https://socialistaction.org/2019/04/04/u-s-hands-off-venezuela-4/
U.S. hands off Venezuela!
/ 11 hours ago
April 2019 Venez. (Ariana Cubillos-AP)
Rally in Caracas on March 30 against the imperialist-abetted coup.
(Ariana Cubillos / AP)
By BRUCE LESNICK
When you corner a rat, it lashes out. The rats in charge of the U.S.
empire are cornered by the contradictions built into their own system:
increasing economic inequality, regular depressions and recessions,
declining profit rates, perpetual austerity, and endless wars promoted
to stave off increasing global competition. The current vicious U.S.
assault on Venezuela—along with the ongoing attacks on working people
here at home—are what it looks like when the imperial rat lashes out.
The Trump administration has openly declared the goal of regime change
in Venezuela. Such an aim is illegal under international law. The mere
threat of aggression is “not only an international crime; it is the
supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that
it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”
But U.S. hostility toward that sovereign, independent nation did not
begin with the current administration. In a classic case of what Malcolm
X called “turning the victim into the criminal,” Barack Obama declared a
state of emergency in January of 2017 asserting that Cuba and Venezuela
were national security threats to the U.S.
What is the reason for U.S. hostility toward Venezuela, a country that
has never threatened any other, let alone the U.S.? Simply put, the
popularly elected Chavez and Maduro governments have failed to blindly
adhere to U.S. neoliberal economic priorities and imperial dictates. As
the CIA acknowledged: “Social investment in Venezuela during the CHAVEZ
administration reduced poverty from nearly 50% in 1999 to about 27% in
2011, increased school enrollment, substantially decreased infant and
child mortality, and improved access to potable water and sanitation
through social investment.”
Naturally, big business and the U.S. government they control couldn’t
stand idly by while a country in their very “back yard” followed a road
that, however tepidly and imperfectly, took steps that hinted at
prioritizing human needs over private profits. A series of executive
orders and sanctions, beginning under the Obama administration and
continuing under Trump, have sought to economically strangle the
Venezuelan people.
From freezing Venezuelan gold and U.S. dollar reserves held in foreign
accounts, to blocking the sale of oil, Venezuela’s chief hard currency
export, the impact on the Venezuelan economy is estimated to be upwards
of $20 billion in 2018 alone. Together these sanctions amount to a
criminal siege, according to UN Special Rapporteur for Venezuela, Alfred
de Zayas.
This was followed by a U.S.-sponsored coup attempt on Jan. 23, 2019,
when President Trump announced U.S. recognition of opposition politician
Juan Guaidó as the “legitimate” president of Venezuela. This was despite
Guaidó’s never having run in a presidential election.
Mainstream media complicity
To cover up its illegal aggression, the U.S. attempted to stage the
delivery of “humanitarian aid” at the Columbian and Brazilian boarders
with Venezuela on Feb. 23. Venezuelan officials denounced the stunt as a
“Trojan Horse,” noting that U.S. Special Envoy Eliot Abrams, who was
promoting the phony aid drop, was known for concealing weapons in planes
with Red Cross markings in support of the Contras—anti-Nicaraguan
government mercenaries supported by the U.S. in the 1980s.
The phony aid drop was stopped by Venezuelan troops. Near opposition
groups escorting the aid, one of the trucks caught fire. Video footage
from the scene by Telesur showed opposition supporters starting the
fire. Nevertheless, The New York Times, CNN and other mainstream media,
plus John Bolton, Marco Rubio and Mike Pompeo, blamed the fire on the
Venezuelan government forces for two weeks after the incident.
Only after the lie had been sufficiently spread and reinforced did The
Times reverse itself on March 10, acknowledging that the same video
published widely by Max Blumenthal of The Grayzone and by other
alternative media sites weeks earlier proved that Venezuelan troops were
not responsible for the fire.
The Times barely paused before spreading additional misinformation in a
story entitled, “‘It Is Unspeakable’: How Maduro Used Cuban Doctors to
Coerce Venezuela Voters.” The story was calculated to smear the
Venezuelan and Cuban governments, as well as thousands of Cuban doctors
and teachers who have volunteered to provide concrete, legitimate aid to
the Venezuelan people.
Nine days later, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) published a
piece thoroughly debunking the Times story. Entitled, “Pathological
Deceit: The NYT Inverts Reality on Venezuela’s Cuban Doctors,” the FAIR
piece concludes, “the New York Times’ Andes bureau chief mobilizes
anonymous sources and defectors—whose testimony ranges from dubious to
preposterous—to further demonize Venezuela and provide cover for
Washington’s murderous regime change policy.”
Multi-faceted attack
The next move in the imperial assault on Venezuela came on March 7 with
a cyber-attack on Venezuela’s power grid.
According to Venezuela’s Telesur, “An ongoing series of cyber attacks
were perpetrated starting Thursday against the El Guri hydroelectric
plant control system leaving the Venezuelan population without
electricity for now almost 96 hours. According to the Venezuelan
government, this nationwide blackout was brought about by foreign-backed
actions aimed at destabilizing the government [of] President Nicolás
Maduro, who stressed that the aggression ‘affected everyone equally
without political distinction.’”
As noted in a March 9 story in Forbes, the U.S. has long had plans for
disrupting the infrastructure of “uncooperative” nations: “Interrupting
power and water supplies, disrupting traffic patterns, slowing or
interfering with internet access, causing smart homes to go haywire and
even remotely triggering meltdowns at nuclear power plants were all
topics increasingly being discussed in the national security community
at the time as legitimate and legal tactics to undermine a foreign state.”
The Cuban government issued a strong statement condemning the attack:
“The Revolutionary Government strongly condemns the sabotage perpetrated
against the power supply system in Venezuela, which is a terrorist
action intended to harm the defenseless population of an entire nation
and turn it into a hostage of the non-conventional war launched by the
government of the United States against the legitimate government headed
by comrade Nicolás Maduro Moros and the civic and military union of the
Bolivarian and Chavista people.”
Genuine aid
On March 25, The Wall Street Journal reported that two Russian military
planes had landed in Caracas: “The Russian delegation, made up of 100
soldiers and military officials, arrived over the weekend to provide
technical consultations linked to arms that Venezuela previously had
purchased from Moscow, according to Russian state media. One of the
planes carried 35 tons of unspecified equipment, said a security
consultant with close ties to Caracas.”
Russia, Cuba and China have also delivered humanitarian aid in
cooperation with the Venezuelan government. Telesur reported, “China
delivered 65 tons of medicine and supplies to Venezuela Thursday as a
result of a strategic cooperation between the two countries. The
delivery of aid is one of many, according to government officials.”
According to Nicolás Maduro, as quoted in the Feb. 19 edition of El
Periódico, “On Wednesday, 300 tons of Russian humanitarian aid will be
legally delivered to the international airport of Caracas.” The article
continues, “He also insisted that the donations made by the United
States and Colombia at the request of the Venezuelan Parliament, which
has an opposition majority, and that are blocked at the border, are
outdated and contaminated food.
“‘The issue of humanitarian aid is a show, it is a hunting trap, they
rob us 30 billion dollars and they offer us 20 million in rotten food,
contaminated, to try to intervene in Venezuela,’ he insisted while
asking the Colombian president , Ivan Duque, and the American, Donald
Trump, stop the ‘madness.’”
Revolutionary socialists fully support the right of the Venezuelan
government to obtain military, technical, and humanitarian aid from
wherever they choose. One does not have to agree with every policy of
the Maduro government to understand the stakes in the current conflict
and to loudly demand: End the Sanctions! U.S. Hands Off Venezuela!
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April 4, 2019 in Anti-War, Latin America.
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