Venezuela has able leaders and is fighting back

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.


As the materials below illustrate, Venezuela, the Bolivarian state, has leaders that make US politicians look exactly what they are—bumbling, impudent jackasses. In America the leadership is comprised of men whose ignorance about the world, and disdain for knowledge and morality, thinking it superfluous to those who carry a big stick, is a match for their transparent sociopathy. By contrast, those who have watched a Maduro speech quickly realise how cogent and impressive he is in outlining the situation engulfing his country. And the same high standard applies to other members of the Maduro administration. Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza is easily one of the most articulate diplomats in Latin America, the Sergey Lavrov of the continent. And below you can observe the lucidity and passion displayed by Venezuela's Vice President, Delcy Rodriguez. These are leaders of caliber. Not the repulsive gangster riff-raff we get in the US. Charles de Gaulle was right when he said the US was a first class power with painfully second rate politicians. I'm afraid even in that he was being charitable. We can only imagine what he would say today.

CROSSPOSTED WITH THE SAKER BLOG
Press conference with Venezuela's Vice President, Hon. Delcy Rodriguez, on 21 February 2019.
Rueda de prensa completa de la vicepresidenta de #Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, este 21 de febrero de 2019 en compañía del canciller Jorge Arreaza, sobre temas como la supuesta "ayuda humanitaria" y otros.

TRANSCRIPT:

0.01 At this time last minute information is coming out and we’ll go to Av Urbaneta, the See of the Executive Vicepresidency of the Republic. Marbelys Fernández will tell us all the details of what’s happening there. Marbe, go ahead, good afternoon.

0.03 Yes, that’s right, the Executive Vicepresident of the Republic at this time provides information of national interest that we share with you.

0.24 We wanted to share with the country important information of meetings that we have held this morning in the See of the Executive Vicepresidency of the Republic.

We had the meeting with Chancellor Jorge Reaza and the Vice-chancellor for Latin America and held a meeting with the ambassador for Holland, who brought a diplomatic message from Holland related to the measures that President Maduro adopted yesterday on the islands of Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire.

We must remark that the diplomatic message and the meeting were given in the frame of absolute respect for the constitutional government of President Maduro and also in the public international law.

We also talked with the ambassador about the refineries that Venezuela has both on the island of Curaçao as well as in the island of Aruba and we have agreed on follow up conversations in the following days and review?? the resolution?? of this measure instituted by the constitutional president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro.

On the other hand, we have received the international contact group of the EU and the representative of Uruguay.

There, we were extensive on the frame and constitutional content of Venezuela. The articles that are the foundation of our institutional work, our rule of law, the rightful authorities of the country, only one president, well we made a full review to let the EU know, to clarify any unknowns that any EU country may have about our constitution.

Indeed we saw that they even mentioned former Venezuelan constitutions and not the current constitution.

So we provided absolute clarity and light on the fundamental articles of our constitution.

2.45 We equally dismantled what the farce, the show of the humanitarian aid for Venezuela means.

We also highlighted what the principles and purposes of the UN letter are. How humanitarian aid happens, in what instance it proceeds, the humanitarian aid. We gave very clear examples; I’d like to retake some data that the president gave yesterday to our country on what the social program of the local committees for supply and production mean where a box of food is delivered to 6 million families.

They are announcing a humanitarian aid, they have mounted a big show in Cúcuta on the border with Colombia only to justify a military intervention in Venezuela. And they have announced that they have 9 deposits loaded with 200 metric tons of food, medicaments, well they include combs, towels..

But we showed what one day of CLAP (Supply and Production Local Committee) means for Venezuela.

In one day we deliver through CLAP and popular organization 298,609 boxes, which corresponds to 4,479 metric tons per day; this supposes the mobilization of 149 GANDOLAS (lorries) per day.

Countered with the new lorries that they propose and have the big show mounted where already Venezuelan terrorists begin to arrive at Cúcuta and they have foreseen the arrival of U.S. extremists to stress this farce, this circus.

Well, we have done the contrast of what this humanitarian aid means, the big scandal on Venezuela, it barely amounts to a 6% of the CLAP that we deliver in one day.

But, I will continue, if we compare with the month of January 2019, last month, we delivered 19,256,878 CLAPs, which correspond to 138,853 metric tons and we add to that other social food programs as the program PAE??, then we’d have 182,701 metric tons in the month of January.

For this logistics, we require 6,090 lorries. The other ones, the poor 9 lorries that they are offering as humanitarian aid, this immoral and hypocrite coalition that pretends that they bring the solution for the Venezuelan people in 9 lorries. This represents the 0.14 % of what we deliver through the CLAP in one month.

But in the year 2018, to finish all this, these numbers which are very clear and overwhelming, 119,822,821 CLAP boxes were delivered; in metric tons: 1,797,343 against the 260 metric tons that they say is the great solution for Venezuela and that dictator Maduro won’t let enter the solution and the aid for the poor people of Venezuela; here in the CLAPs is the dignified response of the model of Bolivarian Socialism facing what is one of the worst criminal blockades against any country which is being committed against Venezuela doing it through illegal sanctions and the financial and commercial blockade.

7.02 For us, to guarantee this distribution, almost 60,000 lorries were utilized to make sure precisely that the food would reach the whole national territory.

60,000 lorries against the 9 that they have in Cúcuta to bring the great solution for the Venezuelan people. A huge farce, an enormous hoax against our country that seeks to ridicule what the mechanisms of humanitarian aid really are for those countries which have had natural catastrophes or have an internal armed conflict, and therefore the application of the right to humanitarian intervention with very precise characteristics in the framework of the UN, in a strict application of the law which must be neutral, impartial, that mustn’t have a political purpose like in this case where they seek to overthrow the constitutional government of President Nicolás Maduro.

8.12 A clear political objective which is the change of regime in Venezuela, that’s the only thing they seek, the government of President Donald Trump.

Now I’m going to ask for a video, which is one more evidence that the real aim of the US government is the Venezuelan oil. Venezuela is the country with the largest oil reserve in the planet, with one of the largest reserves of gas, an energy superpower that they pretend to asphyxiate and drown so they can keep our natural resources ad infinitum.

I’m going to ask the video of an ex-FBI director of the US where he says textually words of Donald Trump that one must make war with Venezuela who is right here in our backyard because the country has oil. The video please.

“The president says to the briefer that he wants to have war with Venezuela, and this is in 2017. “Yeah, the president’s remarks in the hall were along the lines: why we are not looking at Venezuela, why we are not at war with Venezuela, they have all the oil and they are right on our back door, so I can’t put myself in the president’s mind, I can’t say how clearly crystal how clearly his intent could crystallize, but these were comments that caused us deep concern.”

9.45 What does Donald Trump’s government really want? Venezuelan oil, told by an ex director of the US’ FBI.

They took the masks off, we have arrived at that hour when Venezuela is going to defend her legitimate right to her territory, her resources, to guarantee the Venezuelan people’s dignity, because they are in the mind set to take our oil away and attack our country with their own particular goals and here there is, we have to say it, an extremist right that allows itself to be used for Venezuela’s intervention and is currently on a coup d’etat to guarantee these perverse goals of interventionism on our motherland.

I wish to recall what the supposed humanitarian aid of US has meant in humankind. Each time that the US says we are going to bring humanitarian aid is for attacking, to start a war, to bring violence, death.

11.00 Please I want the video where ex-president Bush talks about Iraq’s humanitarian aid.

“We will bring to the Iraqi people food, and medicines and supplies and freedom.”

So, there it is, we’re going to bring food, medicines, supplies, and liberty. And what did they bring to Iraq? Destruction, creation of terrorist groups that caused well, terror, violence in all that region, that’s what they brought, one million dead. And after they beat their chests, some government presidents who had supported Iraq’s invasion, to say: We were wrong, there were no mass destruction weapons in Iraq. But there was a war there, over one million Iraqis died in that war.

11.58 So this show, this hoax, this circus that they are mounting with the agreement of another clown like Ivan Duque, what they seek is perversely, the intervention of our country to take our resources.

In this sense we manifested to this international contact group our concern for what is being concocted; they are seeking a grave provocation, a false positive as president Maduro has denounced in repeated opportunities. They seek a false positive that justifies the provocation and the intervention of Venezuela.

Fortunately, this Saturday 23, what will be on the border is the delivery of CLAP to the poor in Cúcuta, a journey of health for the attention of those hundreds of thousands who are denied of health in this country, because health is private, education is private, there is no attention nor programs directed to vulnerable sectors of our sister republic of Colombia.

We’ll also go with a concert, a concert for peace to tell Donal Trump: hands off Venezuela. A concert of love, encounter, fraternity and well, of much hope and much future for our country.

13.17 We also wish to inform just like the venezuelan chancellery has shared with the country through an official communiqué, that yesterday they made contact with Puerto Rican authorities, with the government of Dominican Republic to manifest our concern regarding the supposed arrival of US special forces to these countries with a view to a provocation against Venezuela.

It is to alert, we want to alert the international community of these perverse plans; we’re sure they won’t happen, they won’t occur, but we’re obligated to denounce it as such.

14.06 Well, an important announcement is that we have handed a list of medicines and food that Venezuela needs for the current year, complete. For the order Venezuela spends annually no less than 4,000 million dollars (4 billion in the US) even in the worst moments of the economic siege, the financial siege, as we informed the EU representatives, that liquid resources of Venezuela that were disposed for the payment of medicines and foods were frozen in banks in Europe.

Well, we have delivered a list for technico-humanitarian assistance through the UN that the EU can utilize and even in case that they may not be in this capacity because we know that the amounts are very high, Venezuela is even willing through financing mechanisms to pay for this technico-humanitarian assistance.

Venezuela has a historic cooperation with the UN international agencies, like the PNUD, the FAO, la UNICEF, la OMS (WHO), the OEPS.

In the last 4 years we have had cooperation with them through these agencies for an year amount of nearly 54 million dollars.

15.32 Well here is a mechanism. it’s a peace mechanism, it’s a mechanism respectful of international laws through the technico-humanitarian assistance that we could receive or finance through UN agencies.

Finally, we wanted to make a very grave denunciation; product of the plundering that Venezuela is being victim of in its enterprises in the US, a survey should be done to the world capitalist class, the investors, what do they think of this plundering of an international investor in US territory where the right to defense is denied to us, but something still worse: those fakes that go around with the humanitarian crisis discourse have denied the resources that PEDEVESA through the Simón Bolivar foundation and CITGO destined and directed annually to meet oncological and renal patients’ cases, mainly children, they have refused the payment for them to continue to be looked after in hospitals, and already in different countries in the world these patients who were under PEDEVESA’s protection are being evicted; unfortunately we have one deceased in Brazil and we have grave cases of lung transplant, cancer and renal transplant that have been already warned that they should leave the hospitals’ medical centers. All this why? Because that government denies PEDEVESA a license to be able to destine those resources for payment of a social program, this one yes humanitarian, very human framed by what is the Bolivarian peace diplomacy.

Well, this way it remains in the open that what is being tried is a circus, a great show, as our president has pointed out, to use the local lackeys, to use local coup mongers, who doing violence to our constitution as we let know the EU international contact group and Uruguay, pretend to show themselves as the great solvers of Venezuela’s problems.

17.54 The great solution for Venezuela? Lift the criminal blockade against our country, financial, commercial, economic.

At least in the following hours let’s try to save these patients’ lives to whom the right to health and recovery is being denied. At least let’s try, let’s call up the conscience of a ruthless, inhumane government, that we know doesn’t even care for its population.

So we keep on working, the Bolivarian peace diplomacy, providing results, the constitutional president acting and defeating the coup d’etat in Venezuela, that from now we say to them: you have failed. Mr Donald Trump, you have failed in the coup d’etat in Venezuela and your puppet’s project is another political failure.

Thank you very much.

Reporter:

Part of the declarations of the executive Vice-president Delcy Rodríguez, who initially made reference to the diplomatic message that Venezuela received from Holland in which it recognizes the unrestricted respect to constitutional president Nicolás Maduro Moro; it also made reference to a meeting that she had with the European international contact delegation in which all that has happened in Venezuela was also dismantled and called it a show on the part of the north American government. All this they did in the framework of the Carta Magna. It’s based on the Bolivarian republic of Venezuela’s constitution.

She also remarked and evidenced through two videos how the real intentions of the north American government are to grab the venezuelan oil and made reference to the supposed humanitarian aid that she called a show of the 9 lorries that they pretend to enter in the Venezuelan people and made a comparison with one day of the attention that local supply and production committees give in which are used 149 lorries of food.


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Scurrying Fascist Cockroaches

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.


By John Steppling


“Suppose it was discovered tomorrow that the greenhouse effects has been way underestimated, and that the catastrophic effects are actually going to set in 10 years from now, and not 100 years from now or something. Well, given the state of the popular movements we have today, we’d probably have a fascist takeover-with everybody agreeing to it, because that would be the only method for survival that anyone could think of. I’d even agree to it, because there’s just no other alternatives right now.”
         —Noam Chomsky (Understanding Power, 2002)

“We’re under attack from climate change—and our only hope is to mobilize like we did in WWII”.
         —Bill McKibben (The New Republic, 2016)

“…the survival of National Socialism within democracy (was potentially more dangerous than) the survival of fascist tendencies against democracy”.
       —Theodor Adorno (quote by Enzo Traverso, The New Faces of Fascism)

AOC and Omar: the Democrats' "new bait" to catch errant lefties. When push came to shove, Omar, like Ocasio Cortez, signed on for regime change in Venezuela.


[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he question of the appropriation of Environmental movements by Capital is one that has been resisted even more than I had anticipated. So, right off the bat I encourage you to read Cory Morningstar and Forest Palmer’s Wrong Kind of Green…especially now, part four.

Now this stuff links directly with the rise of the newest wave of sheepdogging Democratic Party hopefuls. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and now, Ilhan Omar, are the darlings of liberal media and punditry. Omar read (haltingly) from a prepared text as she questioned war criminal Elliot Abrams. She essentially called him a liar, which he is, but which is also what the US government itself already calls him. And she mentioned El Mozote. But, when push came to shove, as they say, Omar like Ocasio Cortez, signed on for regime change in Venezuela.

Now, Ocasio Cortez is floating something she calls the Green New Deal (which, in another form, was already promoted by Green Party candidate Jill Stein) and which is a nakedly pro capitalist bit of three-card monte that will provide a boost to the nuclear power industry and line various corporate pockets. It's capitalism. Omar and Ocasio Cortez also signed the odious Code Pink letter condemning US involvement in coups while at the same time slandering and fabricating stories about Maduro. The logic of the letter was that US proxy forces and covert activities had a counter productive effect and only helped to shore up the credibility of the Maduro government. In other words, fascism is OK, is just fine, only please do it in ways that will not bruise my delicate sensitivities.

Now please note: Ocasio Cortez and Omar are nearly identical physical types. Both are wildly telegenic (until they open their mouths, but maybe that's not as a big problem as I make it out to be) and both are sort of pixie like, lithe and slender. When I point this out I am told there is nothing wrong with being slender. At which point I silently scream and tear the flesh from my face. The point is only to describe the similarities in presentation of these two political products. In other words, they are manufactured political commodities. And as Madison Avenue knows, such marketing works, even when everyone is on the manufacturing process.

“The spectacle is capital to such a degree of accumulation that it becomes an image.”
Guy Debord (Society of the Spectacle)

All life is theatre, to some degree of other. I have written before that theatre did not come out of religion but rather religion came out of theatre. And the short explanation is that our psychic formation is tied to a self narration that must take place on stage…even if just in our heads. The scene of the crime. It is Ur-theatre. So in contemporary life I am constantly reminded of just how caught up in the spectacle.. or rather…in the streaming of the spectacle, is everyone, and that it is one that occurs 24/7. And even when the smarter among us notices this facsimile existence, nothing happens. For it is ever harder to crawl up and out of capital. Out of accumulation. Out of the spectacle.

And set against this is the rising tide of Fascism. Global fascism. Chomsky, long a suspect figure and sort of the honorary chair of political gatekeeping emeritus, openly and none too timidly advises fascism as perhaps (!) the solution to “getting things done”. As in, the environmental crises — let's use that term for now — is dire and suddenly (as they say in Hollywood story conferences) there is *a clock on it*. Meaning there is exactly no time to spare. In fact it's too late. Etc. I read recently a headline that said insects were going extinct. That struck me as, I don’t know, unlikely on the face of it. And sure enough it was a pure sensationalized headline for a sensationalistic article. Bugs are the most diverse creatures on earth. There are more kinds of just one variety of wasp than there are kinds of mammals. And yes, Monsanto is killing honey bees. And it's pretty dire. But it's not led to honey shortages yet, at least that I have noticed. But it has raised prices! And colony collapse disorder (CCD) is the result of a number of factors, including pesticides and fungicides, which among other things render bees susceptible to the Nosema ceranae parasite. Capitalism kills life. Socialism protects life (http://news.trust.org/item/20160209120235-5me2q/) But in general the bugs are not going extinct in thirty years. Still, what is driving this apologia for fascism? And why would Chomsky equate fascism with ‘getting things done’? Socialism…as in Cuba for example…gets things done. Ask earthquake survivors around the globe. Ask whose doctors are first on the scene. But the rehabilitation of fascism is gaining momentum.

Now, there is a clear necessity for western societies to change how they live. Just a ban on the manufacturing of plastics, or pliable plastics even, would do an enormous amount of good. But that means a lot of very big and rich plastic manufacturing businesses would go out of business. Hence there is no movement toward that. Instead you get The Green New Deal. And what, you might ask, is this going to really achieve?

“Today’s climate emergency mobilization must be recognized for what it is: a strategically orchestrated campaign financed and managed by the world’s most powerful institutions – for the preservation of capitalism and global economic growth. This is the launch of a new growth industry in the Global South coupled with the creation of new and untapped markets. Leading up to this precipice, The B Team, the Open Society Foundation, Oxfam, and many others that serve as the human face of capitalism, have moved their offices or set up new divisions in both Africa and Latin America.”
—Cory Morningstar and Forest Palmer (Wrong Kind of Green, park IV)

and…

“…the above plan and language mirrors that in the strategy document “Leading the Public into Emergency Mode: A New Strategy for the Climate Movement” being led by organizations whose affiliations with the Democrats, the Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez campaigns are publicly disclosed. Second, we must recognize that behind large institutions and media outlets such as Grist, branded as both “left” and “progressive”, are power structures subservient to capital. Grist CEO is Brady Walkinshaw. Prior to his role of CEO in 2017, Walkinshaw a former US State representative, worked as a program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Before his tenure at the Gates Foundation, Walkinshaw, a Fulbright scholar of the US State Department, worked as a special assistant to the World Bank. Within the Grist board of directors is 350.org founder, Bill McKibben – defacto foot soldier for Bernie Sanders and the Democrats in general.”

Read the entirety of the breakdown here….http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/02/13/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-the-new-green-deal-is-the-trojan-horse-for-the-financialization-of-nature/

The same fingerprints are always found. The Gates Foundation, 350.org, the US state department and an assortment of varied NGOs of the moment (All based in the West). Western capital is in transition phase. And riding along in the propaganda wing is a clear new focus on fascist iconography and symbol, and on metaphors of war and the military. Getting things done !!

The rehab of fascism is laying the groundwork for various states of emergency to come. Most will be given a token coat of green paint. The worst thing you can be…even worse than an apologist for Harvey Weinstein or something, is a climate denier. It has already superceded Conspiracy theorist as most toxic appellation available today. Pedophile, Conspiracy Theorist, and at the top…Climate Denier.

In a society in which public education is a shell of its former mediocre self, and one in which science is not much emphasized, it is amazing how many times I have had complex statistics and calculus quoted in regard to global warming or rising sea levels or methane bubbles etc. It has become a kind of incantatory recital of belief. And it is about shaming and stigmatizing. And about self righteousness. And again, the trouble with all this is that there IS a climate crisis. There is massive environmental decay and pollution. And there is, in the U.S. certainly, a crumbling material infrastructure. Clean water will be ever more of a problem. There is ample but very general evidence for all of this. But I am not a scientist. And I have to say I have a healthy suspicion of professional science overall. The planet is very very very complex. And again, I may have missed it, but where are the scientists pointing fingers at the military? I ask that one sincerely. I’d like to know. For there is one thing I do feel pretty confident about: And that is..the military produces pollution, kills sea life, poisons the ground and humans both. And on a massive massive massive scale. So why is that never a target do you suppose?

“As a major turning point in the history of Europe, total war introduced mass violence into everyday life, ‘brutalized’ societies, and accustomed them to industrial massacres and anonymous mass death. As a nationalist political movement, fascism grew out from this trauma. Mosse sees it as a product of the ‘nationalization of the masses’ that was powerfully accelerated during the war { } In fact, anti-communism characterized fascism from the beginning to the end of its historical trajectory. It was a militant, radical, aggressive anti-communism that transformed the nationalist ‘civil religion’ into a ‘crusade’ against the enemy.”
Enzo Traverso (The New Faces of Fascism)

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he rehabilitation of fascism cannot find traction without a concomitant anti-communist platform. And the spike in anti-communism has been acute. I wrote on my blog about Liam Neeson…


Bumbling Liam Neeson: Transparent self-serving masculine braggadocio.

“The normalizing of fascist mythology and sentiments preceded what is now open expressions of fascist ideology. And it appears in codes appropriate to the celebrity driven individuality of the Marvel Comix era of entertainment. Liam Neeson’s recent comments (as part of a marketing tour for his next film… a *revenge* thriller..{sic}) about having once wanted to find a black man to beat to death is a rather good example. There is no moral to Neeson’s story, interestingly, beyond it taking him a week, in his words, to figure out “what they fuck am I doing”. This is a form of white masculine bragging now. It's another celebrity search for authenticity. Oh he also was thrilled as a lad to listen to the speeches of Ian Paisley. Not much more is said about this beyond it inspired him to take up acting. So again the fascist rehabilitation is open. And again, there is a racist underpinning, as Paisley actively campaigned against the civil rights movement and organized gangs of club carrying thugs to block pro civil rights protestors. The inherent acceptability of fascism. No celebrity A-list actor would ever admit to having been thrilled by the speeches of Fidel Castro.”

When Trump said “Make America Great Again”, what he meant of course was make America white again. But not just white, but a fascist white. For the very idea of *greatness* resides in that exceptionalism that is connected at its roots to manifest destiny and slave owning. The appeal to a manufactured nostalgia of greatness is an appeal to a white hierarchical martial heroism that is today reflected in Marvel and DC comic super hero movies. And this rehabilitation is neo-colonial, as well. Communism fought against the colonial European powers, while the US and western capital fought on the side of apartheid and colonial powers. Make America colonial again. Make America a land of plantations, again. Make it a land of *Indian killers*. All of this is running through popular culture today. The masculine panic of Liam Neeson is the same one, on a cruder level aesthetically, found at Trump rallies, but also found on Wall Street and in the industrial usage of escort services those brokers are known to indulge — and in fraternities at universities across the U.S. It is tied to a virulent misogyny. And it is, indeed, tied to Harvey Weinstein — though, problematically, it is also found in much of the lynch mob mania of #metoo.

“…fascism comes to power in stages, beginning with attacks on the democratic rights of working people, the imprisonment of communists and trade unionists, hostility to national minorities and immigrants, and the gradual erosion of democratic institutions. It relies on its mass supporters, mostly from the middle class but also including workers and intellectuals, to carry out these policies. Once fascism has consolidated power, it begins to build up the fascist state and engages in expansionary imperialist wars. The terrorist dictatorship of finance capital is only fully established when all opposition has been outlawed and a fascist state machinery has been completely developed.”
—Fabian Van Onzen (Monthly Review, Feb 2019)

There is a constant drum beat that compares communism to fascism. And it has taken a quality of desperation. So insistent are the authors of this familiar trope of “totalitarian” societies ‘all being the same’ that it is sort of now in another phase that might be labeled *secondary conflations*. And it is important to observe the liberal and urban educated bourgeoisie and their emotional connectivity to Green ideas and policy. This is the collaborationist class Gramsci wrote about so trenchantly. But the level of emotional attachment and reaction to questions of Climate Change or Global Warming (and related environmental issues) needs to be explored a bit more.

For it is as if suddenly the bourgeoisie deeply “cares” about Nature and mother earth. About the planet, about saving mankind. The emotional responses one finds here are not only disproportionate to the specific issues that arise, but they are psychologically prophylactic mechanisms that seem to keep actual political analysis buried. There are knee jerk responses that look to stigmatize those now demonstrating insufficient environmental awareness. Those not invested enough, or in the right way, with Green policy. These are going to be the people who line up behind Ocasio Cortez and The Green New Deal. This outrage is almost never displayed against US bombing “errors” when, say, a wedding party is obliterated and a half dozen children are killed. But maybe it's a genuine personal fear. Maybe this is a class now afraid and that is a new experience for them.

“What haunted them {the Frankfurt School thinkers} was the evidence, everywhere to be found in the Federal Republic of Germany to which Adorno returned in 1949, that the fascist era was being airbrushed from history, erased from collective memory in an act of repression. The fear was not only that it was being forgotten in itself, but that if not remembered, it was likely to resurface in unpredictable forms.”
—Stuart Walton (Theory from the Ruins, Aeon Magazine 2017)

The Democratic field is forming for the 2020 run at Trump. Think about who is running. I mean, let's do a quick survey…very quick.

Bernie Sanders is another glaring example of the cognitive dissonance operating at the collective level. Sanders who famously referred to Hugo Chavez as “that dead communist dictator” was also the guy who demanded the Saudis “get their hands dirty”. One of the things that seems not to register on the public, both pro Sanders and contra Sanders, is that Bernie just isn’t very smart. He is not a particular fluid speaker nor does he do very well off script. But Bernie has never seen a defense contract he didn’t want a piece of. Never.

Paul Street wrote back in 2015 {from an article in 2017}….” U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (“I”-VT) is not the independent left politician many progressives claim he is. He’s a Democratic Party company man. That has been clear from his long Congressional record of voting with the neoliberal, dollar-drenched Democrats and accepting their seniority-based committee assignments.” (Counterpunch April 2017)

But Bernie is, again, not in it to win (I don’t think). He is too well fitted to his one specific role; sheepdog for the DNC. But Beto O’Rourke, another youthful Democratic pseudo leftist who, like AOC is telegenic and comely — his hair alone is pure Madison Avenue stuff. Vote for the hair! Which might be a useful slogan for O’Rourke because his voting record is appalling and deeply reactionary. But Beto is looking to find traction as the new JFK or RFK, and is in it to win.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/20/beto-orourke-congressional-votes-analysis-capital-and-main

O’Rourke has also gone out of his way to praise Israel and promise fidelity to “our shared values”. None of this is any sort of surprise. At some point the public has to learn being a Democrat means being pro war and an Imperialist.

“The Fasci di combattimento were born in the aftermath of the war. They were imbued with the petit-bourgeois character of the various veterans associations which arose at that time.
Due to their trenchant opposition to the socialist movement they obtained the support of the capitalists and the authorities. This aspect of the Fasci was inherited in part from the conflict between the Socialist Party and the ‘interventionist’ associations during the war years.
They emerged during the same period when the rural landowners were feeling the need to create a White Guard to tackle the growing workers’ organisations. The gangs that were already organised and armed by the big landowners soon adopted the label Fasci for themselves too. With their subsequent development, these gangs would acquire their own distinct character – as a White Guard of capitalism against the class organs of the proletariat.
Fascism still conserves this trait of its origins. But until very recently, the fervour of the armed offensive kept a lid on the tensions between the urban cadre – who are predominantly petit-bourgeois, orientated on parliament, and ‘collaborationist’ – and the rural cadre, which consist of the big and medium landowners and their tenant farmers.”

—Antonio Gramsci (The Two Fascisms, 1921)

Now O’Rourke is another supporter of the Green New Deal. Quelle surprise.

Kamala Harris is the former DA from San Francisco, and later AD for the state. She used to date (his words) Willie Brown. And she is married to attorney Doug Emhoff, formerly of Venable LLP — a firm whose lawyers included Asa Hutchinson (former Governor of Arkansas, former Undersecretary of Homeland Security and former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration). Also a number of former state’s ADs and a couple other governors (John Marshall Butler for one). Just sayin’. Kamala no doubt has the deepest rolodex of anyone who has so far declared (unless you count Gentleman Joe Biden, and I don’t because Joe has almost ZERO chance to go anywhere in this thing).

Margaret Kimberley wrote of Harris….“One of her more disgraceful policies was to victim shame black mothers for their children’s school truancy. They were fined and when most of them could not pay, were put in jail and separated from their children.This action is the epitome of modern day chattel slavery and Harris cannot be given a pass.{ } Harris has spent her career locking up Black and brown people. She should not be allowed to shake hands, kiss babies or walk into black churches without being taken to task.” (Black Agenda Report, Jan 2019)

Kirsten Gillibrand will likely declare. A favorite daughter of Wall Street and the tobacco industry Gillibrand is heavily entrenched in the bowels of the DNC. She once authored a bill that would criminalize ‘boycotts’ by individuals or groups seeking to express disapproval of Israel. Gillibrand’s stance against protests and ‘boycotts’ included her co-sponsoring the Israel Anti-Boycott Act (S 720). Her parents are both attorneys. She attended Dartmouth and her maternal grandmother Polly Noonan was a key player in Estes Cornings powerful political machine in Albany from the 40s through the mid 80s. One of the last great political machines in the United States in fact.

Tulsi Gabbard is the *identity* candidate. A pacific islander, and a Hindu. On the plus side she spoke positively about US enemies like Assad… except for when she was, you know, calling him a brutal dictator. And she was at least mildly respectful of the DPRK. Sort of. And she was right about the murder, by the US, of Qadaffi. But in all this she is still on the side of the Imperialist overlords. In a sense, Gabbard is the new Obama. The comprador candidate. Oh, and she is an aggressive supporter of Israel and highly critical of the BDS. She is the rational Imperialist. I know its a buzz kill to point out all these things, but she also happens to be a major in the US Army, a member of the Hawaiian National Guard, and significantly, a member of the House Armed Services Committee. She also did TWO tours in Iraq. Not one, but two. Meaning she volunteered to go back and do it again. She has also praised the BJP party in India, and its neo-fascist president. Richard Spencer admires her (sic) for what that is worth. And Gabbard also signed to enforce sanctions on Iran and Russia. But so bankrupt is the electoral landscape in the U.S., that Gabbard is routinely described as a radical voice.

“The worker, the peasant, who for years has hated the fascism that oppresses him believes it necessary, in order to bring it down, to ally himself with the liberal bourgeoisie, to support those who in the past, when they were in power, supported and armed fascism against the workers and peasants, and who just a few months ago formed a sole bloc with fascism and shared in the responsibility for its crimes. And this is how the question of the liquidation of fascism is posed? No! The liquidation of fascism must be the liquidation of the bourgeoisie that created it.”
—Antonio Gramsci (Neither Fascism nor Liberalism: Sovietism! 1924)

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Green New Deal is the figleaf that provides material for this manufacturing of a new fascist narrative. The green fascism of these new ‘products’ from the Democratic Party laboratories is pretty much in line with what Bill Clinton ushered in and what Obama sort of perfected.

There is no potential for change in electoral movements in the U.S. That system is closed. Any radical third party would be quickly stopped, on that Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi both agree. And the idea of an American gilets jaunes (or Occupy redux) would likely lack both leadership and, more importantly perhaps, a narrative. The disaffected in the U.S. have no way to imagine an end to the system that oppresses them. And this is partly where the Soviet Union is so acutely missed. But one senses this is also why Maduro and Venezuela must be shut down. Sure oil, that's a nice bonus, but the threat is, even if partly unconscious for the ruling class, an ideology where the slaves revolt. Same as Milosevic had to go. Same as they tried for decades to eliminate Fidel. Independence is not tolerated.

Luc Boltanski and Arnaud Esquerre noted (for France) that for what they call the *post fascist* ….“The ‘bad’ people— the immigrants, the Muslims and Blacks of the suburbs, veiled women, junkies, and the marginal—merge together with members of the leisure classes who have adopted liberal mores: feminists, the gay-friendly, anti-racists, environmentalists, and defenders of immigrants’ rights. Finally, the ‘good’ people of the postfascist imagination are nationalist, anti-feminist, homophobic, xenophobic, and nourish a clear hostility toward ecology, modern art, and intellectualism.”
(Quoted by Enzo Traverso, Vers l’extrême: Extension des domaines de la droite, Paris: Editions Dehors, 2014; Gérard Mauger, ‘Mythologies: le “beauf” et le “bobo”.)

And here is also where Green issues become a kind of fulcrum around which the NGOs and marketing firms fully understand the ambivalences. The sudden compassion about the Earth and Global Warming is a narrative that is being appropriated very rapidly right now. For the bourgeoisie ‘going green’ is a cause they can get behind, and one that costs them almost nothing. It also provides cover for their new tough love of the underclass (meaning they get to be more openly racist and contemptuous of the poor). The educated urban liberal is borrowing heavily from the Health Food Co-op back room.

For the right, bad people are those with environmental concerns — i.e. the affluent urban liberal who is experienced as the class looking to take away the working class and poor’s small pleasures. First all those *sin* taxes, on tobacco and booze, and then restrictions on muscle cars, and all of sort of stuff is given a crude storyline by folks like Steven Bannon. Good people are those who deny any of this environmental stuff. Thereby in their Evangelical piety the flyover state working poor (and unemployed) justify their ignorance and more to the point, can stop having to wrestle with complicated and often ambivalent ideas to which a destroyed public education system never exposed them.

Because of this mutual disconnect, the emotional cathexis of the liberal educated classes in both Europe and the U.S. identify with their ‘superior’ concerns, their belief in science, which they understand no better than those sitting in the seats at NASCAR races, but who are encouraged to practice what they see as “sober” thinking, “tough love”, and “responsible” telling of hard truths. What this means is they increasingly are now finding permission to express more openly what they have kept silent about (cue Liam Neeson). And that is a virulent racism, but one now more tilted toward antisemitism, and most significantly islamophobia. The affluent bourgeois class is experiencing great relief in being given permission to vent their buried xenophobia. The Muslim is a structural replacement (though not really a replacement so much as an addition but in perception management terms it's a replacement) for Jew in this new liberal antisemitism. It is not expressed in quite the same way as those in the flyover states, but it's there all the same. And yet these classes recognize nothing of themselves in the other.

“The idea of a healthy and prosperous Green New Deal (part and parcel of the fourth industrial revolution) for the world – is a lure to keep you believing in the system.”
—Cory Morningstar (in conversation).

When Gramsci wrote of hegemony he never forgot that bourgeois rule, even when it advanced behind ‘mere’ coercion, still had physical violence as an option. The increased surveillance state and police militarization are linked, in the end, to policing of the inner cities (black and Latino neighborhoods) and to US imperial policing and pacification of the global south.

But in looking at the narratives today, the ruling class and their collaborationist allies in the bourgeoisie, have refashioned environmental concerns so that its truth is always about protecting capital and capitalism while the narrative is about their own virtues. It's an investment opportunity. Nothing more. And part of the problem (often a large part) is transferred to the victims of capital; the very poorest in the world, the very people who consume the least and pollute the least. This is the logic (and always has been) of eugenics and its contemporary trope “overpopulation”. And the cruelty and ruthlessness of the overpopulation meme is given a cosmetic make-over to resemble compassionate white saviour stories. The superior white expert come to stop the savages from having too many children.

To fix or at least manage, to some degree, the worst environmental problems will actually require drastic socialist programs. Not fascism as Chomsky suggests…or as Bernie or AOC or any of the rest of these capitalist sock puppets….but socialist. And nothing, NOTHING of any good is ever going to come out of the Democratic Party. And nothing of any significance can happen via the US electoral theatre. The amount of energy wasted in endless debate about the virtues or “electability” (sic) of Elizabeth Warren vs Bernie Sanders or Kamala Harris vs Tulsi Gabbard etc is breathtaking. Imagine that time spent on something useful. Like, oh, how to prevent more war and carnage. And how to create a sustainable form of human development.

“Socialism, in its most radical form, is about substantive equality, community solidarity, and ecological sustainability; it is aimed at the unification—not simply division—of labor.

Once sustainable human development, rooted not in exchange values, but in use values and genuine human needs, comes to define historical advance, the future, which now seems closed, will open up in a myriad ways, allowing for entirely new, more qualitative, and collective forms of development. This can be seen in the kinds of needed practical measures that could be taken up, but which are completely excluded under the present mode of production. It is not physical impossibility, or lack of economic surplus, most of which is currently squandered, that stands in the way of the democratic control of investment, or the satisfaction of basic needs—clean air and water, food, clothing, housing, education, health care, transportation, and useful work—for all. It is not the shortage of technological know-how or of material means that prevents the necessary ecological conversion to more sustainable forms of energy.103 It is not some inherent division of humanity that obstructs the construction of a New International of workers and peoples directed against capitalism, imperialism, and war. All of this is within our reach, but requires pursuing a logic that runs counter to that of capitalism.”
—John Bellamy Foster (Monthly Review, Feb 2019)

John Bellamy Foster: Capitalism Has Failed—What Next?


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Open letter to Bernie Sanders and those who support him

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.


The evidence:

Luciana Bohne

Open Letter to Bernie Sanders

Dear Bernie,

You wrote on twitter: "The people of Venezuela are enduring a serious humanitarian crisis. The Maduro government must put the needs of its people first, allow humanitarian aid into the country, and refrain from violence against protesters." (10:47 AM - 23 Feb 2019).

You must know, Bernie, that the US is suffocating Venezuela with economic and financial sanctions, preventing even access to medicines (insulin, for example).

You must know, too Bernie, the history of the acceleration of the 17-year-old US campaign to overthrow the government of Venezuela. In 2002, the Bush administration attempted and failed in a coup to remove Chavez. The coup was directed by Elliott Abrams, who is now Trump's envoy to Venezuela. Do you really believe this man has "humanitarian" motives and intentions? A convicted felon, guilty of funding and arming death squads, covering up massacres, providing funds and cover for genocide in Central America in the 1980s?

Bernie, in 2015, President Obama declared Venezuela a threat to US security and issued the first round of sanctions, freezing assets of Venezuelan officials. Do you know on what evidence Venezuela became a threat to the US? I don't think Venezuela was pointing missiles at the US. Do you know better?

In 2017, President Trump issued economic sanctions and followed up in January 2019 with draconian financial sanctions, depriving Venezuela of petroleum revenues--among other punitive financial measures.

Now, Bernie, the US is using the crisis it has itself precipitated to assist Venezuela (while threatening a military intervention--"all options on the table.") Is not this a theater of cruelty-- the tormentor playing the Good Samaritan on its own victim, Bernie? Does it not appall you?

Then, too, Bernie, you must know that Venezuela is accepting aid via the United Nations (and proudly paying for every morsel) from China, Turkey, India, Cuba: 933 tons of food and medicines received. The Venezuelan government has since then received and accepted over 300 tons of medicines from Russia., which it will receive weekly. Are you prepared to propose that aid from the US, too, be delivered via the United Nations?

I know you can't make this proposal, Bernie, because the UN has refused to recognize the illegitimate "interim president" of Venezuela and will deal exclusively with the legitimate government.

But there's something you could do: you could call for the end of the US-sanction regime on Venezuela. That would be humanitarian, Bernie. That.

Best regards,

Luciana Bohne
A citizen

https://www.facebook.com/luciana.bohne.1/posts/2085002134886851


ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Luciana Bohne is a retired academic whose long life is almost a synthesis of the turbulence of the 20th century. She has lived under three systems: fascism, socialism, and capitalism. She has known war, been a refuge and displaced person, an immigrant, and a failed aspirant to bourgeois respectability. 

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The Cynical Assault on Venezuela: Two excellent responses

“As psychopathic and evil as the Boltons and the Abrams are, ethically they are really no worse than the well paid media personalities delivering the fabricated war propaganda day after day, oblivious to the murder and mayhem created by their shilling for the empire’s war machine…”
HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

THE WAR ON VENEZUELA IS BUILT ON LIES

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John Pilger's "The War on Venezuela is Built on Lies" is the departure point for the excellent comments featured below. 

Thank you John Pilger. It is absolutely surreal to think this theatre of the absurd propaganda operation in support of yet another U.S. led coup is being supported by much of the Western world. The same oh so "law abiding," oh so concerned with "human rights," oh so "civilized" and oh so "democratized" Western world that has been plundering the rest of the planet for 500+ years now. A rather "bloody" form of irony to be sure. We used to kill you and steal everything that wasn't nailed down because we felt obliged to "save your soul" by bringing you Christianity. Now we kill you and steal everything that isn't nailed down due to our concern for your "human rights." We kill you - "because we care about you so very very much."

When I was much younger I used to still believe in the "bad apples" explanation for U.S. mayhem. This was back in the 1980's. From that "bad apples" perspective it was the Bolton's and Abrams and Ollie Norths of the world who were "responsible" for the torture and coups and brutality. Watching our amoral fetid war machine wreak it's endless destruction decade after decade, MSM lie after MSM lie, one eventually must face the reality that our entire institutional structure and social system simply "IS" the war machine and we are all part of it, willingly or unwillingly, simply through paying our taxes.

As psychopathic and evil as the Boltons and the Abrams are, ethically they are really no worse than the well paid media personalities delivering the fabricated war propaganda day after day, oblivious to the murder and mayhem created by their shilling for the empire's war machine. These media vampires are quite obviously as unconcerned about human suffering as the bought and paid for political shills in both parties who's job it is to keep this machine running no matter how much innocent blood they must wade through in the process just to reach their office everyday. Of course it goes without saying that the Billionaires, bankers, and the Wall Street boys who make their fortunes from the war machine, together comprise a particularly odious and vile branch of this system of organized crime we call a "society," yet somehow they seem to almost magically disappear into the shadows as the war profits roll in and as the empire moves on to the next victim of our never ending "democracy enhancement" global rape and pillage project.

Avatar

Well said.

As for the "bad apples" explanation this is what drives me crazy about the rabid anti-Trump faction, especially so-called liberals and Democrats. They have wasted over two years foaming at the mouth about Trump while they should have been demanding an end to US illegal wars of aggression everywhere. Instead they intensify the anti-Russia rhetoric which plays into the hands of the neocons, mic, and warmongers. The anti-Trump faction mistakenly believes that getting rid of Trump is what will "make america great again", and they have forgotten the crimes of Obama and Hillary, all of which were enthusiastically supported by Democrats, and the crimes were invisible to many so-called liberals who supported Obama. Of course their answer to the "bad apple" is a "good apple" which is bs (pun intended).


David - spot on. I very much agree. The supreme irony is that the only time the so called "resistance" leaders have anything good to say about Trump is when he's bombing some innocents somewhere. Nothing says "presidential" to American MSM like killing innocent people en masse. It is amazing how well the divide and conquer strategy of "blue vs red," "liberal vs conservative," "Trump vs Hillary," game of false choices continues to work for the oligarchs. I'd like to be more optimistic about our chances to actually impact this monster in some positive fashion, but I'm guessing the best chance for human survival is that the empire continues to crumble from within. How we keep the cadre of insane generals and psychopathic neocons from joyfully launching "the big one" under such circumstances of "decline and fall" I haven't a clue.

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THE WAR ON VENEZUELA IS BUILT ON LIES



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HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

21 February 2019

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]ravelling with Hugo Chavez, I soon understood the threat of Venezuela. At a farming co-operative in Lara state, people waited patiently and with good humour in the heat. Jugs of water and melon juice were passed around. A guitar was played; a woman, Katarina, stood and sang with a husky contralto.

"What did her words say?" I asked.

"That we are proud," was the reply.

The applause for her merged with the arrival of Chavez. Under one arm he carried a satchel bursting with books. He wore his big red shirt and greeted people by name, stopping to listen. What struck me was his capacity to listen.

But now he read. For almost two hours he read into the microphone from the stack of books beside him: Orwell, Dickens, Tolstoy, Zola, Hemingway, Chomsky, Neruda: a page here, a line or two there. People clapped and whistled as he moved from author to author.

Then farmers took the microphone and told him what they knew, and what they needed; one ancient face, carved it seemed from a nearby banyan, made a long, critical speech on the subject of irrigation; Chavez took notes.

Wine is grown here, a dark Syrah type grape. "John, John, come up here," said El Presidente, having watched me fall asleep in the heat and the depths of Oliver Twist.

"He likes red wine," Chavez told the cheering, whistling audience, and presented me with a bottle of "vino de la gente". My few words in bad Spanish brought whistles and laughter.

Watching Chavez with la gente made sense of a man who promised, on coming to power, that his every move would be subject to the will of the people.  In eight years, Chavez won eight elections and referendums: a world record. He was electorally the most popular head of state in the Western Hemisphere, probably in the world.

Every major chavista reform was voted on, notably a new constitution of which 71 per cent of the people approved each of the 396 articles that enshrined unheard of freedoms, such as Article 123, which for the first time recognised the human rights of mixed-race and black people, of whom Chavez was one.

One of his tutorials on the road quoted a feminist writer: "Love and solidarity are the same." His audiences understood this well and expressed themselves with dignity, seldom with deference. Ordinary people regarded Chavez and his government as their first champions: as theirs.

This was especially true of the indigenous, mestizos and Afro-Venezuelans, who had been held in historic contempt by Chavez's immediate predecessors and by those who today live far from the  barrios, in the mansions and penthouses of East Caracas, who commute to Miami where their banks are and who regard themselves as "white". They are the powerful core of what the media calls "the opposition".

When I met this class, in suburbs called Country Club, in homes appointed with low chandeliers and bad portraits, I recognised them. They could be white South Africans, the petite bourgeoisie of Constantia and Sandton, pillars of the cruelties of apartheid.

Cartoonists in the Venezuelan press, most of which are owned by an oligarchy and oppose the government, portrayed Chavez as an ape. A radio host referred to "the monkey". In the private universities, the verbal currency of the children of the well-off is often racist abuse of those whose shacks are just visible through the pollution.

Although identity politics are all the rage in the pages of liberal newspapers in the West, race and class are two words almost never uttered in the mendacious "coverage" of Washington's latest, most naked attempt to grab the world's greatest source of oil and reclaim its "backyard".

For all the chavistas' faults - such as allowing the Venezuelan economy to become hostage to the fortunes of oil and never seriously challenging big capital and corruption - they brought social justice and pride to millions of people and they did it with unprecedented democracy.

"Of the 92 elections that we've monitored," said former President Jimmy Carter, whose Carter Centre is a respected monitor of elections around the world, "I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world." By way of contrast, said Carter, the US election system, with its emphasis on campaign money, "is one of the worst".

In extending the franchise to a parallel people's state of communal authority, based in the poorest barrios, Chavez described Venezuelan democracy as "our version of Rousseau's idea of popular sovereignty".

In Barrio La Linea, seated in her tiny kitchen, Beatrice Balazo told me her children were the first generation of the poor to attend a full day's school and be given a hot meal and to learn music, art and dance. "I have seen their confidence blossom like flowers," she said.


Venezuela's violent opposition is emboldened by the class support shown by the US and other Western countries.


In Barrio La Vega, I listened to a nurse, Mariella Machado, a black woman of 45 with a wicked laugh, address an urban land council on subjects ranging from homelessness to illegal war. That day, they were launching Mision Madres de Barrio, a programme aimed at poverty among single mothers. Under the constitution, women have the right to be paid as carers, and can borrow from a special women's bank. Now the poorest housewives get the equivalent of $200 a month.

In a room lit by a single fluorescent tube, I met Ana Lucia Ferandez, aged 86, and Mavis Mendez, aged 95. A mere 33-year-old, Sonia Alvarez, had come with her two children. Once, none of them could read and write; now they were studying mathematics. For the first time in its history, Venezuela has almost 100 per cent literacy. 

When asked why she filmed only an opposition march, the BBC reporter Orla Guerin tweeted that it was "too difficult" to be on two marches in one day. A war has been declared on Venezuela, of which the truth is "too difficult" to report.
This is the work of Mision Robinson, which was designed for adults and teenagers previously denied an education because of poverty. Mision Ribas gives everyone the opportunity of a secondary education, called a bachillerato.(The names Robinson and Ribas refer to Venezuelan independence leaders from the 19th century).

In her 95 years, Mavis Mendez had seen a parade of governments, mostly vassals of Washington, preside over the theft of billions of dollars in oil spoils, much of it flown to Miami. "We didn't matter in a human sense," she told me. "We lived and died without real education and running water, and food we couldn't afford. When we fell ill, the weakest died. Now I can read and write my name and so much more; and whatever the rich and the media say, we have planted the seeds of true democracy and I have the joy of seeing it happen."

In 2002, during a Washington-backed coup, Mavis's sons and daughters and grandchildren and great-grandchildren joined hundreds of thousands who swept down from the barrios on the hillsides and demanded the army remained loyal to Chavez.

"The people rescued me," Chavez told me. "They did it with the media against me, preventing even the basic facts of what happened. For popular democracy in heroic action, I suggest you look no further."

Since Chavez's death in 2013, his successor Nicolas Maduro has shed his derisory label in the Western press as a "former bus driver" and become Saddam Hussein incarnate. His media abuse is ridiculous. On his watch, the slide in the price of oil has caused hyper inflation and played havoc with prices in a society that imports almost all its food; yet, as the journalist and film-maker Pablo Navarrete reported this week, Venezuela is not the catastrophe it has been painted. "There is food everywhere," he wrote. "I have filmed lots of videos of food in markets [all over Caracas] ... it's Friday night and the restaurants are full."

In 2018, Maduro was re-elected President. A section of the opposition boycotted the election, a tactic tried against Chavez. The boycott failed: 9,389,056 people voted; sixteen parties participated and six candidates stood for the presidency. Maduro won 6,248,864 votes, or 67.84 per cent.

On election day, I spoke to one of the 150 foreign election observers. "It was entirely fair," he said. "There was no fraud; none of the lurid media claims stood up. Zero. Amazing really."

Like a page from Alice's tea party, the Trump administration has presented Juan Guaido, a pop-up creation of the CIA-front National Endowment for Democracy, as the "legitimate President of Venezuela". Unheard of by 81 per cent of the Venezuelan people, according to The Nation, Guaido has been elected by no one.

Maduro is "illegitimate", says Trump (who won the US presidency with three million fewer votes than his opponent), a "dictator", says demonstrably unhinged vice president Mike Pence and an oil trophy-in-waiting, says "national security" adviser John Bolton (who when I interviewed him in 2003 said, "Hey, are you a communist, maybe even Labour?").

As his "special envoy to Venezuela" (coup master), Trump has appointed a convicted felon, Elliot Abrams, whose intrigues in the service of Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush helped produce the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s and plunge central America into years of blood-soaked misery.

Putting Lewis Carroll aside, these  "crazies" belong in newsreels from the 1930s. And yet their lies about Venezuela have been taken up with enthusiasm by those paid to keep the record straight.

On Channel 4 News, Jon Snow bellowed at the Labour MP Chris Williamson, "Look, you and Mr Corbyn are in a very nasty corner [on Venezuela]!" When Williamson tried to explain why threatening a sovereign country was wrong, Snow cut him off. "You've had a good go!"

In 2006, Channel 4 News effectively accused Chavez of plotting to make nuclear weapons with Iran: a fantasy. The then Washington correspondent, Jonathan Rugman, allowed a war criminal, Donald Rumsfeld, to liken Chavez to Hitler, unchallenged.

[dropcap]R[/dropcap]esearchers at the University of the West of England studied the BBC's reporting of Venezuela over a ten-year period. They looked at 304 reports and found that only three of these referred to any of the positive policies of the government. For the BBC, Venezuela's democratic record, human rights legislation, food programmes, healthcare initiatives and poverty reduction did not happen.  The greatest literacy programme in human history did not happen, just as the millions who march in support of Maduro and in memory of Chavez, do not exist.

When asked why she filmed only an opposition march, the BBC reporter Orla Guerin tweeted that it was "too difficult" to be on two marches in one day.

A war has been declared on Venezuela, of which the truth is "too difficult" to report.

It is too difficult to report the collapse of oil prices since 2014 as largely the result of criminal machinations by Wall Street. It is too difficult to report the blocking of Venezuela's access to the US-dominated international financial system as sabotage. It is too difficult to report Washington's "sanctions" against Venezuela, which have caused the loss of at least $6billion in Venezuela's revenue since 2017, including  $2billion worth of imported medicines, as illegal, or the Bank of England's refusal to return Venezuela's gold reserves as an act of piracy.

The former United Nations Rapporteur, Alfred de Zayas, has likened this to a "medieval siege" designed "to bring countries to their knees". It is a criminal assault, he says. It is similar to that faced by Salvador Allende in 1970 when President Richard Nixon and his equivalent of John Bolton, Henry Kissinger, set out to "make the economy [of Chile] scream". The long dark night of Pinochet followed.

The Guardian correspondent, Tom Phillips, has tweeted a picture of a cap on which the words in Spanish mean in local slang: "Make Venezuela fucking cool again." The reporter as clown may be the final stage of much of mainstream journalism's degeneration.

Should the CIA stooge Guaido and his white supremacists grab power, it will be the 68th overthrow of a sovereign government by the United States, most of them democracies. A fire sale of Venezuela's utilities and mineral wealth will surely follow, along with the theft of the country's oil, as outlined by John Bolton.

Under the last Washington-controlled government in Caracas, poverty reached historic proportions. There was no healthcare for those could not pay. There was no universal education; Mavis Mendez, and millions like her, could not read or write. How cool is that, Tom?

Follow John Pilger on twitter @johnpilger


http://www.johnpilger.com/


About the Author
John Richard Pilger is an Australian journalist based since 1962 in the United Kingdom. Pilger has been a strong critic of American, Australian and British foreign policy, which he considers to be driven by an imperialist agenda. Pilger has also criticised his native country's treatment of Indigenous Australians. His analyses and reportage have also exposed the criminal role of US-controlled NATO in exacerbating tensions with Russia, China, Iran and other nations resisting Washington's push for global hegemony.  


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