Good reading. Even for those who already see through the Trump Poopaganda.
I dreamed the other night that Donald Trump was tweeting and
twittering at a great
fair thee well. He jumped up and began waiving his arms and shouting
about stamping out Socialism because it was so terrible, the way it
tried to take over other governments and prevent people from voting,
and take away the hard earned money made by honest billionaires, and
all like that. Suddenly he stopped and pointed his long manicured
finger and said, "Right there is the evil image of Socialism!"
Oops, he was looking in a full length mirror. I woke up and swore I'd
never eat a plate of Carrot Cake topped with mounds of Vanilla
ice-cream so close to bed time, ever again.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/20/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Everyone Has Fallen for the Lies About Venezuela
Shutterstock
There are three things I know for sure in this fanciful, sometimes
inglorious experience we call life:
You will never have a safety pin when you need one, and you will have
thousands when you don’t need one.
Wild animals are breathtakingly majestic until they’re crawling up your
pant
leg.
A U.S. presidential administration will never admit that it invaded another
country or backed a coup attempt in order to essentially steal the natural
resources (oil) of said country.
This is why it was so very shocking last week when members of the Trump
administration admitted they were backing a coup attempt in order to
essentially steal the natural resources (oil) of another country.
That country is Venezuela. I’ll get back to this in a moment.
Let’s take a second to go over the big three. There are three things that
seem to provoke the ornery United States into overthrowing or bringing down
a foreign government, no matter how many innocent civilians may die in the
process. (If enough die, the perpetrators often get nominated for a Nobel
Peace Prize.) If your country has one of these things, the U.S. might screw
with you. If your country has two of these things, the U.S. will definitely
screw with you. If your country has three of these things, then look behind
you, because the U.S. is currently screwing you:
1. Being socialist.
Pretty self-explanatory. If you don’t have the same economic system as we
do, we treat it like you have candy and we’re not allowed to have any, so
we
slip razor blades in yours and tell everyone your candy kills people.
2. Dropping the U.S. dollar.
Iraq dropped the dollar. We invaded.
Syria dropped the dollar. We invaded.
Iran dropped the dollar. We want to invade.
Libya dropped the dollar. We invaded.
Pakistan dropped the dollar in trade with China, and the following day
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-religion/u-s-places-pakistan-on-watc
h-list-for-religious-freedom-violations-idUSKBN1ET1OA> the U.S. added them
to the list of countries violating religious freedom. (I guess you could
argue they did indeed violate our religion: The dollar.)
Basically, we do NOT take kindly to countries dropping the dollar.
In unrelated news,
<https://www.mintpressnews.com/venezuela-drops-petrodollar-us-sanctions-drug
-trafficking/232056/> Venezuela dropped the dollar.
3. Having oil or other natural resources the U.S. needs.
In case you were curious, Venezuela
<https://www.upi.com/Venezuela-is-the-clear-global-leader-in-oil-reserves/92
51533031601/> has the largest oil reserves in the known world. (But we
haven’t checked northern Wyoming yet, because it’s a long, cold drive with
nary a 7-11.)
So these are the three ACTUAL reasons the U.S. has created an attempted
coup
in Venezuela over the past several weeks. And right now, you are falling
into one of two categories. Either you’re saying to yourself, “Of course
those are the reasons. Those are the only reasons the U.S. ever tries to
bring down governments.” OR you still have some strange, deep-rooted faith
in our Pepsi-and-pharmaceutical-owned media outlets, and therefore you’re
thinking, “That’s not true. The U.S. supports the opposition in Venezuela
because we want to help those poor starving people.” But if that were
accurate, we would be tripping over ourselves to help starving and sick
people around the world. Instead we (oddly) only seek to help them when
they
have oil under their feet. And in fact, data has proven this true.
<https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/intervention-in-civil-
wars-far-more-likely-in-oil-rich-nations-10006648.html> A study a few years
ago from the Universities of Portsmouth, Warwick and Essex found that
foreign intervention in civil conflicts is 100 times more likely if the
country has a great deal of oil, versus none.
So who is feeding the average American the idea that our involvement in
Venezuela is about helping people? Only EVERY mainstream media channel in
America—from MSNBC to Fox News to NPR to Bill fuckin’ Maher. It’s truly
mind-numbing to watch so-called “liberals” march in lockstep with the likes
of John Bolton, Elliot Abrams, Donald Trump and every neocon not currently
in a coma.
These outlets froth at the mouth while presenting segments explaining that
the Venezuelan people are starving, but they also purposefully avoid
mentioning that a lot of Venezuela’s hardships are
<https://www.mintpressnews.com/the-truth-about-us-sanctions-on-venezuela-and
-whys-the-media-gets-it-wrong/254625/> due to U.S. sanctions. This isn’t to
say Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, has done an awesome job. But
whether he has or not, saying we must sanction them to help them is like if
somebody fell through a plate glass window and you said, “Let’s help him!
Let’s start cutting the glass shards out of his skin with this rusty
flathead screwdriver I found in an abandoned mine! Then we’ll pour Mountain
Dew and sewage water in the wounds to help them heal!”
But that’s what our sanctions are designed to do. They’re devised from day
one to hurt poor and average people the most, in order to make them angry
enough to rebel. Over a year ago, when Rex Tillerson was secretary of
state,
he <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlQNcjZu2RU> publicly said we could
tell our sanctions on North Korea were working great because poor fishermen
were washing up on the beaches starved to death. (One is perplexed by how
difficult it is at times to tell the difference between “helping other
countries” and mass murder.)
Sanctions are not smart bombs. They destroy everybody, except the rich—who
have enough money to weather the sanctions. Come to think of it, sanctions
are kind of like smart bombs. We’re told they’re only going to hit the bad
guys, but in fact “smart bombs” kill all kinds of innocent civilians, just
like sanctions do.
Furthermore, the U.S. “humanitarian aid” that we claim to be sending is not
what it seems. Even NPR took a break from its traditional role as State
Department stenographer-in-training
<https://twitter.com/LeeCamp/status/1097143848260849665> to reveal that the
“humanitarian aid” is actually meant to create regime change. And
<https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/latin-america/article22
5949200.html> McClatchy last week uncovered that the North Carolina-based
private freight company 21 Air LLC has made 40 secretive flights to
Venezuela from the U.S. in the past month, and the Venezuelan government
claimed the flights were filled to the brim with assault weapons and
ammunition destined for opposition forces. (Apparently we thought the
Venezuelans were going to cook up a fresh pot of bullet stew to ease their
hunger pains.) To make matters worse,
<https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/national-security/ar
ticle226011940.html> two executives at the company have ties to an air
cargo
company that helped the CIA “rendition” supposed terrorists to black sites
for “interrogation” (read: torture).
The next piece of propaganda lovingly pedestalled by our mainstream media
robot-heads is simply calling Juan Guaidó the “interim president” without
mentioning that he was not elected to that position and only 30 out of 200
nations
<https://popularresistance.org/the-rise-of-a-fake-president-in-venezuela/>
recognize him as such. He just declared himself president. Last I checked,
that’s not really how governments work. But if it is—OK, I hereby declare
myself governor of … let’s say, Idaho. No one will really notice. I’m
pretty
sure the current governor is a hedgehog in a bow tie.
There are many other things CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and all the rest don’t
want
you to know about Juan Guaidó. For example, until he
<https://popularresistance.org/imperialist-aggression-what-we-can-learn-from
-the-attempted-coup-against-venezuela/> named himself president,
<https://twitter.com/venanalysis/status/1087447663153500166> 81 percent of
Venezuelans didn’t even know who he was, according to a poll conducted by
the Venezuela-based firm Hinterlaces. And he only won his own assembly seat
with 26% of the vote. In order to win elections in any country, you often
need more than 30 percent of the people to have heard of you. Pauly Shore
has more name recognition among Venezuelans than Juan Guaidó.
On top of that, Guaidó went to George Washington University. As the
<https://grayzoneproject.com/2019/01/29/the-making-of-juan-guaido-how-the-us
-regime-change-laboratory-created-venezuelas-coup-leader/> Grayzone Project
reported, “[In 2007] He moved to Washington, D.C., to enroll in the
Governance and Political Management Program at George Washington under the
tutelage of Venezuelan economist Luis Enrique Berrizbeitia, one of the top
Latin American neoliberal economists. Berrizbeitia is a former executive
director of the International Monetary Fund. …”
Guaidó went to GW, trained under Mr. IMF, and then we declared him
president
of Venezuela. That’s like studying at the WWE, training under Henry
Kissinger, and then the U.S. declares you the King of Japan.
But it doesn’t stop there, according to the Grayzone Project:
“Juan Guaidó is the product of a decade-long project overseen by
Washington’s elite regime change trainers. While posing as a champion of
democracy, he has spent years at the forefront of a violent campaign of
destabilization.”
Furthermore, Juan Guaidó has already said he wants to sell Venezuela’s oil
to foreign companies and let the IMF back in, which will drown the country
in debt.
So he’s an American regime-change pawn who was groomed by the IMF to take
over Venezuela and give away their natural resources. What a catch. … But
if
this is what the Venezuelan people really want, then we should respect
their
wishes. The corporate media tells us this is what the people want, right?
Except that it’s not.
“
<https://grayzoneproject.com/2019/01/29/venezuelans-oppose-intervention-us-s
anctions-poll/> According to a study conducted in early January 2019 … 86
percent of Venezuelans would disagree with international military
intervention,” Grayzone’s Ben Norton reported last month. “And 81 percent
oppose the US sanctions that have gravely hurt the nation’s economy.”
So, based on the Hinterlaces poll, most Venezuelans didn’t know Guaidó
until
recently. Most Venezuelans still support Maduro even if they believe
corruption in the government has increased (whether you personally like
Maduro or not doesn’t matter), and most Venezuelans don’t want military
intervention or U.S. sanctions. Yet CNN and NPR and Fox News and the BBC
and
every other corporate outlet will have you thinking everyone is starving to
death, on their knees begging for America’s democracy bombs to rain down
like dollar bills at a strip club.
But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe those people really need our help, and U.S.
intervention will work out great—exactly like it did in Syria,
and Yemen,
and Iraq,
and Iran,
and Afghanistan,
and Chile,
and Honduras,
and Haiti,
and Somalia,
and Libya,
and Guatemala,
and Nicaragua,
and Colombia,
and Panama,
and Fraggle Rock,
and those tree forts where the EWOKS LIVED!
Now that we have a general understanding of the situation (and why Anderson
Cooper is not keen to remind viewers what happened with Fraggle Rock in the
early ’90s), let’s get back to the question of oil.
When I first started writing this, I didn’t have proof the American
government wanted Venezuela’s oil; it was just a hunch. Kinda like if you
put a balloon in a room with a porcupine, you have a hunch he’ll pop the
balloon. But I didn’t have a quote from a top Trump administration official
saying, “We’d like to take their oil.”
Then national security adviser and Mustache of Doom John Bolton said, “hold
my beer.” While on Fox News
<https://grayzoneproject.com/2019/01/29/us-coup-venezuela-oil-corporate-john
-bolton/> he stated clearly, “It will make a big difference to the United
States economically if we could have American oil companies invest in and
produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.”
That’s Beltway Speak for “We want their oil.”
For 20 years we’ve been trying to destroy Venezuela, and our government
always gives the standard line: “We want to help the people. We care about
their democracy. They have a lot of inflation, and that’s why we need to
drop our freedom bombs on their heads.” They’ve trotted out that bullshit
brigade under Bush, Obama and now Trump. The officials never just say,
“Yeah, there’s like, tons of oil there, and we want it.”
Yet, here it is. The disguise of neoliberal world domination has come off.
(Ironically, the fake mustache was yanked off to reveal a much larger
mustache.)
Also, it’s amazing how monotone and matter-of-fact Bolton is as he speaks.
A
U.S.-backed coup often ends in terrible violence with tens of thousands of
innocent people killed. It’s truly heartbreaking, no matter which side you
support. Sometimes it ends up with a brutal military junta taking control.
Yet, here is John Bolton discussing it the same way he would analyze
whether
to have chocolate fudge ice cream or apple pie for dessert. (“Hmmm,
possible
death of a hundred thousand people? That sounds good—I’ll have that.”)
This is all the more horrifying because these policies are decided by
unelected maniacs like Elliot Abrams, Mike Pompeo and John Bolton. Trump
just named Abrams special envoy to Venezuela despite the fact the guy has a
resume that would make Josef Mengele blush. And what’s even more
jaw-dropping is watching the liberati
<https://fair.org/home/action-alert-msnbcs-resistance-to-trumps-venezuela-co
up-ranges-from-silence-to-support/> like Rachel Maddow, Bill Maher and
nearly every democrat in Congress get in line to support the talking points
of right-wing warlords (the belligerati) like Bolton, Abrams, Pompeo,
Trump,
Hannity and nearly every Republican in Congress. The mountains of
propaganda
put forward make it hard to breathe (the air is thinner up here).
Worse yet—even the
<https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-push-to-oust-venezuelas-maduro-marks-first
-shot-in-plan-to-reshape-latin-america-11548888252> Wall Street Journal
stated the U.S. push to oust Maduro is just the first shot in the
oligarchy’s plan to reshape Latin America. It turns out sociopathy is
addictive. Our American empire knows no bounds to its nation-building
(after
nation-destroying).
The Venezuelan people deserve self-determination, no matter how you feel
about the current government. The absolute last thing they need is to be
turned into a neocon / neoliberal parking lot in which America rips all
their resources out from under them while calling it “freedom.” Luckily,
there are already
<https://popularresistance.org/venezuela-media-find-trumps-coup-plan-does-no
t-work/> many signs this U.S.-created attempted coup is failing.
—
This column is based on a monologue Lee Camp wrote and performed on his TV
show, “ <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKqYkzhOIuQ> Redacted Tonight.”
