When a CIA-backed military coup is attempted by a long term CIA puppet, roared on by John Bolton and backed with the offer of Blackwater mercenaries, in the country with the world’s largest oil reserves, I have no difficulty whatsoever in knowing which side I am on.
Juan Guaido has been groomed for 15 years as a long-term CIA project. His coup attempt yesterday, which so far appears to have stalled, was the culmination of these efforts to return Venezuela’s oil reserves to US hegemony.
It is strange how the urgent installation of liberal democracy by force correlates so often with oil reserves not aligned to the USA, as in Libya, Iraq or Venezuela, while countries with massive oil reserves which permit US military domination and align with the West and Israel can be as undemocratic as they wish, eg Saudi Arabia. Venezuela is an imperfect democracy but it is far, far more of a democracy than Saudi Arabia and with a much better human rights record. The hypocrisy of Western media and politicians is breathtaking.
Hypocrisy and irony are soulmates, and there are multiple levels of irony in seeing the “liberal” commentators who were cheering on an undisguised military coup, then complaining loudly that people are being injured or killed now their side is losing. Yesterday the MSM had no difficulty in calling the attempted coup what anybody with eyes and ears could see it plainly was, an attempted military coup.
Today, miraculously, the MSM line is no coup attempt happened at all, it was just a spontaneous unarmed protest, and it is the evil government of Venezuela which attempts to portray it as a coup. BBC Breakfast this morning had the headline “President Maduro has accused the opposition of mounting a coup attempt”… Yet there is no doubt at all that, as a matter of plain fact, that is what happened.
The MSM today is full of video of water cannons against “protestors” and a horrible video of a military vehicle ramming a group. But it has all been very carefully edited to exclude hours of footage of the same military vehicles being pelted and set alight with molotov cocktails, and shot at. The presentation has been truly shocking.
In any civilised country, attempting to mount a military coup would lead to incarceration for life, and that is what should now happen to Juan Guaido. The attempt by the West to protect their puppet by pretending the failed military coup never happened, must be resisted, if only in the cause of intellectual honesty.
The resort to violence forces binary choice. I have been and am a critic of Maduro in many respects. I believe the constitutional changes to bypass Parliament were wrong, and the indirectly elected Constituent Assembly is not a good form of democracy. Venezuela does have a rampant corruption problem. US sanctions exacerbate but are not the root cause of economic mismanagement. There are human rights failings. But Chavez made revolutionary changes in educating and empowering the poor, and it is a far better governed country for the mass of its population than it would ever be under a US installed CIA puppet regime. Maduro was legitimately elected. The attempt at violence forces a binary choice.
I know which side I am on. It is not Guaido and the CIA.
——————————————
Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with the articles, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.
Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.
Choose subscription amount from dropdown box:
I agree. It is absolutely not a matter for the U.S and other countries to attempt to force a legitimate government out. This is, in my opinion, war and unequivocally wrong.
No. I can’t . . .
The US puppet Guaido, has the audacity to call yesterday’s feeble attempt of a coup Operation Freedom. The illegitimate pretender to the democratically elected president of Venezuela has called for the “protests” to continue today.
I can
https://www.isitdownrightnow.com/jonathan-cook.net.html
Venezuela is a target for US even without the oil because they fear the spread of socialism and will stamp on it wherever it appears. US paid terrorists will soon be patrolling the streets under the guise of ‘freedom fighters’. Just imagine how far the US would go if not held back by Russia.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Tuesday evening issued an order prohibiting U.S. air operators from flying below 26,000 feet in Venezuela’s airspace until further notice, citing “increasing political instability and tensions”.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-airlines/faa-bans-low-flights-over-venezuelas-airspace-citing-political-instability-idUSKCN1S733E
Is Bolton setting-up in Venezuela to shoot down an aircraft? Given cover and spin, that would work as a false flag excuse for direct US military intervention, wouldn’t it?
Re off topic: Yes, it was last updated on 13th April.
On topic, Agree with Craig, the shift in the debate from an attempted coup yesterday to repression of civil unrest today is weird, do the MSM think we have no long term memory?
The most obnoxious thing is the constant US talk of “Libertad” (freedom) for the Venezuelan people, have they forgotten their key allies are Saudi Arabia and Kuwait? Consistency much?
Slanted reporting from the MSM about the economic plight of Venezuelans too; without the context of harsh US sanctions via numerous Obama era and earlier executive orders and other more recently, alleged sabotage (power grid and related control infrastructure).
‘Libertad’ echo of history, and , the Nicaragua FSLN were expelled(1) from the Socialist International (London based international NGO) in Jan 2019, at a meeting which also expressed support to Juan Guaidó in Venezuela , citing “gross violations of human rights and democratic values committed by the government of Nicaragua”
the history bit is what did the son (John Graham Mellor) of a “foreign office diplomat” (Ronald Ralph Mellor, second secretary in British Foreign Service HMDS) write poetically about his travels in South America?
Joe wrote ” Washington Bullets ” 1980 CBS (c)lyrics by Bernie Rhodes and Joe Strummer
Oh! Mama, Mama look there!
Your children are playing in that street again
Don’t you know what happened down there?
A youth of fourteen got shot down there
The Kokane guns of Jamdown Town
The killing clowns, the blood money men
Are shooting those Washington bullets again
As every cell in Chile will tell
The cries of the tortured men
Remember Allende, and the days before,
Before the army came
Please remember Victor Jara,
In the Santiago Stadium,
Es verdad – those Washington Bullets again
And in the Bay of Pigs in 1961,
Havana fought the playboy in the Cuban sun,
For Castro is a colour,
Is a redder than red,
Those Washington bullets want Castro dead
For Castro is the colour…
…That will earn you a spray of lead
For the very first time ever,
When they had a revolution in Nicaragua,
There was no interference from America
Human rights in America
Well the people fought the leader,
And up he flew…
With no Washington bullets what else could he do?
‘N’ if you can find a Afghan rebel
That the Moscow bullets missed
Ask him what he thinks of voting Communist…
…Ask the Dalai Lama in the hills of Tibet,
How many monks did the Chinese get?
In a war-torn swamp stop any mercenary,
‘N’ check the British bullets in his armoury
Que?
Sandinista!
poetry slideshow/video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1LhlVtbW_U
(1) https://www.socialistinternational.org/images/dynamicImages/files/DECLARATION%20ON%20VENEZUELA.pdf [404 not found & Wayback Machine doesn’t have that page archived, so who knows what London said]
David, is this your reference (1)? This one is dated July, not January:
https://www.socialistinternational.org/councils/geneva-2016/declaration-on-venezuela/
I always enjoy the ‘spaciousness’ of Warren Zevon’s ‘Veracruz’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O2qJ0JXjug&list=RDEMHJQ6N9-uMg0KrmdHVLBsFw&index=18
Like a rubber ball, Guaido keeps bouncing back.
I see no mention of Pompeo who plays a large part in Guaido’s promotion.
You’re correct to not to entirely support Maduro. Clearly Venezuela has a huge democratic deficit with candidates and parties excluded from the democratic process,… although it falls well short of some of the brutal Arab dictatorships the west backs, where if citizens could vote leaders would get 98% of the vote and even slight criticism can result in jail or death. Rampant corruption is also evident in Venezuela although how much that is simply a product of sanctions is difficult to assess. However, the real question, is whether a handpicked opposition would be any kinder, less corrupt and more democratic? Or would it be another South American ,Pinochet-esque imposition with an equally cavalier attitude to human rights and democracy? Right-wing placemen certainly aren’t going to have the ordinary Venezuelan citizens’ interests as their priority , that is for sure.
“However, the real question, is whether a handpicked opposition would be any kinder, less corrupt and more democratic?”
A handpicked US puppet, would be anything but democratic, but then again the Great Satan’s goal isn’t one of bringing democracy to Venezuela, it is however one of self interest.
We’ll have to see. But given that the people of Venezuela don’t have a democracy now either, they’re hardly going to be worse off, are they?
If the alleged Opposition refuse to take part in elections then you might have a point.
They even ordered the UN Election watchers not to oversee the last election.
The problem for the opposition has always been – If we win who gets what?
This is one reason why they refuse to stand.
Speaking of Democracy- what do you make of a nation where the opponent gets 3 million plus more votes than the winner
due to an Electoral College where votes are based on slavery.
Hypocrisy and irony indeed.
Pompeo’s so dumb he make Reagan and W Bush look like two intellectuals.
Yosamite Sam’s no great shakes either.
“Pompeo’s so dumb he make Reagan and W Bush look like two intellectuals.”
When Reagan left office in 89, the US had swung from being the world’s biggest creditor, to the world’s biggest debtor. Mind you Reagan had no problem subsidising the Panamanian drug dealing dictator Noriega, until he proved stubborn and a flimsy excuse was manufactured to remove him.
Oh I don’t think Guaido would be a more democratic president, he’s crossed the Rubicon, and headed into Rome, but Pompey hasn’t fled, much to his dismay.
Martinned;
Maduro was elected. What is not democratic about Venezuela?
Former US President Carter: Venezuela’s Electoral System “Best in the World”
“As a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we’ve monitored, I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.”
https://www.globalresearch.ca/former-us-president-carter-venezuelan-electoral-system-best-in-the-world/5305779
And what has he said about the last couple of elections?
I’ll wait…
Never mind. The answer is nothing, because the Carter Centre hasn’t been allowed into Venezuela to monitor anything since somewhere around 2011/2012.
The line that Maduro is bad but sovereignty matters is half wrong. Maduro is only what the 1% in Venezuela and the 1% in the US and the 1% in the UK say he is in the corporate media. They say Assange is a rapist. They say Corbyn is a islamo-communist terrorist. They say Craig Murray is a crazy conspiracy theorist. AOC is just a bartender. Maduro is just a bus driver. They say the people who threaten their profiteering neoliberal interests are dictators, conspiracists, rapists, madmen, Trots and anti-semites.
“parties excluded from the democratic process” — because they did not do the paperwork required, much like ChangeUK not registering their logo in time for EU elections
“although it falls well short of some of the brutal Arab dictatorships the west backs, where if citizens could vote leaders would get 98% of the vote” — Venezuela falls much further short than the USA or UK. Fearing a replay of election rigging in Florida and Mexico, Venezuela created a bulletproof electoral system the US could not hack. Jimmy Carter called it the best in the world. Maduro won by about the same margin as Obama in elections certified by hundreds of international observers, the opposition, opposing candidates, etc. Cleaner than Brexit!
“even slight criticism can result in jail or death”
— The perpetrators of the 2002 coup were never even jailed (!?!) because of fear of US using it as a pretext for further violence. This is why Guaido is not arrested for treason. Similarly, Leopoldo Lopez, the multi-millionaire owner of Polar foods, which has a monopoly on staples like corn flour and uses this for economic warfare, was involved in the 2002 coup. Yet he only faced arrest for violent guarimbas in 2014 that lead to many, many deaths at the hands of opposition protesters, including lynching black people. He was recently released under house arrest. Yesterday he walked into the Chilean embassy after participating in Guaido’s coup! Then he waltzed over to the Spanish embassy instead. In contrast, the UK trapped Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy for 8 years, ignoring international law, for the crime of publishing the truth about US war crimes. This is but one of many reasons the UK is more corrupt and authoritarian than Venezuela.
“whether a handpicked opposition would be any kinder, less corrupt and more democratic?”
Venezuela is a democratic socialist country. They believe increasing democracy is the path to a more socially civilised society. Neoliberalism, which led up to the Caracazo, only meant hunger and misery for the people. They revolted and gave birth to a democratic revolution. After 20 years, Venezuela has much deeper, more grass roots, and more diverse democracy than somewhere like the UK. If we compare the reports of the UN special rapporteurs who visited UK and Venezuela around the same time, the reports were not drastically dissimilar. The UK “created a humanitarian crisis for disabled people,” and reports of a humanitarian crisis in Venezuela were exaggerated.
Brad,
I agree with everything you say, other than a difference in understanding of the reasons why the purportedly main opposition parties refused to participate in recent elections. 🙂 Suffice it to say, they weren’t barred from participating, as those in the West smearing Maduro like to tell us.
Obviously the “opposition” parties refused to participate in elections because they would have put up a shockingly bad performance. It would not have looked good if they had got, say, 6% of the vote; even the BBC would be hard pressed to make that sound like any kind of success.
By abstaining from the election process, they opened the door for the Western MSM tosuggest, libellously, that the government somehow prevented them from taking part.
With complete control of the official media, all kinds of bare-faced lies can be established as things “everybody knows”. Which brings us back to Julian Assange.
It’s all perfectly summed up by the picture that says:
“First they came for the journalists. We don’t know what happened after that”.
https://pics.me.me/thumb_first-they-came-for-the-journalist-we-dont-know-what-48082643.png
Thanks, Tom. Nice pic. 🙂
Good post. Chavez was quite a guy – a strategic genius. Dual power like this has never lasted so long without civil war anywhere.
The compradores, fascists, USA-lovers, fingernail-pullers, oligarchs and their professional-class hangers on, let’s call them the “opposition” (words such as “neoliberal” are just ridiculous), retained power over much of the country, including most of the media and of course in the traditional professions such as most of the law, and among school-teachers, and even in most of the trade union scene. Chavez couldn’t destroy the bastards’ positions. So what do you do? You go round them. As Craig rightly says, the reforms that Chavez introduced have improved the lot of the poor considerably. And there was no civil war. No big confrontation. Eventually there would come a time – and that time may be now – when dual power could no longer last but wow – look how long it did last. It could well be that the right-wing scum have overplayed their hand once again as they did in 2002 when the level of support for the Chavez government from the poor in Caracas took them and their most “expert” “advisers” in “how to run a coup” by surprise. I wouldn’t like to predict whether if that’s what has happened it will play out slow or fast. Especially in view of the drift in Ecuador and Brazil and the strength of pro-US forces in those countries and Colombia too. In any case, events in Venezuela should be viewed in the context of the entire Hispanic and Lusophone world.
Apology if this has been posted earlier but I only came across this article yesterday and readers might find it interesting also. http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1905/S00001/40000-dead-venezuelans-under-us-sanctions-media-ignores.htm
As a Kiwi I can tell you Scoop are very leftfield in NZ. I’m not dissing the veracity of their report, only pointing out the fact that it took Scoop to break this story even in a liberal media environment like NZ.
NZ is in Five Eyes but ever since the Nuclear Free status and L’Affair Rainbow it has followed an essentially non-aligned or part aligned foreign policy. We went troops to Afghanistan because it was UN sanctioned but only unarmed engineers doing reconstruction to Southern Iraq after the invasion who had to be withdrawn when the security situation deteriorated (in part due to British stupidity and brutality).
I follow the NZ new online but I didn’t even know Scoop were still going. Nobody I know has mentioned them. I haven’t seen them quoted in comments sections.
If an article cries in the wilderness will anyone listen?
“…candidates and parties excluded from the democratic process…”
I presume you are referring to the ‘candidates and parties’ who opted not to stand in the last elections, in proclamation of their opposition to Maduro? ‘Exclusion’ is a mantra employed by the MSM.
The following linked article by John Pilger provides a very readable overview of his reading of the situation in Venezuela. I personally have no reason to doubt the veracity of what he reports.
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/02/22/john-pilger-the-war-on-venezuela-is-built-on-lies/
Borncynical
Thanks for the article, fantastic piece by John Pilger as always.
Andyoldlabour,
Glad to be of help!:-)
J.
“candidates and parties excluded from the democratic process”
The opposition have excluded themselves, and quite deliberately, so that they can make the “Maduro has no democratic legitimacy” claim. Maduro was elected in free and fair elections, as judged by international observers. In previous elections where the opposition did field presidential candidates they did not do very well despite massive financial and media support from wealthy Venezuelan elites.
Liberals are against Trump only until he starts bombing foreign countries and deposing elected leaders who stray from the neoliberal Washington Consensus. If the past two or three years have had any major positive in politics it is that people have had their eyes fully opened to what liberals (aka ‘moderates’, ‘centrists’) actually are.
Even Bernie Sanders is having to tread carefully on this.
When Trump starts threatening violence or throwing military weight around he seems to suddenly win over his harshest critics on the liberal side. I’ve always thought the real political divide is between authoritarians and libertarians, and it crosses party boundaries . Many who describe themselves as progressives are in fact deeply authoritarian and hawkish. These so-called liberal interventionists make up the vast bulk of Labour’s ‘moderate’ wing. They have this idealised notion that the west is pure good and any violence in our name is somehow righteous, they simply ignore the fact some will profit from misery.
The Labour moderates have exposed themselves time and again as comically hypocritical figures, about as far from righteous as it is possible to be. A year or two ago for example, they abstained en masse on a parliamentary motion calling for a halt to the sale of British bombs to Saudi, even though it was being widely reported the Saudis were targeting civilians in Yemen. Through the same period they were loudly condemning Russian bombs being dropped on civilians in east Aleppo. They have no credibility outside their own media. But I’d need to hear more about this antiwar sentiment you’re seeing on the Conservative side. I have not heard of even one of them being opposed to the US coup effort in Venezuela. .
There were Tories critical of planned Syrian action, in the big authorisation vote Cameron lost back in 2013. The one in which Ed Miliband took what was probably his bravest stand as leader. Whether he fully understood the implications , who knows?
A few of the more conscientious Tories have concerns over the lack of any parliamentary oversight of special forces and covert ops. Crispin Blunt former chairman of the Commons foreign affairs committee, stated last year “It is my view there is a gaping hole in parliamentary oversight.”, pointing out other countries with similar elite forces – such as Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Norway and the US – subject their forces to democratic scrutiny.
Well of course, Goose. It’s basic chimp psychology. The best way to get everyone to unite (if only temporarily) behind the leader is to conjure up a THREAT FROM OUTSIDE. All totalitarian leaders do it habitually – and the USA has been a totalitarian regime for decades.
You should read what Sigmund Freud had to say on the subject in his book “Civilization and its Discontents”, published in 1930. He was worried that modern civilization could not hold together without the pressure of an external threat to hold it together. Otherwise he felt sure that it would spontaneously break up into warring tribes – like the Greens and the Blues in Byzantium, the pro-Trump and anti-Trump camps in the USA, etc.
Civilization and culture, Freud concedes, are essential to a balanced life. Without them, we would have chaos. Yet we cannot help resenting them, feeling oppressed and caged by them. Freud argues that individual liberty is not a benefit of culture, but a value that culture actually threatens to extinguish. In a passage that is startlingly prophetic of 1960s thinking, he declares that society systematically forbids a whole range of pleasurable activities, ranging (in the case of sex, naturally) from incest through homosexuality to sexuality among children and even between the unmarried – thereby, he implies, taking most of the fun out of it. After briskly demolishing the Christian ideal of loving everyone (even one’s enemies) as hopelessly unrealistic, he comes to one of his central points: that human beings can be made to cooperate and even treat one another decently; but only when they are given an external, alien enemy on whom to vent their aggression. This conclusion could have come straight out of “Mein Kampf”.
And on it goes..
Britain’s foremost liberal media pusher of Russigate today headlines with ‘Populists are far more likely to believe conspiracy theories.’
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/01/revealed-populists-more-likely-believe-conspiracy-theories-vaccines
Nice timing too, with the Guardian having sought to dismiss as a conspiracy theory any suggestion this Venezuela operation is about oil, even after Bolton confessed openly on US TV that it is about the oil.
No surprise Lopez, Guaido’s more popular and better known colleague, has gone to the Chile embassy and requested Asylum.
Guaido will be lucky to survive the week. Hence the media suggestions that the troops have been aggressive rather than incredibly patient. (Ukraine again and the Heavenly Hundred – murdered not by Yanukovych’s Berkut men, but by Georgian snipers who mostly targeted Policemen).
The handful of troops with blue marks supporting Guaido were carrying M4 weapons – which must have been part of the recent deliveries from the US. They are not Venezuelan army weapons.
Fun game for all – in a country with 53% black or mixed race, where shades of brown strongly indicate class – Spot the brown man at a Guaido rally.
López (who was under arrest at his luxury home, found guilty of inciting murderous violence in earlier demonstrations) and family moved on; are currently holed-up at the Spanish embassy, without having yet applied for asylum.
https://www.eldiario.es/internacional/presencia-Leopoldo-Lopez-equilibrio-Gobierno_0_894510699.html
“When a CIA-backed military coup is attempted by a long term CIA puppet, roared on by John Bolton…”. And, of course, the Democrats, when they can spare a moment from their obsessive outrage at a level of Russian interference in the US election which the attempted overthrow of the democratically elected Venezuelan government puts firmly in perspective as the complete irrelevance that it is. Another example of why they cannot attack Trump on his policies, since they’re pretty much indistinguishable from their own.
True. The difference between the Republicans and Democrats is the difference between being mauled by a crocodile or an alligator.
Fascist?
Assange broke UK law, he was then punished for it. He recieved legal representation and was convicted in open Court, in public. Not exactly the hallmarks of fascist justice.
Your definition of fascist is wildly inaccurate.
“The deprivation of liberty of Mr. Assange is arbitrary and in contravention of articles 9 and 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and articles 7, 9(1), 9(3), 9(4), 10 and 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.”
UN Working Group on Arbitrary detention, Human Rights Council, 4 December 2015.
The UN found his arbitrary detention to be “cruel, inhuman and degrading”, and tantamount to torture. The UK remains in violation of the UN decision. It is very difficult to see how the word ‘fascist’ is “wildly inaccurate” in this context.
LOL. You probably know nothing about the British judiciary. Your forefathers did in the Republic.
Craig writes, “The MSM today is full of video of water cannons against “protestors” and a horrible video of a military vehicle ramming a group. But it has all been very carefully edited to exclude hours of footage of the same military vehicles being pelted and set alight with molotov cocktails, and shot at.”
Two questions:
1) any links for the unedited footage of protestors attacking the policing and military?
2) Does the act of throwing stones and petrol bombs at armoured vehicles justify the police or the military ramming protestors? Does that justification change when it comes to Palestinians throwing stones at the IDF, or indeed Irish nationalists / British loyalists attacking the RUC / PSNI in Northern Ireland?
The ramming of protesters happened also during the recently failed ‘trojan horse’ coup. Defecting soldiers stole an MV4 armoured vehicle and rammed it through roadblocks and the crowd. Here’s the video:
https://ruptly.tv/en/videos/20190224-044
Defecting soldiers are reported to have stolen 8 MV4 amoured cars. Same people, same tactics? They have been known to drive buses over top of police lines (2017, 2 officers killed)
It’s impossible to tell who is doing the ramming/killing or even if it is a real event.
I wouldn’t believe anything in the Western media on the subject.
I second IrishU’s two questions and demand that Murray produces the “very carefully edited” stuff on which he bases his assertion. Will he dare to ignore this legitimate request?
‘the “very carefully edited” stuff on which he bases his assertion’ was all over all news channels Bostock.
Where are the unedited clips? As Craig must have viewed these in order to claim that the clips shown on the MSM are carefully edited. No?
@IrishU
I take it you don’t watch RT, then? Sadly, I thought of you when they showed the scenes again this morning. You should try it. You might be enlightened about all sorts of subjects.
We’ve gone from saving the planet from fossil fuel use to fighting over it’s oil reserves, doesn’t give one much hope of world co-operation in battling climate change.
I think it’s good news for him. That’s the matter dealt with and out of the way, one less thing to be concerned about. Does anyone know how much time he’ll actually have to do? I thought maybe 6 months but I was reading earlier that it could be as little as 2 months. He’ll be able to walk the streets freely and if he keeps his nose clean for a year, he’ll be free to go wherever he wants.
I’m assuming that since he’s an Australian citizen, then the US extradition request can be legally tied up for a reasonably long time so once he’s out of jail, it’s going to be difficult for the UK to extradite an Australian citizen to the USA or anywhere else for that matter. The best they could do is send him back to Australia.
In a hopefully balanced way – I wish to share and consider certain factors pertaining to Venezuela.
i) There was actually an election ( accompanied by an offer to have international observers).
ii) The offer was rejected by Guaido and the US.
iii) The US declares Guido the President of Venezuela.
iv) There are approximately 50 member states of the UN which recognise Guaido; so well over two-thirds of UN member states accept Maduro.
v) There is economic hardship in Venezuela.
vi) The US has imposed economic sanctions and seeks to commandeer Venezuelan funds and property (the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington) within US its control.
Can we accept the foregoing as basic facts?
Put the question of right or left politics aside for a moment.
Question: Do the Venezuelan people have a right to elect who they want to lead them?
Question: Is this not reminiscent of the embargo imposed on Cuba?
Question: With the Russia/US international divide as a global political reality – is this not reminiscent of the US efforts, by way of proxy support for terrorists in Syria to effect ‘regime change’?
Question: Is it not a reality that Venezuelan oil was nationalised; so isn’t the US motivation more one of trying to get financial control again over Venezuelan oil via US oil companies returning to reverse the nationalised control; or – does it appear that the US has any real concern and care for the long-term welfare of the Venezuelan people – like they did for the Iraqis or Libyans or Syrians?
Viewed in a very serious way – as a lawyer – I believe in a rule based system as a far more rational and desirable alternative to the rule of the jungle. So, we in the world have the UN, we have international law, we have domestic laws which govern our conduct. Not perfect – but rational in the desire to have rules to be followed in the collective interest. My country of birth is Jamaica, a small nation state in the Caribbean. All the Caribbean nations are small. So, the events in Venezuela, for reason of proximity ( e.g. there is short sea divide between Trinidad and Tobago (TT) from the shores of Venezuela; many Venezuelans have fled to TT for economic reasons). I also believe that not merely small nations, but all nations ( e.g. Iran) should be exceptionally concerned about adherence to the ‘rule of law’ in the international arena.
If, for a moment I thought that the US/Guaido had the best interest of the Venezuelan people at heart – my sentiments and support would be with the US/Guaido.
For me, it is like my disliking the bully at school and siding with the little boy to ward off the bully.
That is how I see it.
As with Cuba – there will be ups and downs – but there is no magic solution forthcoming via the US/Guaido. At some stage the oil prices will rise again and Venezuela will see better days and hopefully will be prudent in how the blessings from their oil is handled.
“There are approximately 50 member states of the UN which recognise Guaido; so well over two-thirds of UN member states accept Maduro.”
Interestingly when confronted with the above figure by a reporter, stating that the number hadn’t moved beyond fifty. A US spokesperson pulled a face as if to say, why man did you ask such a killer question.
The appetite to remove Maduro, appears not to have reached the other 143 UN members.
.
Courtenay,
I agree with your reading of the situation. The only point I would take issue with is the conflict between two of your sentiments:
“There was actually an election/Do the Venezuelan people have a right to elect who they want to lead them?” and
“If, for a moment, I thought that the US/Guaido had the best interest of the Venezuelan people at heart – my sentiments and support would be with the US/Guaido”.
I think we are on dangerous territory if an outside, foreign power is deemed to be within its rights to overthrow any elected government which hasn’t delivered results in the best interests of its people. On that basis the UK Tory party had better beware. 🙂
Do read my comment in its entirety.
Re: ” I think we are on dangerous territory if an outside, foreign power” ( and I said more).
Actually – when you read what I have said – we are more in agreement than disagreement.
Courtenay
“Actually – when you read what I have said – we are more in agreement than disagreement”.
Undoubtedly. I just wish those ‘in power’ recognised the sense and wisdom in adhering to the rule of law.
Cheers
J.
“or – does it appear that the US has any real concern and care for the long-term welfare of the Venezuelan people – like they did for the Iraqis or Libyans or Syrians?”
You left out Ukraine Courtney! It will soon have removed US puppet Poroshenko in an overwhelming defeat. Decent people are sick of the US and its proxy wars. Instead of interfering in other countries affairs it should be paying off its national debt. Currently standing at:
https://www.usdebtclock.org
“Instead of interfering in other countries affairs it should be paying off its national debt. ”
That’s a ridiculous comment. As the monopoly sovereign fiat currency issuer, why would the US gov need to, or want to, pay off its “debt”?
If the holders of US Treasuries preferred to hold cash instead of govt bonds, they would have either never have bought them in the first place, or would sell them in the secondary bond markets at any time they liked.
Govt debt = private sector savings.
Even if the US govt, for some bizarre reason, decided to buy back all its bonds (above and beyond any QE operations), the private sector would soon be clamoring for new govt bond issues, as somewhere safe to save US financial assets – which happened when the Australian govt last ran budget surpluses and temporarily curtailed bond issuance.
There’s a good argument for US deficit spending to be used for socially and environmentally beneficial purposes, rather than military expenditure or tax cuts for the wealthy, or for the US govt to change the law, abolish bond sales and instead simply run an overdraft at the Fed, but those are entirely different discussions.
Well actually countries that owned them have been selling US treasury bonds like there’s no tomorrow. Who in their right mind would want to buy the debt of a dying empire? As to your argument Govt debt = private sector savings it’s a load of bollocks. And as to the petro-dollar being the fiat currency that only holds good while there is confidence in it. The US annual GNP cannot nearly cover its debt. Remember the Deutschmark after the First World War?
Why should any other country be held responsible for its national debt when the US sets such a bad example. Come to think of it why should individuals pay off loans?
Part of your last paragraph is fair except you use the term deficit spending as though it should be encouraged. This is what is wrong with all governments, their accounting, as with bankers’ liquidity ratio, it is dishonest. How can they expect individuals to be honest when they are so corrupt.
John your economics is dated. You need to read modern monetary theory. Government deficits in a fiat currency zone are the economy in credit. Government regulates the money supply through taxation. It gets a lot of the money it creates back through taxes. Meanwhile the economy is boosted by government spending.
Just like the stupid Austerity in a age when borrowing rates are at historic lows tanked the economy as government spending was greatly reduced.
NZ has also run surpluses, expressly to use them to settle international debt and only for at most 3 years. The economy was sufficiently buoyant to not be too badly affected. But doing it long term sucks money out of the economy.
This is also why the Norwegians put their oil income into their SWF and ban it from largely investing in Norway. The Norwegian govt also runs a govt deficit as that is sensible economics since they have a fiat currency. In recent times during the credit crunch it drew down from the SWF to stop the deficit getting too big. Note not to wipe the deficit out but to regulate its size to sensible levels.
This idea that govts with fiat currencies should not run deficits is economically illiterate. When you issue the money you have to be both in deficit and tax those in your economy, to regulate the money supply.
You cannot compare govts with fiat currencies with household or company accounts. Be VERY sceptical of any politician who tries that, outside of the Devolved nations. Scotgov’s borrowing powers are very carefully prescribed precisely because it raises only a small fraction of it’s income (directly) and does not have a fiat currency.
The above is why I think iScotland should plant to mint a fiat currency as soon as possible post Independence. It might be able to issue oil bonds but borrow money in someone else’s currency? That is what Argentina did and it serially defaulted and still cannot rid itself and its economy of the US Dollar.
I think we may have to limit how much you can hold in rUK bank accounts for some time after Independence. Mind you once iScotland leaves the Sterling zone with our oil reserves, alcohol duties and positive balance of payments Brexit rUK’s currency will be a target of the Soros’s of the world. Once your balance of payments gets to 9% the vultures circle. That was the trigger for Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Portugal to get the treatment.
I predict that Sterling will tank big time once iScotland leaves the Sterling zone. It might tank if we are informally in Sterlingisation. I fully expect Westminster to BEG us to enter a currency share and tie us in it as long as they can once a Yes vote happens because of the risks to rUK economy from our leaving the Sterling zone.
rUK will be okay, it may have to suffer the pound to tank to very low levels but that will make rUK exports cheap, solving the balance of payments. After the Crunch Iceland devalued its currency, jailed the bankers, closed the bank and went fishing. It’s fine now.
John,
“You left out Ukraine Courtney!”
Mate – come to think of it – I left out many countries.
John,
Tried to get a reply to you earlier. It simply would not go through.
Anyway – In the interim ‘ Borncynical ” came fully on board with me.
So – guess – I have nothing further to say ( for now – at least).
Hope you are well Courtenay and apologies for not spelling your name correctly last time. 🙂
I am busy in court – tired – overworked – underpaid – but happy.
Thanks John – hope you are well too.
“If these delinquents with their black consciences* pulled the same stunt back in the twenties when people were judged not in accordance with strictly delineated articles of the Criminal Code but instead operated with a ‘revolutionary understanding of what is right,’ oh how these turncoats would have received an altogether different form of punishment!” Mikhail Sholokhov, 1965
*Soviet dissident writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel
Juan Guido is a counter-revolutionary too. He wants to bring democracy to Venezuela and change the regime of the Worker’s Paradise from which many have fled to escape starvation, the stinker!
Guaido, the US, has zero intention of bringing democracy to Venezuela. The exact opposite in fact. Today, Maduro and the Venzuelan people are fighting for their democracy and independence, threatened by that democracy oppressor, the US of A
M.J.
But Venezuela already has democracy.
Today’s MediaLens article on corporate ‘news’ media coverage of the sanctions against Venezuela:
http://www.medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2019/893-venezuela-blitz-part-2-press-freedom-sanctions-and-oil.html
It always is about oil, and it will not stop until we have a replacement for liquid fuel for mobile power.
Considering the obvious connection between oil and America’s desire to go to war it is no wonder that so much FUD has been thrown at climate change and Green policies.
Luckily batteries can meet most transport needs, the price is still falling. Aircraft are another matter.
The aircraft thing is changing. Short hop electric aircraft are here now. As materials science progresses and airframes get lighter the range of an electric plane gets longer.
Also lighter more capacious batteries than Li-Ion are possible and in development.
Note liquid fuels are heavy too. So an electric plane saves fuel weight.
90% of the world’s trade travels by sea, carried by 90,000 vessels.
Were those vessels considered to be a country, their combined pollution would place them in sixth worse position.
It might be more about whether the oil is only sold for dollars or not. Only the use of dollars to price oil supports the value of the dollar and those countries that have been regime changed or are threatened with regime change tend to be those that have or hve threatened to, priced their oil in other currencies. Venezuela’s gold mines look like they could fill a few gaps in at Fort Knox as well.
Someone has pointed out that it takes more energy to extract and refine Venezuelan oil than is present in the oil so not all oil reseves are equal.
Let me see if I got this straight: It’s fine for Maduro to cling onto power only with support of the military, but as soon as the military switches sides it’s suddenly a massive evil conspiracy? Gotcha…
P.S. 50 weeks for Assange is longer than I expected (as I mentioned in the comments section of another post a few weeks ago). I would have given him more credit for the fact that he didn’t exactly spend those years on a tropical beach somewhere, and for the fact that his concern about being sent to the US wasn’t entirely unreasonable. The sentencing remarks are here: https://www.judiciary.uk/judgments/sentencing-remarks-of-hhj-deborah-taylor-r-v-assange/
“The sentencing remarks are here”
And what a pack of self serving lies they are. I’m recalling all of your previous statements on the matter.
Wikileaks reports that tomorrow at 10Am “there will be a hearing in Westminster Magistrate Court on the US extradition request.”
That sounds right. The extradition hearing has to come pretty quickly after someone’s been arrested, because you can’t detain someone indefinitely just because you plan to have a hearing at some point. There are human rights standards for that. Of course, now that Assange has gone from being in pre-trial detention to serving a sentence, s. 76B of the Extradition Act applies: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/41/section/76B
(Which basically means that they can hold off on deciding anything to do with the extradition until he’s finished serving his 50 weeks. Which is, for the avoidance of doubt, a good thing if you’re trying to avoid being sent to the US.)
The main rush is to hand him over before a possible Labour government gets in which won’t hand him over.
Forget law – this is naked politics.
Speed is of the essence.
Ken,
Politics and law together.
The 50 week Bail Act sentence will be fully served. In the interim the extadition case will be working its way through the court system from start to final appeal finish.
Then – back to your ‘politics’. I doubt, however, that the UK justice system will want to be seen to be flagrantly political.
We shall see.
There is zero chance that all the extradition litigation will get sorted in 50 weeks, unless Assange for some reason chooses not to avail himself of all the appeal options open to him.
The date of the hearing for extradition was set before the sentencing for bail infringement.
“It’s fine for Maduro to cling onto power ”
Is Maduro clinging onto power, or is he (more likely) fending off an illegal coup by a foreign backed country, whose goal is to replace the democratically elected president with an imposter, answerable to a foreign nation, shades of Poland under the USSR spring to mind.
The former. There is no democratically elected President in Venezuela. That’s exactly the problem.
If it is a problem, it is a problem for Venezuela alone.
And it is not a fact that ‘there is no democratically elected President in Venezuela’. Plenty of nations recognise Maduro as the democratically elected leader. The US has no superior right to judge or make pronouncements. I would discount anything reported or said in the Western media on the subject.
If that is a problem for Venezuela alone, what are the Russians meddling in the country for?
For the same reasons that they were invited to “meddle” in Syria.
More UN countries recognise Maduro as the legitimate president than recognise Guaido. Falcón and Bertucci, knew fine well that Maduro was a more popular candidate than themselves, thus they attempted to have him removed from the ballot paper, again shades of Putin and Navalny’s exclusion at work.
Really? I’d love to see some reason behind this statement.
Venezuela used a British made system. And what’s more, Maduro was elected in an election where more than 150 international election observers unanimously agreed that the election was legitimate by international standards.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Venezuela
I think you’re confused. There were (understandably, from Maduro’s perspective) no independent observers for the last presidential election.
According to the pro-government Venezuelan National Electoral Council, 170 foreign observers were invited to witness the election.[23] Maduro—like his predecessor Chávez—was able to use government resources which included funds, establishments and workers to promote himself during his electoral campaigning.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_presidential_election,_2013
So all those people going into voting booths and choosing Maduro didn’t happen then.
What didn’t happen was any viable opposition candidate being permitted onto the ballot. Which is a rather essential part of an election.
Pure Bullshit, Martinned. And not for the first time.
Is judge Deborah Taylor the daughter of Peter Taylor, the former Lord Chief Justice of England?
Taylor blagged his way to an exhibition at Pembroke College, Cambridge, but he only managed to get a second-class degree. Something tells me he didn’t pay back the money for the exhibition. Family name Teicher, he took silk before he was 40. His record includes prosecuting the mentally disabled man Stefan Kiszko for the sex murder of an 11-year-old girl, a crime of which Kiszko was completely innocent. (And I don’t just mean his conviction was unsafe: he should never have been prosecuted, let alone convicted, and he was literally proven innocent by DNA. He ended up serving 16 years in jail for this vile crime which he did not commit, protected from other prisoners for at least some of that time under Rule 43, and then he died before he could receive any payment in “compensation” for this injustice. Interestingly his defence counsel who was co-responsible for getting him convicted later was David Waddington, who later became one of the most idiotic Tory Home Secretaries of modern times.)
Deborah Taylor, the red judge who today sentenced Julian Assange to 50 weeks, and who spat that it wasn’t for him to decide the nature of his cooperation with the Swedish investigation, was once a Judicial Appointments Commissioner. She seems well-connected in the City, having worked at Blackfriars Crown Court and at the Mayor‘s and City of London County Court. (The “Mayor” in that title doesn’t mean Sadiq Khan.)
Who knows? Maybe she’s the daughter of darts champion Phil Taylor…
N_
Peter Taylor had four children, one of whom was called Deborah. It would seem highly likely that they are one and the same.
@ N_
On a point of information: At the time Taylor went up to Cambridge, open scholarships and exhibitions were awarded by the colleges on the basis of performance in the entrance exams and interviews. Unless N_ has had sight of Tayor’s exam papers (unlikely) or attended the interview as a fly on the ceiling (even more unlikely), then I fail to see how N_ can justify his assertion that Taylor “blagged his way to an exhibition”. Perhaos he would care to explain?
Secondly, although colleges tend to expect open scholars and exhibitioners to get firsts, there is no obligation – contractual or moral – for any open scholar or exhibitioner to repay any open scholarship or exhibition monies. No college would dream of asking them to do so.
Thirdly, the value of an exhibition at the time would have been unlikely to exceed £ 40 or so a year.
So all of that is just a load of your usual crap. But thank you for pointing out that his parents were Jews who emigrated to the UK. It is highly relevant to whatever you’re trying to say.
N_ didn’t say that Taylor’s parents were Jewish. The Wiki article he linked to did. Which means that this information is “highly relevant” to whatever YOU are trying to say.
Georgie boy
N_ only quoted bits of a quite long Wikipedia entry on the late Lord Justice Taylor. Is it not interesting that one of the few bits he did quote was the bit which tells the reader that Lord Justice Taylor was a Jew? Is that information relevant to whatever N_ was trying to say, do you think?
Charles – I just did a word search for this entire page and the only mention of “Jew” comes from you, me and Borncynical.
Chas,
I have read N’s comment again and I can see no mention of Judge Taylor’s religion at all, are you reading something else? What precisely are you trying to infer by drawing our attention to it in the Wiki entry. I would have thought it was an unimportant detail, which is why it wasn’t mentioned.
I notice you don’t refer to the treatment of Stefan Kiszko, surely one of the more prominent miscarriages of justice at the time, do you regard that as OK or is that what you call the usual crap? Trust in the justice system is one of the important things being discussed in the Assange case, loss of trust in justice is one of the movers and motivators in a desire for reform or change of government.
pete,
I agree with you. N_doesn’t mention Judge Taylor’s religion. He mentions his original family name but that could just as easily have been of German origin; many immigrant families over the years changed their family names because of persecution over their German connections. The Jewish origin only becomes apparent from reading the Wikipedia entry.
I think you will agree Martinned that now a precedent has been set with raiding a foreign embassy to remove Julian Assange it is all right for properly-elected Madura’s police and special services to go into the Spanish Embassy in Caracas and frogmarch Leopoldo Lopez out to stand trial for attempting to overthrow the legitimate government.
https://www.rt.com/news/457985-venezuela-coup-fizzles-lopez-chile/
John,
If I am reading this correctly then the Spanish and Brazilian Embassies are granting political asylum to some of Guaido’s supporters?
Dangerous precedents being set in this entire Assange matter.
No one raided any embassy. The Ecuadorians kicked Assange out.
The UK seriously considered ‘storming’ the Ecuadorian Embassy when Assange first took refuge there. Presumably they listened to legal advice suggesting it wasn’t such a good idea; an era when legal counsel meant something to the Government.
They may have considered nuking it, but the point is that they didn’t. No one “stormed” the embassy (as you put it) and no one “raided” it (as Goss puts it). How on earth can anything be discussed seriously on here when posters claim things which simply did not happen (and all this only a couple of weeks ago)??
CB,(15.38)
As you appear not to have read my comments properly, I was talking about 7 years ago. The reason I mentioned it was to pre-empt comments from blinkered people who might be inclined to claim that a country of integrity such as the UK would never dream of breaking international rules and conventions. The fact they even considered storming the Embassy against the will of the Ecuadorians says it all. ‘Storming’ is precisely the word used for it at the time, as seen in the Julian Assange documentary film ‘Risk’ which followed JA from 2010-2016 and was shown on BBC4 two weeks ago.
I’m sorry Martinned the Ecuadorians granted him asylum. Only the corrupt US puppet Lenin Moreno sanctioned the removal of political asylum.
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/INA-Papers-The-Corruption-Case-Against-Ecuadors-President-Lenin-Moreno-20190331-0007.html
Which as democratically elected president he was legally entitled to do.
Kempe, that just shows your ignorance in international law and political asylum.
I’m not going to go over the whole (non-)concept of diplomatic asylum again. Instead, I’m simply going to refer you to this article just published by the (presumably not suspect) New York Review of Books entitled “Why Assange and Ecuador fell out”: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/05/01/why-assange-and-ecuador-fell-out/
And I saw with my own eyes UK agents going inside the embassy and physically removing Assange.
Did you see any sign of them making a forced entry?
Precisely. To use the word “raided” – as Goss did – is to imply forcible entry. There was no forcible entry.
See here:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/05/venezuela-and-binary-choice/comment-page-1/#comment-862327
Re Embassy forced entry, forced removal of Julian Assange
We were not party to what went on inside the embassy, The British police went inside, one account was that they were invited in. Mr Assange was bundled out.
All we have are non independent accounts of what transpired in between these events, we don’t know what was said. We are entitled to believe whatever version of events we like, the present Ecuadorian government is not sympathetic to Assange’s plight, they have a reason to lie as they stand to gain the benefit of an enormous loan, they are untrusted narrators. The US have a deep grudge against Assange for revealing their war crimes and data secrets, they are untrustworthy as UK allies, the UK is America’s lapdog, it cannot be trusted in this matter either, it will do whatever it is told.
I tell you, lacking any further information, to believe whatever you want.
No.
They gave permission for the Britsh to come into their Embassy to ‘ take ‘ Assange out.
A precedent has been set and maybe Maduro might copy that.
Personally I’d do what Cuba did years ago.
That is: I would ask people who wanted to got to the US to get on the boats supplied by the sending country and land them in Florida where they can experience ‘ Democracy ‘ in a close up and personal way that only the US can deliver.
Guaido and Lopez should be given first dibs.
For the purveyors and believers in Law – politics trumps all.
Everytime.
Blimey – If powerful States took any notice of Law – how the heck could they invade/bomb all these failed countries and steal their resources with no repercussions?
Might is Right.
That’s what defines Imperialism.
Not Law.
lol @ “maduro barely clings to power”. the coup was a farce.
Indeed.
US sanctions have done more than just exacerbate economic mismanagement. A report last week by a DC based think tank attributed 40,000 Venezuelan deaths since 2017 directly to US sanctions, with the rate of deaths increasing since the sanctions were made even harsher in January this year.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/venezuela-sanctions-us-excess-death-toll-economy-oil-trump-maduro-juan-guaido-jeffrey-sachs-a8888516.html
The Great Satan has form in South America Reagan, couldn’t remove Ortega using violence, of which the USA was carpeted by the ICJ, memories prove to be long, the Great Satan has sheer disdain for the ICJ now.
Ortega was finally removed by the very thing that Maduro is holding fast with sanctions. Nicaraguans eventually couldn’t take anymore sanctions and voted Ortega out, the Sandinista regime finally gave way.
Here’s hoping Maduro can hold out
The excess deaths in the U.S. since 2017 resulting from economic inequality have probably been considerably more than 40,000.
The regime change in Venezuela will be pursued by Washington, they have no choice.
The Iranians cannot be brought to heel by threats, who are in a defendable position. A position that could result in the free passage of shipping in the Straits of Hormuz being stopped…_
https://consortiumnews.com/tag/strait-of-hormuz/
Iran is also close enough to Russia to allow Russia to enact the Syrian scenario, should the US attempt anything.
They also sent various comfort gifts to Venezuela recently.
I fear that some quiet diplomacy between Russia and USA could see Russia abandon Venezuela to it’s fate, if the USA cooled it’s role in the Middle East. The Russian missile systems against US fleet and aircraft means they don’t have that top gun advantage of superiority today…_
Indeed.
How long must we wait before we have a rejuvenated, effective UN?
Erik Prince and Co @ Blackwater are a particularly stomach-turning mob.
Brings to mind John Cale’s brilliant take on mercenaries:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-p8XZw_StQ
I agree wholeheartedly, I can only hope that with the ready access to the internet that the public has now that it (the public) will reject the plain propaganda that the television has been spewing out at us non stop.
However, if the public DOES realise the lies being aimed at it there is little anyone can do. Our politicians feel like the do not have to account for their own behaviour, never mind that of their American Allies.
Sadly they have no shame…
There has been mass use of the internet for 20 years. Have conditions, clarity, activeness of mind improved for most of the population or deteriorated?
I doubt there is much to fear from support for Juan Guaido (Guaidog they call him). An amused friend posted this aerial view of the “never was – never will be” president of Venezuela jockeying for some kind of angle whereby it might look like he has a modicum of support, taken a few days back (27 March I think).
https://twitter.com/TopeteGLZ/status/1121944727081897985
The world of reality is not what people are led to believe. I have no difficulty in knowing what side I’m on either – but that has nothing to do with numbers – just decency.
The obvious question is still – why Guaido have not been under arrest. Venezuelan weak response sends signals to both US/Trump and Guaido that what he do – and continue to do will go unpunished. Major miscalculation by the authorities, they will not be able to to keep up with the force US/Trump will sooner or later commit.
Meanwhile, Assange is jailed for 1 year in jail. The criminal persecution is obvious, but who cares in the west today that are apparently too busy supporting a violent coup in Venezuela.
Jack,
” The obvious question is still – why Guaido have not been under arrest. Venezuelan weak response sends signals to both US/Trump and Guaido that what he do – and continue to do will go unpunished. Major miscalculation by the authorities, they will not be able to to keep up with the force US/Trump will sooner or later commit”
If the Venezuelan authorities arrested Guaido then the MSM would spin it say ‘oppression by the dictator’. If they leave him and try to restore the economy – time is on the side of Maduro. The US wants to advance provocations to provide excuses and pretexts to continue the economic and information/propaganda war on Venezuela. The miscalculation would be for Maduro to lose his cool.
Courtenay Barnett
“iff the Venezuelan authorities arrested Guaido then the MSM would spin it say ‘oppression by the dictator”
They are already saying that. For years.
I think that is a very dangerous and flawed way of thinking. Venezuela should not be dictated what to do by the same MSM and politicians that right now destroy Venezuela with the coup. Maduro is already called, and will be called, names no matter what he do. He needs to stop this once and for all, otherwhise he will end up like Yanukovich sooner or later.
I hear reports on Radio Sputnik that U.S. aircraft carriers are on the way. Maduro is wise to do nothing that would make it easier to justify a military intervention to the U.S. public.
lysias
If doing nothing against Guadio is the answer, then the only solution is that Maduro step down. If every fight and response is a threat – Maduro has nothing to gain by any resistance.
How could Maduro possibly win if he cant really push a response against Guadio?
Maduro wins by staying in power, denying control of the oil to the U.S., and thus dealing a severe blow to the credibility of U.S. power.
lysias
How do he stay in power with these attacks that will escalate and not stop?
US have already began reducing their import of the oil themselves.
How does he stay in power? Were you watching yesterday?
But how could he stay in power considering 1 the escalating threats against him and the venezuela state while 2 he “should not” arrest the source of these threats (Guaido)?
My brother,
What happened in Ukraine.
People are not stupid ( and – unlike the President there – I am not a comedian).
If Maduro won’t prosecute Guaido for fear of what the US regime might do then he’s as good as ceded Venezuela’s sovereignty to the US. He should act against this treason in accordance with Venezuela’s laws to reinforce his country’s sovereignty.
Guaido might have been set up by his handlers to provide such an excuse.
A year is beyond belief. In my area the local news often reports on those who jump bail or who decline to appear in court. I can’t recall anyone jailed for a year round here in respect of a similar crime.
Yes it is daunting. By the way, didn’t Tommy Robinson got a similar sentence recently?
I have read, in Spanish I suppose and from Venezuelan sources, that the Venezuelan Justice Ministry’s prosecutors have announced their intention to identify and arrest and prosecute all those responsible for yesterday’s insurrectional violence.
“Venezuela does have a rampant corruption problem. US sanctions exacerbate but are not the root cause of economic mismanagement.”
This is a bit facile. One can argue that USA has a rampant corruption problem that is continuing for so long that 99% of the corruption became “regulated and legalized”. One can argue the opposite. However, in the vicinity of Venezuela, can we point out a country without a “rampant corruption problem”? To make a judgement if the economy suffers more from local mismanagement or from American sabotage one has dig out more facts, but the sanctions and other form of sabotage are surely vicious.
Did you know that “insider trading” by US Senators is not a crime?
Yes – I did know that. The Republicans have been treating this as a jolly hoot for many years, were baffled at opposition to it, and have fought off efforts to lift the decriminalisation of the practice from Democrats.
Was just looking for a suitable link to back up my point. But it would probably give anyone a bit more of a laugh to look up “Republican inside trading”. We’re talking about male white Christians on the whole, every one of them a God-fearing righteous patriot. Surely we would expect nothing but good news stories from such a search.
The US empire is dying. The Venezuela debacle is showing it as the emperor with no clothes.
https://thesaker.is/behold-the-breathtaking-weakness-of-the-empire/
Well, if it’s really dying, why do you blow a gasket on here so often? Just have patience and wait a while! Look at me – I don’t think the US (forget the “Empire” rubbish) is dying and so I stay zen and smiling. Follow my lead and avoid a possible heart attack!
I have to say that it is about time that a coup were organised in the USA, as that country is undoubtedly not democratic.
The justification should not be to benefit the people of the USA, rather to ensure the safety of everyone else whose countries are constantly threatened with coups by US partisans. US folks will probably benefit economically as the military budget could be cut by 75% over a decade as the economy were realigned away from war. But worrying about Americans should be well down the list of priorities.
It is very important that Americans lose the right to choose their own leader as it might teach them what everyone else has to endure.
I am sure we all know how Americans will react to all that…..
Sauce for the goose…..
Indeed. All it needs is for China/Russia to declare that some random person is now the legitimate President of the United States. That’s how easy it is these days. Anyone can be President, provided a large State backs them.
The U.S. is badly in need of a new de Gaulle. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lack of candidates.
Did the US ever have an old De Gaulle?
You have a point there Charles, France never really embraced Nato, until de Gaulle was gone.