“The media is lying to you about the Venezuelan election,” begins
BreakThrough News reporter about what is undeniably another US-sponsored coup to try and overthrow the Venezuelan people’s desire as expressed through an election.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Yesterday Venezuelans voted for Nicolás Maduro to continue as president. The election highlights one of Justin Trudeau’s most embarrassing foreign policy failures and a lesson on media and government propaganda.
According to Venezuela’s National Electoral Council, Maduro received 51% of the vote. His main challenger, Edmundo Gonzalez, garnered 44% while 59% of eligible voters cast ballots.
Without presenting any evidence, the opposition cried foul. But they’ve done so after basically every election loss over the past 20 years (though not their wins).
The vote is the first presidential poll since a brazen Canadian-backed campaign to oust Maduro. In a bid to elicit “regime change,” Ottawa worked to isolate Caracas, imposed illegal sanctions, took the Maduro government to the International Criminal Court, financed an often-unsavoury opposition and decided that a marginal right-wing opposition politician was the country’s legitimate president.
On January 23, 2019, Juan Guaidó declared himself president of Venezuela in a Caracas park. The same day then foreign minister Chrystia Freeland formally recognized the little-known opposition politician. In subsequent days Canadian diplomats boasted to reporters that they played an important role in uniting large swaths of the Venezuelan opposition behind the plan to ratchet up tensions by proclaiming the new head of the opposition-dominated National Assembly president. They also told the Globe and Mail and Associated Press that Canada played an important role in building international diplomatic support for claiming the relatively marginal politician was president.
Amidst the exuberance the Liberals quickly organized a meeting of the Lima Group of states opposed to the Venezuelan government. At the February 4, 2019, meeting in Ottawa Trudeau declared, “the international community must immediately unite behind the interim president.” The post Lima Group “Ottawa Declaration” called on Venezuela’s armed forces “to demonstrate their loyalty to the interim president” by removing the elected president.
(Despite the opposition boycotting the May 2018 poll, Maduro received a higher proportion of the overall vote than leaders in the US, Canada and elsewhere. For instance, in 2019, Trudeau’s Liberals received 33% of the vote with 66% of eligible voters casting their ballots, which amounted to 22% of the adult population. Maduro received 67% of votes cast with 41% of eligible voters participating, which equaled 27% of the population.)
About a year before the poll Canada founded the anti-Maduro Lima Group coalition with Peru. A year later Canada and five like-minded South American nations asked the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor — the first time a member state was brought before the ICC by other members — to investigate the Maduro government. During this period Ottawa also severed diplomatic relations with Caracas and imposed four rounds of sanctions on Venezuelan officials. While ostensibly targeted at individuals, Canadian sanctions deterred companies from doing business in Venezuela. They also helped legitimate more devastating US actions. A recent front page Washington Post article detailed the impact of US sanctions played in Venezuela’s economic collapse.
Trudeau and Freeland were at the forefront of the anti-Maduro campaign. In the weeks after Guaidó declared himself president, Canada’s prime minister called the leaders of France, Spain, Paraguay, Ireland, Italy and others to convince them to join Canada’s campaign against the Venezuelan government. When Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited Ottawa in April 2019 Canada’s post meeting release noted, “during the visit, Prime Minister Abe announced Japan’s endorsement of the Ottawa Declaration on Venezuela.”
At the end of that month Guaidó, opposition politician Leopoldo Lopez and others sought to stoke a military uprising in Caracas. Hours into the early morning effort Freeland tweeted, “watching events today in Venezuela very closely. The safety and security of Juan Guaidó and Leopoldo López must be guaranteed. Venezuelans who peacefully support Interim President Guaidó must do so without fear of intimidation or violence.” She followed that up with a statement to the press noting, “Venezuelans are in the streets today demonstrating their desire for a return to democracy” and a video calling on Venezuelans to rise up. She later promoted a Lima Group statement labeling the attempted putsch an effort “to restore democracy” and demanded the military “cease being instruments of the illegitimate regime for the oppression of the Venezuelan people.”
While this failed insurrection marked the end of any realistic chance Guaidó had at becoming president, Trudeau openly supported him for months longer. In January 2020 Guaidó was fêted in Ottawa, meeting the PM, international development minister and foreign minister. A picture of Trudeau and Guaidó taking a selfie together was released by the Prime Minister’s Office and Trudeau declared, “I commend Interim President Guaidó for the courage and leadership he has shown in his efforts to return democracy to Venezuela, and I offer Canada’s continued support.”
Since then Guaidó has moved to the US and the Lima group has become dormant. But the Trudeau government hasn’t formally reversed its position or restarted diplomatic relations or withdrawn sanctions.
On the third anniversary of Guaidó’s presidential self-declaration an open letter was released demanding Trudeau stop recognizing Guaidó, end sanctions and reset relations with Venezuela. It was signed by 2 MPs, 4 former MPs and 50 prominent individuals. The government should heed its call.
Very little to none of the above important context will appear in the mainstream media over what looks to be yet another ongoing US-led attempt to destabilize the Venezuelan government.
The bottom line? Neither the Canadian government nor media should be considered arbiters of truth regarding events in Venezuela. They have repeatedly proven themselves self-interested liars and agents of US hegemony.
The post Trudeau’s Failure in Venezuela first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
For all the hullabaloo about “free and fair elections” in Venezuela by the US government, its sycophantic corporate press deliberately ignores the elephant in the room – namely, the so-called sanctions designed to make life so miserable that the people will acquiesce to Washington’s plan for regime change.
As Foreign Policy puts it, “Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro values his political survival above his country’s economic well-being.” Translated from Washington-speak, the US government is blackmailing the Venezuelan electorate with, in the words of Foreign Policy, “the looming threat,” of continuing unilateral coercive measures unless they vote against the incumbent in the presidential election on July 28.
The New York Times reports that a Maduro win will “intensify poverty,” conveniently omitting the cause will be tightening of US sanctions. Typical of such coverage, the article blames Maduro for the “dire” economic situation, but not until the 25th paragraph is there even a passing reference to US sanctions.
Such outside electoral meddling by the use of sanctions is orders of magnitude greater than the supposed “Russiagate” interference in the 2016 US presidential contest. Washington brazenly leaves no ambiguity about its intent to punish the Venezuelan people for choosing a government not to its liking. With no sense of shame or irony, the State Department imperiously calls this bullying “democracy promotion.”
US hybrid war on Venezuela
As documented by Venezuelanalysis, US sanctions against Venezuela are “a war without bombs.” These actions, more correctly called coercive economic measures by the United Nations, are killing Venezuelans. Never mentioned in the corporate press is that these unilateral measures are a form of collective punishment, considered illegal under international law.
The over 930 US sanctions are designed to crash the Venezuelan economy and, above all, to prevent any recovery. Initially they succeeded in the former objective and, equally importantly, failed in the latter.
The bipartisan offensive was initiated in 2015 by President Obama, who incredulously declared “a national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security” posed by Venezuela. (Note, none of the corporate press subjected this extraordinary claim to any kind of scrutiny.) Coercive measures were intensified by President Trump, targeting the vital Venezuelan oil industry. Seamlessly, President Biden continued the “maximum pressure” campaign with minor adjustments, mainly designed to benefit US and select foreign business interests.
As a result, Venezuela experienced the largest peacetime economic contraction in recent world history. The free-falling economy suffered triple-digit inflation, again, the highest in the world. Some seven million economic refugees fled the country.
The US continued other “hybrid warfare” measures including recognizing Juan Guaidó as the self-proclaimed “interim president” of Venezuela in 2019. The then 35-year-old far-right US security asset had never run for national office and was at the time unknown to over 80% of the population. Nevertheless, some fifty US allies initially recognized his government.
Further, US-backed coups have continued since the 2002 one that lasted only 47 hours. Recent capers included the “bay of piglets” operation in 2020. Biden recently repatriated two of the US mercenaries, who had been captured in that failed coup, in a prisoner exchange that resulted in freeing Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab.
Coup attempts are ongoing according to the Venezuelan government. US official policy on such extra-legal measures is “plausible deniability.”
Venezuela successfully resists
Contrary to all odds and most predictions, President Maduro has turned the Venezuelan ship of state around against such unfavorable winds. By the end of 2023, Venezuela had recorded 11 quarters of consecutive growth after years of economic contraction. GDP growth during the first four months of 2024 exceeded forecasts of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and are projected to be 4% for the year, compared to IMF figures for the US at 2.7% and China at 4.6%.
Today, on the diplomatic front, only the US, Israel, and a handful of other Washington vassals still fail to recognize the democratically elected government of Venezuela. Even the US-backed opposition has itself renounced the Guaidó presidency.
Until recently, Colombia (then a hostile US client state) served as a launching pad for paramilitary incursions onto Venezuela’s western border. In 2022, President Gustavo Petro, the first leftist in the entire history of Colombia, replaced the right-wing Iván Duque. The next year, the friendly Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva replaced the hostile government of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil on Venezuela’s southern border.
Meanwhile, progressive regional governments such as Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s Mexico have continued to support Venezuela. Most significantly and indicative of a shifting world order toward multipolarity, Venezuela has strengthened ties with China, Russia, and Iran. This, in turn, has only intensified hostility by the US.
Lessons from the 1990 electoral defeat of the Sandinista’s in Nicaragua
Conditions in Venezuela today, in the run-up to the July presidential election, bear some parallels to a similar situation in Nicaragua in 1990. In 1979, the Sandinistas overthrew the US-backed Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua. By the 1990 presidential election, polls looked favorable for the reelection of their FSLN party’s Daniel Ortega.
Everyone, including the US president, who was bent on overthrowing the Nicaraguan Revolution, anticipated a Sandinista victory, according to Dan Kovalik’s book on Nicaragua. But the vote was unfavorable, issuing in seventeen years of neoliberal regression.
Both the State Department and the US ambassador to Managua had made it abundantly clear that the Nicaraguans had best vote the “right way” or the US-sponsored contra war would continue. The contras were mercenaries recruited largely from Somoza’s former army who were waging an armed terror campaign against the population.
In addition, the country was under US economic sanctions and suffering from hyperinflation. Brian Willson, who lost his legs in civil disobedience protesting the US contra war in Nicaragua, reported that the US funded opposition parties and NGOs in the 1990 election. The CIA alone poured in $28-30 million. Willson concluded that the US “purchased the 1990 Nicaragua elections.”
Prospects for the Venezuelan presidential election
While Venezuela is not under siege by US-paid mercenaries as was Nicaragua, it is nonetheless subject to Washington’s hybrid war of coercive economic measures, funding of opposition forces, international diplomatic belligerence, and covert actions.
An assessment in February by the US intelligence community found Maduro “is unlikely to lose the 2024 presidential election.” A May 3 Encuesta Nacional Ideadatos opinion poll reported a 52.7% preference for Maduro. Other polls give the lead to opposition candidate Edmundo González with the Unitary Platform who allegedly worked with the CIA.
Within the Chavista core – those who support the Bolivarian Revolution of Hugo Chávez and its current standard bearer Nicolás Maduro – it is only to be expected that there is a certain level of weariness. Venezuelan political commentator Clodovaldo Hernández cites ongoing issues of inadequate healthcare delivery, salaries and pensions that have not kept pace with inflation, erratic electric power, incompletely addressed corruption, and dysfunctional police and judicial services, all of which disproportionately impact the Chavista base of poor and working people. How this will translate come July 28 is uncertain.
The propaganda campaign by the US state and its stenographers in the press to delegitimize the Venezuela election process is ramping up. For example, the US “newspaper of record” reports that “the last competitive election was held in 2013.” Not “fit to print” is the news that the presidential term is six years, or that the US literally ordered the opposition not to run in 2018. The leading opposition candidate at the time, Henri Falcón, was threatened with sanctions when he chose to ignore Washington’s demand.
The very fact that any of the US-backed opposition is contesting in the upcoming election rather than boycotting indicates that they are no longer relying on an extra-parliamentary overthrow of the government. This itself represents a significant victory for the Chavistas.
The post The Biggest Obstacle to Free and Fair Elections in Venezuela is the US first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Despite continuous US-led hybrid warfare to overthrow the socialist project, this month marks the 25th anniversary of the Bolivarian Revolution. The Venezuelan government of President Nicolás Maduro has successfully forced the US to de facto engage with it, although Washington still maintains the fiction that the defunct 2015 National Assembly is the “last remaining democratic institution” there.
While still egregiously interventionist, the imperial power has been relegated to vetting candidates for the upcoming Venezuelan presidential election, having failed to achieve outright regime change. The appearance of Venezuelan politician Maria Corina Machado before a US congressional committee is the latest in the empire’s quest for a trustworthy confederate. Hopes are high among Republicans that she is the right collaborator. The Democrats may have another endgame.
The opposition to the ruling Venezuelan socialist government is composed of many small and fractious sects, usually associated with a dominant personality, such as Machado’s Vente Venezuela party. The US spends millions each year meddling in the internal affairs of Venezuela in what it euphemistically calls “democracy promotion.” USAID alone pledged $50M to “push” the presidential elections, scheduled for later this year.
Washington’s efforts to force a unified opposition have been so far unsuccessful in Venezuela. But that has not deterred the Yankees from imperiously selecting the candidate they think ought be Venezuela’s leader.
Farewell to Venezuelan “interim president” Juan Guaidó
The last contender for the role of the empire’s factotum was the now disgraced Juan Guaidó. Despite his popularity abroad as the “interim president” of Venezuela, the hapless security asset was not as well received at home and was dismissed by his own opposition bloc in 2022.
The US and its allies gave Guaidó and his cronies illegally seized Venezuelan assets such the Monómeros agrochemical complex in Colombia and the Citgo oil franchise in the US. They used the enterprises to grossly enrich themselves while running them into the ground. According to the Venezuelan attorney general, an estimated $19B was embezzled by Guaidó’s “fictious government.”
With his deer-in-the-headlights visage and stilted oratory, Guaidó appeared every bit like a puppet. In the case of Mr. Guaidó, appearances did not deceive. In contrast, the new contestant is photogenic and with a quick wit. Besides, Machado speaks fluent English.
Machado auditions before the “bipartisan roundtable”
The February 7th House Foreign Affairs Committee “bipartisan roundtable” was entitled “The Fight for Freedom in Venezuela.” Streamed live, committee chair Maria Salazar (R-FL)
gushed in support of featured guest María Corina Machado as the sole opposition presidential candidate. Salazar asserted that no other opposition candidate will be tolerated: “There is no plan B!”
In what amounted to an audition, Machado painted a dire picture of today’s Venezuela as the “largest torture center in Latin America.” She accused the Maduro government of “intentionally destroying the quality of life.”
When asked how she would solve Venezuela’s problems, Machado said she would “open markets.” Not mentioned was that the very US economic sanctions, which she had championed, had closed the markets and imposed an asphyxiating blockade immiserating Venezuela’s less fortunate citizens. Machado comes from one the richest families.
Alluding to current president Nicolás Maduro and National Assembly leader Diosdado Cabello, Machado said she would not be for “a system of impunity” when she’s president.
Although no one else had brought Nicaragua up, she pledged to work for a “transition” there too. Statements like this prompted the Perú Libre party, reflecting leftist sentiment throughout Latin America, to warn that Machado “constitutes a threat to continental peace.”
Machado’s political baggage
Machado comes with considerable political baggage. In 2002, she signed the infamous Carmona Decree, establishing the short-lived coup government that temporarily deposed Hugo Chávez. Machado received amnesty for supporting that coup, but has continued to be associated in coup attempts. She was active in promoting the violent guarimbas in 2014 and 2017 to overthrow the elected government and has called for a US military invasion.
In 2014, she was barred from running for public office, in accordance with the Venezuelan constitution, when she served as a diplomat for Panama in order to testify against Venezuela before the Organization of American States. She had initially refused to contest her barring before the supreme court (TSJ), which she regarded as illegitimate. But when Washington wanted to use her electoral disqualification as an excuse for reimposing some sanctions, she obediently complied, though she still remained barred.
Other congressional initiatives
Last December, Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) introduced House Resolution 911 designating Machado as the “official presidential opposition candidate.” Besides being a blatant interference in the internal affairs of another country, the resolution is tone deaf to the opposition in Venezuela, which does not recognize Machado as the sole legitimate candidate.
On January 30, after Machado lost her appeal to have her electoral eligibility reinstated, Republican Senators Marco Rubio, Rick Scott, and Bill Cassidy sent Biden a letter urging him to immediately reimpose sanctions on Venezuela in order to maintain US “credibility.” That same day, the Biden State Department issued a statement revoking sanctions relief on Venezuelan gold sales and threatened to do the same on gas and oil.
Four days before, the Congressional Research Service reported that US sanctions on Venezuela have “failed” to achieve regime change but have caused profound human suffering. This is the same “humanitarian crisis” that Machado claims was deliberately precipitated by the Venezuelan government.
How popular is Machado off of Capitol Hill?
Most knowledgeable analysts identify Machado as the opposition politician in Venezuela with the greatest name recognition and the single most popular one. But she does not command the unanimity of support in Venezuela that she is receiving inside the beltway.
Venezuelan sociologist Maria Paez Victor, now residing in Canada, reports that Machado is deeply resented by most in the opposition. “She is a hated figure among the people because of her enthusiastic support and plea for more sanctions that have caused such suffering.”
To begin with, Machado’s much vaunted opposition primary was problematic. Machado swept a crowded field of contestants with a suspicious 92%. The October contest excluded some opposition parties, while others chose not to contend and still others participated but subsequently claimed fraud.
The primary was not conducted by the national election authority (CNE) as they usually are, but was a private affair run by Machado’s own non-governmental organization Súmate, which has received NED funding. Some of the polling places were in private homes rather than public venues such as schools. And after the ballots were counted manually, they were quickly destroyed so that there was no way to verify the validity of the count.
Reflecting the primary’s questionable nature, the US press usually refers to it as “an” opposition primary rather than “the” opposition primary, although a close and critical reading is needed to detect the weasel-word usage. Due to the irregularities, the Venezuelan supreme court subsequently suspended the primary results.
Machado’s prospects
Although Maduro has yet to announce his candidacy, it is widely believed that the incumbent president will be his party’s choice. For her part, Machado says, “there can be no elections without me.” The European Union agrees, saying they will not recognize the election unless Machado runs.
The Orinoco Tribune reports that the White House does not especially care who the opposition candidate is in Venezuela. According to Biden official Juan González, “the process and not the candidate” is most important.
This translates to the White House anticipating a Maduro victory and, accordingly, planning to pronounce the election fraudulent. In the last Venezuelan presidential election, the US took no chances when it declared the contest fraudulent a half a year in advance and even threatened opposition candidate Henri Falcón with sanctions for running.
The manufactured drama around Machado’s electoral eligibility has a purpose that has little to do with the far-right opposition politician. Washington knew with near certainty that she would not be allowed to run for political office due to manifest past transgressions. That is precisely why she was not named in the Barbados Agreement’s electoral roadmap negotiated between the US and Venezuela. Rather, the charade is being played out to cast doubt and calumny on the upcoming election. If Maduro wins, the US will surely pronounce the contest illegitimate.
The post Washington Promotes Opposition Candidate Setting the Stage for Delegitimizing the Venezuelan Presidential Election first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
The Trump administration dusted off the 19th century Monroe Doctrine that subjugates the nations of the region to U.S. interests. The Biden administration, instead of reversing course, followed suite, with disastrous results for the region and a migration crisis that threatens Biden’s re-election.
It has left most of Trump’s sanctions against Venezuela and Cuba intact and has tightened those against Nicaragua.
U.S. policy towards Venezuela has been a fiasco. Try as it might, both Trump and Biden were unable to depose President Maduro and found themselves stuck with a self-proclaimed president, Juan Guaidó. U.S. support for Guaidó backfired as he was held responsibility for massive corruption involving Venezuelan assets abroad that were turned over to him. Now Washington is openly siding with presidential hopeful María Corina Machado, who has a long history of engagement in violent disruptions and has called on the U.S. to invade her country. The Venezuelan people have paid a heavy price for the debacle, which has included crippling economic sanctions and coup attempts. The U.S. has also paid a price in terms of its prestige internationally.
This is only one example of a string of disastrous policies toward Latin America.
Instead of continuing down this imperial path of endless confrontation, U.S. policymakers need to stop, recalibrate, and design an entirely new approach to inter-American relations. This is particularly urgent as the continent is in the throes of an economic recession that is compounded by low commodity prices, a belly-up tourist industry and the drying up of remittances from outside.
A good reference point for a policy makeover is Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbor Policy” in the 1930s, which represented an abrupt break with the interventionism of that time. FDR abandoned “gunboat diplomacy” in which Marines were sent throughout the region to impose U.S. will. Though his policies were criticized for not going far enough, he did bring back U.S. Marines from Nicaragua, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and scrapped the Platt Amendment that allowed the U.S. to intervene unilaterally in Cuban affairs.
So what would a Good Neighbor Policy for the 21st Century look like? Here are some key planks:
An end to military intervention. The illegal use of military force has been a hallmark of U.S. policy in the region, as we see from the deployment of Marines in the Dominican Republic in 1965, Grenada in 1983, Panama in 1989; involvement in military actions leading to the Guatemalan coup in 1954 and destabilization in Nicaragua in the 1980s; support for coups in Brazil in 1964, Chile in 1973 and elsewhere. A Good Neighbor Policy would not only renounce the use of military force, but even the threat of such force (as in “all options are on the table”), particularly because such threats are illegal under international law.
U.S. military intimidation also comes in the form of U.S. bases that dot the continent from Cuba to Colombia to further south. These installations are often resisted by local communities, as was the case of the Manta Base in Ecuador that was shut down in 2008 and the ongoing opposition against the Guantanamo Base in Cuba. U.S. bases in Latin America are a violation of local sovereignty and should be closed, with the lands cleaned up and returned to their rightful owners.
Another form of military intervention is the financing and training of local military and police forces. Most of the U.S. assistance sent to Latin America, particularly Central America, goes towards funding security forces, resulting in the militarization of police and borders, and leading to greater police brutality, extrajudicial killings and repression of migrants. The training school in Ft. Benning, Georgia, formerly called the “School of the Americas,” graduated some of the continent’s worst human rights abusers. Even today, U.S.-trained forces are involved in egregious abuses, including the assassination of activists like Berta Cáceres in Honduras. U.S. programs to confront drugs, from the Merida Initiative in Mexico to Plan Colombia, have not stopped the flow of drugs but have poured massive amounts of weapons into the region and led to more killings, torture and gang violence. Latin American governments need to clean up their own national police forces and link them to communities, a more effective way to combat drug trafficking than the militarization that Washington has promoted. The greatest contribution the U.S. can make to putting an end to the narcotics scourge in Latin America is to control the U.S. market for those drugs through responsible reforms and to prevent the sale of U.S.-made weapons to drug cartels.
No more political meddling. While the U.S. public has been shocked by charges of Russian interference in its elections, this kind of meddling is par for the course in Latin America. USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), created in 1983 as a neutral sounding alternative to the CIA, spend millions of tax-payer dollars to undermine progressive movements. Following the election of Hugo Chávez in 1998, for instance, NED ramped up its assistance to conservative groups in Venezuela (which became the foundation’s number one Latin American recipient) as a leadup to regime change attempts.
An end to the use of economic blackmail. The U.S. government uses economic pressure to impose its will. The Trump administration threatened to halt remittances to Mexico to extract concessions from the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador on immigration issues. A similar threat persuaded many voters in El Salvador’s 2004 presidential elections to refrain from voting for the candidate of the left-leaning Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN).
The U.S. also uses economic coercion. For the past 60 years, U.S. administrations have sanctioned Cuba—a policy that has not successfully led to regime change but has made living conditions harder for the Cuban people. The same is true in Venezuela, where one study says that in just 2017-2018, over 40,000 Venezuelans died as a result of sanctions. With coronavirus, these sanctions have become even more deadly. A Good Neighbor Policy would lift the economic sanctions against Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua and help them recover economically.
Support trade policies that lift people out of poverty and protect the environment. U.S. free trade agreements with Latin America have been good for the elites and U.S. corporations, but have increased economic inequality, eroded labor rights, destroyed the livelihoods of small farmers, furthered the privatization of public services, and compromised national sovereignty. When indebted nations seek loans from international financial institutions, the loans have been conditioned on the imposition of neoliberal policies that exacerbate all ofthese trends.
In terms of the environment, too often the U.S. government has sided with global oil and mining interests when local communities in Latin America and the Caribbean have challenged resource-extracting projects that threaten their environment and endanger public health. We must launch a new era of energy and natural resource cooperation that prioritizes renewable sources of energy, green jobs, and good environmental stewardship.
Massive protests against neoliberal policies erupted throughout Latin America shortly prior to the pandemic and will return with a vengeance unless countries are free to explore alternatives to neoliberal policies. A New Good Neighbor Policy would cease imposing economic conditions on Latin American governments and would call on the International Monetary Fund to do the same. An example of international cooperation is China’s “Belt and Road Initiative,” which, even with some downsides, has generated goodwill in the Global South by prioritizing investments in much-needed infrastructure projects without conditioning its funding on any aspect of government policy.
Humane immigration policy. Throughout history, U.S. administrations have refused to take responsibility for the ways the U.S. has spurred mass migration north, including unfair trade agreements, support for dictators, climate change, drug consumption and the export of gangs. Instead, immigrants have been used and abused as a source of cheap labor, and vilified according to the political winds. President Obama was the deporter-in-chief; President Trump has been caging children, building walls, and shutting off avenues for people to seek asylum; President Biden is better than his predecessor when it comes to rhetoric, but not so much action-wise. A Good Neighbor policy would dismantle ICE and the cruel deportation centers; it would provide the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States a path to citizenship; and it would respect the international right of people to seek asylum.
Recognition of Latin America’s cultural contributions. President Trump’s blatant disrespect towards Latin Americans and immigrants, including his call for building a wall “paid for by Mexico,” intensified racist attitudes among his base which has continued ever since. A new Latin America policy would not only counter racism but would uplift the region’s exceptional cultural richness. The controversy surrounding the extensive commercial promotion of the novel “American Dirt,” written by a U.S. author about the Mexican immigration experience, is an example of the underestimation of talent south of the border. The contributions of the continent’s indigenous population should also be appreciated and justly compensated, such as the centuries-old medicinal cures that are often exploited by U.S.-based pharmaceutical companies.
An all-encompassing expression of goodwill in the form of a New Good Neighbor Policy will meet resistance from vested economic and military interests, as well as those persuaded by racist arguments. But the vast majority of people in the United States have nothing to lose by it and, in fact, have much to gain. Universal threats, such as coronavirus and the climate crisis, have taught us the limits of borders and should act as incentives to construct a Good Neighbor Policy for the 21st Century based on those principles of non-intervention and mutual respect.
The post Redefining US-Latin American Relations: From Outdated Monroe Doctrine to a 21st Century Good Neighbor Policy first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
This spring, the Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó delivered a solemn address to the international press in Miami, Florida. Claiming his life was in danger, Guaidó announced that he fled Venezuela to escape persecution and rally the world against the government of President Nicolás Maduro. In bold strokes, he argued that Maduro constitutes a threat to “the entire world…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
This spring, the Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó delivered a solemn address to the international press in Miami, Florida. Claiming his life was in danger, Guaidó announced that he fled Venezuela to escape persecution and rally the world against the government of President Nicolás Maduro. In bold strokes, he argued that Maduro constitutes a threat to “the entire world…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The only “real” democratic institution in Venezuela, according to United States State Department spokesperson Ned Price, is one that has not met in seven years, writes Vijay Prashad.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
Latin America and the Caribbean have again began to take on a becoming pink complexion, all the more so with June’s historic electoral victory in Colombia over the country’s long-dominant US-backed right-wing and a similar reverse in Brazil in October. These electoral rejections of the right-wing followed left victories last year in Peru, Honduras, and Chile. And those, in turn, came after similar routs in Bolivia in 2020, Argentina in 2019, and Mexico in 2018.
This electoral wave, according to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, speaking at the Climate Summit in November, “open[s] a new geopolitical age to Latin America.” This “Pink Tide” challenges US hemispheric hegemony, whose pedigree dates back to the 1823 Monroe Doctrine.
The tidal surge
The metaphor of the “Pink Tide” aptly describes the ebb and flow of the ongoing class conflict between the minions of imperialism and the region’s popular forces. Back in 1977, the region was dominated by the “rule of the generals.” The infamous US Operation Condor supported explicit military dictatorships in all of South America, except for Colombia and Venezuela, and in much of Central America.
Then the tide began to turn with the election of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela in 1998. By 2008, almost the entire region was in the pink with the notable exceptions of Colombia, Mexico, and a few others. A decade later, a conservative backlash left Uruguay, Ecuador, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Cuba, and a lonely handful of other states on the progressive side. But that was to change by mid-year 2018.
Mexico
The first blush of pink to the current wave dates back to July 1, 2018, with Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s landslide victory in Mexico. Many believe his two previous runs at the presidency were stolen from him. Affectionately known by the acronym AMLO, his broad coalition under the newly formed MORENA party swept national, state, and municipal offices and ended 36 years of neoliberal rule.
Mexico’s list to the left was significant. It is the second largest economy in the region and the thirteenth in the world. Mexico is the second largest US trading partner after Canada and before China.
AMLO has made important foreign policy initiatives independent, in fact, defiant, of the US. He conspicuously invited Venezuelan President Maduro as a guest of honor to a major Mexican holiday celebration. When Biden called a “democracy summit” for the hemisphere last June but did not invite Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, AMLO boldly led a boycott, which largely sabotaged the affair. And AMLO has been a strong proponent of regional integration promoting CELAC and other multi-national institutions.
Argentina
A year after AMLO’s ascendency, the rightist Mauricio Macri was replaced by the left Peronist Alberto Fernández on October 27, 2019. The flip from right to left was a repudiation of Macri’s subservience to the IMF and austerity economic policies, which had generated mass opposition.
Bolivia
Two weeks after the election in Argentina, the left suffered a major body blow on November 10, 2019, when a coup overthrew leftist President Evo Morales in Bolivia. The coup was backed by the US with the complicity of the Organization of American States (OAS) under the leadership of Luis Almagro, a sycophant to the Yankees.
Evo, as he is popularly called, was the first indigenous president in the majority indigenous country. He barely escaped the coup violence when a plane supplied by AMLO whisked him to safety in Mexico.
Evo’s vindication came a year later on October 18, 2020, when his fellow Movement to Socialism (MAS) Party member Luis Arce won back the presidency by a landslide. Evo then returned from exile and has since played an international role as a spokesperson on climate change, regional integration, indigenous rights, and other left issues.
Peru
Then seven months later, a person from a Marxist-Leninist party took the presidency in Peru on June 6, 2021. When the rural schoolteacher and strike leader Pedro Castillo emerged as one of the two contenders in the first presidential election round, he was virtually unknown. The international press even struggled to find a photo of the future president.
Castillo won the final election round against the hard right Keiko Fujimori. Castillo’s victory spelled the end of the Lima Group, a coalition of anti-Venezuela countries. Strategically, the Pacific rim of South America, which had previously been entirely populated by right-wing US allies, now had a leftist in its midst.
Nicaragua
The left trend was further consolidated five months after the success in Peru when the ruling Sandinista Party (FSLN) in Nicaragua swept the national elections on November 7, 2021. A year later on November 6, 2022, the Sandinistas were further affirmed with a sweep of the municipal elections.
Nicaragua had been recovering from a violent unsuccessful coup attempt in 2018 involving the Catholic Church and other right-wing elements. Having failed to achieve regime change by helping to instigate and back the coup, the US has since tightened the economic screws on the third poorest state in the hemisphere ratcheting up unilateral coercive measures.
Despite the illegal US sanctions designed to punish its people, the socialist government has done so much with so little. Nicaragua’s 8.3% economic growth during the pandemic is among the highest in the region and indeed the world.
Nicaragua is the safest in the entire region and among the safest internationally. Education and healthcare are free. With the best roads in Central America, the previously neglected and isolated Caribbean coast is now more fully integrated with the rest of the country. And an unsurpassed 30% of the national territory is in autonomous zones for indigenous and Afro-descendent peoples. Contrary to US propaganda, polls show President Daniel Ortega is popular with his constituents.
Venezuela
Then two weeks after the left electoral affirmation in Nicaragua, the same was repeated in Venezuela. The ruling Socialist Party (PSUV) swept the regional and legislative elections on November 21, 2021.
Although the US and a handful of its most sycophantic allies still recognize the Trump-anointed Juan Guaidó as “interim president” of Venezuela, the vast majority of states accept Nicolás Maduro as the lawful president. The hapless Mr. Guaidó has the highest disapproval ratings among potential opposition candidates for the 2024 presidential election. While polls show that if a snap election were called, Maduro would win.
Meanwhile, Biden, under pressure to ease fuel shortages of its own making, is ever so slightly easing Trump’s draconian sanctions. Chevron is resuming limited operations in Venezuela and some of Venezuela’s $20 billion of “kidnapped” assets in foreign banks are being released for humanitarian projects.
Honduras
Just a week after the Venezuela election, the sweetest left triumph was achieved. Xiomara Castro became the first woman elected to the presidency in the history of Honduras on December 1, 2021. Her husband, Manuel Zelaya, had been overthrown in a coup on June 28, 2009, that was orchestrated by US President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Castro replaced over twelve years of “nacro dictatorship,” a well-deserved opprobrium that is confirmed by the US government itself. Back in 2009, the facts were so clear that even the accomplice Obama had to admit Zelaya was ousted in a “coup,” though he weaseled that wasn’t a “military” coup.
The US then backed a succession of illegitimate presidents, including the most recent past President Juan Orlando Hernández, with generous military, financial, and political support. Even the OAS, which is essentially an arm of the US masquerading as a multi-national body, questioned the validity of his election. Then once Castro won, “JOH” was quickly extradited to the US and thrown into prison for importing vast quantities of cocaine to the US.
Formerly known as the “USS Honduras” for its role as the US surrogate in Central America, the new Castro presidency will be charting a new course for Honduras.
Chile
Less than two weeks after the defeat of the right in Honduras, Gabriel Boric won the Chilean presidency on December 19, 2021, campaigning under the slogan “neoliberalism was born in Chile and here it will die.” He replaced the rightist Sebastián Piñera who, incidentally, was the richest person in Chile.
A former student leader turned politician, the 36-year-old Boric came out of the mass anti-neoliberal protests of 2019 and 2021, which mobilized a significant portion of Chile’s population. Boric had beaten the Communist Party candidate in the progressive Apruebo Dignidad coalition primary and went on the defeat José Antonio Kast in the presidential election.
To call Kast a far rightist would be an understatement. Sometimes leftist rhetoric too loosely accuses opponents of being fascists. In the case of Kast and his politically active brothers, however, the term is perfectly apt. Their father came from Germany and was an actual member of the Nazi Party.
Colombia
What happened next was truly historical. Former leftist guerilla (since moderated toward the center-left) Gustavo Petro and his VP Francia Márquez, an Afro-descendent environmentalist, were the first progressives to ever win in Colombia on June 19th of this year. Their Pacto Histórico coalition had come out of the immense popular protests of 2019 and 2020, which featured indigenous and Afro-descendent participation.
Colombia, formerly known as the “Israel of Latin America,” had long been the leading US regional client state and the largest recipient of US military aid in the hemisphere. This election promises to upset that role and break with the influential right-wing former President Álvaro Uribe and his successors.
Outgoing rightist President Iván Duque also made history as Colombia’s least popular president. He immediately joined the rightist Wilson Center in Washington, changing job titles but not, in effect, employers.
Brazil
Colombia was a huge splash in the region, but what ensued in Brazil was a crashing tidal wave of global proportions.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known colloquially simply as Lula, was first elected in 2003 and left the presidency in 2010 with soaring popularity ratings. He was succeeded by fellow Workers’ Party member Dilma Rousseff, who was reelected in 2014. Two years later, the right-dominated legislature used “lawfare” to oust her from office.
Lula was then a victim of lawfare himself. Although the most popular would-be presidential candidate, he spent April 2018 to November 2019 in prison. This allowed Jair “Trump of the Tropics” Bolsonaro to assume the presidency. Then in a spectacular comeback, Lula beat Bolsonaro in the next presidential contest on October 31, 2022.
Sea change in Latin America and the Caribbean
The progressive electoral victories decisively tip the regional geopolitical balance to the portside. The rank order by size of the largest regional economies is Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, and Peru – all of which are now on the left side of the ledger. Brazil’s is the eighth largest economy in the world.
Brazil’s inclusion in the BRICS transcontinental alliance foreshadows an emerging international multipolar independence from the west. Originally including Russia, India, China, and South Africa, BRICS+ may expand to include Argentina, Iran, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, and others.
Lula campaigned on creating a regional currency, the SUR. Maduro, too, has called for a regional currency, which would challenge US dollar dominance.
Lula, Maduro, and their fellow travelers promise to be spokespersons for the poor at home, for regional integration (reviving UNASUR and reinforcing MERCOSUR), and internationally for multilateralism (addressing climate change and possibly even helping to broker a peace in Ukraine).
To be continued…
• Part II addresses the explicitly socialist countries (Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua), the lessons of Haiti, and the emerging role of China.
The post The Volatility of US Hegemony in Latin America (Part 1) first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
US special presidential envoy for hostage affairs Roger Carstens is on a case which could lead to freeing Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab. Pressure is building on the Biden administration to swap Saab for some American citizens currently incarcerated in Venezuela.
Alex Saab targeted in the US economic war against Venezuela
Alex Saab, who has been confined for over two years, is a victim of the US economic war calculated to achieve regime-change in Venezuela. He has been targeted because of his role in helping circumvent the sanctions imposed on Venezuela by the US. These measures, really collective punishment, are intended to make conditions so onerous there that the people would renounce their elected government. Such unilateral coercive measures are illegal under international law.
Saab was on a humanitarian mission from Caracas to Tehran to procure food, fuel, and medicine in legal international trade but in contravention of the illegal US sanctions. When his plane made a fuel stop in Cabo Verde on June 12, 2020, he was seized and imprisoned on Washington’s behest. Although the regional ECOWAS Court and the UN Human Rights Committee ordered his release, Saab was held captive. Then in October 2021, the US extradited Saab and has imprisoned him ever since in Miami.
As Venezuela’s special envoy and a deputy ambassador to the African Union, Saab had diplomatic immunity from arrest and detention under the Vienna Convention. Although a signatory to the convention, the US has flouted this international law.
Saab will be fighting against his illegal detention at a hearing before the 8th District Court on October 29. An international campaign has been mounted to #FreeAlexSaab.
Hybrid war against Venezuela heats up
Starting in 2015 with US President Obama’s sanctions against Venezuela and ratcheted up by subsequent US presidents, the US has intensified its hybrid war against the socialist government of that South American country. One of the spoils of that war was CITGO. This US-based oil refiner and retailer was initially a subsidiary of the Venezuelan oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PdVSA).
In July 2018, the US expelled the then CITGO president Asdrúbal Chávez. Then in January 2019, in a major blow against Venezuela, CITGO revenues were cut off.
US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced that the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) had seized CITGO to hold “accountable those responsible for Venezuela’s tragic decline.” In fact, it was the US sanctions that were explicitly designed to cause the decline he hypocritically lamented.
In an incredible inversion of logic, Mnuchin claimed that the seizure was to “support” an opposition deputy in Venezuela’s National Assembly named Juan Guaidó “to restore their [Venezuela’s] democracy.” Mr. Guaidó had declared himself president of Venezuela on a street corner in Caracaras and was immediately recognized as legitimate by US President Trump. The 35-year-old US security asset had never even run for national office. His self-proclamation was unlawful and unconstitutional.
Besides handing control over CITGO to Guaidó, the US declared in March 2020 that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was a “narco-terrorist.” A $15 million bounty was put on his head. Adding to the farce, the Drug Enforcement Agency put up a wanted poster on its website.
More recently in May 2022, a US judge approved of the auctioning of the $8-billion-worth CITGO. However, the auction is contingent on the approval of the US Treasury’s OFAC, which currently opposes the auction because it is “inconsistent with US foreign policy goals” now that the asset is controlled by Guaidó. However, Guaidó has been complicit in mismanaging and giving away Venezuelan assets that the US has seized and handed over to him.
The purpose of the auction would be to pay claims by the Canadian mining company Crystallex and the US oil company ConocoPhillips against Caracas for nationalizing their properties in Venezuela. However, in another ironic twist, the US sanctions against Venezuela explicitly prevent the servicing of its debt.
The convoluted case of the CITGO Six
The case of the CITGO Six is playing out against this backdrop of hybrid warfare and international finance. The six – Tomeu Vadell, Gustavo Cardenas, Jorge Toledo, Alirio Jose Zambrano, Jose Luis Zambrano, and Jose Angel Pereira – are Venezuelan citizens and were executives at CITGO. All but one also hold dual US citizenship.
The head of PdVSA called the CITGO executives to Caracas in November 2017, where they were arrested for embezzlement in a $4 billion refinancing scheme. The group was granted house arrest in December 2019. But they were imprisoned again in February 2020 after President Trump received Juan Guaidó at the White House and House Speaker Pelosi also honored the pretend president.
After New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson made a visit to Caracaras in July 2020, two of the six – Cárdenas and Toledo – were released to humanitarian house arrest. The releases by Caracas were a goodwill gesture following US President Trump’s comment in June 2020 of possibly directly meeting with Venezuelan President Maduro. Later, Trump walked back on the opening, reiterating the US regime-change policy: “I would only meet with Maduro to discuss one thing: a peaceful exit from power!”
The remaining executives were again granted house arrest, only to be transferred back to prison in October 2021 after Alex Saab was extradited to the US.
Other US citizens imprisoned in Venezuela – US mercenaries or innocents abroad
The US maintains that the CITGO Six are wrongfully imprisoned, although noting that “PdVSA has long been a vehicle for corruption.”
An even harder case for asserting innocence is that of two former Green Berets arrested in May 2020 in connection with a plan to kidnap President Maduro. Luke Denman and Airan Berry were leaders of Operation Gideón. Derisively dubbed the “Bay of Piglets,” their amphibious assault failed.
Then in September 2020, ex-Marine Matthew Heath was apprehended near an oil refinery and accused of terrorism and spying. At the time of Heath’s capture, he possessed a grenade launcher, a sub-machine gun, C4 explosives, and a satellite phone along with bricks of $20 bills. Not your typical tourist, even the Washington Post suggested Heath was tied to the CIA.
The case of Eyvin Hernandez is perhaps the least known. The former Los Angeles public defender was detained earlier this year when he was caught illegally crossing the border from Colombia into Venezuela without proper papers.
US-Venezuela prisoner swap negotiations
Last February, family members of the imprisoned CITGO Six met with Department of Justice officials and urged them to accept a prisoner exchange to free their relatives. The Associated Press reported the families “vented” against the extradition of Alex Saab by the US. The Venezuelan government’s goodwill gesture of moving their loved ones from prison to house arrest had been reversed after Washington perversely reciprocated by extraditing Saab.
The Biden administration was also pressured by Representative Michael McCaul, the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He complained: “These Americans deserve a whole of government effort to getting them home, and Congress equally shares the responsibility and desire to get this mission accomplished.”
While a prisoner swap may be considered, the US also claims the authority to conduct military operations and impose sanctions against states holding illegally detained Americans. But, then again, Washington routinely takes such actions with even weaker excuses.
Swap rumors circulated in March 2022. Without advance publicity and veiled in secrecy, an unprecedented high-level US delegation visited Venezuelan President Maduro. The delegation was led by National Security Council senior director for the Western Hemisphere Juan Gonzalez and was accompanied by hostage affairs envoy Roger Carstens. Carstens had previously traveled to Caracas in December of last year to meet with the CITGO Six, Matthew Heath, and the two former Green Berets.
Afterward, Venezuela released former CITGO executive Gustavo Cardenas and Cuban-US naturalized citizen Jorge Fernandez. The latter had been arrested on terrorism charges for flying a drone on the Colombian border with Venezuela.
Venezuela’s latest goodwill gesture has not been reciprocated by the US, although it is widely believed that the two countries are continuing prisoner swap negotiations through confidential back channels.
Precedent of the Cuban Five’s release
The US is reluctant to engage in prisoner swaps on the grounds that such magnanimity encourages hostage taking. Nevertheless, that reluctance can be overcome as it was in the case of the Cuban Five.
The Cuban government, cooperating with their US counterparts in the “war on terrorism,” supplied Washington with information on terrorists plotting against Cuba from the US. Instead of arresting the terrorists in September 1998, the US imprisoned five Cuban undercover intelligence officers who had infiltrated US-based terrorist organizations to protect their homeland.
Two of the five Cuban heroes, as they were known back home, were released after basically serving their sentences. The remaining three were released in December 2014 in a prisoner swap, ostensibly for US spy Rolando Trujillo, but really for alleged US agent Alan Gross.
Gross’s well-connected family had launched an aggressive drive for his release. More significantly, a massive international solidarity campaign to free the Cuban Five proved to have been decisive. Cuban President Fidel Castro promised that the five would be freed, and he kept his promise. Venezuelan President Maduro, meanwhile, is demanding Alex Saab’s repatriation.
The post Possible Prisoner Exchange in US Hybrid War against Venezuela first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Unlike Ukraine, Venezuela successfully resisted the violent US-led coup attempt in 2014, and in other years, by right wing forces and the hybrid war being waged against it. Venezuela is recovering despite the ongoing economic blockade. Now, because the United States needs oil, the Biden administration has started talking to the Maduro government and there is hope that relations between the two countries may resume. For an update on this situation, as well as the future of Venezuela’s US-based oil company CITGO, the status of Venezuela’s gold in the Bank of London, the demise of Juan Guaido, and the kidnapping of Venezuelan diplomat, Alex Saab, Clearing the FOG speaks with Leonardo Flores, the Latin American campaign director for CODEPINK.
The post Venezuela: A Model Of Resistance To US Intervention appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
As The Canary has consistently reported, the US-backed coup attempt in Venezuela has been degenerating into an increasingly pathetic and embarrassing spectacle. Now, in one final gasp of desperation, Juan Guaidó has called for a fresh round of protests next month. But it looks like he and his dwindling band of followers’ hopes of toppling the government will soon be dashed. Because there are now growing calls for his prosecution for crimes including treason.
Washington and its mouthpieces in the corporate-owned media will surely crow that this somehow constitutes ‘proof’ of the Venezuelan government’s authoritarian nature. But the reality is that the US is, if anything, even less tolerant of the kind of behavior that its proxies in Venezuela have engaged in as part of their attempt to seize power.
On 23 January, Guaidó called on his supporters to hit the streets on 12 February to protest president Nicolas Maduro’s government. Guaidó has been the leader of an ongoing coup attempt since early 2019. In January of that year, then-US president Donald Trump declared him Venezuela’s ‘interim president’. In the early months of the coup, most of the US’s major Latin American and European allies recognized Guaidó as the country’s legitimate leader.
But as time went by, his support from abroad began to decline. As The Canary reported at the time, in January 2021 the European Union withdrew its recognition of his claim to power. Guaidó derived this claim from his position as leader of Venezuela’s legislature, the National Assembly. But because he and his party boycotted the National Assembly elections the previous year, he no longer even held a seat in the body. This therefore voided the premise behind his claim to power even on its own terms.
It’s in the context of this increasingly desperate situation that Guaidó has called for this fresh round of protests against Maduro’s government. He has indicated that the demonstrations should be peaceful. But his past involvement in violent street protests casts doubt on his sincerity.
In his younger years, Guaidó was a member of one of the street gangs that led the ‘guarimba’ protests. In 2014, these protests left over 40 people dead. Then in 2017 the ‘guarimberos’ returned. And, according to Dan Cohen and Max Blumenthal, they were responsible for “causing mass destruction of public infrastructure, the murder of government supporters, and the deaths of 126 people”.
But irrespective of the sincerity of his commitment to non-violence, Guaidó might soon find himself behind bars anyway. Members of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV in its Spanish initials) have been increasing their calls for Guaidó’s prosecution. During an event commemorating the overthrow of Venezuela’s general Marcos Pérez Jiménez’s murderous dictatorship in the 1950s, president Maduro assured supporters that “justice will definitely come”.
Meanwhile, a majority of PSUV National Assembly members have petitioned Venezuela’s attorney general to take action against Guaidó. He currently stands accused of treason and fraud by the Assembly’s Anti-Corruption Commission. And he also faces criminal charges of “treason, money laundering, embezzlement, and ties to Colombian-based paramilitary gangs”.
Like their puppet masters in Washington and cheerleaders in the corporate press, Guaidó and his supporters will also presumably characterize this as ‘proof’ of the Maduro government’s inherent authoritarianism. But it should be pointed out that though PSUV members are leading the calls for Guaidó’s prosecution, it’ll be Venezuela’s independent judicial system, not the government, that tries him. Moreover, there’s ample evidence to suggest that Guaidó is guilty of all the crimes for which he stands accused.
To take the most obvious example, colluding with a hostile foreign power (the US) that’s imposing unilateral sanctions on his own country (in flagrant violation of international law) seems a cut-and-dry case of treason. The sanctions have been responsible for the deaths of over a hundred thousand people. Yet Guaidó continues to use them as a bargaining chip in negotiations. He recently said during an interview with Reuters, for example, that the offer to withdraw sanctions as part of a peace deal with the government “is not indefinite”.
This kind of behavior is criminalized in most countries, not least in the US where treason is a capital crime. The fact that Guaidó has largely continued his coup attempt unmolested by Venezuelan authorities shows that, if anything, Venezuela is more tolerant of political dissent than the US. After all, given all the fuss over (alleged) Russian influence in the 2016 US election, we can see how powerbrokers in Washington do not tolerate even comparatively minor (alleged) interference in their own country’s internal affairs.
There’s also considerable evidence to support the charges of fraud and embezzlement. As The Canary has extensively reported, Guaidó attempted to get access to gold belonging to the Central Bank of Venezuela that was being held by the Bank of England. The Bank of England unilaterally froze the assets on the bogus grounds that Maduro was no longer Venezuela’s rightful leader. Maduro’s government is currently taking legal action in the UK to recover these stolen assets.
Likewise, evidence to support charges of ties to Colombian paramilitaries is substantial. In September 2019, the Guardian reported:
Juan Guaidó, the Venezuelan politician fighting to topple Nicolás Maduro, is facing awkward questions about his relationship with organised crime after the publication of compromising photographs showing him with two Colombian paramilitaries.
Clearly, the days Guaidó has left to continue this ridiculous charade are numbered. It may not be long before he finally faces justice for his murderous and destabilizing coup attempt – one that’s plunged Venezuela into ever-greater chaos and turmoil.
Featured image via Flickr – DJANDYW.COM AKA NOBODY and Wikimedia Commons
By Peter Bolton
This post was originally published on The Canary.
Getty Images
President Biden and the Democrats were highly critical of President Trump’s foreign policy, so it was reasonable to expect that Biden would quickly remedy its worst impacts. As a senior member of the Obama administration, Biden surely needed no schooling on Obama’s diplomatic agreements with Cuba and Iran, both of which began to resolve long-standing foreign policy problems and provided models for the renewed emphasis on diplomacy that Biden was promising.
Tragically for America and the world, Biden has failed to restore Obama’s progressive initiatives, and has instead doubled down on many of Trump’s most dangerous and destabilizing policies. It is especially ironic and sad that a president who ran so stridently on being different from Trump has been so reluctant to reverse his regressive policies. Now the Democrats’ failure to deliver on their promises with respect to both domestic and foreign policy is undermining their prospects in November’s midterm election.
Here is our assessment of Biden’s handling of ten critical foreign policy issues:
Now, instead of helping the Afghan people recover from two decades of U.S.-inflicted destruction, Biden has seized $9.4 billion in Afghan foreign currency reserves, while the people of Afghanistan suffer through a desperate humanitarian crisis. It is hard to imagine how even Donald Trump could be more cruel or vindictive.
Biden’s failure to acknowledge Russia’s legitimate security concerns has led to the present impasse, and Cold Warriors within his administration are threatening Russia instead of proposing concrete measures to de-escalate the situation.
After a decade of unprecedented U.S. military spending and aggressive military expansion under Bush II and Obama, the U.S. “pivot to Asia” militarily encircled China, forcing it to invest in more robust defense forces and advanced weapons. Trump, in turn, used China’s strengthened defenses as a pretext for further increases in U.S. military spending, launching a new arms race that has raised the existential risk of nuclear war to a new level.
Biden has only exacerbated these dangerous international tensions. Alongside the risk of war, his aggressive policies toward China have led to an ominous rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans, and created obstacles to much-needed cooperation with China to address climate change, the pandemic and other global problems.
Instead of immediately rejoining an agreement that worked for all parties, the Biden administration thought it could pressure Iran to negotiate a “better deal.” Exasperated Iranians instead elected a more conservative government and Iran moved forward on enhancing its nuclear program.
A year later, and after eight rounds of shuttle diplomacy in Vienna, Biden has still not rejoined the agreement. Ending his first year in the White House with the threat of another Middle East war is enough to give Biden an “F” in diplomacy.
Instead of manufacturing and distributing vaccines on a non-profit basis to tackle the pandemic as the global public health crisis that it is, the United States and other Western countries chose to maintain the neoliberal regime of patents and corporate monopolies on vaccine manufacture and distribution. The failure to open up the manufacture and distribution of vaccines to poorer countries gave the Covid virus free rein to spread and mutate, leading to new global waves of infection and death from the Delta and Omicron variants
Biden belatedly agreed to support a patent waiver for Covid vaccines under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, but with no real plan for a “People’s Vaccine,” Biden’s concession has made no impact on millions of preventable deaths.
But by the time Biden got to Glasgow, he had let the centerpiece of his own climate plan, the Clean Energy Performance Program (CEPP), be stripped out of the Build Back Better bill in Congress at the behest of fossil-fuel industry sock-puppet Joe Manchin, turning the U.S. pledge of a 50% cut from 2005 emissions by 2030 into an empty promise.
Biden’s speech in Glasgow highlighted China and Russia’s failures, neglecting to mention that the United States has higher emissions per capita than either of them. Even as COP26 was taking place, the Biden administration infuriated activists by putting oil and gas leases up for auction for 730,000 acres of the American West and 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico. At the one-year mark, Biden has talked the talk, but when it comes to confronting Big Oil, he is not walking the walk, and the whole world is paying the price.
In July 2021, former drone pilot Daniel Hale was sentenced to 45 months in prison for exposing the killing of civilians in America’s drone wars. WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange still languishes in Belmarsh Prison in England, after 11 years fighting extradition to the United States for exposing U.S. war crimes.
Twenty years after it set up an illegal concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to imprison 779 mostly innocent people kidnapped around the world, 39 prisoners remain there in illegal, extrajudicial detention. Despite promises to close this sordid chapter of U.S. history, the prison is still functioning and Biden is allowing the Pentagon to actually build a new, closed courtroom at Guantanamo to more easily keep the workings of this gulag hidden from public scrutiny.
Biden has continued Trump’s failed economic siege warfare against countries that resist U.S. imperial dictates, inflicting endless pain on their people without seriously imperiling, let alone bringing down, their governments. Brutal U.S. sanctions and efforts at regime change have universally failed for decades, serving mainly to undermine the United States’s own democratic and human rights credentials.
Juan Guaidó is now the least popular opposition figure in Venezuela, and genuine grassroots movements opposed to U.S. intervention are bringing popular democratic and socialist governments to power across Latin America, in Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Honduras – and maybe Brazil in 2022.
Instead, Biden only issued an order to stop selling “offensive” weapons to Saudi Arabia, without clearly defining that term, and went on to okay a $650 million weapons sale. The United States still supports the Saudi war, even as the resulting humanitarian crisis kills thousands of Yemeni children. And despite Biden’s pledge to treat the Saudis’ cruel leader, MBS, as a pariah, Biden refused to even sanction MBS for his barbaric murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Donald Trump was flagrant in his disdain for Palestinian rights, including tranferring the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to a property in Jerusalem that is only partly within Israel’s internationally recognized border, a move that infuriated Palestinians and drew international condemnation.
But nothing has changed under Biden. The U.S. position on Israel and Palestine is as illegitimate and contradictory as ever, and the U.S. Embassy to Israel remains on illegally occupied land. In May, Biden supported the latest Israeli assault on Gaza, which killed 256 Palestinians, half of them civilians, including 66 children.
Conclusion
Each part of this foreign policy fiasco costs human lives and creates regional–even global–instability. In every case, progressive alternative policies are readily available. The only thing lacking is political will and independence from corrupt vested interests.
The United States has squandered unprecedented wealth, global goodwill and a historic position of international leadership to pursue unattainable imperial ambitions, using military force and other forms of violence and coercion in flagrant violation of the UN Charter and international law.
Candidate Biden promised to restore America’s position of global leadership, but has instead doubled down on the policies through which the United States lost that position in the first place, under a succession of Republican and Democratic administrations. Trump was only the latest iteration in America’s race to the bottom.
Biden has wasted a vital year doubling down on Trump’s failed policies. In the coming year, we hope that the public will remind Biden of its deep-seated aversion to war and that he will respond—albeit reluctantly—by adopting more dovish and rational ways.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
This outcome was far from certain in recent months. With Guaidó’s self-proclamation and initial enthusiasm far in the rearview mirror, the opposition’s cherished tradition of cannibalistic infighting became ever more present. Corruption scandals and bitter name-calling made the rounds on social media.
Leaders like Henrique Capriles were openly calling for Guaidó’s head while mocking the “interim government” by likening it to a video game. A sector of the opposition managed to twist the hardliners’ arm and run in the November 21 mega-elections. The gamble was clear: get a respectable number of elected governors and mayors and Guaidó’s post would be under even more pressure.
But it did not work out, which forced the warring parties into a kind of détente.
The post Washington, Guaidó And The Billion-Dollar Circus appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
Imagine if Nicolás Maduro’s vice president quit and called for his government to be disbanded. Or if Venezuela’s opposition won a landslide in regional elections or if 90% of member states voted against the government’s UN credentials. The Canadian media would have splashed this news on front pages, but the shoe was on “our guy’s” foot so they’ve been silent.
The dominant media has all but ignored the collapse of Canada’s unprecedented bid to create an international coalition to support a parallel Venezuelan government. It’s quite a turnaround from when the media published puff pieces about Ottawa’s central role in Juan Guaidó’s rise and CTV News’ Don Martin asked foreign minister Chrystia Freeland whether Maduro was “any step closer to being kicked out of office as a result of this meeting today?”
A search of major Canadian media found almost no mention of the following developments over the past month:
Borges’ resignation is a special blow to Ottawa’s policy and definitely worthy of coverage by any sort of truly independent media. Instead, our corporate-owned newspapers, TV and radio either cheerlead for this country’s foreign policy or criticize it from the right.
The media has largely gone silent on Venezuela since it became clear Canada’s campaign to oust the government was a failure. This includes ignoring the withdrawal of Lima from the Lima Group of countries seeking to overthrow Venezuela’s government. In August a new Peruvian government’s foreign minister said, “the Lima Group must be the most disastrous thing we have done in international politics in the history of Perú.”
In fact, the Lima Group has lost other members and is now dormant. Where are the columnists analyzing this demise as yet another blow to Trudeau’s foreign policy? Ottawa founded Lima Group with Peru in 2017 as a structure outside of the Organization of American States largely because that organization’s members refused to back Washington and Ottawa’s bid to interfere in Venezuelan affairs, which they believed defied the OAS’ charter. The media previously reported glowingly about these Trudeau government policies.
But now that the American bull and the Canadian steer have ravaged the South American china shop yet again, there’s no mention of the destruction caused in Venezuela and elsewhere by the blatant interference in other countries’ internal affairs. Or even of the failure of a major Trudeau/Freeland foreign policy plank.
It’s time the media pressed the Liberals to drop their Juan Guaidó charade.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Mexico City, Mexico, December 20, 2021 – The United Kingdom’s highest court issued a ruling on Monday favoring opposition figure Juan Guaidó and his efforts to wrest control of US$1.7 billion worth of Venezuelan gold stored at the Bank of England (BoE).
The Monday decision is the latest episode in the legal struggle by the democratically-elected Nicolás Maduro government to regain access to the reserves. Following what the court described as the “one voice principle,” the court ruled that under the UK’s constitutional arrangements political recognition of foreign states falls to the country’s executive.
In 2019, Conservative UK Prime Minister Theresa May recognized Guaidó, then president of the National Assembly, as “interim president” as part of the US-led effort to oust the Maduro government.
The post UK Gold Ruling Based On ‘Illegal Interference’ In Venezuela appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
Donald Trump thinks he’s still president according to no more reliable a source than Rachel Maddow on her February 5th show. This was confirmed in May by Vanity Fair. Right-wing conspiracy theorists echo this analysis as recently as this month. Left-liberals are smugly confident that Kamala Harris’s running mate is in the White House, snoozing in the presidential bedroom. Inquiring minds ask what is the evidence nearly a year into the alleged Biden presidency that there has been a change of guard in Washington?
+The Obama-Biden union card check proposal was not on Mr. Trump’s political horizon, nor is it on that of the current occupant in the White House.
+The current occupant is ramping up Trump’s unhinged Sino-phobic hallucinations, sanctioning 34 Chinese entities for development of “brain-control weaponry.” Not that the Chinese have been angels. In an egregious suppression of freedom of information, the inscrutable Orientals have made it more difficult for US spies to operate in their country.
+The current occupant nominally withdrew US troops from Afghanistan as negotiated by Mr. Trump, presumably reducing overall military costs. Yet, he continues the Trump-trajectory of lavishing billions of dollars more on the military than even the Pentagon requests.
+Given his priority to feed the war machine, the new occupant is having a hard time finding sufficient funds for Biden-promised student debt forgiveness. Ditto for making two years of community college tuition-free.
+ President Trump slashed the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%; candidate Biden vowed to raise it to 28%; the current occupant proposed a further cut to 15%.
Biden, while campaigning in 2019, pledged to wealthy donors that “nothing would fundamentally change” if he’s elected. And nothing has changed despite recent drama in the Senate over Build Back Better. Trump’s $4.5 trillion corporate-investor tax cut still appears secure.
+Raising the federal minimum wage to $15-an-hour from $7.25, where it has languished since 2009, was a big selling point for the Biden campaign. Now it is on hold, while billionaire fortunes balloon, leaving the working class broke but woke under the current administration.
+The Obama-Biden nuclear deal with Iran was gutted by Trump. The current occupant, contrary to Biden’s campaign utterances, has not returned to the conditions of the JCPOA. Rather, he has continued Trump’s “maximum pressure” policy against Iran.
+Candidate Biden, calling for a foreign policy based on diplomacy, criticized Trump’s dangerous and erratic war mongering. Yet only a month after his inauguration, the new president capriciously bombed “Iranian-backed militias” in Syria who were fighting ISIS terrorists and posed no threat to the US.
The new president went on to authorize further “air strikes” on “targets” around the world such as Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Now, the undiscriminating reader might think these are acts of war. But war, according to the “rules-based order” of the new occupant, is best understood as a conflict where US lives are lost rather than those of seemingly more expendable swarthy-skinned foreigners.
+The Obama-Biden normalization of relations with Cuba and easing of restrictions were reversed by Trump. Presidential candidate Biden had signaled a return, but the current occupant has instead intensified the US hybrid war against Cuba.
+Candidate Biden pledged to review Trump’s policy of US sanctions against a third of humanity. The presumptive intention of the review was to ameliorate the human suffering caused by these unilateral coercive measures. Sanctions are a form of collective punishment considered illegal under international law. Following the review, the current occupant has instead tightened the screws, more effectively weaponizing the COVID crisis against countries such as Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela, while adding Ethiopia and Cambodia to the growing list of those sanctioned.
+Among Trump’s most ridiculous foreign policy stunts (and it’s a competitive field) was the recognition of Juan Guaidó as president of Venezuela in 2019. The then 35-year-old US security asset had never run for a nationwide office and was unknown to over 80% of the Venezuelans. Contrary to campaign trail inuendoes that Biden would dialogue with the democratically elected president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, the new guy in the White House has continued the embarrassing Guaidó charade.
+The current White House occupant has also continued and expanded on some of the worse anti-immigrant policies of the xenophobe who preceded him. Asylum seekers from Haiti and Central America – fleeing conditions in large part created by US interventions in their countries – have been sent packing. Within a month of assuming the presidency, migrant detention facilities for children were employed, contradicting statements made by candidate Biden who had deplored locking kids in cages.
+President Trump was a shameless global warming denier. Candidate Biden was a refreshing true believer, boldly calling for a ban on new oil and natural gas leasing on public land and water. But whoever is now in the Oval Office opened more than 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for fossil fuel drilling.
Perhaps the strongest evidence that Trump is practically still in office is the political practice of his left-liberal detractors who solemnly promised to “first dump Trump, then battle Biden.” However, these left-liberals are still obsessing about dumping Trump. Instead of battling Biden, they are fanning the dying embers of the fear of another January 6 insurrection, giving the Democrats a pass.
Of course, the Democrats occupy the executive branch along with holding majorities and both houses of Congress. Yet, despite campaign pledges and spin, the continuity from one administration to the next is overarching as the preceding quick review documented.
The partisan infighting theatrics of the “dysfunctional Congress” is in part a distraction from an underlying bedrock bipartisan consensus. Congress is dysfunctional by design on matters of social welfare for working Americans. It is ruthlessly functional for matters of concern for the ruling elites, such as the military spending, bank bailouts, corporate welfare, and an expansive surveillance state.
The Democrats offer an empty “we are not Trump” alternative. The bankrupt left-liberals no longer stand for substantial improvements to the living conditions of working people, a “peace dividend,” or respite from war without end. Instead, they use the scare tactic that they are the bulwark against a right popular insurgency; an insurgency fueled in the first place by the failure of the two-party system to speak to the material needs of its constituents.
The post Trump Thinks He’s Still President: What Is the Evidence? first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
A few days ago I was out grocery shopping when I heard a man tell his friend that Venezuela was the only country in the world with two presidents but where everything was still screwed up.
This has become a running joke among Venezuelans. However, some three years ago, when Juan Guaidó proclaimed himself “interim president” and was instantly backed by the United States and the European Union, things didn’t seem so funny.
The government and its support base feared this was the opening act ahead of a US military invasion. Opposition activists weren’t totally clear as to what was going on, but their leaders were quick to fall in line behind Guaidó, and the initial rallies created a lot of expectation.
But that did not last.
The post Tales Of Resistance: Guaidó’s Pie appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
Protest by students in Thailand. AP
President Biden’s virtual Summit for Democracy on December 9-10 is part of a campaign to restore the United States’ standing in the world, which took such a beating under President Trump’s erratic foreign policies. Biden hopes to secure his place at the head of the “Free World” table by coming out as a champion for human rights and democratic practices worldwide.
The greater possible value of this gathering of 111 countries is that it could instead serve as an “intervention,” or an opportunity for people and governments around the world to express their concerns about the flaws in U.S. democracy and the undemocratic way the United States deals with the rest of the world. Here are just a few issues that should be considered:
(1) The U.S. claims to be a leader in global democracy at a time when its own already deeply flawed democracy is crumbling, as evidenced by the shocking January 6 assault on the nation’s Capitol. On top of the systemic problem of a duopoly that keeps other political parties locked out and the obscene influence of money in politics, the U.S. electoral system is being further eroded by the increasing tendency to contest credible election results and widespread efforts to suppress voter participation (19 states have enacted 33 laws that make it more difficult for citizens to vote).
A broad global ranking of countries by various measures of democracy puts the U.S. at # 33, while the U.S. government-funded Freedom House ranks the United States at # 61 in the world for political freedom and civil liberties, on a par with Mongolia, Panama and Romania.
(2) The unspoken U.S. agenda at this “summit” is to demonize and isolate China and Russia. But if we agree that democracies should be judged by how they treat their people, then why is the U.S. Congress failing to pass a bill to provide basic services like health care, child care, housing and education, which are guaranteed to most Chinese citizens for free or at minimal cost?
And consider China’s extraordinary success in relieving poverty. As UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said, “Every time I visit China, I am stunned by the speed of change and progress. You have created one of the most dynamic economies in the world, while helping more than 800 million people to lift themselves out of poverty – the greatest anti-poverty achievement in history.”
China has also far surpassed the U.S. in dealing with the pandemic. Little wonder a Harvard University report found that over 90% of the Chinese people like their government. One would think that China’s extraordinary domestic achievements would make the Biden administration a bit more humble about its “one-size-fits-all” concept of democracy.
(3) The climate crisis and the pandemic are a wake-up call for global cooperation, but this Summit is transparently designed to exacerbate divisions. The Chinese and Russian ambassadors to Washington have publicly accused the United States of staging the summit to stoke ideological confrontation and divide the world into hostile camps, while China held a competing International Democracy Forum with 120 countries the weekend before the U.S. summit.
Inviting the government of Taiwan to the U.S. summit further erodes the 1972 Shanghai Communiqué, in which the United States acknowledged the One-China policy and agreed to cut back military installations on Taiwan.
Also invited is the corrupt anti-Russian government installed by the 2014 U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine, which reportedly has half its military forces poised to invade the self-declared People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in Eastern Ukraine, who declared independence in response to the 2014 coup. The U.S. and NATO have so far supported this major escalation of a civil war that already killed 14,000 people.
(4) The U.S. and its Western allies—the self-anointed leaders of human rights—just happen to be the major suppliers of weapons and training to some of the world’s most vicious dictators. Despite its verbal commitment to human rights, the Biden administration and Congress recently approved a $650 million weapons deal for Saudi Arabia at a time when this repressive kingdom is bombing and starving the people of Yemen.
Heck, the administration even uses U.S. tax dollars to “donate” weapons to dictators, like General Sisi in Egypt, who oversees a regime with thousands of political prisoners, many of whom have been tortured. Of course, these U.S. allies were not invited to the Democracy Summit—that would be too embarrassing.
(5) Perhaps someone should inform Biden that the right to survive is a basic human right. The right to food is recognized in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights as part of the right to an adequate standard of living, and is enshrined in the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
So why is the U.S. imposing brutal sanctions on countries from Venezuela to North Korea that are causing inflation, scarcity, and malnutrition among children? Former UN special rapporteur Alfred de Zayas has blasted the United States for engaging in “economic warfare” and compared its illegal unilateral sanctions to medieval sieges. No country that purposely denies children the right to food and starves them to death can call itself a champion of democracy.
(6) Since the United States was defeated by the Taliban and withdrew its occupation forces from Afghanistan, it is acting as a very sore loser and reneging on basic international and humanitarian commitments. Certainly Taliban rule in Afghanistan is a setback for human rights, especially for women, but pulling the plug on Afghanistan’s economy is catastrophic for the entire nation.
The United States is denying the new government access to billions of dollars in Afghanistan’s foreign currency reserves held in U.S. banks, causing a collapse in the banking system. Hundreds of thousands of public servants have not been paid. The UN is warning that millions of Afghans are at risk of starving to death this winter as the result of these coercive measures by the United States and its allies.
(7) It’s telling that the Biden administration had such a difficult time finding Middle Eastern countries to invite to the summit. The United States just spent 20 years and $8 trillion trying to impose its brand of democracy on the Middle East and Afghanistan, so you’d think it would have a few proteges to showcase.
But no. In the end, they could only agree to invite the state of Israel, an apartheid regime that enforces Jewish supremacy over all the land it occupies, legally or otherwise. Embarrassed to have no Arab states attending, the Biden administration added Iraq, whose unstable government has been racked by corruption and sectarian divisions ever since the U.S. invasion in 2003. Its brutal security forces have killed over 600 demonstrators since huge anti-government protests began in 2019.
(8) What, pray tell, is democratic about the U.S. gulag at Guantánamo Bay? The U.S. Government opened the Guantanamo detention center in January 2002 as a way to circumvent the rule of law as it kidnapped and jailed people without trial after the crimes of September 11, 2001. Since then, 780 men have been detained there. Very few were charged with any crime or confirmed as combatants, but still they were tortured, held for years without charges, and never tried.
This gross violation of human rights continues, with most of the 39 remaining detainees never even charged with a crime. Yet this country that has locked up hundreds of innocent men with no due process for up to 20 years still claims the authority to pass judgment on the legal processes of other countries, in particular on China’s efforts to cope with Islamist radicalism and terrorism among its Uighur minority.
(9) With the recent investigations into the March 2019 U.S. bombing in Syria that left 70 civilians dead and the drone strike that killed an Afghan family of ten in August 2021, the truth of massive civilian casualties in U.S. drone strikes and airstrikes is gradually emerging, as well as how these war crimes have perpetuated and fueled the “war on terror,” instead of winning or ending it.
If this was a real democracy summit, whistleblowers like Daniel Hale, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange, who have risked so much to expose the reality of U.S. war crimes to the world, would be honored guests at the summit instead of political prisoners in the American gulag.
(10) The United States picks and chooses countries as “democracies” on an entirely self-serving basis. But in the case of Venezuela, it has gone even farther and invited an imaginary U.S.-appointed “president” instead of the country’s actual government.
The Trump administration anointed Juan Guaidó as “president” of Venezuela, and Biden invited him to the summit, but Guaidó is neither a president nor a democrat, and he boycotted parliamentary elections in 2020 and regional elections in 2021. But Guaido did come tops in one recent opinion poll, with the highest public disapproval of any opposition figure in Venezuela at 83%, and the lowest approval rating at 13%.
Guaidó named himself “interim president” (without any legal mandate) in 2019, and launched a failed coup against the elected government of Venezuela. When all his U.S.-backed efforts to overthrow the government failed, Guaidó signed off on a mercenary invasion which failed even more spectacularly. The European Union no longer recognizes Guaido’s claim to the presidency, and his “interim foreign minister” recently resigned, accusing Guaidó of corruption.
Conclusion
Just as the people of Venezuela have not elected or appointed Juan Guaidó as their president, the people of the world have not elected or appointed the United States as the president or leader of all Earthlings.
When the United States emerged from the Second World War as the strongest economic and military power in the world, its leaders had the wisdom not to claim such a role. Instead they brought the whole world together to form the United Nations, on the principles of sovereign equality, non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, a universal commitment to the peaceful resolution of disputes and a prohibition on the threat or use of force against each other.
The United States enjoyed great wealth and international power under the UN system it devised. But in the post-Cold War era, power-hungry U.S. leaders came to see the UN Charter and the rule of international law as obstacles to their insatiable ambitions. They belatedly staked a claim to universal global leadership and dominance, relying on the threat and use of force that the UN Charter prohibits. The results have been catastrophic for millions of people in many countries, including Americans.
Since the United States has invited its friends from around the world to this ”democracy summit,” maybe they can use the occasion to try to persuade their bomb-toting friend to recognize that its bid for unilateral global power has failed, and that it should instead make a real commitment to peace, cooperation and international democracy under the rules-based order of the UN Charter.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
The United Socialist Party of Venezuela secured a resounding victory in Sunday’sregional and local elections, which were defined by the return of obstinate far-right political parties to Venezuela’s democratic process after years of United States-backed destabilization efforts and violent regime-change plots.
Preliminary results from the country’s electoral authority showed Chavistaswinning up to 20 of the 23 governorships that were up for grabs. The results cemented the ruling socialists’ dominance over a political opposition that has struggled to unite under a cohesive strategy and banner after years of violent political schemes that failed to oust President Nicolás Maduro from power despite the opposition having considerable bipartisan support from the U.S. political establishment, which maintains a punishing sanctions regime on the country.
United Socialist Party of Venezuela supporters and sympathizers celebrated their victory, taking to the streets even before results were announced.
“We believe it is significant that we won 20 of 23 of the state contests — the math does not lie,” said Abril Viscaya, a political organizer and member of FrenteRevolucionario Artístico Patria o Muerte (or “Homeland or Death Revolutionary Artistic Front”), in an interview with Truthout. “We must remain on this pathway of participation; we are a people that are not willing to surrender in the face of unilateral coercive measures by the United States government.”
These elections saw races for 3,082 public offices, including 23 state governors, 335 local mayors, 253 regional legislators and 2,471 local councilors, and were accompanied by more than 300 international visitors invited by the National Electoral Council and political parties in Venezuela, as well as delegations from the European Union, the Carter Center and the Latin American Council of Electoral Experts (CEELA).
Martin Sereno, a regional lawmaker from the province of Misiones, Argentina,who accompanied the electoral process told Truthout that the vote was well organized, peaceful and marked by a festive atmosphere. “We also saw many adults and seniors that came to vote, and that speaks to the enthusiasm of the people to be able to elect their representatives and authorities,” said Sereno.
Nicanor Moscoso, head of the CEELA delegation, praised the organization of the election and said in a press conference that the process met international standards.
Venezuela has a rigorous system to prevent fraud, with voters having to present their identification, have their fingerprints scanned, and both sign and leave a thumbprint on a paper record. The South American country is one of few in the world that has an entirely electronic voting system which automatically produces a paper record that is then deposited into a ballot box in case of an audit. Political parties are also invited to have a representative at every polling location to supervise the process and the count.
Cybel González, one of the citizens tasked by the electoral authority with supervising a voter center in the municipality of Carrizal in the state of Miranda, told Truthout that in her center the process had taken place without incident with representatives from four political organizations present to scrutinize the vote.
Carlos Ruiz Patiño, a voter in the city of Los Teques, just outside the capital of Caracas, said he found the organization of the election to have been excellent, despite the additional safety protocols implemented in light of the pandemic.“Going out to vote is the most important thing,” said Ruiz.
With a history of sabotage by political forces interested in disrupting elections and rumors of potential violence, Venezuela mobilized a significant number of state security forces to provide security at the voting centers.
Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López, visiting one of the polling locations in the Coche Parish in Caracas, told Truthout that there had been no significant incidents in the country. “The people are the ones who will be the protagonists on this day, and they are doing it. The people of Venezuela have always demonstrated their civic duty,” said Padrino.
Certain elements of the political opposition, particularly those close to self-declared “interim” President Juan Guaidó and his Popular Will party, have in the recent past staged months-long violent street protests known as guarimbas. Guaidóhimself, along with his mentor, former Chacao Municipality Mayor Leopoldo López, unsuccessfully tried to stage a military coup.
The insurrectionary strategy proved unsuccessful, being largely rejected by the Venezuelan people, leading Guaidó to tepidly endorse a return to an electoral strategy, with other hardline parties more emphatically calling for an end to violent tactics.
“The people of Venezuela have said ‘no’ to that violence and have come out in massive numbers to vote,” said Padrino. “They have said ‘no’ to interventionism, ‘no’ to political violence, ‘yes’ to democracy, ‘yes’ to harmony, ‘yes’ to coexistence, and this is another example of what the Venezuelan people want.”
A sizeable portion of the opposition had, until recently, opted for the insurrectionary strategy and called on their supporters to boycott the election over the past three electoral cycles, which played a role in a drop in voter turnout.
As a result, with the return of nearly all of the political parties, much attention was paid to the voter turnout in these elections. The National Electoral Council reported a turnout of nearly 42 percent, a figure in line with turnout in previous regional elections in Venezuela and notably, higher than the turnout in presidential elections in neighboring Chile, which also held its vote on Sunday.
The return of the hardline political opposition was the product of complex negotiations between the government and opposition. The efforts to bring the political opposition back to the democratic process facilitated the participation of an election observation mission from the EU, which had not accompanied Venezuelan elections since 2006.
The participation by nearly 100 EU observers is widely considered a first step for the lifting EU sanctions, which together with U.S. sanctions, have significantly contributed to rising poverty and hunger in the country as the government struggles to sell oil, Venezuela’s single most important export commodity.
Nonetheless, ahead of the vote there was significant tension between Venezuelan politicians and Josep Borrell, the high representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, with President Maduro and even representatives of the moderate opposition Democratic Alliance emphasizing that Venezuelan elections are sovereign processes, and that their legitimacy would not derive from the EU or its mission.
Those tensions largely dissipated during Sunday’s vote with the head of the EU mission, Isabel Santos, saying the vote was proceeding “calmly” and Maduro noting that the mission had respected the Venezuelan constitution. The EU is expected to release its full report this week.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemned the vote, saying that the Venezuelan government “deprived Venezuelans yet again of their right to participate in a free and fair electoral process” but did not point to any flaws in the voting process. Instead, he alleged the government “grossly skewed the process.”
Blinken also reaffirmed U.S. support for Popular Will opposition leader Guaidó’s claim to the presidency and gave no indication there would be any easing of sanctions. The statement also pinned the blame for the lack of opposition unity on Maduro. The Venezuelan opposition is notorious for its infighting, a fact made evident by an incident just days before the vote with an opposition activist assaulting a rival candidate in the state of Bolívar.
The disappointing result for the opposition and the U.S.’s affirmation of support for Guaidó’s claim despite a lack of support inside Venezuela paints a grim picture for the opposition’s future. With part of the opposition betting on participating in elections and the Guaidó camp clinging to its claim to the presidency despite not exercising any real power, the opposition continues to send contradictory messages to its supporters.
Meanwhile, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela has emerged from this contest all the more stronger.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Alex Saab is “the key that unlocks the Venezuelan monetary mystery—that is, how a country facing sanctions from the US, the UK and the European Union—is still able to export things like gold and oil…and really the only man who can actually explain how the country [Venezuela] survives today,” according to Forbes.
The US would far prefer to just quietly extradite Saab to Miami, use whatever means necessary to extract sensitive information from him, and then warehouse him in the world’s largest prison system. Forbes uses the euphemism “under pressure” by US prison authorities as the means to force Saab to “shed light on Venezuela’s post-sanction economic network.” Saab already reports that his surrogate captors in Cabo Verde, described below, have unsuccessfully employed torture to try to break his will and induce him to betray Venezuela.
That an elite business magazine such as Forbes is featuring a diplomat from a country aspiring to become socialist is a testament to the growing international movement to free the imprisoned Alex Saab and an indication of the weakness of the US case against him.
The arrest of a diplomat
Saab is fighting what Canadian lawyer John Philpot, an expert on international law, calls “a flagrant attempt of extra-territorial judicial overreach by the US.”
In June 12, 2020, Saab was on a mission as a special envoy of the Venezuelan government to procure food, fuel, and medicines from Iran, when his plane from Caracas to Tehran was diverted to Cabo Verde for a fueling stop. Saab’s arrest and subsequent detention at the bidding of the US is arbitrary, illegal, and irregular. Further, Saab has been denied treatment for his cancer condition.
Saab, the deputy Venezuelan ambassador to the African Union, is fighting extradition to the US for the “crime” of trying to procure humanitarian supplies in violation of illegal US sanctions. To date, Saab’s legal appeals to Cabo Verdean authorities for freedom have been either denied, rejected, or ignored.
Under the Vienna Convention, a credentialed diplomat such as Saab has absolute immunity from arrest, even in the time of war. Saab appealed to the US 11th Circuit Court on the basis of his diplomatic status. In response, Washington filed an application for an extension to reply in a legal delaying tactic to allow Saab’s pending extradition without recognizing his diplomatic immunity. It is as if the US empire is claiming the authority to qualify who other countries may choose and receive as their ambassadors.
Consider, however, that the US government still does not recognize the democratically elected Nicolás Maduro as the legitimate president of Venezuela. In contradiction of the United Nations and almost every other country in the world, Joe Biden continues to claim that the Trump-anointed, US security asset Juan Guaidó is Venezuela’s “interim” head of state.
The US case against Alex Saab
The US alleges Saab culpable of fraud and money laundering to bilk the Venezuelan people who are, in fact, under siege by the US. Specifically, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control accuses Saab of “loot[ing] hundreds of millions of dollars from starving Venezuelans.” One would think that Saab would be given a Presidential Medal of Freedom for his efforts, given that the US policy of promoting regime change in Venezuela is doing precisely the same thing as Saab is being accused.
The US and its sycophantic allies have imposed unilateral coercive measures on Venezuela that amount to a blockade through the use of secondary sanctions. The UN has repeatedly called such collective punishment illegal and has demanded their repeal. Some three dozen countries and one third of humanity are suffering under US sanctions.
Largely due to the sanctions, the Venezuelan economy has drastically contracted, especially after the targeting of its oil sector, which is its major source of foreign earnings. Attempts by the Venezuelan government to access its own gold reserves held abroad or to use its drawing rights from the International Monetary Fund to pay for COVID relief have been blocked at the behest of the US government. The Venezuelan oil company subsidiary in the US, CITGO, has been appropriated by Washington. Venezuela’s bank accounts abroad have been frozen and looted by the US and its allies. Western Union has suspended money transfers to Venezuela. And third-country ships carrying supplies to Venezuela have been seized by the US in blatant acts of piracy on international waters. The result has been widespread misery and even death in Venezuela.
The real reasons for the US extradition effort on Alex Saab
David Dawkins, the Forbes staff author of the article on Saab, uses the byline “I cover the work and wealth of Europe’s richest.” Because Forbes services the niche of corporate media that is read by elites and those who attend them, their reports are – as in this case – more factual than some of the more popularly oriented media outlets.
For example, Forbes discloses that Saab is believed to have “the means and know-how to help discreetly keep an entire economy moving under the eyes of a watching world.” The “world” that is “watching” is a reference to the US surveillance state. Because Saab has been instrumental in circumventing the illegal US blockade of Venezuela is exactly why the US has persecuted the diplomat and why Washington seeks to bring him to the US.
Indeed, Saab is understood to be, according to Forbes, “a key cog in Venezuela’s national money machine,” who “worked as a key fixer on the country’s housing and food programs, juggling contacts, companies and bank accounts around the world.”
Giving credit where it is due, Forbes notes: “Much to the annoyance of the Trump and Biden administrations, Saab, a creative and capable businessman, found a way to navigate Venezuelan trade in sectors like food, oil and gold between the cracks of US oversight.”
The US case against Saab is political, not legal. Femi Falana, Saab’s lead attorney at the regional Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) court in Nigeria, maintains “the case against Alex Saab is indeed rooted in political expediency.” The real reason for the US extradition effort, as Forbes reveals, is that Saab is a “serious information asset for the US in understanding just how the country [Venezuela] does business.”
Underlining the importance of Saab to the US, the Navy cruiser San Jacinto was clandestinely deployed for a period off the coast of Cabo Verde, where Saab was imprisoned. The New York Times described the dispatch of the warship as a “secret mission aimed at helping deal a major blow to President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela.”
International effort to free Alex Saab
Forbes correctly reports: “But for many in Venezuela, this [Saab’s activities] is not criminal—Saab is a hero, and his efforts overseas are the actions of a man trying to feed and house the hungry and homeless.” The Venezuelan government recently appointed Saab as an official delegate to the talks in Mexico between them and the opposition United Platform group.
Internationally, Cabo Verde has received diplomatic letters protesting the Saab case from Iran, China, Russia, the United Nations, the African Union, and ECOWAS, based on the principles of immunity and inviolability of consular rights. Over 15,000 internationals have signed a petition to the US and Cape Verdean political leadership to free Alex Saab here.
Forbes says Saab’s extradition is imminent. Saab’s lawyer Femi Falana says, “the legal process is far from over, and His Excellency Alex Saab will not be going to the United States any time soon.” Regardless, Alex Saab says:
The post Forbes Reveals Why the US Government Is Trying to Extradite Venezuelan Diplomat Alex Saab first appeared on Dissident Voice.For those who dream that my speech or integrity will change if I am extradited, let me spoil that illusion. My integrity does not change with the [political] climate or the type of torture. Venezuela is sovereign.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Roger D. Harris.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The corporate media in Britain was responsible for a vicious disinformation campaign against Jeremy Corbyn from 2016 to present. If that happened right under our noses here in Britain, think about the levels of disinformation being propagated about Venezuela in the mainstream press, as the British state tries to overthrow their government. The Canary’s John McEvoy reports on the UK’s hidden war on Venezuela.
This post was originally published on The Canary.
On 3 August, The Canary exposed how Venezuelan opposition figure Juan Guaidó’s UK legal costs were paid with money appropriated from the Venezuelan state.
In an effort to access roughly US$2bn of Venezuelan gold held in the Bank of England, it was reported that Guaidó’s legal team drew on hundreds of thousands of dollars originally seized from the Central Bank of Venezuela in the US.
We can now reveal that this figure is significantly higher. According to official documents, Guaidó and his appointees have given over US$6.5m to powerhouse legal firms as part of a campaign to bleed the Venezuelan state of its foreign assets.
Almost all of this money was sent in a series of instalments to Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP – the legal firm representing Guaidó in the UK.
The firm appears to be tightly knit with the US foreign policy apparatus, and has over recent years represented a series of right-wing Latin American officials.
Remarkably, the documents also suggest that Guaidó has been paid over half a million dollars from this fund.
In April 2020, the US government transferred US$342m of Central Bank of Venezuela assets to an account at the US Federal Reserve in New York. In a move denounced by the Venezuelan government as “vulgar plundering”, the money was then handed over to Guaidó’s ad-hoc administrative board of the Central Bank of Venezuela.
Official figures released by Guaidó’s ad-hoc board show that at least US$6,552,512 of these funds have been used “for professional services of lawyers in the care of Assets abroad to be protected and licensing procedures before OFAC”.
Guaidó and his appointees have, in other words, spent millions of looted dollars in an attempt to asset strip the Venezuelan state.
Most of this money was paid to Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP – the legal firm representing Guaidó in the UK.
Guaidó and his appointees have also directed roughly US$100m of looted assets towards a secretive “Liberation Fund”. According to AP, opposition lawmakers used the fund during 2020 to “pay themselves $5,000 a month” while providing only $100 a month to doctors and nurses battling the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.
Remarkably, the documents suggest that Guaidó and his appointees have in fact paid Guaidó over half a million dollars since March 2021. The most recent instalment to the ‘Presidency’ was delivered on 19 July 2021, and totalled US$407,702.
A number of questions also arise regarding Guaidó’s legal representation in the UK and its connections to the US foreign policy apparatus.
Eli Whitney Debevoise II, a senior partner at Arnold & Porter who leads on Guaidó’s UK case, has been listed on the US Foreign Agents Registration Act as a lobbyist for the Venezuelan opposition.
According to an official document, Debevoise has advised Guaidó “concerning U.S. economic sanctions, corporate banking law, U.S. litigation, and international arbitration”.
The document continues:
In support of the primary registrant [Guaidó], the short-form registrant may engage in political activities on behalf of the foreign principal, including making contact with U.S. government officials concerning the preservation of Venezuela’s assets in the United States, the establishment of a diplomatic presence, and economic and humanitarian assistance.
Guaidó may have paid for Arnold & Porter’s legal services, in other words, with money seized in the US as a result of Arnold & Porter’s lobbying efforts.
Debevoise II seems well-positioned to provide lobbying services in the US.
According to his LinkedIn account, he’s a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which provides “in-person access to world leaders, senior government officials, members of Congress, and prominent thinkers and practitioners”. Elliot Abrams, Donald Trump’s former point-man on Venezuela, is a long-time senior fellow and member of CFR.
Debevoise II also lists the late US official William D. Rogers, who planned US policy in Latin America throughout the 1960s and 1970s, as a mentor. Rogers was a top adviser to Henry Kissinger throughout the mid-1970s; the latter described Rogers as “my friend and, in many ways, my conscience”.
Newspaper reports from the 1960s note that Debevoise II’s father Eli Whitney Debevoise was the principal officer at CIA front organisation the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ). As the Washington Post reported in 1967, the ICJ received “$655,000 from known CIA front groups”. Among Arnold & Porter’s alumni is former CIA general counsel Jeffrey H. Smith.
Arnold & Porter reportedly launched an “influence campaign” in support of disgraced drug trafficker Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández, the brother of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández.
Guaidó’s legal representation in the UK thus appears to enjoy a close proximity to both the US foreign policy apparatus and the Latin American right, and questions regarding conflicts of interest are likely to arise.
Despite his involvement in a damning series of scandals, the UK government reemphasised its support for Guaidó on 18 August.
Featured image via Flickr/Trump White House Archive
By John McEvoy
This post was originally published on The Canary.
As The Canary has extensively reported, since January 2019 Venezuela has been subjected to a US-backed coup attempt. The putsch began when a previously unknown member of Venezuela’s legislature declared himself ‘interim president’. He was quickly recognized as the oil rich South American country’s legitimate leader by the US and most of its Latin American and Western European allies, including the UK government of then-prime minister Theresa May.
As part of the coup attempt, the Bank of England unilaterally froze assets belonging to Venezuela. But the beleaguered nation will soon have the opportunity to recoup its stolen property in court. And as the case’s hearing approaches, the UK government has made one last desperate move. Evidently, it hopes to salvage whatever’s left of its international credibility by avoiding the likely embarrassment of having to hand it back to its rightful owner.
On 19 July, the UK government issued a statement reconfirming its support for Venezuelan coup attempt leader Juan Guaidó. It appears that the move could be intended to bolster the UK’s position ahead of a legal bid by the Venezuelan Central Bank (BCV in its Spanish initials). Acting on behalf of the democratically-elected government of Nicolás Maduro, the BCV seeks the repatriation of gold held by the Bank of England. Reports differ on the exact value, though estimates usually fall within the range of just below $1bn to $1.8bn. Legal representatives from both sides appeared in court shortly before this report went to press.
About a month after the coup attempt was launched, in the face of growing sanctions and US hostility, the Venezuelan government requested a return of the gold to Venezuela. However, the Bank of England froze the assets on the spurious basis that the Maduro government was no longer the rightful government of Venezuela. The UK government then pressured the Bank of England into instead granting access to the funds to Guaidó. This move was based on its recognition of him as Venezuela’s rightful leader. Experts in international affairs quickly pointed out that the UK’s action flies in the face international norms of behavior.
Moreover, just a few months after the beginning of the coup attempt, it became increasingly clear that Guaidó had failed to overthrow the government. As the months turned into years, Guaidó began to cut an increasingly pathetic figure. And since he never seized the reins of the Venezuelan state, his political faction slowly degenerated into a shadow government with no real power. The BCV, meanwhile, filed a lawsuit against the Bank of England in May 2020. As part of the suit, it requests the return of the roughly 14 tonnes of gold to Venezuela. But so far, the Bank of England has refused to comply, precipitating a protracted court case.
In October 2020, the BCV won a major victory. A UK court of appeal overturned a decision that had earlier ruled that UK recognition of Guaidó constituted legitimate grounds for not handing the government over to the Maduro government. Now, it looks like the BCV is on the verge of outright victory. And the significance of this cannot be overstated; the gold represents roughly 15% of Venezuela’s entire foreign currency reserves.
As part of its case, BCV’s lawyers argue that the Venezuelan government needs these funds in order to strengthen the country’s response to the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic and increase investment in its health service. This seems perfectly reasonable, not least because Venezuela has struggled with both these goals in the face of crushing US sanctions and an economic crisis that has lasted roughly seven years. In February, as a result of these factors, United Nations rapporteur Alena Douhan, an expert on unilateral coercive measures, called on the UK and other European states to “unfreeze assets of the Venezuela Central Bank”.
The UK’s position with respect to the coup attempt, meanwhile, has become increasingly desperate and isolated. As The Canary reported in January, the European Union (EU) withdrew its recognition of Guaidó as Venezuela’s legitimate head of state. This was because his party had boycotted elections to the National Assembly, Venezuela’s legislature, and therefore he no longer even held a seat in the body.
Guaidó’s claim to the presidency was based on a provision of the Venezuelan constitution that says that the head of the National Assembly assumes the presidency in the case of a breakdown in democracy. Though this claim was itself highly dubious in the first place, the EU at least had the decency to follow the logic to its natural conclusion. And so, because Guaidó was no longer even a member of the National Assembly, let alone its leader, it concluded that it could no longer support his claim to the presidency.
This latest saga exposes how the UK’s position on Venezuela has become an increasing embarrassment. Clearly, a return of the gold to its rightful owner would be a major victory for national sovereignty and international norms of behavior, as well as another nail in the coffin of the Tory government’s credibility when it comes to international affairs.
Featured image via Wikimedia Commons – Hossein Zohrevand and Flickr – Dark Dwarf
By Peter Bolton
This post was originally published on The Canary.
The European Union (EU) has sent an “exploratory mission” to Venezuela to assess social and political conditions in the country.
The 15-day mission is similarly charged with judging electoral guarantees and the “utility, convenience and viability” of adding an EU delegation to the typically ample electoral observer teams for the November 21 “mega-elections,” in which more than 100 political parties are vying to elect over 3000 public regional and local officials.
The delegation is considered a further step in smoothing relations between the Caribbean country and the European bloc, with EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell highlighting a “possible political opening in Venezuela.”
The post EU Mission Evaluates Venezuela Electoral Team appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
Western governments have recently expressed a willingness to “review” sanctions against Venezuela’s democratically elected government. Of course, this should be welcomed given the huge harm that sanctions have caused to Venezuela’s civilian population. But, as always, we must be skeptical of these governments’ motives. This latest move could simply be the next chapter in the ongoing regime change saga.
On 25 June, the US, Canada, and the European Union (EU) indicated they’d potentially be willing to lift sanctions against Venezuela as part of negotiations with president Nicolás Maduro’s government. US secretary of state Antony Blinken, Canadian minister of foreign affairs Marc Garneau and EU high representative for foreign affairs Josep Borrell said in a joint statement that sanctions could be lifted in exchange for restoring “the country’s institutions” and “credible, inclusive and transparent local, parliamentary, and presidential elections”.
The statement follows meetings between Juan Guaidó’s representatives and Washington officials on 23 June. Guaidó is the leader of the attempted coup against Maduro. Meetings were held with Biden administration personnel from the White House, the State Department, the Treasury, and several congress members. Amongst the latter were senators Marco Rubio and Robert Menendez, both of whom are known for their hardline stance against the US’s adversaries in Latin America.
As The Canary reported in May 2021, Guaidó indicated willingness to enter into negotiations last month. Much of the corporate-owned media characterized this as some kind of generosity on his part. But Maduro’s government has, in fact, been willing to negotiate ever since the coup attempt began in January 2018. Guaidó’s about-face on the issue appears to be a result of his weakened position.
As The Canary also reported, in January 2021 the EU announced that it could no longer recognize Guaidó as Venezuela’s ‘interim president’. This was because his party boycotted the National Assembly elections. Therefore he couldn’t remain head of parliament, since he didn’t even hold a seat.
To be sure, an end to sanctions should be welcomed. Various rounds of US sanctions have been put in place over the years. But in 2019, Washington implemented what have proven to be the most punishing sanctions of all. These were placed on Venezuela’s state oil company Petroleum of Venezuela (better known by its Spanish initials PDVSA).
As The Canary has already pointed out, as of March 2020 US sanctions had directly led to the deaths of around 100,000 people. That’s according to United Nations special rapporteur for Venezuela Alfred de Zayas. This figure would almost certainly need to be revised significantly as of June 2021, not least because the US weaponized the coronavirus pandemic to ramp up regime change efforts against Venezuela.
This development does not in any way mean that Guaidó’s faction, and its backers in Washington, plan on abandoning regime change. Rather, it represents a change of tack to adapt their coup strategy to new realities on the ground. For instance, the reference to demanding “transparent” elections is revealing. Because what Washington means by “transparent” is an election presided over by the US and its internal allies.
The basis for this demand is the claim that the Maduro government can’t be trusted to oversee fair elections. The US denounced the 2018 presidential election, for example, as “an insult to democracy”. Washington also claims that the Maduro government controls the country’s electoral oversight body, the National Electoral Council (CNE). The reality, however, is that it’s historically been a multi-party body. And it’s been filled with figures from both the governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and opposition parties since its formation.
Moreover, an election presided over by the US and its favored political factions can hardly be considered more trustworthy than one overseen by the CNE. As The Canary has previously reported, Washington has interfered in over 80 elections in more than 40 countries since the end of World War II. Needless to say, given its supposed status as the US’s ‘backyard’, Latin America has been particularly at the receiving end of this electoral meddling. In 1943, for example, the US interfered in elections in Argentina. It even falsely accused left populist candidate Juan Peron of complicity with Nazi Germany.
The figure of over 80 cases of electoral meddling doesn’t even include cases of direct US-backed regime change, of which there are many examples in Latin America. These include:
Clearly if there’s anyone that can’t be trusted to oversee a fair election in Latin America, it’s the US itself. Since Guaidó is openly allying himself with a country with such a track record, and until recently one of the most reactionary administrations in US history, his own faction lacks credibility by association.
Again, any prospect of lifting the sanctions is welcome. But the reality is that Venezuela’s government isn’t obligated to offer concessions to Guaidó and his puppet masters in Washington. On the contrary, it’s perfectly entitled to demand that sanctions be lifted unilaterally as a condition to entering into dialogue. Because sanctions are, and always have been, a cynical tool to blackmail a democratic government. Mass murder of a civilian population has been used as a bargaining chip. And that truly reveals who the hostile parties are in this increasingly desperate coup attempt, and the depths of depravity to which they’re willing to stoop.
Featured image via Flickr – Fibonacci Blue
By Peter Bolton
This post was originally published on The Canary.
Recent statements made by US officials suggest that Washington will continue to pursue a hardline policy on Venezuela. The new Biden Administration, however, needs to urgently rethink its approach.
US State Department spokesperson, Ned Price, remarked on February 3 that he “certainly” does not “expect this administration to be engaging directly with (President) Maduro.” Namely, Price expects that the Biden Administration will adhere to the strategy of its predecessor, which is predicated on completely ignoring the current government in Caracas.
Moreover, the Biden government will also continue to dialogue with Venezuela’s opposition leader, Juan Guaido. On March 2, Guaido conversed with the new American Secretary of State, Antony Blinken. It was the highest-level US contact with the increasingly-discredited and isolated Guaido since Biden’s inauguration last January. In their exchange, Blinken and Guaido agreed on the “importance of a return to democracy in Venezuela through free and fair elections”.
It would be rational, therefore, to conclude that no significant change regarding US foreign policy in Venezuela will occur under the Biden Administration, at least imminently. However, such a conclusion would be hasty, as it fails to appreciate the numerous changes that have transpired in and around Venezuela in recent years, especially since Washington strengthened its economic sanctions on the South American country in 2015 and again, in 2017, 2019 and, finally, February 2020.
Washington’s agenda in Venezuela has unmistakably failed, and no amount of additional sanctions is likely to change the political outcome. Not only did the Maduro government, ruling party, regional and international allies prove durable and capable of withstanding immense political and economic pressures, Washington’s allies are no longer united, neither about Venezuela nor anywhere else.
Guaido, who arrived on the scene in 2015, was elevated from being a little known politician to the anti-socialism hero designated by Washington to reclaim Venezuela in the name of liberal democracy. Guaido’s legitimacy was largely derived from the Venezuelan opposition’s victory in the elections of that same year.
Since then, however, Guaido’s own legitimacy has slowly eroded. By disproportionately investing in Washington’s ability to oust Maduro through severe sanctions, diplomatic delegitimization and political pressure, Guaido slowly abandoned his initial Venezuela-centric approach, thus delegitimizing himself instead, even among his own supporters. Frustrated by Guaido’s self-serving priorities, and knowing that the man’s current strategy would not lead to any substantive political reordering in the country, Venezuela’s opposition disintegrated into small factions.
In January 2020, another opposition lawmaker, Luis Parra, attempted to claim the position of Speaker of Parliament. This led the parliament security to block Guaido’s access to the Palacio Federal Legislativo for he, too, was claiming the same chair. Images of the chaotic scene were beamed across the globe.
Venezuela’s most recent legislative elections last December have also reflected the deep divisions among the country’s opposition parties, where some strictly adhered to the boycott of the elections while others participated. The outcome was a decisive victory for Maduro’s United Socialist Party, which now has complete control over the country’s political institutions. France24 news agency captured this new reality in this headline: “New Venezuela Parliament leaves Western-backed Guaido out in cold”.
Actually, Blinken’s call to Guaido, whose moment has faded, is unlikely to change much on the ground. His usefulness now lies in the fact that Washington has no other ‘strong man’ in Caracas. Additionally, Washington has invested tremendous financial resources and political credit which allowed Guaido to claim the title of the country’s interim president. Completely divesting from Guaido is also a risky maneuver.
Of note is the shift in language in the US political discourse, following the Blinken-Guaido telephone conversation: the “importance of a return to democracy in Venezuela through free and fair elections.” The change is, perhaps, subtle but still significant, as it is no longer a decisive demand to remove Maduro from power.
It seems that the distance between the US and Venezuela’s position is shrinking. In August 2019, the Washington Post reported that Venezuelan negotiators, speaking on behalf of Maduro’s government, made a “startling offer” during mediated talks with the country’s opposition in Norway two months earlier, where the government “signaled (its) willingness to hold such a vote within nine to 12 months,” referring to the opposition’s demand for fresh presidential elections.
Nevertheless, it behooves Washington to engage Caracas in civil political conversations, away from threats and sanctions, for two main reasons:
First, despite claims that the majority of Venezuelans living in the US support Washington’s hardline policies, 46 percent of them also “support a removal of oil sanctions if the Maduro government agrees to hold internationally recognized free and fair elections,” according to a recent opinion poll published by the right-wing Atlantic Council.
Second, Washington’s futile sanctions-based approach to Venezuela has proved not only immensely harmful to the welfare of the Venezuelan people but also to Washington’s own regional interests. Washington’s obstinacy allowed its global rivals, Russia and China, to unprecedentedly cement their economic and strategic interests in that country.
In their 2019 report, the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) revealed that, in the 2017-18 year, US-led sanctions on Venezuela “have inflicted – and increasingly inflict – very serious harm to human life and health, including an estimated more than 40,000 deaths”.
Certainly, there can be no political logic or moral justification for this ongoing calamity.
The post The Ongoing Calamity: US Collective Punishment of the Venezuelan People Must End first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
US “virtual ambassador” to Venezuela James “Jimmy” Story promised to answer a series of questions sent to him by The Grayzone this February 24. But after a Whatsapp exchange with this reporter during which Story offered to explain why he regularly alternated between Gargamel and the Smurfs as his avatar on the messaging app, the promised exchange never took place.
On March 2, Story’s assistant, David Fogelson, informed The Grayzone that the virtual ambassador “won’t be able to do the interview.” He offered no further details on Story’s turnabout.
That same day, during a Zoom event with the Venezuelan American Association of the US, Story boasted that his willingness to accept a few critical questions from his online audience “shows a transparency that the regime [in Caracas] does not show.”
The post US ‘Virtual Ambassador’ To Venezuela Hosts Insurrectionist Summit Ahead Of Biden’s Guaidó recognition appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
