OMNI
VENEZUELA
NEWSLETTER #1, EARLY FEBRUARY TO MAY 16, 2019.
Compiled
by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology
(This is the first newsletter specifically on Venezuela, but
OMNI’s Latin America newsletters have included books and articles on the
country and all relevant to recent US subversion of its elected
government. See http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2013/04/latin-america-newsletter-2.html
)
5-16-19
[The following articles appear in reverse chronological order. I have quoted the first report fully (sent by Sue Skidmore) to be sure it is available. Most of the articles are accompanied by its link. The articles extend from February to May 16. --Dick]
[The following articles appear in reverse chronological order. I have quoted the first report fully (sent by Sue Skidmore) to be sure it is available. Most of the articles are accompanied by its link. The articles extend from February to May 16. --Dick]
5-16 Breaking News
from Sue Skidmore and Ted Swedenburg:
The last four of the Venezuelan
Embassy Protection Collection EPC have been arrested by the USA in violation of
the Vienna Convention
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1071027692917703/wp/1804800209666288/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1071027692917703/wp/1804800209666288/
Fascism in Plain Sight
in the Nation’s Capital
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5-16-19,4:53 AM (4 hours ago)
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Sue lives in Springfield, MO, is
active in peace and justice advocacy, and has arranged for visits by Ray
McGovern to Springfield several times (as has OMNI). --Dick.
‘Turnkey Tyranny’ on the Streets of
Washington
May 9, 2019 •by Ray McGovern 138 Comments
May 9, 2019 •by Ray McGovern 138 Comments
We are at the point
Edward Snowden described as “turnkey tyranny.”And on Wednesday night the key
was turned a bit more dramatically. Ray McGovern explains.
Venezuela Embassy Protection Collective
Defies ‘No Trespass’ Order May 15, 2019 • by Medea Benjamin & Ann
Wright [Medea and Ann have visited Fayetteville several times—Ann is from
Bentonville--, sponsored by OMNI.]
Mint Press News https://www.mintpressnews.com/secret-service-blocks-food-from-reaching-activists-inside-venezuelan-embassy/258244/
Video showing when the
police and secret service cut off the power at the Venezuelan Embassy
NAZIS wearing 3 piece
suits want the US to bombard the Venezuelan Embassy
Mike Pompeo gave the Secret Service the script to read to the people who call asking the Secret Service to turn the power back on in the Venezuelan Embassy
War against a legal and fairly elected president in Venezuela is about to break out -- the Secret Service is being used to accomplish this NAZI - esque way of abusive tyranny to oust a fairly elected president for USA regime change.
Mike Pompeo gave the Secret Service the script to read to the people who call asking the Secret Service to turn the power back on in the Venezuelan Embassy
War against a legal and fairly elected president in Venezuela is about to break out -- the Secret Service is being used to accomplish this NAZI - esque way of abusive tyranny to oust a fairly elected president for USA regime change.
At the Venezuelan
embassy, where @SecretService has sanctioned a right-wing riot. Am going to ask
some officers why they won’t protect the embassy right now.
At this moment, the
violent mob that you have allowed to continually commit acts of violence against
persons and property at the Venezuelan embassy is actively working to smash in
the doors while your (secret service) officers give permission to the assault
and explicitly refuse to intervene.
Fascism in Plain Sight
in the Nation’s Capital (same article as TurnKey Tyranny ) By Ray McGovern
I just got word that
Gerry Condon, President of Veterans For Peace, was bloodied and “taken to
ground,” as they like to say, for trying to get food to people inside the
occupied Venezuelan embassy this evening. See:
https://twitter.com/RealAlexRubi/status/1126258040221634566…
https://twitter.com/RealAlexRubi/status/1126258040221634566…
This link should take
you directly to a photo of Gerry Condon on the sidewalk after the attack:
pic.twitter.com/Z6R27pu1Wh
pic.twitter.com/Z6R27pu1Wh
We are at the point
Edward Snowden described as “turnkey tyranny.” Last night the key was turned a
bit more, but — at least until now — it has been an almost imperceptibly
gradual process, like the proverbial frog in the pan, as the water starts to
boil. And, of course, this has happened before.
What follows is taken
from “Creeping Fascism: History’s Lessons,” which I posted on December 27,
2007: [See: https://consortiumnews.com/2007/122707a.html ]]
“There are few things
as odd as the calm, superior indifference with which I and those like me
watched the beginnings of the Nazi revolution in Germany, as if from a box at
the theater. ... Perhaps the only comparably odd thing is the way that now,
years later....”
The above are the
words of Sebastian Haffner (pen name for Raimund Pretzel), who as a young
lawyer in Berlin during the 1930s experienced the Nazi takeover and wrote a
first-hand account. His children found the manuscript when he died in 1999 and
published it the following year as “Geschichte eines Deutschen” (The Story of a
German).
The book became an
immediate bestseller and has been translated into 20 languages—in English as
“Defying Hitler.”
I recently learned from his daughter Sarah, an artist in Berlin, that today is the 100th anniversary of Haffner’s birth. She had seen an earlier article in which I quoted her father and e-mailed to ask me to “write some more about the book and the comparison to Bush’s America. ... This is almost unbelievable.” [Emphasis added.]
I recently learned from his daughter Sarah, an artist in Berlin, that today is the 100th anniversary of Haffner’s birth. She had seen an earlier article in which I quoted her father and e-mailed to ask me to “write some more about the book and the comparison to Bush’s America. ... This is almost unbelievable.” [Emphasis added.]
More about Haffner
below. Let’s set the stage first by recapping some of what has been going on
here in the U.S. [in late 2007] that may have resonance for readers familiar
with the Nazi ascendancy, noting how “odd” it is that the frontal attack on our
Constitutional rights is met with such “calm, superior indifference.” Reflect
on the key role played by the media.
Collect on Everyone
After suppressing for
two and a half years the explosive story of the Bush/Cheney surveillance of
Americans in gross violation of the Fourth Amendment, top New York Times officials decided to let the rest of us in on the
fact that the George W. Bush administration had been eavesdropping on American
citizens without the court warrants required by the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978. Not to mention the U.S. Constitution.
The Times had learned of this well before the
election in 2004 and acquiesced to White House entreaties to suppress the
damaging information. In late fall 2005 when Times correspondent James Risen’s book, State of War: the Secret History of the CIA and the Bush
Administration, revealing the
warrantless eavesdropping was being printed,
Times publisher, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., recognized that he could
procrastinate no longer.
It would simply be too
embarrassing to have Risen’s book on the street, with Sulzberger and his
associates pretending that this explosive eavesdropping story did not fit
Adolph Ochs’s trademark criterion: All The News That’s Fit To Print.
(The Times’ own ombudsman, Public Editor Byron Calame, branded the newspaper’s explanation for the long delay in publishing this story “woefully inadequate.”)
(The Times’ own ombudsman, Public Editor Byron Calame, branded the newspaper’s explanation for the long delay in publishing this story “woefully inadequate.”)
When Sulzberger told
his friends in the White House that he could no longer hold off on publishing
in the newspaper, he was summoned to the Oval Office for a counseling session
with the president on Dec. 5, 2005. Bush tried in vain to talk him out of
putting the story in the Times. The truth would out; part of it, at least. ...
What followed struck
me as bizarre. The day after the Dec. 16 Times feature article exposing the
Fourth-Amendment-trashing program, the president of the United States publicly
admitted to a demonstrably impeachable offense.
Authorizing illegal electronic surveillance was a key provision of the second article of impeachment against President Richard Nixon. On July 27, 1974, this and two other articles of impeachment were approved by bipartisan votes in the House Judiciary Committee.
Authorizing illegal electronic surveillance was a key provision of the second article of impeachment against President Richard Nixon. On July 27, 1974, this and two other articles of impeachment were approved by bipartisan votes in the House Judiciary Committee.
Bush took a frontal
approach, Far from expressing regret, he bragged about having authorized the
surveillance “more than 30 times since the September the 11th attacks,” and
said he would continue to do so. The president also said:
“Leaders in Congress have been briefed more than a dozen times on this authorization and the activities conducted under it.”
“Leaders in Congress have been briefed more than a dozen times on this authorization and the activities conducted under it.”
On Dec. 19, 2005,
then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and then-NSA Director Michael Hayden
held a press conference to answer questions about the as yet unnamed
surveillance program. Gonzales was asked why the White House decided to flout
FISA rather than attempt to amend it, choosing instead a “backdoor approach.”
He answered:
“We have had discussions with Congress...as to whether or not FISA could be amended to allow us to adequately deal with this kind of threat, and we were advised that that would be difficult, if not impossible.” ...
“We have had discussions with Congress...as to whether or not FISA could be amended to allow us to adequately deal with this kind of threat, and we were advised that that would be difficult, if not impossible.” ...
It was not difficult
to infer that the surveillance program must have been of such scope and
intrusiveness that, even amid highly stoked fear, it didn’t have a prayer for
passage. It turns out we didn’t know the half of it. …
Bear in mind that when
this illegal surveillance program began, it had nothing to do with terrorism,
an issue that did not really appear on the new administration’s radar screen
until a week before 9/11. … So this until-recently-unknown pre-9/11 facet of
the “Terrorist Surveillance Program” was not related to Osama bin Laden or to
whomever he and his associates might be speaking. It had to do with us.
We know that the
Democrats briefed on the “Terrorist Surveillance Program” include House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi, D-California, (the one with the longest tenure on the House
Intelligence Committee), Rep. Jane Harman, D-California, and former and current
chairmen of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bob Graham, D-Florida, and Jay Rockefeller,
D-West Virginia, respectively. May one interpret their lack of public comment
on the news that the snooping began well before 9/11 as a sign they were
co-opted and then sworn to secrecy?
It is an important
question [with considerable relevance to the situation today]. Were the
appropriate leaders in Congress informed that within days of George W. Bush’s
first inauguration the NSA electronic vacuum cleaner began to suck up
information on you and me, despite the FISA law and the Fourth Amendment? Are
they all complicit?
With respect to Nazis
and their enablers: You don’t have to be a Nazi. You can just be, well, a
sheep.
In his journal,
Sebastian Haffner decries what he calls the “sheepish submissiveness” with
which the German people reacted to a 9/11-like event, the burning of the German
Parliament (Reichstag) on Feb. 27, 1933.
Haffner finds it quite
telling that none of his acquaintances “saw anything out of the ordinary in the
fact that, from then on, one’s telephone would be tapped, one’s letters opened,
and one’s desk might be broken into.”
But it is for the
cowardly politicians that Haffner reserves his most vehement condemnation. Do
you see any contemporary parallels here?
In the elections of
March 4, 1933, shortly after the Reichstag fire, the Nazi party garnered only
44 percent of the vote. Only the “cowardly treachery” of the Social Democrats
and other parties to whom 56 percent of the German people had entrusted their
votes made it possible for the Nazis to seize full power. Haffner adds:
“It is in the final analysis only that betrayal that explains the almost inexplicable fact that a great nation, which cannot have consisted entirely of cowards, fell into ignominy without a fight.” [Emphasis added.]
“It is in the final analysis only that betrayal that explains the almost inexplicable fact that a great nation, which cannot have consisted entirely of cowards, fell into ignominy without a fight.” [Emphasis added.]
The Social Democratic
leaders betrayed their followers—“for the most part decent, unimportant
individuals.” In May, the party leaders sang the Nazi anthem; in June the
Social Democratic party was dissolved. The middle-class Catholic party Zentrum
folded in less than a month, and in the end supplied the votes necessary for
the two-thirds majority that “legalized” Hitler’s dictatorship.
As for the right-wing
conservatives and German nationalists: “Oh God,” writes Haffner, “what an
infinitely dishonorable and cowardly spectacle their leaders made in 1933 and
continued to make afterward. ... They went along with everything: the terror,
the persecution of Jews. ... They were not even bothered when their own party
was banned and their own members arrested.”
In sum: “There was not
a single example of energetic defense, of courage or principle. There was only
panic, flight, and desertion. In March 1933, millions were ready to fight the
Nazis. Overnight they found themselves without leaders. ... At the moment of
truth, when other nations rise spontaneously to the occasion, the Germans
collectively and limply collapsed. They yielded and capitulated, and suffered a
nervous breakdown. ... The result is today the nightmare of the rest of the
world.”
So what about today?
This is what can happen when virtually all are intimidated. Our Founding
Fathers were not oblivious to this; thus, James Madison:
“I believe there are
more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and
silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
... The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the
instruments of tyranny at home.”
We cannot say we
weren’t warned.
Margaret Flowers MD
& Kevin Zeese are currently living
and working in the Venezuelan embassy where our Embassy Protection Collective
has been since April 11. We are surrounded by US-trained regime change
right-wing extremists who have a physical presence surrounding the building
24/7. They use loud music, sirens, banging pots and pans, harassment,
intimidation and threats of violence against us and our supporters. When they
assault and injure our folks, the police let them go and arrest our folks
instead. They are blocking our people from entering the building and deliveries
of food and supplies. The Secret Service has a public statement denying this,
but the reality is they stand by while our folks are assaulted and damage is
done to the building. The Secret Service also refuses to guarantee our safety.
They tell us to talk to Venezuela or they just hang up on us. We are low on
food and need clean clothes and other personal items. This is all being done
because the US coup failed in Venezuela. We are here with the full permission
and support off the elected government of Venezuela, which is recognized by the
UN and over 140 countries. The SS can't evict us because they have no legal
basis to do that. They are trying to starve and harass us out because that is
the only way they can install their puppet. We are determined to stay here
until Venezuela can find a protectorate for the embassy. We are receiving many
messages of support from social movements in Venezuela. We feel a
responsibility to prevent our government from conducting a coup, violating the
Vienna convention and setting a dangerous precedent that threatens every
country and their embassies. If the US can ignore an election, install their
own leader and turn over assets to that leader in Venezuela, then which country
will be next? If the US can violate the Vienna Convention, what embassy,
including US embassies abroad, will be safe? That is why we are here and we
win't leave, no matter what these extremists do until there is a peaceful
transition of the US and Venezuelan embassies in each other's country. I am
wondering where is that Trump #Resistance that
mobilized thousands against hate but are absent when this is happening right
here in Georgetown. Where are our members of Congress like John Sarbanes? We
are literally under siege in DC. Call them and tell them to take action now.
Stop the coup. End the economic war against #Venezuela. Respect the
Vienna Convention. Protect the constituents who are protecting the embassy.
Margaret Flowers is
with Kevin Zeese. May 5 at 3:30 PM
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VFP Board President
and Embassy Protector Arrested - Take Action Now!
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Washington’s hybrid war on Venezuela – a very 21st-century attempt at
regime change. Mronline.org (5-8-19)
Rather than carry out
conventional war, over recent months U.S. officials have sought to promote
internal divisions, sabotage, and economic collapse within Venezuela. Here’s
the full story of Washington’s hybrid war on the country. Source
Activists defy right-wing siege at Venezuelan embassy in Washington DC.
Mronline.org (5-7-19).
Clashes outside the
Venezuelan embassy in Washington DC are continuing with Juan Guaido supporters
growing increasingly hostile and violent.
Source
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Pro-US/Trump View of Venezuela by Human Rights Watch (The Defender, Membership Letter, Spring
2019).
Opening paragraph:
“As the human rights catastrophe in Venezuela continues to
grow—and access to reliable resources all but disappears—it’s imperative that
Human Rights Watch continues to speak out on behalf of its citizens.”
The catastrophe’s cause?
The government or the long developing coup by the US?
Paragraph 2:
“Severe food and medicine shortages, a ruthless government
crackdown, violent crime, and hyperinflation are forcing Venezuelans to leave
their country….” It’s the Maduro
government’s fault. And more of the same
throughout the essay. Maybe a Trump
assistant wrote it.
From: James Petras <jpetras@binghamton.edu>
Date: Sun, Apr 14, 2019 at 8:50 PM
Subject: new essay by petras - Why Venezuela has not been Defeated
(via Sonny San Juan Jr. 4-17-19)
Why Venezuela has not been Defeated
James Petras
Introduction
Over the past half-decade, a small army of US analysts, politicians, academics
and media pundits have been predicting the imminent fall, overthrow, defeat and
replacement of the Venezuelan government. They have been wrong on all
counts, in each and every attempt to foist a US client regime.
In fact, most of the US induced ‘regime changes’ has strengthened the support
for the Chavez – Maduro government.
When the US promoted a military-business coup in 2002, a million poor people
surrounded the presidential palace, allied with the military loyalists and
defeated the coup. The US lost their assets among their business
and military clients, strengthened President Chavez, and radicalized his social
program. Likewise, in 2002-03 when state oil company executives launched
a lock-out. They were defeated, and hundreds of hardcore US supporters were
fired and Washington lost a strategic ally.
A more recent example is the overbearing role of President Trump’s bellicose
proclamation that the US is prepared to invade Venezuela. His threat aroused
massive popular resistance in defense of national independence, even among
discontented sectors of the population.
Venezuela is in the vortex of a global struggle which pits the imperial
aspirations of Washington against an embattled Venezuela intent on defending
its own, and like countries, in support of national and social justice.
We will proceed by discussing the multi-sided means and methods adopted by
Washington to overthrow Venezuela’s government and replace it by a client
regime.
We will then analyze and describe the reasons why Washington has failed,
focusing on the positive strengths of the Venezuelan government.
We will conclude by discussing the lessons and weaknesses of the Venezuelan
experience for other aspiring nationalist, popular and socialist governments.
US Opposition: What Venezuela Faces
The US assault on Venezuela’s state and society includes:
(a) A military coup in 2002
(b) A
lockout by the executives of the Venezuelan oil company
(c) The exercise of global US power – organized political pressure
via clients and allies in Europe, South and North America
(d) Escalating
economic sanctions between 2013 – 2019
(e) Street violence between 2013 – 2019
(f) Sabotage of the entire electrical system between 2017 -2019
(g) Hoarding
of goods via corporations and distributors from 2014 – 2019
(h) Subversion
of military and civilian institutions 2002 – 2019
(i) Regional alliances to expel Venezuelan membership from regional
organizations
(j) Economic sanctions accompanied by the seizure of over $10
billion dollars of assets
(k) Sanctions
on the banking system
The US direct intervention
includes the selection and appointment of opposition leaders and ‘dummy’
representatives overseas.
In brief the US has
engaged in a sustained, two decades struggle designed to bring down the
Venezuelan government. It combines economic, military, social and media
warfare. The US strategy has reduced living standards, undermined
economic activity, increased poverty, forced immigration and increaser
criminality. Despite the exercise of US global power, it has failed to
dislodge the government and impose a client regime.
Why Venezuela has Succeeded?
Despite the two decades of pressure by the world’s biggest imperial power,
which bears responsibility for the world’s highest rate of inflation, and
despite the illegal seizure of billions of dollars of Venezuelan assets, the
people remain loyal , in defense of their government. The reasons are
clear and forthright.
The Venezuelan majority has a history of poverty, marginalization and
repression, including the bloody massacre of thousands of protestors in
1989. Millions lived in shanty towns, excluded from higher education and
health facilities. The US provided arms and advisers to buttress the
politicians who now form the greater part of the US opposition to President
Maduro. The US- oligarch alliance extracted billions of dollars from
contracts from the oil industry.
Remembrance of this reactionary legacy is one powerful reason why the vast
majority of Venezuelans oppose US intervention in support of the puppet opposition.
The second reason for the defeat of the US is the long-term large-scale
military support of the Chavez-Maduro governments .Former President Chavez
instilled a powerful sense of nationalist loyalty among the military which
resists and opposes US efforts to subvert the soldiers.
The popular roots of Presidents Chavez and Maduro resonate with the masses who
hate the opposition elites which despise the so-called ‘deplorables’.
Chavez and Maduro installed dignity and respect among the poor.
The Venezuelans government defeated the US-backed coups and lockouts, these
victories encouraged the belief that the popular government could resist and
defeat the US-oligarch opposition. Victories strengthened confidence in
the will of the people.
Under Chavez over two million modern houses were built for the shanty town
dwellers; over two dozen universities and educational centers were built for
the poor, all free of charge. Public hospitals and clinics were built in
poor neighborhoods as well as public supermarkets which supplied low-cost food
and other necessities which sustain living standards despite subsequent
shortages.
Chavez led the formation of the Socialist Party which mobilized and gave voice to
the mass of the poor and facilitated representation. Local collectives
organized to confront corruption, bureaucracy and criminality. Together
with popular militias, the community councils ensured security against CIA
fomented terror and destruction.
Land reform and the nationalization of some mines and factories secured peasant
and workers support – even if they were divided by sectarian leaders.
Conclusion
The cumulative socio-economic benefits consolidate support for the Venezuelan
leadership despite the hardships the US induces in recent times. The mass
of the people have gained a new life and have a lot to lose if the US-
oligarchy returns to power. A successful US coup will likely massacre
tens of thousands of popular supporters of the government. The
bourgeoisie will take its revenge on those many who have ruled and benefited at
the expense of the rich.
There are important lessons to be learned from the long-term large-scale
successful resistance of the Venezuelan government’s experience but also its
limitations.
Venezuela, early on, secured the loyalty of the army. That’s why the
Chavista government has endured over 30 years while the Chilean government of
Salvador Allende was overthrown in three years.
The Venezuelan government retained mass electoral support because of the deep
socio-economic changes that entrenched mass support in contrast to the
center-left regimes in Argentina, Brazil and Ecuador which won three elections
but were defeated by their right-wing opponents, including electoral
partners, with a downturn in the economy, and the flight of middle-class voters
and parties.
Venezuela’s linkages with allies in Russia, China and Cuba provided ‘life
jackets’ of economic and military support in the face of US interventions,
something the center-left governments failed to pursue.
Venezuela built regional alliances with nearly half of South America, weakening
US attempts to form a regional or US invasion force.
Despite their strategic successes the Venezuelan government has committed
several costly mistakes which increased vulnerability.
(1) Failure to diversify their exports, markets
and banking system. The US sanctions exploited these weaknesses.
(2) Failure to carry out monetary reforms to
reverse or contain hyperinflation.
(3) Failure to maintain the hydro-electoral system
and secure it from sabotage.
(4) Failure to invest in and recruit new technical
professional to upgrade the operation of the financial system and prosecute
financial corruption in the banking system. Venezuela worked with high
officials who engaged in financial and real estate transactions of a dubious
nature.
(5) The failure to recruit and train working class
and professional political cadres capable of oversight over management.
Venezuela has taken
steps to rectify these errors but the question is whether they have time and
place to realize radical reforms?
Attachments area
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The U.S. Government has been monitoring Venezuela’s electricity system
for over a decade. Mronline.org (4-12-19).
The North American
intelligence agencies and their government’s attention and monitoring of the
electricity situation in Venezuela is long-standing. This was confirmed by more
than 1,000 documents released by Wikileaks which mention the status of the
National Electric System in Venezuela and the Simón BolÃvar Hydroelectric Plant
located in Guri. Source
U.S. is manufacturing a crisis in Venezuela so that there is chaos and
‘needed’ intervention. Mronline.org (4-11-19)
America has for years
been waging an economic war against Venezuela, including debilitating sanctions
which have dramatically affected the state’s ability to purchase medicines, and
even mundane replacement parts needed in buses, ambulances, etc. Source
An open letter to the Congressional Black Caucus on the U.S.’s attacks on
Venezuela and Cuba. Mronline.org (4-10-19)
Greetings. We write to
urge you to support the international and domestic efforts to thwart the Unites
States’ unlawful attempts to change the existing governments in the Bolivarian
Republic of Venezuela and the Republic of Cuba. Source
Latin America has
suffered these coup attempts from America for generations, and still, it
continues. A conversation on the history and the new ways and attempts. Source 
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3 FROM mronline.org 3-8-19
An important Latin
American political theorist argues that right-wing “internationalism” requires
a leftist response that also reaches beyond national boundaries.
Vovan and Lexus,
Russian telephone pranksters known for their trolling of politicians from
around the world, have struck again, targeting U.S. special representative for
Venezuela Elliott Abrams to find out more about the U.S.-backed effort to
unseat that country’s legitimate government. Sputnik got ahold of the full
audio from the talks.
Let me finish this
interview with our motto: “Fight, fight, don’t stop fighting for a government
of the workers and of the people.”
It is a fundamental
task for the class struggle that we succeed in liberating Lula so that he
becomes the principal spokesman, he is the one who has the capacity to help
mobilize the masses against the system and the project of the extreme right. Source
Dear Reader, we make
this and other articles available for free online to serve those unable to afford
or access the print edition of Monthly Review. If
you read the magazine online and can afford a print subscription, we hope you
will consider purchasing one. Please visit the MR store for subscription options. Thank you very much. —Eds.
March 2019 (Volume 70, Number 10)
(Mar 01, 2019)
[The following two pages provided the best succinct yet deep
analysis of US intervention in Venezuela I had read by March 2019. –Dick]
“Notes from the Editors.”
“As we write these notes in the first week of February 2019, the United States is openly directing a
political-economic coup in Venezuela. At the same time, it has announced that
it is unilaterally withdrawing from the Intermediate-Nuclear Forces (INF)
Treaty. Together, these events, taking place in late January and early
February, mark a new escalation of U.S. imperialism, threatening the entire
world.
On January 23, only
weeks after the inauguration of Nicolás Maduro into a new term as president of
Venezuela, Juan Guaidó, a right-wing politician who had never run for president
and whose name was unknown to more than 80 percent of the Venezuelan
population, proclaimed himself president of Venezuela. He denounced the elected
president Maduro—for whom more than two thirds of voters and 31 percent of the
Venezuelan electorate cast their votes in the 2018 Venezuelan elections (as
opposed to a minority of voters and only 26 percent of the U.S. electorate in
favor of Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. elections)—as an “usurper” (Ben Norton,
“Internal U.S. Gov’t Document Outlines Program of ‘Economic Warfare’ on
Venezuela,” Grayzone, January 30, 2019; Joe
Emersberger, “When Is a Democracy Not a Democracy?” Mint Press News,
January 28, 2019). Guaidó was immediately declared the legitimate president of
Venezuela by the United States. Washington proceeded to impose what was, in
effect, an embargo on Venezuelan oil coming into the United States, while
seizing control of the assets of Citgo, the Venezuela-owned oil company in the
United States, in the name of the coup plotters. Meanwhile, the Bank of
England, at U.S. urging, removed the Venezuelan government’s access to its $1.2
billion in gold reserves.
The present ongoing
coup attempt organized in Washington is simply the latest in a series of such
attempts by the U.S. government to overthrow the Bolivarian Republic of
Venezuela over the last two decades. It can be seen as having three
interrelated motives: (1) the destruction of Venezuelan socialism, (2)
regaining control of Venezuela’s oil (the largest petroleum reserves in the
world), and (3) reasserting U.S. hegemony over Latin America. The United States
has backed three successful Latin American coups in the last decade: Honduras
(2009), Paraguay (2012), and Brazil (2016). Venezuela, however, is the hardest
nut to crack since it is ruled by an elected socialist government and backed by
the largest mass of the population and most of Venezuela’s poor, who strongly
support the revolutionary process and are virulently opposed to U.S.
imperialism.
To understand the nature
of the January 2019 coup unleashed
against Venezuela, it is important to see it in terms of its basis in
economic warfare designed to undermine the sovereignty of the Venezuelan state.
Former United Nations (UN) special rapporteur, Alfred de Zayas, declared in a
UN report on Venezuela, completed in August 2018, that the “economic sanctions
and blockades” like those being imposed by the United States on Venezuela in
defiance of international law were “comparable with medieval sieges of towns.
Twenty-first century sanctions attempt to bring not just a town but sovereign
countries to their knees” (United Nations, Report of the Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and
Equitable International Order on his Mission to the Bolivarian Republic of
Venezuela and Ecuador, August 3, 2018, 14; “Venezuela Crisis: Former UN Rapporteur
Says US Sanctions Are Killing Citizens,” Independent, January
26, 2019).
U.S. imperial
planning, in this respect, has been lodged heavily in the Council on Foreign
Relations (CFR), commonly known as “the imperial brain trust” and as “Wall
Street’s think tank” (see Laurence H. Shoup and William Minter, Imperial Brain Trust[Monthly Review Press, 1977] and
Laurence H. Shoup, Wall Street’s Think Tank [Monthly Review Press, 2019]). In September 2018, CFR President
Richard N. Haass—who in 2000 wrote an article entitled “Imperial America” on
the need for the resurrection of U.S. imperial domination of the globe, and
subsequently served as director of policy planning for the Department of State
in the George W. Bush administration, helping to direct regime change in Iraq,
before becoming president of the CFR in 2003—came out with an article arguing
for U.S. regime-change intervention in Venezuela. According to Haass,
presenting the general view of the CFR, a U.S. “humanitarian” military
intervention in Venezuela was necessary (see Richard N. Haass, “What the Crisis
in Venezuela Reveals,” CFR, September 26, 2018; John Bellamy Foster, Naked
Imperialism [Monthly
Review Press, 2006], 97–106.)
But it is through its
promotion of U.S. economic warfare under the rubric of geoeconomics that the
CFR has played a central role in paving the way to the coup in Venezuela. The
strategy is to employ more systematic techniques of “smart” economic sanctions
to destroy the country, as articulated particularly by CFR authors Robert D.
Blackwill and Jennifer M. Harris in their War by Other Means (Harvard
University Press, 2016), which has become the manual of CFR’s Greenberg Center
for Geoeconomic Studies devoted to promoting U.S. economic warfare (inspired by
the U.S. Office of Economic Warfare in the 1940s). Blackwill was himself an
advisor to George W. Bush on Iraq, serving as a presidential envoy to Iraq, and
was critically responsible for the privatization of Iraqi oil. Blackwill and
Harris note in their book that, forty years ago, cross-border economic flows
were mostly trade based, while now they are financially based, allowing for
massive disruption of such flows by the United States and other advanced
economies and their corporations, representing the “capitals of capital” (War by Other Means, 53). The primary target of U.S.
geoeconomic warfare, according to Blackwill and Harris, should be China, which
has been offering generous loans to Venezuela in return for oil. Attacking
Venezuela, with which China is economically aligned, is thus seen as part of
the long-term strategy of undermining China geoeconomically—in addition to
reasserting U.S. control over Venezuela and its oil and crushing any idea of a
successful socialism.
Amy Myers Jaffe, a
fellow of the CFR’s Greenberg Center for Geoeconomics, took part in the writing
of CFR policy documents with respect to oil privatization in U.S.-occupied
Iraq. In the context of the current coup in Venezuela, Jaffe wrote a January
28, 2019, CFR article entitled, “No Easy Path for Venezuela’s Oil in the Struggle
for a Transition in Power,” strongly in support of Guaidó’s right-wing
political coup and already planning the takeover of Venezuelan oil. Comparing
the situation in Venezuela to Iraq, Jaffe argues that the United States, after
a successful coup overthrowing the Bolivarian Republic under Maduro, will have
to pour billions of dollars into propping up Venezuela’s oil industry and
increasing production, especially in the face of what she says will be
“multiple renegade armed groups operating inside Venezuela, including Cuban
mercenaries.” She strongly implies that this will require the stability offered
by U.S. troops. Key to the success of the coup, she observes, will be that
“U.S. actions have already in effect embargoed imported Venezuelan crude to Citgo
and other U.S. buyers,” as well as seizing Venezuelan oil and gold assets
abroad, severing the country from much of its economic wealth. What made this
strategy possible is what Blackwill and Meghan O’Sullivan in 2014 referred to
in an article for Foreign Policyas the new U.S.
petropower arising from fracking (Shoup, Wall Street’s Think Tank,
198). The increased energy independence and leverage of the United States over
world oil now gives it the latitude to crush a petrostate such as Venezuela
without damaging the U.S. economy. In response to U.S. sanctions, the
Venezuelan government, out of necessity, recently moved away from denominating
its petroleum sales in dollars. Two other petrostates previously adopted this
strategy: Iraq and Libya. Both were annihilated in U.S. regime-change actions.”
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