoon. I had been a guest on one of the most popular national TV morning shows, speaking of the anti-war efforts in the United States in defense of Venezuela.
She said emphatically, “Please tell the truth so they hear it in the media over there. Tell the truth. We are not starving. Yes, it is true, we have shortages, but the fault is of the United States that has restricted us so. There have been so many lies about us.”
She added, “Even my daughter who lives in Spain called me and said, ‘Mama how many dead people are there?’ That was so ridiculous, I had to hang up on her.”
This battering ram of false propaganda hides a more insidious truth: The U.S. government is the biggest reason for the shortages, with the strangling sanctions it has imposed. Major Venezuelan and U.S. corporations have engaged in a concerted production, an act of war, and in this war the attacks are increasing daily.
This week a medical shipment from Qatar paid for by the Maduro government, was seized by Spain on its way to Venezuela and returned to Qatar.
The seizure of Venezuela’s CITGO property in the U.S. alone will cost the country over $7 billion. The country’s bank accounts are frozen, the Bank of England refuses to release Venezuela’s gold.
Under such conditions, other governments would have collapsed long ago.
Resistance and international solidarity
The government of President Nicolas Maduro has gone into overdrive to help the population resist the economic war, by expanding the scope and reach of the historic missions begun by the revolution’s leader Hugo Chavez.
This expansion didn’t happen overnight. It has been unfolding in the last three years, although certainly at an accelerated pace in recent months.
Education, healthcare, housing, and food sustenance are the pillars of Venezuela’s development towards socializing larger sections of the economy.
Despite scenes of empty shelves of U.S. television, there is not a scarcity of food in Venezuela. Private supermarkets and pharmacies are chock full of products. The problem is that they are largely inaccessible. The problem is the sky-high prices in private markets. A chicken costs 10,000 Bolivares (Bs). while the minimum wage is 18,000 bs.
Vegetable and fruit stands abound on the sidewalks. Most are run by people with limited means. Those prices are much more affordable.
Three years ago, Maduro launched the CLAP program to provide a vital supply of food to six million families, through a system of community organization, census and distribution.
One neighbor in a major housing community, Carmen Requena, showed me the latest CLAP monthly box she received. An architect, she lives alone. Her box contained six pounds of rice, six pounds of black beans, two pounds of lentils, two liter bottles of oil, two bags of milk, 2.2 pounds of sugar, 10 pounds of corn flour, the essential ingredients of arepas, mayonnaise, catsup, two cans of tuna fish. The total cost 500 Bs. The official rate of exchange is 3,000 Bs per 1 USD.
CLAP supplies include chicken, meat, and 36 eggs per month. Instead of 10,000 Bs for a chicken in the private market, the CLAP cost for all the added animal protein is 500 Bs.
CLAP is not just a simple delivery from a truck. There is a high level of community organization, also called CLAPs, within the Communal Councils (consejo comunal). The CLAP coordinator is elected in the community, like all responsible position of the councils.
I attended an evening CLAP meeting in the Caracas parish of Antímano of three CLAPs in which 207 families take part. All the families there are covered, 65,000. The coordinators and families were working closely together to make sure the numbers were exact. And this was in the dark in a schoolyard, each group using the light of a cell phone. The lack of light didn’t dampen their spirit.
The parish census is part of a citywide survey in all of Caracas to assure the exact number of recipients. After completion the CLAPs will be delivered every 15 days instead of monthly, and it is being applied nationally.
As Diosdado Cabello, Vice president of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, PSUV, and President of the National Constituent Assembly, said about the U.S. demand that its military rations of 70 tons of “aid” be accepted by Venezuela: “It is shameful that the U.S. says they want to bring 70 tons, when just in the Andean region alone, we deliver directly 12,000 tons of food. It is a media show.”
Assuring rice supply with expropriation, Vietnamese solidarity
Riding a bus with Venezuelans to Táchira to counter the U.S. Trojan horse operation, we pass immense fields of rice, a large agricultural complex and silos of rice storage.
Fernando Avila explains, “when the Mari company that produces rice began to suppress its own rice production in league with the opposition, the state took control of the factory by the designation of necessity. It is very high quality and now that rice is being used in the CLAP deliveries.”
Yesterday on TV with a team of Vietnamese agronomist and diplomats present, both countries announced a major aggressment to help Venezuela grow rice on a self-sustaining basis.
Russia ships medicine, other countries to help also
Maduro has made clear that Venezuela has the money to buy medicines that the country needs. But again, the purchases are being blocked by Washington’s dictates. Venezuelan government bank accounts and the seizure of the country’s oil reserves in the U.S. are a deliberate weapon to turn Venezuela into an impoverished country.
President Maduro announced on Feb 21 that a shipment from Russia had just arrived of 7.5 tons of essential medicines for cancer, diabetes, and other illnesses. It is part of Russia’s shipments of 300 tons of medicines and equipment. Despite its hostility to the Bolivarian Revolution, the European Union agreed to send medicines through the UN as well. More has recently arrived from China, Cuba and others.
Maduro explained: “Every week in a permanent way the medicines are coming. Who pays? The Venezuelan government. We are not beggars. We are paying for all our obligations. But how criminal it is that the U.S. imperialist government that is blocking our medicines. Trump is violating the human rights of the Venezuelan people when he blocks the entry of medicine.”
One woman I became friend with on the bus on our way to Táchira, Liuska said, “It is more than just our oil the U.S. wants. They are attacking us because of our effort to make a new society.”
https://www.liberationnews.org/dispatch ... rationnews
Not much good to say about PLS, Trot-ish & a disorganized mess(no party line discernible) but this pdf flyer option of this article is a Good Idea.
https://flyer-generator.herokuapp.com/? ... 77410/data
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Venezuela
Venezuela: 23 February – the day they did not pass
Jorge Martin 24 February 2019
Photo: CBRZ Venezuela
So, 23 February came and went. This was the day that had been billed by the US and its local puppets as D-Day, when "humanitarian aid" was supposed to enter the country against the will of the evil Maduro, something which, as even the BBC correspondent admitted, had little to do with aid and everything to do with defying the authority of President Maduro.
In his madness, Guaidó ("White Dog" as Venezuelans call him) had addressed himself to the Venezuelan Armed Forces, giving himself the title of "commander-in-chief"! What next? Pope? Nobel Prize winner?
Events started on Friday 22nd with Branson's concert at the Tienditas bridge on the Venezuela-Colombia border. Yes, this is the bridge that Marco Rubio claimed had been blocked by the "Maduro regime", even though the bridge had never been actually inaugurated nor opened to traffic. The media, of course, repeated this lie ad nauseam, with only CBC bothering to issue a retraction. Branson's "Live Aid" was supposed to attract half a million people, but in the end it was a rather paltry affair, with 20,000 in attendance maximum.
Artists who have never raised even a little finger for the poor and those subject to human rights violations in their own countries rallied to help the poor Venezuelans, hundreds of thousands of whom are supposedly about to die if aid doesn't arrive, flown in by the US Army, according to Guaidó.
Already, on Friday, there was a fatal incident, which the world's media circus immediately latched onto. In an armed clash in Kumarakapay, Bolivar state, one or perhaps two Pemón were killed. The capitalist media immediately ran the headline: "two dead as Maduro opens fire on aid convoy", or words to that effect. A straight lie. CBC in Canada even talked of the incident having involved tanks! What really happened is not completely clear yet, but what we know is that some Pemón people from the local town (which is 80 km away from the Brazilian border) attempted to stop a convoy of buses (not tanks) from the National Guard on their way to the border. In the standoff, two were killed, the opposition claims from National Guard fire.
Later on, Guaidó claimed that a truck of aid had crossed the border from Brazil. This proved to be another straight lie. Guaidó and his minders, who had all gathered in Cúcuta (not Cucutá, as foreign journalists call it), was desperate to show some sign of success in a day which didn't go according to plan.
The gathering at Cúcuta was impressive. The Chilean President Piñera (and admirer of General Pinochet), OAS secretary general Almagro, convicted perjurer and human rights abuser Elliot Abrams, Miami Cuban mafia boss Marco Rúbio... they were all there to pile on the pressure and even, perhaps, for a picture opportunity at the fall of a dictator. They were disappointed, and not only with the "artists" Branson had hired.
On Friday they brought out a high profile "defection", that of "Pollo" (the chicken) Carvajal: a former, high-ranking military and intelligence officer. The small details that the New York Times interview didn't tell you are that he had already joined the opposition ranks in August 2017, so this was not really a defection at all, and secondly, he has been accused by the DEA and the Treasury of all sorts of crimes (narcotrafficking, collaboration with the FARC, being an agent of Hezbollah) and that this is likely to be his motivation now in accusing Venezuelan government officials of those same things.
The truth is that the key element in this coup attempt, a fracture in the Armed Forces, has not materialised, and Guaidó (despite his delusions of grandeur), is not a president, but rather an opposition deputy (as even CNN and the BBC call him these days).
So desperate was Guaidó to be in on the action that he crossed the border, illegally, and attended Branson's recital, where he was given a hero's welcome. Perhaps Colombian President Duque was a bit worried that Guaidó, on seeing the crowd, would decide to proclaim himself president... of Colombia! The problem of Trump's "president in charge" will be now that the border has been closed and he has therefore become a "president in exile", or perhaps that was his elegant way of abandoning a plot that was not going according to plan.
The attempt to push the "aid" through the border was not successful, to the disappointment of the gathered dignitaries. In the morning, three Venezuelan National Guards commandeered two armoured vehicles and rammed them against the fences on one of the border bridges. They injured a female police officer and a Chilean journalist. They jumped out of the vehicles and ran for the Colombian border, where Venezuelan opposition politicians welcomed them.
One of the politicians had been released from jail as part of attempts by the Maduro government to appease the opposition, despite having been charged with violent rioting. That tells you all you need to know about attempts to mollify the opposition. In the end, the three national guards happened to consist of one who worked in the kitchen and two others with admin positions. Hardly a full-blown military coup, then.
Later in the day, we saw images of Guaidó on the side of an articulated lorry carrying USAID parcels. He made a heroic pose for the cameras, but as the lorry convoy approached the border crossing he disappeared quietly, leaving the actual heroic job of going through police lines to his followers. They did try, but a few tear gas canisters and rubber bullets were all that was required to disperse this mob.
As well as the National Guard, also protecting the border were hundreds of civilians who had arrived from different parts of the country, including a contingent from the Bolivar Zamora Revolutionary Current from Apure with their Hugo Chavez Peoples Defence Brigades.
Frustrated at their lack of progress and inability to break through police lines, opposition supporters set fire to one of the aid lorries. It seems aid was not so precious after all! Of course, now they are trying to blame the Venezuelan border guards for the burning of the lorry. Aerial footage shows how guards were at a distance from the lorry and close-up pictures show Venezuelan opposition supporters setting it on fire. Don't expect fair reporting of this incident either.
In total, throughout the day, a dozen Venezuelan National Guards and crossed the border. The Colombian foreign affairs minister claims it was 60, but we can take that claim with a pinch of salt.
The main balance of the day can be found in this CNN Spanish subheading: "la entrega no se logró" ("the delivery failed"). In fact, in their morning press conference, the assembled gang already had doubts and announced a further meeting on Monday where they would impose more sanctions.
Meanwhile, in Caracas, a large Chavista march took place to reject imperialist intervention.
This was a sizeable demonstration, proving how the threat of imperialism is provoking a counter-reaction in which, even many who are disillusioned with or critical of Maduro, are closing ranks against US aggression (watch this PBS report to get an idea of this). At the rally, Maduro announced he was breaking all diplomatic relations with Colombia.
The NY Times correspondent at the border summed up the day with these words: "Feeling like the momentum is getting lost on the bridge. The rally feel of yesterday is gone and the bridge looks more like a press conference with frustrated regional leaders."
Today imperialism did not achieve its aims, and that's a victory for our side.
https://www.marxist.com/venezela-februa ... t-pass.htm
Screen shots at link
Jorge Martin 24 February 2019
Photo: CBRZ Venezuela
So, 23 February came and went. This was the day that had been billed by the US and its local puppets as D-Day, when "humanitarian aid" was supposed to enter the country against the will of the evil Maduro, something which, as even the BBC correspondent admitted, had little to do with aid and everything to do with defying the authority of President Maduro.
In his madness, Guaidó ("White Dog" as Venezuelans call him) had addressed himself to the Venezuelan Armed Forces, giving himself the title of "commander-in-chief"! What next? Pope? Nobel Prize winner?
Events started on Friday 22nd with Branson's concert at the Tienditas bridge on the Venezuela-Colombia border. Yes, this is the bridge that Marco Rubio claimed had been blocked by the "Maduro regime", even though the bridge had never been actually inaugurated nor opened to traffic. The media, of course, repeated this lie ad nauseam, with only CBC bothering to issue a retraction. Branson's "Live Aid" was supposed to attract half a million people, but in the end it was a rather paltry affair, with 20,000 in attendance maximum.
Artists who have never raised even a little finger for the poor and those subject to human rights violations in their own countries rallied to help the poor Venezuelans, hundreds of thousands of whom are supposedly about to die if aid doesn't arrive, flown in by the US Army, according to Guaidó.
Already, on Friday, there was a fatal incident, which the world's media circus immediately latched onto. In an armed clash in Kumarakapay, Bolivar state, one or perhaps two Pemón were killed. The capitalist media immediately ran the headline: "two dead as Maduro opens fire on aid convoy", or words to that effect. A straight lie. CBC in Canada even talked of the incident having involved tanks! What really happened is not completely clear yet, but what we know is that some Pemón people from the local town (which is 80 km away from the Brazilian border) attempted to stop a convoy of buses (not tanks) from the National Guard on their way to the border. In the standoff, two were killed, the opposition claims from National Guard fire.
Later on, Guaidó claimed that a truck of aid had crossed the border from Brazil. This proved to be another straight lie. Guaidó and his minders, who had all gathered in Cúcuta (not Cucutá, as foreign journalists call it), was desperate to show some sign of success in a day which didn't go according to plan.
The gathering at Cúcuta was impressive. The Chilean President Piñera (and admirer of General Pinochet), OAS secretary general Almagro, convicted perjurer and human rights abuser Elliot Abrams, Miami Cuban mafia boss Marco Rúbio... they were all there to pile on the pressure and even, perhaps, for a picture opportunity at the fall of a dictator. They were disappointed, and not only with the "artists" Branson had hired.
On Friday they brought out a high profile "defection", that of "Pollo" (the chicken) Carvajal: a former, high-ranking military and intelligence officer. The small details that the New York Times interview didn't tell you are that he had already joined the opposition ranks in August 2017, so this was not really a defection at all, and secondly, he has been accused by the DEA and the Treasury of all sorts of crimes (narcotrafficking, collaboration with the FARC, being an agent of Hezbollah) and that this is likely to be his motivation now in accusing Venezuelan government officials of those same things.
The truth is that the key element in this coup attempt, a fracture in the Armed Forces, has not materialised, and Guaidó (despite his delusions of grandeur), is not a president, but rather an opposition deputy (as even CNN and the BBC call him these days).
So desperate was Guaidó to be in on the action that he crossed the border, illegally, and attended Branson's recital, where he was given a hero's welcome. Perhaps Colombian President Duque was a bit worried that Guaidó, on seeing the crowd, would decide to proclaim himself president... of Colombia! The problem of Trump's "president in charge" will be now that the border has been closed and he has therefore become a "president in exile", or perhaps that was his elegant way of abandoning a plot that was not going according to plan.
The attempt to push the "aid" through the border was not successful, to the disappointment of the gathered dignitaries. In the morning, three Venezuelan National Guards commandeered two armoured vehicles and rammed them against the fences on one of the border bridges. They injured a female police officer and a Chilean journalist. They jumped out of the vehicles and ran for the Colombian border, where Venezuelan opposition politicians welcomed them.
One of the politicians had been released from jail as part of attempts by the Maduro government to appease the opposition, despite having been charged with violent rioting. That tells you all you need to know about attempts to mollify the opposition. In the end, the three national guards happened to consist of one who worked in the kitchen and two others with admin positions. Hardly a full-blown military coup, then.
Later in the day, we saw images of Guaidó on the side of an articulated lorry carrying USAID parcels. He made a heroic pose for the cameras, but as the lorry convoy approached the border crossing he disappeared quietly, leaving the actual heroic job of going through police lines to his followers. They did try, but a few tear gas canisters and rubber bullets were all that was required to disperse this mob.
As well as the National Guard, also protecting the border were hundreds of civilians who had arrived from different parts of the country, including a contingent from the Bolivar Zamora Revolutionary Current from Apure with their Hugo Chavez Peoples Defence Brigades.
Frustrated at their lack of progress and inability to break through police lines, opposition supporters set fire to one of the aid lorries. It seems aid was not so precious after all! Of course, now they are trying to blame the Venezuelan border guards for the burning of the lorry. Aerial footage shows how guards were at a distance from the lorry and close-up pictures show Venezuelan opposition supporters setting it on fire. Don't expect fair reporting of this incident either.
In total, throughout the day, a dozen Venezuelan National Guards and crossed the border. The Colombian foreign affairs minister claims it was 60, but we can take that claim with a pinch of salt.
The main balance of the day can be found in this CNN Spanish subheading: "la entrega no se logró" ("the delivery failed"). In fact, in their morning press conference, the assembled gang already had doubts and announced a further meeting on Monday where they would impose more sanctions.
Meanwhile, in Caracas, a large Chavista march took place to reject imperialist intervention.
This was a sizeable demonstration, proving how the threat of imperialism is provoking a counter-reaction in which, even many who are disillusioned with or critical of Maduro, are closing ranks against US aggression (watch this PBS report to get an idea of this). At the rally, Maduro announced he was breaking all diplomatic relations with Colombia.
The NY Times correspondent at the border summed up the day with these words: "Feeling like the momentum is getting lost on the bridge. The rally feel of yesterday is gone and the bridge looks more like a press conference with frustrated regional leaders."
Today imperialism did not achieve its aims, and that's a victory for our side.
https://www.marxist.com/venezela-februa ... t-pass.htm
Screen shots at link
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Venezuela
Venezuela - There Was A Riot At The Border But What Else Did The "Aid" Stunt Achieve?
Yesterday's "humanitarian aid" stunt at the Colombian-Venezuelan border was supposed to achieve four points:
to breach the border and thereby open venues that could later be used for the passage of arms and fighters,
to incite large scale defections from the Venezuelan army and police forces,
to demonstrate to the outside world that the Random Guyaido, who declared himself president, has a large following and is thereby legitimate enough to support him,
to deliver justification for further steps against Venezuela.
Point 1 was clearly not achieved. A few hundred young men attacked the Venezuelan National Guard force that closed off the border. Attempts were made to ram "aid" trucks through. Random Guyaido was nowhere to be seen. The whole thing ended in a minor riot. The violent attackers received gasoline and made Molotov cocktails to attack the guards and set the "aid" trucks alight. Here is a video that proves that. The riots continued (vid) until about midnight but neither any rioters nor the aid passed through the border.
The New York Times headlines, and Guaido claimed, that some "aid" passed into Venezuela from Brazil:
Some Aid From Brazil Pierces Venezuela’s Blockade, but Deadly Violence Erupts
Down in paragraph 17 of its story the NYT admits that its headline is fake:
But as of Saturday night, the trucks remained stranded on the border, according to Jesús Bobadillo, a Catholic priest in Pacaraima, the Brazilian border town.
Bloomberg's bureau chief in Venezuela confirmed that the "aid" never entered the country:
Patricia Laya @PattyLaya - 4:31 PM - 23 Feb 2019
An important note from our reporter on the Brazil border @SamyAdghirni: while the aid is technically on Venezuelan territory, it hasn't crossed security or customs checkpoints
The attempt to incite defections of Venezuelan security forces largely failed. A handful of National Guard foot soldiers went over to the Colombian side. But the National Guard lines held well even under a hail of stones and fire and the units were quite disciplined in taking and holding their positions. The military of Venezuela stays firmly on the side of the state.
The "aid" nonsense did not help to brush up Guaido's legitimacy. Defying a court order Guaido left Venezuela and entered Colombia. If he ever goes back he will have to go to jail. The large mobilization inside and outside of Venezuela he had promised completely failed to appear. The melee at the border crossing only showed that his followers are a gang of brutal thugs.
Guaido also lost his original legal position. He claimed the presidency on January 23 under this paragraph of article 233 of the Venezuelan constitution:
When an elected President becomes permanently unavailable to serve prior to his inauguration, a new election by universal suffrage and direct ballot shall be held within 30 consecutive days. Pending election and inauguration of the new President, the President of the National Assembly shall take charge of the Presidency of the Republic.
That the "elected President becomes permanently unavailable" was never the case to begin with. But if article 233 would apply Guaido would have had 30 days to hold new elections. The 30 days are over and Guaido did not even call for elections to be held. He thereby defied the exact same paragraph of the constitution that his (false) claim to the presidency is based on.
All the above will not change the U.S. urge to "regime change" Venezuela. But it will certainly lower Guaido's support within the country as well as his international standing. It demonstrated aptly that he is nothing but an empty suit.
The last aim of yesterday's stunt was to give justification for the next steps towards "regime change" - whatever those steps may be. The success of achieving that aim was never in question as all U.S. media and politicians were already backing Trump's plans by accepting the "humanitarian aid" nonsense in the first place:
Bernie Sanders @SenSanders - 18:47 utc - 23 Feb 2019
The people of Venezuela are enduring a serious humanitarian crisis. The Maduro government must put the needs of its people first, allow humanitarian aid into the country, and refrain from violence against protesters.
This response to the fake socialist is warranted:
Roger Waters @rogerwaters - 22:27 utc - 23 Feb 2019
Replying to @SenSanders
Bernie, are you f-ing kidding me! if you buy the Trump, Bolton, Abrams, Rubio line, “humanitarian intervention” and collude in the destruction of Venezuela, you cannot be credible candidate for President of the USA. Or, maybe you can, maybe you’re the perfect stooge for the 1 %.
When the day was over Guaido and his U.S. handlers put out some statements that they probably wrote even before their "aid" stunt failed:
Juan Guaidó @jguaido - 2:33 utc - 24 Feb 2019
Translated from Spanish
Today's events force me to make a decision: to raise the international community formally that we must have open all the options to achieve the liberation of this country that struggles and will continue to fight.
Hope was born to not die, Venezuela!
To advance on our route, I will meet on Monday with our allies of the international community, and we will continue ordering upcoming actions to the internal of the country. Internal and external pressure are essential for liberation.
Hope was born not to die!
Marco Rubio @marcorubio - 2:43 utc - 24 Feb 2019
Marco Rubio Retweeted Juan Guaidó
After discussions tonight with several regional leaders it is now clear that the grave crimes committed today by the Maduro regime have opened the door to various potential multilateral actions not on the table just 24 hours ago.
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence will arrive in Colombia tomorrow to tell Guaido how to proceed. The focus will most likely be on how to start a sabotage campaign and a low level guerrilla war within Venezuela. Both will certainly hurt the country and its people but they are unlikely to achieve the larger "regime change" aim.
Fact free propaganda by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is already preparing a wider field:
Secretary Pompeo @SecPompeo - 3:25 utc- 24 Feb 2019
Cuban agents are directing attacks on the people of #Venezuela on behalf of Maduro. The Venezuelan military should do its duty, protect the country’s citizens, and prevent the Havana puppeteers from starving hungry children. #EstamosUnidosVE
The Economist is speculating about the consequences of military intervention in Venezuela, also known as a war of aggression. It is not (yet) convinced that it is the immediate way to go, but foresees that it is likely the only way to actually "change the regime":
Outsiders tend to play down the ideological commitment of some in the armed forces. [...] There are many guns in the hands of pro-regime militias. Venezuela has a tradition of guerrilla warfare.
An American invasion would thus be highly risky. It would also be counter-productive, because it would deprive a new government of legitimacy and revive anti-imperialism across Latin America when the main issue is the defence of democracy. Yes, Cuba is intervening in Venezuela, and there is scant evidence that Mr Maduro will go peacefully. Even so, maintaining the broadest possible political front against him remains the best option.
The next steps the U.S. will take will "soften up" its target for an upcoming invasion. They will include further measures to make Venezuela ungovernable and to starve its people into submission. One possible step, even while legally unjustifiable, is a sea and air blockade. The "soften up" phase will take many month, if not years, to achieve some noticeable changes on the ground. Only then will further action be merited. The actual point in time will depend on how it may influence Trump's domestic standing.
Would launching a war on Venezuela help him to get reelected or will the war have to wait until he won his second term?
Posted by b on February 24, 2019 at 09:48 AM | Permalink
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/02/v ... hieve.html
We might be seeing some Green Berets being perp-walked thru the streets of Caracas. That would be sweet. After calling for direct foreign intervention against his government I think Juan Guaidó is a candidate for the gallows.
Yesterday's "humanitarian aid" stunt at the Colombian-Venezuelan border was supposed to achieve four points:
to breach the border and thereby open venues that could later be used for the passage of arms and fighters,
to incite large scale defections from the Venezuelan army and police forces,
to demonstrate to the outside world that the Random Guyaido, who declared himself president, has a large following and is thereby legitimate enough to support him,
to deliver justification for further steps against Venezuela.
Point 1 was clearly not achieved. A few hundred young men attacked the Venezuelan National Guard force that closed off the border. Attempts were made to ram "aid" trucks through. Random Guyaido was nowhere to be seen. The whole thing ended in a minor riot. The violent attackers received gasoline and made Molotov cocktails to attack the guards and set the "aid" trucks alight. Here is a video that proves that. The riots continued (vid) until about midnight but neither any rioters nor the aid passed through the border.
The New York Times headlines, and Guaido claimed, that some "aid" passed into Venezuela from Brazil:
Some Aid From Brazil Pierces Venezuela’s Blockade, but Deadly Violence Erupts
Down in paragraph 17 of its story the NYT admits that its headline is fake:
But as of Saturday night, the trucks remained stranded on the border, according to Jesús Bobadillo, a Catholic priest in Pacaraima, the Brazilian border town.
Bloomberg's bureau chief in Venezuela confirmed that the "aid" never entered the country:
Patricia Laya @PattyLaya - 4:31 PM - 23 Feb 2019
An important note from our reporter on the Brazil border @SamyAdghirni: while the aid is technically on Venezuelan territory, it hasn't crossed security or customs checkpoints
The attempt to incite defections of Venezuelan security forces largely failed. A handful of National Guard foot soldiers went over to the Colombian side. But the National Guard lines held well even under a hail of stones and fire and the units were quite disciplined in taking and holding their positions. The military of Venezuela stays firmly on the side of the state.
The "aid" nonsense did not help to brush up Guaido's legitimacy. Defying a court order Guaido left Venezuela and entered Colombia. If he ever goes back he will have to go to jail. The large mobilization inside and outside of Venezuela he had promised completely failed to appear. The melee at the border crossing only showed that his followers are a gang of brutal thugs.
Guaido also lost his original legal position. He claimed the presidency on January 23 under this paragraph of article 233 of the Venezuelan constitution:
When an elected President becomes permanently unavailable to serve prior to his inauguration, a new election by universal suffrage and direct ballot shall be held within 30 consecutive days. Pending election and inauguration of the new President, the President of the National Assembly shall take charge of the Presidency of the Republic.
That the "elected President becomes permanently unavailable" was never the case to begin with. But if article 233 would apply Guaido would have had 30 days to hold new elections. The 30 days are over and Guaido did not even call for elections to be held. He thereby defied the exact same paragraph of the constitution that his (false) claim to the presidency is based on.
All the above will not change the U.S. urge to "regime change" Venezuela. But it will certainly lower Guaido's support within the country as well as his international standing. It demonstrated aptly that he is nothing but an empty suit.
The last aim of yesterday's stunt was to give justification for the next steps towards "regime change" - whatever those steps may be. The success of achieving that aim was never in question as all U.S. media and politicians were already backing Trump's plans by accepting the "humanitarian aid" nonsense in the first place:
Bernie Sanders @SenSanders - 18:47 utc - 23 Feb 2019
The people of Venezuela are enduring a serious humanitarian crisis. The Maduro government must put the needs of its people first, allow humanitarian aid into the country, and refrain from violence against protesters.
This response to the fake socialist is warranted:
Roger Waters @rogerwaters - 22:27 utc - 23 Feb 2019
Replying to @SenSanders
Bernie, are you f-ing kidding me! if you buy the Trump, Bolton, Abrams, Rubio line, “humanitarian intervention” and collude in the destruction of Venezuela, you cannot be credible candidate for President of the USA. Or, maybe you can, maybe you’re the perfect stooge for the 1 %.
When the day was over Guaido and his U.S. handlers put out some statements that they probably wrote even before their "aid" stunt failed:
Juan Guaidó @jguaido - 2:33 utc - 24 Feb 2019
Translated from Spanish
Today's events force me to make a decision: to raise the international community formally that we must have open all the options to achieve the liberation of this country that struggles and will continue to fight.
Hope was born to not die, Venezuela!
To advance on our route, I will meet on Monday with our allies of the international community, and we will continue ordering upcoming actions to the internal of the country. Internal and external pressure are essential for liberation.
Hope was born not to die!
Marco Rubio @marcorubio - 2:43 utc - 24 Feb 2019
Marco Rubio Retweeted Juan Guaidó
After discussions tonight with several regional leaders it is now clear that the grave crimes committed today by the Maduro regime have opened the door to various potential multilateral actions not on the table just 24 hours ago.
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence will arrive in Colombia tomorrow to tell Guaido how to proceed. The focus will most likely be on how to start a sabotage campaign and a low level guerrilla war within Venezuela. Both will certainly hurt the country and its people but they are unlikely to achieve the larger "regime change" aim.
Fact free propaganda by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is already preparing a wider field:
Secretary Pompeo @SecPompeo - 3:25 utc- 24 Feb 2019
Cuban agents are directing attacks on the people of #Venezuela on behalf of Maduro. The Venezuelan military should do its duty, protect the country’s citizens, and prevent the Havana puppeteers from starving hungry children. #EstamosUnidosVE
The Economist is speculating about the consequences of military intervention in Venezuela, also known as a war of aggression. It is not (yet) convinced that it is the immediate way to go, but foresees that it is likely the only way to actually "change the regime":
Outsiders tend to play down the ideological commitment of some in the armed forces. [...] There are many guns in the hands of pro-regime militias. Venezuela has a tradition of guerrilla warfare.
An American invasion would thus be highly risky. It would also be counter-productive, because it would deprive a new government of legitimacy and revive anti-imperialism across Latin America when the main issue is the defence of democracy. Yes, Cuba is intervening in Venezuela, and there is scant evidence that Mr Maduro will go peacefully. Even so, maintaining the broadest possible political front against him remains the best option.
The next steps the U.S. will take will "soften up" its target for an upcoming invasion. They will include further measures to make Venezuela ungovernable and to starve its people into submission. One possible step, even while legally unjustifiable, is a sea and air blockade. The "soften up" phase will take many month, if not years, to achieve some noticeable changes on the ground. Only then will further action be merited. The actual point in time will depend on how it may influence Trump's domestic standing.
Would launching a war on Venezuela help him to get reelected or will the war have to wait until he won his second term?
Posted by b on February 24, 2019 at 09:48 AM | Permalink
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/02/v ... hieve.html
We might be seeing some Green Berets being perp-walked thru the streets of Caracas. That would be sweet. After calling for direct foreign intervention against his government I think Juan Guaidó is a candidate for the gallows.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Venezuela
THE CLAP AS A WAR GOAL: SET FIRE TO WAREHOUSES IN THE PORT OF LA GUAIRA
27 Feb 2019 , 3:25 pm .
Fire in the port of La Guaira affected warehouses of CLAP boxes (Photo: Archive)
According to information from the newspaper La Verdad de Vargas , in the morning hours today a fire occurred at the facilities of the port of La Guaira, Vargas state, where a CLAP boxes warehouse is located, one of the food assistance policies that the Venezuelan government carries out with the organized population to serve more than 7 million families every month.
As a result of the incident, the governor of the coastal entity, Jorge García Carneiro, expressed : "We have no doubt that they are terrorist acts, criminal hands that attempt to feed our people." According to the governor, the fire started in a "warehouse in which there are only recyclable materials."
In December of last year, the Encovi private survey stated that 7.3 million families receive CLAP boxes. The subsidized food program, according to this figure, serves almost the entire Venezuelan population, thus avoiding the deepening social and economic wounds generated by the financial blockade of the United States, which currently in complicity with the Venezuelan opposition keep more than 30 hostages. one billion dollars of the country that could be used to improve the economic conditions of the population.
http://misionverdad.com/entrevistas%20/ ... -la-guaira
Google Translator sucks
This sort of thing all they got? Mebbe...
27 Feb 2019 , 3:25 pm .
Fire in the port of La Guaira affected warehouses of CLAP boxes (Photo: Archive)
According to information from the newspaper La Verdad de Vargas , in the morning hours today a fire occurred at the facilities of the port of La Guaira, Vargas state, where a CLAP boxes warehouse is located, one of the food assistance policies that the Venezuelan government carries out with the organized population to serve more than 7 million families every month.
As a result of the incident, the governor of the coastal entity, Jorge García Carneiro, expressed : "We have no doubt that they are terrorist acts, criminal hands that attempt to feed our people." According to the governor, the fire started in a "warehouse in which there are only recyclable materials."
In December of last year, the Encovi private survey stated that 7.3 million families receive CLAP boxes. The subsidized food program, according to this figure, serves almost the entire Venezuelan population, thus avoiding the deepening social and economic wounds generated by the financial blockade of the United States, which currently in complicity with the Venezuelan opposition keep more than 30 hostages. one billion dollars of the country that could be used to improve the economic conditions of the population.
http://misionverdad.com/entrevistas%20/ ... -la-guaira
Google Translator sucks
This sort of thing all they got? Mebbe...
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Venezuela
Chavistas celebrate Caracazo anniversary with massive march
The self-proclaimed interim president says he will soon reveal when he returns to Venezuela
▲ Supporters of the Venezuelan government took to the streets yesterday to celebrate the anniversary of the social outbreak of February 27, 1989 against President Carlos Andrés Pérez. Afp photo / Presidency of Venezuela
Luis Hernández Navarro
Sent
Newspaper La Jornada
Thursday 28 February 2019, p. 2. 3
Caracas. The battle of this Wednesday was for the meaning of history. In full anniversary of the Caracazo , Chavistas and antichavistas disputed the meaning of the date. The government and its supporters claimed, as a result of these days, as their faithful heirs. His enemies, however, bet on the networks to present the current situation in Venezuela as much worse than the then.
But it was an unequal battle. The anti-Chavistas bear on their shoulders with the defeat of their coup on February 23 and the celebration of a date that does not belong to them. They had to limit themselves to acting on social networks and making statements in their media. And take to walk violent destabilization actions without vindicating them publicly.
In contrast, the Caracazo is part of the government's DNA. The late Hugo Chávez described it as the spark that ignited the motor of the Bolivarian revolution . The Chavistas, victors of the battle just four days ago, showed again the muscle, with a massive demonstration in the town of Petare, metropolitan area of Caracas, the second in less than a week. President Nicolás Maduro decreed February 27 and 28 days of national commemoration.
The outbreak
On February 27, 1989, a social outbreak occurred in Caracas that generated waves of expansion in Venezuela and throughout the continent. That day, thousands of poor dissatisfied inhabitants came down from the hills of Caracas, in which they lived, to protest. The government of the social democrat Carlos Andrés Pérez brutally repressed the demonstrators. Hundreds of them were killed. The curfew was declared. The constitutional guarantees were suspended.
Just on February 3 he had taken office for a second term (in the first he governed between 1974 and 1979), which he won with more than 52 percent of the votes. In accordance with the guidelines of the International Monetary Fund promised the end of the interventionist and protective State, and the liberalization of the economy.
A few days later he announced the release of the prices of all consumer products, interest rates and public service rates. In the realm of oil rent, he reported the increase in the price of gasoline.
The economic adjustment package was to begin on February 27. The day arrived, the disagreement became widespread and the claims and protests spread like wildfire almost all over the country. Supermarkets and appliance stores were looted.
At first, the police took to the streets to control the rioting by shooting and hitting. Overwhelmed by popular anger, the government ordered the troops to leave the barracks to restore order. He did it by killing more than 3,600 people.
It was the first continental uprising against neoliberal adjustments. Since then, the ruling classes of Latin America know (although they prefer to ignore it) that there are no adjustment and stabilization policies without consequences, and that at any moment the poor of the hills (real or figurative) can come down to disrupt the order.
Blurred opposition
Although Henrique Capriles is today the shadow of what he once was, he remains a relevant opposition figure. Displaced and belittled by his former colleagues, but a figure. His message sums up the line of action of the antichavista at this juncture. In a tweet he wrote: "30 years have passed since the Caracazo , the living conditions of Venezuela are worse than those that led to that outbreak. Let our people be clear that the tragedy we are living is responsible: Maduro and his combo! With one voice, let them go and start the recovery! "
However, the opposition's maneuver to reverse the meaning of the Caracazo against chavism is not simple. She is the continuation of the Puntofijo Pact, the governance agreement signed at the end of 1958 by the political parties that alternated in power for four decades, until the triumph of Hugo Chávez, in 1998. They were the direct victims of the Caracazo . It was his policies that provoked
Perhaps that is why they resorted to a bit more energetic measures, such as setting fire to the warehouses in Vargas where the food packaging containing the food support boxes provided by the government is stored.
The self-proclaimed Juan Guaidó decided to kick the boat later to hide that his plan is adrift. He continued to appoint symbolic officials, such as the special attorney of the Republic, and notified that in the next few days he will announce the exact date of his return to Venezuela. Meanwhile, he began a visit to Brazil.
Shows that the misfortune does not come alone, Saleh Lorent, the freedom fighter that the PAN got the Senate presenting him as a hero, was arrested in Colombia, accused of trying to rape two women under the influence of drugs. He managed to be rescued by the good offices of the Venezuelan opposition and his Colombian allies.
And unfortunately for the opponent's fate, even actress and playmate Pamela Anderson, known for her roles in the television series Guardians of the Bay , went head-to-head against US intervention. In a tweet he pointed out that legislator Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is wrong to say that Venezuela is a failure of democracy, instead of saying that the US government is organizing a bloody coup against the nation .
https://www.jornada.com.mx/2019/02/28/mundo/023n1mun
Google Translator
The self-proclaimed interim president says he will soon reveal when he returns to Venezuela
▲ Supporters of the Venezuelan government took to the streets yesterday to celebrate the anniversary of the social outbreak of February 27, 1989 against President Carlos Andrés Pérez. Afp photo / Presidency of Venezuela
Luis Hernández Navarro
Sent
Newspaper La Jornada
Thursday 28 February 2019, p. 2. 3
Caracas. The battle of this Wednesday was for the meaning of history. In full anniversary of the Caracazo , Chavistas and antichavistas disputed the meaning of the date. The government and its supporters claimed, as a result of these days, as their faithful heirs. His enemies, however, bet on the networks to present the current situation in Venezuela as much worse than the then.
But it was an unequal battle. The anti-Chavistas bear on their shoulders with the defeat of their coup on February 23 and the celebration of a date that does not belong to them. They had to limit themselves to acting on social networks and making statements in their media. And take to walk violent destabilization actions without vindicating them publicly.
In contrast, the Caracazo is part of the government's DNA. The late Hugo Chávez described it as the spark that ignited the motor of the Bolivarian revolution . The Chavistas, victors of the battle just four days ago, showed again the muscle, with a massive demonstration in the town of Petare, metropolitan area of Caracas, the second in less than a week. President Nicolás Maduro decreed February 27 and 28 days of national commemoration.
The outbreak
On February 27, 1989, a social outbreak occurred in Caracas that generated waves of expansion in Venezuela and throughout the continent. That day, thousands of poor dissatisfied inhabitants came down from the hills of Caracas, in which they lived, to protest. The government of the social democrat Carlos Andrés Pérez brutally repressed the demonstrators. Hundreds of them were killed. The curfew was declared. The constitutional guarantees were suspended.
Just on February 3 he had taken office for a second term (in the first he governed between 1974 and 1979), which he won with more than 52 percent of the votes. In accordance with the guidelines of the International Monetary Fund promised the end of the interventionist and protective State, and the liberalization of the economy.
A few days later he announced the release of the prices of all consumer products, interest rates and public service rates. In the realm of oil rent, he reported the increase in the price of gasoline.
The economic adjustment package was to begin on February 27. The day arrived, the disagreement became widespread and the claims and protests spread like wildfire almost all over the country. Supermarkets and appliance stores were looted.
At first, the police took to the streets to control the rioting by shooting and hitting. Overwhelmed by popular anger, the government ordered the troops to leave the barracks to restore order. He did it by killing more than 3,600 people.
It was the first continental uprising against neoliberal adjustments. Since then, the ruling classes of Latin America know (although they prefer to ignore it) that there are no adjustment and stabilization policies without consequences, and that at any moment the poor of the hills (real or figurative) can come down to disrupt the order.
Blurred opposition
Although Henrique Capriles is today the shadow of what he once was, he remains a relevant opposition figure. Displaced and belittled by his former colleagues, but a figure. His message sums up the line of action of the antichavista at this juncture. In a tweet he wrote: "30 years have passed since the Caracazo , the living conditions of Venezuela are worse than those that led to that outbreak. Let our people be clear that the tragedy we are living is responsible: Maduro and his combo! With one voice, let them go and start the recovery! "
However, the opposition's maneuver to reverse the meaning of the Caracazo against chavism is not simple. She is the continuation of the Puntofijo Pact, the governance agreement signed at the end of 1958 by the political parties that alternated in power for four decades, until the triumph of Hugo Chávez, in 1998. They were the direct victims of the Caracazo . It was his policies that provoked
Perhaps that is why they resorted to a bit more energetic measures, such as setting fire to the warehouses in Vargas where the food packaging containing the food support boxes provided by the government is stored.
The self-proclaimed Juan Guaidó decided to kick the boat later to hide that his plan is adrift. He continued to appoint symbolic officials, such as the special attorney of the Republic, and notified that in the next few days he will announce the exact date of his return to Venezuela. Meanwhile, he began a visit to Brazil.
Shows that the misfortune does not come alone, Saleh Lorent, the freedom fighter that the PAN got the Senate presenting him as a hero, was arrested in Colombia, accused of trying to rape two women under the influence of drugs. He managed to be rescued by the good offices of the Venezuelan opposition and his Colombian allies.
And unfortunately for the opponent's fate, even actress and playmate Pamela Anderson, known for her roles in the television series Guardians of the Bay , went head-to-head against US intervention. In a tweet he pointed out that legislator Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is wrong to say that Venezuela is a failure of democracy, instead of saying that the US government is organizing a bloody coup against the nation .
https://www.jornada.com.mx/2019/02/28/mundo/023n1mun
Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Venezuela
Trump’s Other ‘National Emergency’: Sanctions That Kill Venezuelans
The humanitarian crisis will get rapidly worse if the most recent sanctions continue, Mark Weisbrot argues.
While Americans have rightly groaned and rebelled against President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency over his precious wall, which would rob Congress of its constitutional authority over spending, he has also used another false declaration of national emergency―most recently last week―that has been mostly unnoticed.
Every executive order that Trump has issued imposing economic sanctions on Venezuela includes a sentence declaring that the country is causing a “national emergency” for America and poses “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security” of the United States.
The fact that these absurd claims have gone unnoticed in the major media shows how weak the rule of law is in the United States in the arena of foreign policy―as legal scholars have noted. This is especially true for aggressive actions by our government that kill people in other countries.
And make no mistake about it: US sanctions on Venezuela are killing people, and have been killing people for some time, as opposition economist Francisco Rodríguez, the leading expert on the Venezuelan economy, has pointed out.
There are no estimates of the death toll from the sanctions, but given the experience of countries in similar situations, it is likely in the thousands or tens of thousands so far. And it will get rapidly worse if the most recent sanctions continue.
How do economic sanctions kill people? In general, they do so by damaging the economy. This includes loss of employment and income for people living on the margin, and, most importantly, reduced access to life-saving necessities such as medicines, medical supplies, and health care.
In Iraq in the 1990s, for example, the number of children who died from the sanctions was in the hundreds of thousands.
But the Venezuelan people have been even more vulnerable to US economic sanctions than Iraqis were. Venezuela is dependent on oil exports for almost all of the dollars the economy needs to import necessities such as medicine and food. This means that anything that reduces oil production is primarily hitting the general population by cutting off the dollars that both the private sector and government use to import goods for people’s basic needs, as well as for transport, spare parts, and most goods that the economy needs in order to function.
The Trump sanctions of August 2017 imposed a financial embargo that cut Venezuela off from most borrowing. This had an enormous impact on oil production, which had already been declining. The rate of decline accelerated rapidly; during the year following the sanctions, it would fall by 700,000 barrels a day, about three times as fast as it had fallen over the previous 20 months. This post-sanction acceleration in the loss of oil production amounts to the loss of more than $6 billion. For comparison, Venezuela, when the economy was growing, spent about $2 billion per year on medicines. Total goods imports for 2018 are estimated at $11.7 billion.
At the time of these sanctions, Venezuela was already suffering from a deep recession and balance-of-payments problems that necessitated a debt restructuring. To restructure the debt, the government has to be able to issue new bonds, but the US sanctions made this impossible.
The Trump sanctions—both the August 2017 sanctions and now the new oil embargo—also make it pretty near impossible for the government to take measures that would end the hyperinflation, currently estimated at 1.6 million percent annually. To stabilize hyperinflation, you have to restore faith in the domestic currency. This would very likely be done through creating a new exchange-rate system and other measures that would require access to the dollar-based international financial system—but the sanctions preclude that.
The sanctions imposed by the Obama administration in March 2015 (which also declared a “national emergency”) also had a very serious impact. This is well-known in financial institutions, but generally not reported in the major media, which treat these sanctions as they are advertised by the US government, as “sanctions against individuals.” But when the individuals are high-level government officials, for example the finance minister, the sanctions cause enormous problems, as these officials are cut off from necessary transactions in most of the world financial system.
Financial institutions increasingly turned away from Venezuela after March 2015, as they saw the risks of lending to a government that the United States was increasingly determined to topple―and, as the economy worsened, looked more likely to succeed in doing so. The Venezuelan private sector was cut off from vital access to credit, which contributed to the unprecedented, indeed almost unbelievable, 80 percent drop in imports over the past six years, which has devastated this import-dependent economy.
On January 23, the Trump administration announced that it was recognizing Juan Guaidó, currently head of the Venezuelan National Assembly, as “interim president” of the country. By doing so (together with politically allied countries), Washington basically imposed a trade embargo against Venezuela. This is because any revenue from oil sales to about three-quarters of Venezuela’s export markets―the United States and its allies―would no longer go to the government but to the “interim president.” Some temporary exceptions were carved out for US oil companies, but this embargo is still sweeping enough to rapidly multiply the economic damage, suffering, and death that the prior sanctions have caused.
A statement on the latest sanctions from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights noted, “Precipitating an economic and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela is not a foundation for the peaceful settlement of disputes.”
It is clear from their statements and actions that the Trump team―including National Security Adviser John Bolton, Senator Marco Rubio, and 1980s warcriminal and now special envoy to Venezuela Elliott Abrams―is not interested in a peaceful resolution of Venezuela’s crisis. They are not the type who worry about how many people will die along their road to regime change.
The real question is why prominent liberals, such as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, support this illegal and barbaric operation. Is it possible they don’t know what Trump and his sanctions are doing?
https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14360
What’s the Deal with Sanctions in Venezuela, and Why’s It So Hard for Media to Understand?
CEPR's Alexander Campbell looks at US sanctions against Venezuela and how the media ignore their effects.
Last week, the US formally adopted sanctions on Venezuelan national oil company PDVSA, as well as on CITGO, its US-based distribution arm, as part of its press for regime change in Caracas. National Security Advisor John Bolton estimated the actions would affect some $7 billion in assets and would block $11 billion in revenue to the Venezuelan government over the next year. The State Department was quick to add, “These new sanctions do not target the innocent people of Venezuela…”
But of course they do. The Wall Street Journal reported:
The sanctions could create deeper gasoline shortages in Venezuela. The country’s refineries are already operating at a fraction of their capacity, crippled by a lack of spare parts and crude. Venezuela only produced a third of the 190,000 barrels of gasoline it consumed a day as of November, according to Ivan Freites, a leader of the country’s oil union.
“Immediately, it’s going to hurt the average Venezuelan,” Mr. Freites said.
Meanwhile, The New York Times noted:
But just across the street, a group of senior citizens waiting in line to collect their pensions worried that the Trump administration’s actions would further bankrupt their country and deepen the humanitarian crisis that has left so many starving, sick and without basic services.
“The United States has no business meddling in this,” said Aura Ramos, 59, a retiree who can barely afford blood pressure medicine. “It’s the regular people who will be affected.”
The Washington Office on Latin America released a statement criticizing the announced sanctions, writing:
However, we are deeply concerned at the potential for the recently announced U.S. sanctions to intensify the severe hardships and suffering that millions of Venezuelans are enduring. Venezuelans are already facing widespread scarcities of essential medicines and basic goods. Venezuela’s oil exports represent the main source of hard currency used to pay for imports. Without this revenue, it is clear that the importation of food and medicine could be put at risk. In turn, this will further accelerate a migration and refugee crisis that has strained neighboring countries and put many of the over 3 million Venezuelan migrants and refugees at risk.
It appears as though there is increasing acceptance of the basic fact that the US sanctions on Venezuela will have a negative impact on the people of Venezuela, but all this analysis misses two important points. First, the Trump administration had already imposed broad economic sanctions in 2017, though apparently both The Wall Street Journal and New York Times were unaware of this development.
From the same WSJ article:
…this week’s sanctions mark the first targeting of Venezuela’s lifeblood industry, which accounts for nearly all of the country’s hard currency income. Until now, U.S. sanctions were largely limited to individuals in Venezuela’s regime.
Another example from a NYT article a few days earlier:
The oil sanctions amount to the first punitive action taken by the United States against Mr. Maduro since the power struggle in Caracas erupted last week, and it is intended to starve the government of Mr. Maduro of cash and foreign currency. Oil production in Venezuela has already plummeted because of mismanagement and poor policies, and the country’s economy is in shambles.
These examples are certainly not alone in their misunderstanding of the sanctions ― and their impact on the oil industry. But it’s not terribly difficult to find information on the impact of the 2017 sanctions. Venezuelan economist Francisco Rodríguez provided a useful analysis last year explaining just this ― and it is even in English.
Rodríguez’s basic story: the oil industry is critical to the Venezuelan government; underinvestment and the rapid decline in oil prices caused a significant drop in revenue; then, as oil prices began increasing, Trump imposed sanctions making any international financial transaction extremely difficult and potentially “toxic.” Rodríguez explains, using this graph of oil production in Venezuela and Colombia, how Venezuelan and Colombian oil production both declined at the same rate, until the Trump financial embargo was implemented in August 2017. Then, Venezuela’s oil production collapsed:
It is striking that the second change in trend in Venezuela’s production numbers occurs at the time at which the United States decided to impose financial sanctions on Venezuela. Executive Order 13.808, issued on August 25 of 2017, barred U.S. persons from providing new financing to the Venezuelan government or PDVSA. Although the order carved out allowances for commercial credit of less than 90 days, it stopped the country from issuing new debt or selling previously issued debt currently in its possession.
The Executive Order is part of a broader process of what one could term the “toxification” of financial dealings with Venezuela. During 2017, it became increasingly clear that institutions who decided to enter into financial arrangements with Venezuela would have to be willing to pay high reputational and regulatory costs. This was partly the result of a strategic decision by the Venezuelan opposition, in itself a response to the growing authoritarianism of the Maduro government.
It’s not just the the media’s apparent amnesia with regard to those 2017 sanctions and their impact on the oil industry that is the problem here. In fact, the impact of those sanctions was even larger. As my colleague, Mark Weisbrot has previously explained, and as Rodríguez notes in the same article linked above, the sanctions made it virtually impossible for the Venezuela government to take the measures necessary to eliminate hyperinflation or recover from a deep depression. Such measures would include debt restructuring, and creating a new exchange rate system (Exchange Rate Bases Stabilization), in which the currency would normally be pegged to the dollar.
But it actually gets worse. When the US first announced its recognition of Juan Guaidó as president of Venezuela on January 23, the decision was met largely with applause within the foreign policy establishment. It seemed like nobody bothered to think about what, practically and economically, the decision would mean. Since Trump’s election, and his increasingly threatening rhetoric in relation to Venezuela, there has been wide agreement that a full-scale oil embargo would be terrible, both for Venezuela and the US. Yet somehow hardly anyone realized that by recognizing Guaidó, the US was de facto putting an oil embargo in place. Once again we turn to Rodríguez who, for what it’s worth, has been publicly supportive of the decision to recognize Guaidó and wrote the following on January 28,[1] a day before the most recently announced sanctions:
By giving it the legal authority to invoice Venezuelan oil, the decision to recognize the Guaidó administration, therefore, would have the same implications for bilateral trade of an oil embargo. Applied by the countries that provide for nearly three-fourths of Venezuela’s imports, the decisions can be expected to have a significant effect on the country’s capacity both to produce oil and import goods. As a result, we expect Venezuela’s oil production to decline by 640tbd to 508tbd in 2019 (a fall of 55.7%), as opposed to our prior forecast of 1,070tbd. Exports will fall to USD 13.5bn (USD 12.3bn from oil), nearly half our previous estimate of USD 23.8bn. Imports of goods will decline to USD 7.0bn, a 40.3% decline (we expect the entrance of some humanitarian aid as well as the default on payments of all debt to cushion the fall). Venezuela’s economy is highly import dependent, as illustrated by the strong empirical correlation between import and GDP growth. As a result of the additional import crunch, we expect Venezuela’s economy to contract by 26.4%, as opposed to our previous forecast of 11.7%.
The impact is clear. The decision to formally recognize Guaidó will have a massive economic impact on the people of Venezuela ― irrespective of sanctions, oil embargos or whatever else is announced. The Trump administration succeeded in de facto implementing an oil embargo, without taking any of the heat they would have if it were done explicitly. And then this week, the Trump administration announced broader trade sanctions that appeared to make explicit by the recognition of a parallel government, with some specific carve outs for American oil companies already in Venezuela, like Chevron and Halliburton.
Of course, there are plenty of people who will argue that this pain and suffering is worth it in order to force Maduro from power. That’s their right, but the media should force them to make that argument openly, and honestly confront the pain and suffering these policies will inflict.
Finally, if asking for the media to get the sanctions story right is too much, maybe they can give some coverage to the fact that National Security Advisor John Bolton went on national TV and openly said the following:
It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela. It would be good for the people of Venezuela. It would be good for the people of the United States. We both have a lot at stake here making this come out the right way.
A decimated oil industry in the nation with the largest proven oil reserves in the world would appear to serve some alternative interests beyond “democracy” and “human rights.”
[1] Francisco Rodríguez, “Ecuador & Venezuela This Week,” Torino Economics and Torino Capital Group Company, January 28, 2019.
https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14297
The humanitarian crisis will get rapidly worse if the most recent sanctions continue, Mark Weisbrot argues.
While Americans have rightly groaned and rebelled against President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency over his precious wall, which would rob Congress of its constitutional authority over spending, he has also used another false declaration of national emergency―most recently last week―that has been mostly unnoticed.
Every executive order that Trump has issued imposing economic sanctions on Venezuela includes a sentence declaring that the country is causing a “national emergency” for America and poses “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security” of the United States.
The fact that these absurd claims have gone unnoticed in the major media shows how weak the rule of law is in the United States in the arena of foreign policy―as legal scholars have noted. This is especially true for aggressive actions by our government that kill people in other countries.
And make no mistake about it: US sanctions on Venezuela are killing people, and have been killing people for some time, as opposition economist Francisco Rodríguez, the leading expert on the Venezuelan economy, has pointed out.
There are no estimates of the death toll from the sanctions, but given the experience of countries in similar situations, it is likely in the thousands or tens of thousands so far. And it will get rapidly worse if the most recent sanctions continue.
How do economic sanctions kill people? In general, they do so by damaging the economy. This includes loss of employment and income for people living on the margin, and, most importantly, reduced access to life-saving necessities such as medicines, medical supplies, and health care.
In Iraq in the 1990s, for example, the number of children who died from the sanctions was in the hundreds of thousands.
But the Venezuelan people have been even more vulnerable to US economic sanctions than Iraqis were. Venezuela is dependent on oil exports for almost all of the dollars the economy needs to import necessities such as medicine and food. This means that anything that reduces oil production is primarily hitting the general population by cutting off the dollars that both the private sector and government use to import goods for people’s basic needs, as well as for transport, spare parts, and most goods that the economy needs in order to function.
The Trump sanctions of August 2017 imposed a financial embargo that cut Venezuela off from most borrowing. This had an enormous impact on oil production, which had already been declining. The rate of decline accelerated rapidly; during the year following the sanctions, it would fall by 700,000 barrels a day, about three times as fast as it had fallen over the previous 20 months. This post-sanction acceleration in the loss of oil production amounts to the loss of more than $6 billion. For comparison, Venezuela, when the economy was growing, spent about $2 billion per year on medicines. Total goods imports for 2018 are estimated at $11.7 billion.
At the time of these sanctions, Venezuela was already suffering from a deep recession and balance-of-payments problems that necessitated a debt restructuring. To restructure the debt, the government has to be able to issue new bonds, but the US sanctions made this impossible.
The Trump sanctions—both the August 2017 sanctions and now the new oil embargo—also make it pretty near impossible for the government to take measures that would end the hyperinflation, currently estimated at 1.6 million percent annually. To stabilize hyperinflation, you have to restore faith in the domestic currency. This would very likely be done through creating a new exchange-rate system and other measures that would require access to the dollar-based international financial system—but the sanctions preclude that.
The sanctions imposed by the Obama administration in March 2015 (which also declared a “national emergency”) also had a very serious impact. This is well-known in financial institutions, but generally not reported in the major media, which treat these sanctions as they are advertised by the US government, as “sanctions against individuals.” But when the individuals are high-level government officials, for example the finance minister, the sanctions cause enormous problems, as these officials are cut off from necessary transactions in most of the world financial system.
Financial institutions increasingly turned away from Venezuela after March 2015, as they saw the risks of lending to a government that the United States was increasingly determined to topple―and, as the economy worsened, looked more likely to succeed in doing so. The Venezuelan private sector was cut off from vital access to credit, which contributed to the unprecedented, indeed almost unbelievable, 80 percent drop in imports over the past six years, which has devastated this import-dependent economy.
On January 23, the Trump administration announced that it was recognizing Juan Guaidó, currently head of the Venezuelan National Assembly, as “interim president” of the country. By doing so (together with politically allied countries), Washington basically imposed a trade embargo against Venezuela. This is because any revenue from oil sales to about three-quarters of Venezuela’s export markets―the United States and its allies―would no longer go to the government but to the “interim president.” Some temporary exceptions were carved out for US oil companies, but this embargo is still sweeping enough to rapidly multiply the economic damage, suffering, and death that the prior sanctions have caused.
A statement on the latest sanctions from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights noted, “Precipitating an economic and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela is not a foundation for the peaceful settlement of disputes.”
It is clear from their statements and actions that the Trump team―including National Security Adviser John Bolton, Senator Marco Rubio, and 1980s warcriminal and now special envoy to Venezuela Elliott Abrams―is not interested in a peaceful resolution of Venezuela’s crisis. They are not the type who worry about how many people will die along their road to regime change.
The real question is why prominent liberals, such as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, support this illegal and barbaric operation. Is it possible they don’t know what Trump and his sanctions are doing?
https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14360
What’s the Deal with Sanctions in Venezuela, and Why’s It So Hard for Media to Understand?
CEPR's Alexander Campbell looks at US sanctions against Venezuela and how the media ignore their effects.
Last week, the US formally adopted sanctions on Venezuelan national oil company PDVSA, as well as on CITGO, its US-based distribution arm, as part of its press for regime change in Caracas. National Security Advisor John Bolton estimated the actions would affect some $7 billion in assets and would block $11 billion in revenue to the Venezuelan government over the next year. The State Department was quick to add, “These new sanctions do not target the innocent people of Venezuela…”
But of course they do. The Wall Street Journal reported:
The sanctions could create deeper gasoline shortages in Venezuela. The country’s refineries are already operating at a fraction of their capacity, crippled by a lack of spare parts and crude. Venezuela only produced a third of the 190,000 barrels of gasoline it consumed a day as of November, according to Ivan Freites, a leader of the country’s oil union.
“Immediately, it’s going to hurt the average Venezuelan,” Mr. Freites said.
Meanwhile, The New York Times noted:
But just across the street, a group of senior citizens waiting in line to collect their pensions worried that the Trump administration’s actions would further bankrupt their country and deepen the humanitarian crisis that has left so many starving, sick and without basic services.
“The United States has no business meddling in this,” said Aura Ramos, 59, a retiree who can barely afford blood pressure medicine. “It’s the regular people who will be affected.”
The Washington Office on Latin America released a statement criticizing the announced sanctions, writing:
However, we are deeply concerned at the potential for the recently announced U.S. sanctions to intensify the severe hardships and suffering that millions of Venezuelans are enduring. Venezuelans are already facing widespread scarcities of essential medicines and basic goods. Venezuela’s oil exports represent the main source of hard currency used to pay for imports. Without this revenue, it is clear that the importation of food and medicine could be put at risk. In turn, this will further accelerate a migration and refugee crisis that has strained neighboring countries and put many of the over 3 million Venezuelan migrants and refugees at risk.
It appears as though there is increasing acceptance of the basic fact that the US sanctions on Venezuela will have a negative impact on the people of Venezuela, but all this analysis misses two important points. First, the Trump administration had already imposed broad economic sanctions in 2017, though apparently both The Wall Street Journal and New York Times were unaware of this development.
From the same WSJ article:
…this week’s sanctions mark the first targeting of Venezuela’s lifeblood industry, which accounts for nearly all of the country’s hard currency income. Until now, U.S. sanctions were largely limited to individuals in Venezuela’s regime.
Another example from a NYT article a few days earlier:
The oil sanctions amount to the first punitive action taken by the United States against Mr. Maduro since the power struggle in Caracas erupted last week, and it is intended to starve the government of Mr. Maduro of cash and foreign currency. Oil production in Venezuela has already plummeted because of mismanagement and poor policies, and the country’s economy is in shambles.
These examples are certainly not alone in their misunderstanding of the sanctions ― and their impact on the oil industry. But it’s not terribly difficult to find information on the impact of the 2017 sanctions. Venezuelan economist Francisco Rodríguez provided a useful analysis last year explaining just this ― and it is even in English.
Rodríguez’s basic story: the oil industry is critical to the Venezuelan government; underinvestment and the rapid decline in oil prices caused a significant drop in revenue; then, as oil prices began increasing, Trump imposed sanctions making any international financial transaction extremely difficult and potentially “toxic.” Rodríguez explains, using this graph of oil production in Venezuela and Colombia, how Venezuelan and Colombian oil production both declined at the same rate, until the Trump financial embargo was implemented in August 2017. Then, Venezuela’s oil production collapsed:
It is striking that the second change in trend in Venezuela’s production numbers occurs at the time at which the United States decided to impose financial sanctions on Venezuela. Executive Order 13.808, issued on August 25 of 2017, barred U.S. persons from providing new financing to the Venezuelan government or PDVSA. Although the order carved out allowances for commercial credit of less than 90 days, it stopped the country from issuing new debt or selling previously issued debt currently in its possession.
The Executive Order is part of a broader process of what one could term the “toxification” of financial dealings with Venezuela. During 2017, it became increasingly clear that institutions who decided to enter into financial arrangements with Venezuela would have to be willing to pay high reputational and regulatory costs. This was partly the result of a strategic decision by the Venezuelan opposition, in itself a response to the growing authoritarianism of the Maduro government.
It’s not just the the media’s apparent amnesia with regard to those 2017 sanctions and their impact on the oil industry that is the problem here. In fact, the impact of those sanctions was even larger. As my colleague, Mark Weisbrot has previously explained, and as Rodríguez notes in the same article linked above, the sanctions made it virtually impossible for the Venezuela government to take the measures necessary to eliminate hyperinflation or recover from a deep depression. Such measures would include debt restructuring, and creating a new exchange rate system (Exchange Rate Bases Stabilization), in which the currency would normally be pegged to the dollar.
But it actually gets worse. When the US first announced its recognition of Juan Guaidó as president of Venezuela on January 23, the decision was met largely with applause within the foreign policy establishment. It seemed like nobody bothered to think about what, practically and economically, the decision would mean. Since Trump’s election, and his increasingly threatening rhetoric in relation to Venezuela, there has been wide agreement that a full-scale oil embargo would be terrible, both for Venezuela and the US. Yet somehow hardly anyone realized that by recognizing Guaidó, the US was de facto putting an oil embargo in place. Once again we turn to Rodríguez who, for what it’s worth, has been publicly supportive of the decision to recognize Guaidó and wrote the following on January 28,[1] a day before the most recently announced sanctions:
By giving it the legal authority to invoice Venezuelan oil, the decision to recognize the Guaidó administration, therefore, would have the same implications for bilateral trade of an oil embargo. Applied by the countries that provide for nearly three-fourths of Venezuela’s imports, the decisions can be expected to have a significant effect on the country’s capacity both to produce oil and import goods. As a result, we expect Venezuela’s oil production to decline by 640tbd to 508tbd in 2019 (a fall of 55.7%), as opposed to our prior forecast of 1,070tbd. Exports will fall to USD 13.5bn (USD 12.3bn from oil), nearly half our previous estimate of USD 23.8bn. Imports of goods will decline to USD 7.0bn, a 40.3% decline (we expect the entrance of some humanitarian aid as well as the default on payments of all debt to cushion the fall). Venezuela’s economy is highly import dependent, as illustrated by the strong empirical correlation between import and GDP growth. As a result of the additional import crunch, we expect Venezuela’s economy to contract by 26.4%, as opposed to our previous forecast of 11.7%.
The impact is clear. The decision to formally recognize Guaidó will have a massive economic impact on the people of Venezuela ― irrespective of sanctions, oil embargos or whatever else is announced. The Trump administration succeeded in de facto implementing an oil embargo, without taking any of the heat they would have if it were done explicitly. And then this week, the Trump administration announced broader trade sanctions that appeared to make explicit by the recognition of a parallel government, with some specific carve outs for American oil companies already in Venezuela, like Chevron and Halliburton.
Of course, there are plenty of people who will argue that this pain and suffering is worth it in order to force Maduro from power. That’s their right, but the media should force them to make that argument openly, and honestly confront the pain and suffering these policies will inflict.
Finally, if asking for the media to get the sanctions story right is too much, maybe they can give some coverage to the fact that National Security Advisor John Bolton went on national TV and openly said the following:
It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela. It would be good for the people of Venezuela. It would be good for the people of the United States. We both have a lot at stake here making this come out the right way.
A decimated oil industry in the nation with the largest proven oil reserves in the world would appear to serve some alternative interests beyond “democracy” and “human rights.”
[1] Francisco Rodríguez, “Ecuador & Venezuela This Week,” Torino Economics and Torino Capital Group Company, January 28, 2019.
https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14297
Re: Venezuela
The Global Left and the Danger of a Dirty War in Venezuela
Lucas Koerner warns that the Global North “left” critique of “authoritarianism” in Venezuela serves as ideological cover for the current coup and impending dirty war pushed by Washington.
In a recent piece for Jacobin, Gabriel Hetland mapped out what he believes should be the “left” position vis-à-vis the ongoing US-led coup effort in Venezuela.
Hetland correctly observes that there is “absolutely no justification for U.S. sanctions or military intervention” in Venezuela, which must be opposed by leftists and progressives the world over.
However, he goes on to argue that President Nicolás Maduro “was not democratically elected,” and as such, the left has a duty to “back the call for free and fair elections” in the Caribbean nation.
But is Maduro any less legitimate than his Global North counterparts and should the US left be calling for new elections in Venezuela? Moreover, are “free and fair elections” even feasible under current conditions?
Democratic double standards
Hetland elaborates a laundry list of alleged “authoritarian” abuses by the Maduro government that he claims invalidate the Venezuelan government’s democratic credentials.
In a previous article, we argued that the political science concept of “authoritarianism” is fundamentally colonial in nature, serving to juxtapose Global North capitalist democracies with Global South “regimes” that challenge the Washington consensus of “free markets” plus liberal representative democracy as the “end of history.”
In discarding this ontological binary, we affirm that the Maduro government must be judged not according to some abstract ideal of “democratic legitimacy, “ but by the same standards we apply to the Trump administration and other Global North regimes.
Hetland claims, “Maduro banned Venezuela’s leading opposition parties and candidates – most prominently, Henrique Capriles Radonski – from running.”
He, of course, omits the critical fact that the three largest opposition parties, Democratic Action (AD), First Justice (PJ), and Popular Will (VP), had boycotted the December 10, 2017 municipal elections, obliging them to re-validate their party status by collecting signatures from 0.5 percent of the electorate – a requirement not uncommon in many states of the US. AD successfully renewed its status, PJ failed to collect the necessary signatures, while VP boycotted the procedure outright.
Capriles was indeed disqualified from running over Odebrecht corruption allegations that were likely politically motivated. Nevertheless, in any other country he would probably still be in jail, or legally barred from holding office, given his high-profile role in the 2002 coup, in which he led the siege of the Cuban Embassy and participated in the kidnapping of Interior Minister Ramón Rodriguez Chacín together with former Chacao Mayor Leopoldo López. Capriles and López, along with other prominent opposition leaders, including Julio Borges, Antonio Ledezma, and María Corina Machado, would go on to spearhead five more brazenly unconstitutional attempts to oust the Chavista government: the 2002/3 oil lockout, the 2013 post-election opposition violence, the 2014and 2017 guarimbas, as well as the current Trump-led coup.
While Hetland is correct to call into question the manner in which the Maduro government has engaged in top-down power maneuvers from the Supreme Court, National Executive, and later National Constituent Assembly in a clear departure from Chavez’s strategy of bottom-up mobilization to build a socialist hegemony, he fails to acknowledge that such measures came in response to a parliamentary coup effort. Recall that the opposition-held National Assembly effectively blocked the government from renegotiating the country’s sovereign debt, approved abjectly unconstitutional laws such as a constitutional amendment retroactively shortening the presidential term, and declared that Maduro had “abandoned his post,” just as has been claimed to justify Juan Guaido’s self-swearing in as “interim president.”
Likewise, as Venezuelanalysis has amply documented, the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) has certainly repressed challengers to its left in several cases, but such practices pale in comparison to those regularly employed by the US Democratic Party which has yet to face any legal repercussions for its rigging of the 2016 presidential primary in favor of Hillary Clinton.
The fact of the matter is that Nicolás Maduro was re-elected in an internationally monitored election with 6.2 million votes, equivalent to 31 percent of the voting eligible population. In comparison, Barack Obama received 31 percent in 2008 and 28 percent in 2012, while Trump was elected with just 26 percent in 2016, failing to win the popular vote. As such, in procedural democratic terms, Maduro is no less legitimate than Donald Trump, Spain’s un-elected Pedro Sánchez, political crisis-mired Theresa May, or countless other Western leaders, none of whom would be expected to tolerate a violent foreign-backed opposition.
Hetland is again right to note that had the opposition united behind opposition presidential candidate Henri Falcon, the ex-governor would have stood a very good chance of beating Maduro. But he neglects to mention that the main opposition parties instead abandoned talks with the government and followed Washington’s lead in actively sabotaging Falcon with the aim of delegitimizing the election and setting the stage for the present coup attempt.
Cold War redux?
In 1990, the Sandinistas were defeated in a presidential election, which only in an Orwellian parallel universe could be construed as “free and fair.”
A decade of US economic strangulation and paramilitary terrorism had decimated the Central American country, leaving Nicaraguans to vote “with a pistol pointed at their heads,” as Daniel Ortega famously put it.
At the time, even the so-called “doves” within the US policy establishment, as Chomsky meticulously documents, enthusiastically backed the Reagan administration’s criminal siege, with liberal press icon Hendrik Hertzberg voicing support for a “continuation of the embargo against Nicaragua if the Sandinistas won the election and the observer reports were less than favorable.”
Meanwhile, the US left was too debilitated to adequately oppose Washington’s terrorist war.
Any objective assessment of the situation would have concluded that Ortega was one hundred percent in his right to suspend the 1990 elections until the US ended support for the contras, lifted the economic blockade, and paid US $17 billion in World Court-ordered reparations owed to the country. Yet, due to the weakness of US domestic opposition, Ortega was forced to accept the Reagan administration’s bait-and-switch peace deal, in which Washington reneged on its promise to end the war in exchange for elections.
Venezuela is not Nicaragua, but the present situation isn’t all-together dissimilar.
Like in Nicaragua, Venezuela’s May 20, 2018 election was hardly “free and fair,” but not for the reasons Hetland expounds.
Washington’s interference in the election was extreme, putting to shame the current Russiagate allegations.
A US financial blockade, imposed first by President Barack Obama in 2015 and made de jure by Trump in 2017, has decimated Venezuela’s economy, exacerbating the damage done by key Maduro policy failures which Hetland is correct to mention. As a result, Venezuela was robbed of at least US $6 billion in lost oil export revenues in the twelve months after August 2017, equivalent to around six percent of GDP. Healthcare spending in Latin America, in comparison, averages seven percent of GDP.
On top of these illegal measures, Washington promoted an opposition boycott, going as far as to threaten to sanction opposition presidential contender Falcon.
If last year’s presidential elections were in no way “free and fair” for the above reasons, what then makes Hetland think calling new elections will be any different?
The US further ratcheted up its sanctions in late January, imposing a de facto oil embargo which is estimated to cost Venezuelan coffers $11 billion in 2019. According to Torino Capital Chief Economist Francisco Rodriguez, the new measures will, on top of existing sanctions, cause Venezuela’s GDP to contract by twenty-six percent in 2019, destroying what is left of the country’s economy and killing many, many Venezuelans.
Moreover, in the unlikely event that Maduro or some other Chavista candidate manages to win a new election, there is little chance Washington and the right-wing opposition parties – whose unpopularity at 75 percent is on par with the ruling PSUV according to opposition-aligned pollster Datanalisis – will recognize the outcome. The opposition has cried fraud in virtually every major election over the past fifteen years, with the curious exception of the two that they won. For its part, the Obama administration was the only government in the world that refused to recognize Maduro’s April 14, 2013 election victory.
The reality the left must take deadly seriously is that the US, along with its ultra-right VP and PJ allies, are hell-bent on waging a dirty war to exterminate Chavismo as a mass political force. Skeptics need look no further than the appointment of Elliott Abrams, widely considered the godfather of US-backed death squad regimes in 1980s Central America, as special envoy to Venezuela. Similarly, the Venezuelan opposition’s enthusiastic support for US-led economic sanctions and refusal to rule out foreign military intervention are glaring proof of its willingness to sacrifice countless Venezuelan lives in order to bring down Maduro and Chavismo. Lest we forget that this is the opposition that thought nothing of lynching black men in the streets for the crime of “looking Chavista” during itsviolent anti-government protests.
We seem to be witnessing the same playbook as the April 11, 2002 coup when the Venezuelan opposition, with a green light from Abrams, temporarily ousted democratically elected President Hugo Chávez and installed a dictatorship that dissolved the constitution and killed between fifty and sixty people in a 47-hour reign of terror.
Under the present conditions of US-led siege, the notion that “free and fair elections” could be convened and Chavismo could peacefully relinquish power without risking liquidation is, at best, delusional.
As such, the first and foremost duty of leftists in Global North countries is to oppose their own governments’ imperial interventionism in Venezuela.
Any leftist discourse excoriating the Maduro government for “authoritarianism” and demanding elections as a point of abstract principle only provides ideological cover for the ongoing coup, especially since the US left is still too anemic to oppose it in any effective manner.
As Chávez used to say, “sólo el pueblo salva al pueblo” (only the people can save the people). Venezuelans can and will determine their own destiny, but it’s up to leftists, progressives, and all self-identifying democrats in the “belly of the beast” to help them defeat the new “coalition of the willing” being assembled to topple yet another independent Global South government.
https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14350
Lucas Koerner warns that the Global North “left” critique of “authoritarianism” in Venezuela serves as ideological cover for the current coup and impending dirty war pushed by Washington.
In a recent piece for Jacobin, Gabriel Hetland mapped out what he believes should be the “left” position vis-à-vis the ongoing US-led coup effort in Venezuela.
Hetland correctly observes that there is “absolutely no justification for U.S. sanctions or military intervention” in Venezuela, which must be opposed by leftists and progressives the world over.
However, he goes on to argue that President Nicolás Maduro “was not democratically elected,” and as such, the left has a duty to “back the call for free and fair elections” in the Caribbean nation.
But is Maduro any less legitimate than his Global North counterparts and should the US left be calling for new elections in Venezuela? Moreover, are “free and fair elections” even feasible under current conditions?
Democratic double standards
Hetland elaborates a laundry list of alleged “authoritarian” abuses by the Maduro government that he claims invalidate the Venezuelan government’s democratic credentials.
In a previous article, we argued that the political science concept of “authoritarianism” is fundamentally colonial in nature, serving to juxtapose Global North capitalist democracies with Global South “regimes” that challenge the Washington consensus of “free markets” plus liberal representative democracy as the “end of history.”
In discarding this ontological binary, we affirm that the Maduro government must be judged not according to some abstract ideal of “democratic legitimacy, “ but by the same standards we apply to the Trump administration and other Global North regimes.
Hetland claims, “Maduro banned Venezuela’s leading opposition parties and candidates – most prominently, Henrique Capriles Radonski – from running.”
He, of course, omits the critical fact that the three largest opposition parties, Democratic Action (AD), First Justice (PJ), and Popular Will (VP), had boycotted the December 10, 2017 municipal elections, obliging them to re-validate their party status by collecting signatures from 0.5 percent of the electorate – a requirement not uncommon in many states of the US. AD successfully renewed its status, PJ failed to collect the necessary signatures, while VP boycotted the procedure outright.
Capriles was indeed disqualified from running over Odebrecht corruption allegations that were likely politically motivated. Nevertheless, in any other country he would probably still be in jail, or legally barred from holding office, given his high-profile role in the 2002 coup, in which he led the siege of the Cuban Embassy and participated in the kidnapping of Interior Minister Ramón Rodriguez Chacín together with former Chacao Mayor Leopoldo López. Capriles and López, along with other prominent opposition leaders, including Julio Borges, Antonio Ledezma, and María Corina Machado, would go on to spearhead five more brazenly unconstitutional attempts to oust the Chavista government: the 2002/3 oil lockout, the 2013 post-election opposition violence, the 2014and 2017 guarimbas, as well as the current Trump-led coup.
While Hetland is correct to call into question the manner in which the Maduro government has engaged in top-down power maneuvers from the Supreme Court, National Executive, and later National Constituent Assembly in a clear departure from Chavez’s strategy of bottom-up mobilization to build a socialist hegemony, he fails to acknowledge that such measures came in response to a parliamentary coup effort. Recall that the opposition-held National Assembly effectively blocked the government from renegotiating the country’s sovereign debt, approved abjectly unconstitutional laws such as a constitutional amendment retroactively shortening the presidential term, and declared that Maduro had “abandoned his post,” just as has been claimed to justify Juan Guaido’s self-swearing in as “interim president.”
Likewise, as Venezuelanalysis has amply documented, the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) has certainly repressed challengers to its left in several cases, but such practices pale in comparison to those regularly employed by the US Democratic Party which has yet to face any legal repercussions for its rigging of the 2016 presidential primary in favor of Hillary Clinton.
The fact of the matter is that Nicolás Maduro was re-elected in an internationally monitored election with 6.2 million votes, equivalent to 31 percent of the voting eligible population. In comparison, Barack Obama received 31 percent in 2008 and 28 percent in 2012, while Trump was elected with just 26 percent in 2016, failing to win the popular vote. As such, in procedural democratic terms, Maduro is no less legitimate than Donald Trump, Spain’s un-elected Pedro Sánchez, political crisis-mired Theresa May, or countless other Western leaders, none of whom would be expected to tolerate a violent foreign-backed opposition.
Hetland is again right to note that had the opposition united behind opposition presidential candidate Henri Falcon, the ex-governor would have stood a very good chance of beating Maduro. But he neglects to mention that the main opposition parties instead abandoned talks with the government and followed Washington’s lead in actively sabotaging Falcon with the aim of delegitimizing the election and setting the stage for the present coup attempt.
Cold War redux?
In 1990, the Sandinistas were defeated in a presidential election, which only in an Orwellian parallel universe could be construed as “free and fair.”
A decade of US economic strangulation and paramilitary terrorism had decimated the Central American country, leaving Nicaraguans to vote “with a pistol pointed at their heads,” as Daniel Ortega famously put it.
At the time, even the so-called “doves” within the US policy establishment, as Chomsky meticulously documents, enthusiastically backed the Reagan administration’s criminal siege, with liberal press icon Hendrik Hertzberg voicing support for a “continuation of the embargo against Nicaragua if the Sandinistas won the election and the observer reports were less than favorable.”
Meanwhile, the US left was too debilitated to adequately oppose Washington’s terrorist war.
Any objective assessment of the situation would have concluded that Ortega was one hundred percent in his right to suspend the 1990 elections until the US ended support for the contras, lifted the economic blockade, and paid US $17 billion in World Court-ordered reparations owed to the country. Yet, due to the weakness of US domestic opposition, Ortega was forced to accept the Reagan administration’s bait-and-switch peace deal, in which Washington reneged on its promise to end the war in exchange for elections.
Venezuela is not Nicaragua, but the present situation isn’t all-together dissimilar.
Like in Nicaragua, Venezuela’s May 20, 2018 election was hardly “free and fair,” but not for the reasons Hetland expounds.
Washington’s interference in the election was extreme, putting to shame the current Russiagate allegations.
A US financial blockade, imposed first by President Barack Obama in 2015 and made de jure by Trump in 2017, has decimated Venezuela’s economy, exacerbating the damage done by key Maduro policy failures which Hetland is correct to mention. As a result, Venezuela was robbed of at least US $6 billion in lost oil export revenues in the twelve months after August 2017, equivalent to around six percent of GDP. Healthcare spending in Latin America, in comparison, averages seven percent of GDP.
On top of these illegal measures, Washington promoted an opposition boycott, going as far as to threaten to sanction opposition presidential contender Falcon.
If last year’s presidential elections were in no way “free and fair” for the above reasons, what then makes Hetland think calling new elections will be any different?
The US further ratcheted up its sanctions in late January, imposing a de facto oil embargo which is estimated to cost Venezuelan coffers $11 billion in 2019. According to Torino Capital Chief Economist Francisco Rodriguez, the new measures will, on top of existing sanctions, cause Venezuela’s GDP to contract by twenty-six percent in 2019, destroying what is left of the country’s economy and killing many, many Venezuelans.
Moreover, in the unlikely event that Maduro or some other Chavista candidate manages to win a new election, there is little chance Washington and the right-wing opposition parties – whose unpopularity at 75 percent is on par with the ruling PSUV according to opposition-aligned pollster Datanalisis – will recognize the outcome. The opposition has cried fraud in virtually every major election over the past fifteen years, with the curious exception of the two that they won. For its part, the Obama administration was the only government in the world that refused to recognize Maduro’s April 14, 2013 election victory.
The reality the left must take deadly seriously is that the US, along with its ultra-right VP and PJ allies, are hell-bent on waging a dirty war to exterminate Chavismo as a mass political force. Skeptics need look no further than the appointment of Elliott Abrams, widely considered the godfather of US-backed death squad regimes in 1980s Central America, as special envoy to Venezuela. Similarly, the Venezuelan opposition’s enthusiastic support for US-led economic sanctions and refusal to rule out foreign military intervention are glaring proof of its willingness to sacrifice countless Venezuelan lives in order to bring down Maduro and Chavismo. Lest we forget that this is the opposition that thought nothing of lynching black men in the streets for the crime of “looking Chavista” during itsviolent anti-government protests.
We seem to be witnessing the same playbook as the April 11, 2002 coup when the Venezuelan opposition, with a green light from Abrams, temporarily ousted democratically elected President Hugo Chávez and installed a dictatorship that dissolved the constitution and killed between fifty and sixty people in a 47-hour reign of terror.
Under the present conditions of US-led siege, the notion that “free and fair elections” could be convened and Chavismo could peacefully relinquish power without risking liquidation is, at best, delusional.
As such, the first and foremost duty of leftists in Global North countries is to oppose their own governments’ imperial interventionism in Venezuela.
Any leftist discourse excoriating the Maduro government for “authoritarianism” and demanding elections as a point of abstract principle only provides ideological cover for the ongoing coup, especially since the US left is still too anemic to oppose it in any effective manner.
As Chávez used to say, “sólo el pueblo salva al pueblo” (only the people can save the people). Venezuelans can and will determine their own destiny, but it’s up to leftists, progressives, and all self-identifying democrats in the “belly of the beast” to help them defeat the new “coalition of the willing” being assembled to topple yet another independent Global South government.
https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14350
Re: Venezuela
Uruguay defends Maduro against "drums of war" and interference
2.MAR.2019 / 09:18 AM / MAKE A COMMENT
Compartirone
Photo: Referential
The president of Uruguay reiterates his support for his Venezuelan counterpart, Nicolás Maduro, in the face of external interference and "drums of war".
"We are not neutral, because when we had to choose between peace and war we opted for peace, when many were shaking war drums, increasing the violence that already exists in Venezuela, our government opted for dialogue and for peaceful and democratic exit in search of of elections, "Tabaré Vázquez said on Friday at a stadium in Montevideo (Uruguayan capital), full of supporters.
Vázquez defended his government's position in favor of the Maduro Executive, in line with which he previously rejected the supposed legitimacy of the self-proclaimed "interim president" of Juan Guaidó, president of the Venezuelan National Assembly - opposition majority and disrespect since 2016-.
For the Uruguayan president, everything that happens in Venezuela is an internal matter of this country. "The problems of Venezuelans must be solved by Venezuelans and not by outsiders, we do not approve any kind of external interference," he said.
In the same vein, said that Montevideo will continue to defend "the self-determination of peoples and the peaceful settlement of disputes," as what "has been Uruguay throughout history."
The United States, as the first country to recognize Guaidó, has already asked Uruguay as well as Mexico - another Latin American country that refused to support the Venezuelan coup leaders - to change their position and stop supporting Maduro, who was re-elected president of Venezuela after win the presidential elections of May 2018 with more than 6 million votes (68% of the total) -considered a historical figure-.
The North American country, likewise, has intensified its threats to resort to a military intervention in Venezuela to overthrow Maduro.
Caracas has denounced the interference of Washington as part of a plan to promote a coup in Venezuela, which pursues the main objective of seizing the natural resources of this country, as assured by the Chavez authorities and several analysts and observers.
Hispan TV
http://www.psuv.org.ve/temas/noticias/t ... Hqv88BKiM9
Google Translator
2.MAR.2019 / 09:18 AM / MAKE A COMMENT
Compartirone
Photo: Referential
The president of Uruguay reiterates his support for his Venezuelan counterpart, Nicolás Maduro, in the face of external interference and "drums of war".
"We are not neutral, because when we had to choose between peace and war we opted for peace, when many were shaking war drums, increasing the violence that already exists in Venezuela, our government opted for dialogue and for peaceful and democratic exit in search of of elections, "Tabaré Vázquez said on Friday at a stadium in Montevideo (Uruguayan capital), full of supporters.
Vázquez defended his government's position in favor of the Maduro Executive, in line with which he previously rejected the supposed legitimacy of the self-proclaimed "interim president" of Juan Guaidó, president of the Venezuelan National Assembly - opposition majority and disrespect since 2016-.
For the Uruguayan president, everything that happens in Venezuela is an internal matter of this country. "The problems of Venezuelans must be solved by Venezuelans and not by outsiders, we do not approve any kind of external interference," he said.
In the same vein, said that Montevideo will continue to defend "the self-determination of peoples and the peaceful settlement of disputes," as what "has been Uruguay throughout history."
The United States, as the first country to recognize Guaidó, has already asked Uruguay as well as Mexico - another Latin American country that refused to support the Venezuelan coup leaders - to change their position and stop supporting Maduro, who was re-elected president of Venezuela after win the presidential elections of May 2018 with more than 6 million votes (68% of the total) -considered a historical figure-.
The North American country, likewise, has intensified its threats to resort to a military intervention in Venezuela to overthrow Maduro.
Caracas has denounced the interference of Washington as part of a plan to promote a coup in Venezuela, which pursues the main objective of seizing the natural resources of this country, as assured by the Chavez authorities and several analysts and observers.
Hispan TV
http://www.psuv.org.ve/temas/noticias/t ... Hqv88BKiM9
Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."