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The members of the Network of Intellectuals, Artists and Social Movements in Defense of Humanity (REDH), participants in the International Day for Democracy and Peace and in Solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution held in Caracas, support the constitutional President Nicolás Maduro Moros and the Venezuelan people in the face of the ongoing coup d’état and the announced military intervention by the U.S. government, along with its satellites.

Organized in commemoration of the National Day of Dignity in February 4, 1992, this day made it possible for us to receive updated and first-hand information on the effects of the economic war, the financial and commercial blockade, the intentional and selective shortages, the induced hyperinflation and an unprecedented media attack. It was inspiring to see once again the moral strength and patriotic conscience with which the Venezuelan people are facing this difficult moment in their history.

We received very significant data showing that Venezuela does not need “humanitarian aid”. As an example, the funds held in the U.S., which amounts to about $23 billion dollars, the country could import the medicines needed by the Venezuelan people for 20 years.

The Bolivarian process is a political project that has built and delivered to the population 2.5 million modern homes in only 8 years, it has carried out a massive annual vaccination campaign and ensures that 7.6 million children are in school cannot be compared to being a “humanitarian crisis”.

President Maduro’s legitimacy is beyond question. The data of the same electoral entity that recognized the victory of the opposition in the 2015 parliamentary elections, has documented that more than 9 million people participated in the presidential election of which 67.84 percent opted for Maduro (more than 6 million votes).

We appeal to the conscience of men and women who love peace and a world order based on dialogue, respect for civilized coexistence among nations, and the principles of international law. In Venezuela, the principle of State sovereignty is defended today. The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is at the epicenter of the global geopolitical dispute. The aggression of U.S. imperialism is against the peoples of Our America.

We support the path of sovereignty and independence of the Bolivarian process with all our forces. We call upon all intellectuals, artists and social movements to be protagonists in the defense of the Venezuelan people against the threat posed by the attitude of surrender that characterizes the Lima Group or Cartel.

Returning to the diplomacy of peace and Latin American unity promoted by Chávez and Fidel, the REDH ratifies its unwavering commitment to the Bolivarian revolutionary process and its self-determination.

Network in Defense of Humanity

Caracas February 4, 2019

By Edward Curtin

“And as the flames climbed high into the night
To light the sacrificial rite
I saw Satan laughing with delight
The day the music died”

– Don McLean, “American Pie”

The Nazis had a name for their propaganda and mind-control operations: weltanschauungskrieg – “world view warfare.” As good students, they had learned many tricks of the trade from their American teachers, including Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, who had honed his propagandistic skills for the United States during World War I and had subsequently started the public relations industry in New York City, an industry whose raison d’ȇtre from the start was to serve the interests of the elites in manipulating the public mind.

In 1941, U.S. Intelligence translated weltanschauungskrieg as “psychological warfare,” a phrase that fails to grasp the full dimensions of the growing power and penetration of U.S. propaganda, then and now. Of course, the American propaganda apparatus was just then getting started on an enterprise that has become the epitome of successful worldview warfare programs, a colossal beast whose tentacles have spread to every corner of the globe and whose fabrications have nestled deep within the psyches of many hundreds of millions of Americans and people around the world. And true to form in this circle game of friends helping friends, this propaganda program was ably assisted after WW II by all the Nazis secreted into the U.S. (“Operation Paperclip”) by Allen Dulles and his henchmen in the OSS and then the CIA to make sure the U.S. had operatives to carry on the Nazi legacy (see David Talbot’s The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, The CIA, and The Rise of America’s Secret Government, an extraordinary book that will make your skin crawl with disgust).

This went along quite smoothly until some people started to question the Warren Commission’s JFK assassination story. The CIA then went on the offensive in 1967 and put out the word to all its people in the agency and throughout the media and academia to use the phrase “conspiracy theory” to ridicule these skeptics, which they have done up until the present day. This secret document – CIA Dispatch 1035-960 – was a propaganda success for many decades, marginalizing those researchers and writers who were uncovering the truth about not just President Kennedy’s murder by the national security state, but those of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy. Today, the tide is turning on this score, as recently more and more Americans are fed up with the lies and are demanding that the truth be told. Even the Washington Post is noting this, and it is a wave of opposition that will only grow.

The CIA Exposed – Partially

But back in the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, some covert propaganda programs run by the CIA were “exposed.” First, the Agency’s sponsorship of the Congress of Cultural Freedom, through which it used magazines, prominent writers, academics, et al. to spread propaganda during the Cold War, was uncovered. This was an era when Americans read serious literary books, writers and intellectuals had a certain cachet, and popular culture had not yet stupefied Americans. The CIA therefore secretly worked to influence American and world opinion through the literary and intellectual elites. Frances Stonor Saunders comprehensively covers this in her 1999 book, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA And The World Of Arts And Letters, and Joel Whitney followed this up in 2016 with Finks: How the CIA Tricked the World’s Best Writers, with particular emphasis on the complicity of the CIA and the famous literary journal The Paris Review.

Then in 1975 the Church Committee hearings resulted in the exposure of abuses by the CIA, NSA, FBI, etc. In 1977 Carl Bernstein wrote a long piece for Esquire – “The CIA and the Media” – naming names of journalists and publications (The New York Times, CBS, etc.) that worked with and for the CIA in propagandizing the American people and the rest of the world. (Conveniently, this article can be read on the CIA’s website since presumably the agency has come clean, or, if you are the suspicious type, or maybe a conspiracy theorist,it is covering its deeper tracks with a “limited hangout,” defined by former CIA agent Victor Marchetti, who went rogue, as “spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting—sometimes even volunteering—some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further.”)

Confess and Move On

By the late 1970s, it seemed as if the CIA had been caught in flagrante delicto and disgraced, had confessed its sins, done penance, and resolved to go and sin no more.Seeming, however, is the nature of the CIA’s game. Organized criminals learn to adapt to the changing times, and that is exactly what the intelligence operatives did. Since the major revelations of the late sixties and seventies – MK Ultra, engineered coups all around the world, assassinations of foreign leaders, spying on Americans, etc. – no major program of propaganda has been exposed in the mainstream media. Revealing books about certain CIA programs have been written – e.g. Douglas Valentine’s important The Phoenix Program being one – and dissenting writers, journalists, researchers, and whistle blowers (Robert Parry, Gary Webb, Julian Assange, James W. Douglass, David Ray Griffin, Edward Snowden, et al.) have connected the U.S. intelligence services to dirty deeds and specific actions, such as the American engineered coup d’état in Ukraine in 2013-14, electronic spying, and the attacks of September 11, 2001. But the propaganda has for the most part continued unabated at a powerful and esoteric cultural level, while illegal and criminal actions are carried out throughout the world in the most blatant manner imaginable, as if to say fuck you openly while insidiously infecting the general population through the mass electronic screen culture that has relegated intellectual and literary culture to a tiny minority.

Planning Ahead

Let me explain what I think has been happening.

Organizations like the CIA are obviously fallible and have made many mistakes and failed to anticipate world events. But they are also very powerful, having great financial backing, and do the bidding of their masters in banking, Wall St., finance, etc. They are the action arm of these financial elites, and are, as Douglass Valentine has written, organized criminals. They have their own military, are joined to all the armed forces, and are deeply involved in the drug trade.They control the politicians. They operate their own propaganda network in conjunction with the private mercenaries they hire for their operations. The corporate mass media take their orders, orders that need not be direct, but sometimes are, because these media are structured to do the bidding of the same elites that formed the CIA and own the media. And while their ostensible raison d’ȇtre is to provide intelligence to the nation’s civilian leaders, this is essentially a cover story for their real work that is propaganda, killing, and conducting coups d’états at home and abroad.

Because they have deep pockets, they can afford to buy all sorts of people, people who pimp for the elites. Some of these people do work that is usually done by honest academics and independent intellectuals, a dying breed, once called free-floating intellectuals. These pimps analyze political, economic, technological, and cultural trends. They come from different fields: history, anthropology, psychology, sociology, political science, cultural studies, linguistics, etc. They populate the think tanks and universities. They are often intelligent but live in bad faith, knowing they are working for those who are doing the devil’s work. But they collect their pay and go their way straight to the bank, the devil’s bank. They often belong to the Council of Foreign Relations or the Heritage Foundation. They are esteemed and esteem themselves. But they are pimps.

El Diablo

Ah, the devil! He’s their man. A man of many names, but always an impostor. These pimps know his story and how he works his magic, and this is what their paymasters want from them: ways to use the old bastard’s bag of tricks to conjure confusion, and sow fear and paranoia. And to do this slow and easy in ways no one will recognize until it is too late.

For like culture, propaganda relies on myths, symbols, and stories. Some prefer to say narratives. But nothing is more powerful. Controlling the stories is the key to powerful propaganda. The pimps can spin many a tale.

Tell people endless tales of the good guys and the bad, of how the bad are out to get you and the good to save you. Think of the use of symbols in the telling of these stories. They are crucial. The word symbol comes from a Greek word to throw together. Symbols that represent the in-group or the “good guys” are used to create social solidarity within the in-group. Stories are told to accompany the symbols; stories, narratives, or myths tell of how the good guys are fighting to hold the group together and the bad guys are trying to rip the community apart. The symbolic and its opposite – the diabolic (to throw apart) – the angels against the devils – el diablo. Very simple, very old. The aliens are out to get us. And el diablo is always the ultimate other, the man in red, the reds, the commies, the Russians, the others, immigrants, the blacks who want to move next door, Muslims, gays – take your pick. Satanic rituals. Black magic. Witchcraft.

Methods of Propaganda

Infecting minds with such symbols and stories must be done directly and indirectly, as well as short-term and long-term. Long term propaganda is like a slowly leaking water pipe that you are vaguely aware of but that rots the metal from within until the pipe can no longer resist the pressure. Drip drop, drip drop, drip drop – and the inattentive recipients of the propaganda gradually lose their mettle to resist and don’t know it, and then when an event bursts into the news – e.g. the attacks of September 11, 2001 or Russia-gate – they have been so softened that their assent is automatically given. They know without hesitation who the devil is and that he must be fought.

The purpose of the long-term propaganda is to create certain predispositions and weaknesses that can be exploited when needed. Certain events can be the triggers to induce the victims to react to suggestions. When the time is ripe, all that is needed is a slight suggestion, like a touch on the shoulder, and the hypnotized one acts in a trance. The gun goes off, and the entranced one can’t remember why (see: Sirhan Sirhan). This is the goal of mass hypnotization through long-term propaganda: confusion, memory loss, and automatic reaction to suggestion.

Intelligence Pimps and Liquid Screen Culture

When the CIA’s dirty tricks were made public in the 1970s, it is not hard to imagine that the intellectual pimps who do their long-range thinking were asked to go back to the drawing board and paint a picture of the coming decades and how business as usual could be conducted without further embarrassment. By that time it had become clear that intellectual or high culture was being swallowed by mass culture and the future belonged to electronic screen culture and images, not words. What has come to be called “post modernity” ensued, or what the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman calls “liquid modernity” and Guy Debord “the society of the spectacle.” Such developments, rooted in what Frederic Jameson has termed “the cultural logic of late capitalism,” have resulted in the fragmentation of social and personal life into pointillistic moving pictures whose dots form incoherent images that sow mass confusion and do not cohere. From the mid-1970s until today, this generalized disorientation with its flowing and eternal present of appearing and dissolving images has resulted in what is surely a transformed world, and with it, transformed worldviews. The foundations have collapsed. Meaning and coherence have become difficult to discern. Stable personality has been disassociated, memory downloaded, attention lost, the psyche materialized, sexual identity confused, the electronic mind-body interface established, and the electronic and pharmaceutical drugging of the population accomplished. Really? Yes.

Did not the intelligence agencies foresee all this? Did not they see it and plan accordingly? Did they not notice that about the time their old dirty deeds were being exposed, a movie burst onto the screen that introduced a theme familiar to them and their Nazi friends? I mean the 1973 hit, The Exorcist, wherein Satan struts his stuff, four years after Mick Jagger strut his across the stage at Altamont, singing “Sympathy for the Devil,” while shortly after a killing took place down in front of him and the 1960s were laid to rest.But during the 1970s The Exorcist and its theme of the devil’s hold on people came to life and was taken up with a religious fervor by the entertainment industry and promoted by Oprah Winfrey, Geraldo Rivera, and other media luminaries, who went about promoting el diablo’s hold on so many helpless victims. Occult, magic, and satanic themes became pop staples and would remain so up until the present day.I would suggest that readers put aside their reservations at what may seem sensational and watchthis video. Then ask yourself: what is going on here?

The CIA as Prophetic

But maybe a better question than did the CIA foresee these developments, would be to ask if it has been involved in the occult and satanic world itself, before and after the social developments of “liquid modernity.” The answer is yes. Indeed, all the characteristics of the social and cultural developments I mentioned previously in reference to post modernity have been a major part of its work before this new world emerged: “the disassociation of stable personalities, memory erasure and the implanting of false memories, materializing the psyche, confusing sexual identity, establishing the electronic mind-body interface, and electronic, hallucinogenic (the CIA introduced and spread LSD in the 1960s), and pharmaceutical drugging,” to name but a few. In anticipating these developments the CIA was at the very least predictive. Disinformation, acts of terrorism, coup d’états, assassinations flow out of a marriage to the Nazis made in hell – Talbot’s “devil’s chessboard” – but they are linked to much more. Peter Levenda, in Sinister Forces: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft, a trilogy on sinister forces in American history, puts it this way:

The CIA, satanic cults, and UFOs, the mythology of the late twentieth century is surprisingly coherent even though the masks change from case to case, from victim to alleged victim. The CIA, of course, does exist; their mind control programs from BLUEBIRD to ARTICHOKE to MK-ULTRA are a matter of public record. Their history of political assassinations and the overthrow of various foreign governments is also a matter of record. Satanic cults – or perhaps we should qualify that and say ‘occult secret societies’ – also exist and are a matter of public record; their attempts to contact alien forces by means of ceremonial magic and arcane ritual (including the use of some of the same drugs and other techniques as the CIA used in its mind control programs) are also well-known and documented. Some of these practitioners were – and are – well-known men and women who have not denied their involvement (such as rocket scientist Jack Parsons in the 1950s and Army Colonel and intelligence officer Michael Aquino in the 1990s). The CIA also aggressively researched American cults and secret societies in an effort to discover the source of paranormal abilities and ancient mind control mechanisms. And while the jury is still out on the question of UFOs, there is no doubt that government agencies have attempted to track, to analyze them, and to explain them away. Again this is a matter of public record, including FBI and CIA documents in addition to military records.

Skeptical readers may find this strange to consider. That would be a mistake. The web of connections is there for anyone who cares to look. For more than fifty years occult themes and rituals have been part of world view warfare. Drugs, shamanism, black magic, and the occult – staples of the CIA then and now. It is well known that Hollywood, television, and the media in general have been working closely with the intelligence agencies for a long time. Especially since 2001, films and television programs have glorified the CIA, our “good” spies, and the military. The mystification of reality has found its best friend in the electronic and internet revolution as strange and “subversive” beliefs are dangled like candy for little children. Good and evil move through the public consciousness like passing sun and shadows. Weird conspiracy theories“pop up” to titillate and obsess, and to drive out the serious findings of dedicated and disciplined writers and researchers who have discovered the truth about real government conspiracies. Sowing confusion is the name of this deadly game, and if you find yourself confused, you are in good company.

But many are catching on and realizing that what seems strange but innocent is part of a much larger effort to hypnotize the public to agree to their own destruction through the ingestion of what can only be called black magic.

The eloquent writer and brave American, Jim Garrison, the former District Attorney of New Orleans and the only person to bring a trial in the assassination of President Kennedy, put it this way in On The Trail of The Assassins, the story of his quest to solve the murder of JFK.

I knew by now that when a group of individuals gravitated toward one another for no apparent reason, or a group of individuals inexplicitly headed in the same directions as if drawn by a magnetic field, or coincidence piled upon coincidence too many times, as often as not the shadowy outlines of a covert intelligence operation were somehow becoming visible.

Rub Lucifer, the Prince of Darkness, the right way and the CIA emerges into the light.You can see its shadowy outline with your eyes wide shut. As it says on CIA headquarters: “You shall know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free.”

Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely. He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.

6 February 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

Co-Written by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers

The United States has been working with oligarchs in Venezuela to remove President Maduro since he came to office in 2013 after the death of Hugo Chavez and was re-elected that year. After he won re-election to another six-year term in 2018, the regime change planners sought new strategies to remove Maduro, including an assassination attempt last August. The coup campaign escalated recently with the self-appointment of president Juan Guaido, who President Trump and US allies have recognized. Now, the ongoing coup attempt is escalating through a strategy of humanitarian intervention.

Trump has been talking openly about war to take control of Venezuela’s vast oil reserves since mid-2017. Pentagon and former administration officials, who have since been removed from office, opposed the action. Now, Trump is surrounded by neocons who share his goal of removing Maduro and taking control of the country’s natural resources. War is an option being openly considered.

The US has no excuse to legally attack Venezuela. As Defense One reports,“International law forbids ‘the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.’” There are two exceptions mentioned in the UN Charter: self-defense and authorization by the U.N. Security Council, neither of which have been met in Venezuela. Domestically, Trump would also need the US Congress to authorize an attack, which is unlikely with a Democratic-controlled House not because Democrats oppose war but because they oppose Trump.

The United States has also claimed a highly questionable right to use force for “humanitarian intervention.” For example, the US and NATO 1999 intervention in Kosovo was a humanitarian intervention that became a war.

After a long-term economic war that has sought to starve Venezuela of resources and has cost the country billions of dollars annually, the United States is now claiming there is a humanitarian crisis in Venezuela. It is moving to use this humanitarian crisis it helped to create as a path to war with Venezuela, with the help of US proxies, Colombia and Brazil. The tactic is to proclaim a humanitarian crisis in Venezuela requiring a humanitarian intervention and then to bring troops in to provide humanitarian aid as the BBC explains. Once the foot is in the door, it is simple to manufacture an excuse for conflict.

This weekend, the humanitarian intervention began to unfold when the coup president, Juan Guaido, announced the imminent distribution of humanitarian aid. Guaido announced the aid would be gathered at three points, and Venezuela’s army would be pressured to allow it into the country. The collection centers will be in Colombia, Brazil and on an island in the Caribbean. He announced aid will begin to be distributed in the coming days. He claimed the Venezuela military will have to make a decision whether or not to let this aid in to Venezuela. Guaido said he wants the people to play a supportive role by staying in the streets with demonstrations that will be announced soon.

Also over the weekend, National Security Adviser John Bolton said the US will send “critical supplies” requested by Guaido. Previously, Bolton has openly called for a military coup and sanctions to starve millions of Venezuelans into submission. On Twitter, USAID administrator Mark Green shared images of boxes embossed with the US flag en route to Venezuela.

Elliot Abrams, who has a long history of war crimes and was convicted in the Iran-Contra scandal, said the US government is considering opening a “humanitarian corridor” and has maintained contacts with Brazil and Colombia on the issue. He acknowledged that Maduro’s “cooperation” would be necessary to transport the aid to the country. El Pais reported, “The opening of this supply channel could require the participation of troops, whether Americans or from another country in the region, something that Chavism interprets as a clear threat.”

Vice President Mike Pence spoke this week about the deployment of humanitarian assistance with Carlos Vecchio, Guaidó’s ambassador to the United States, as well as Julio Borges, appointed as representative to the Lima Group. Borges will ask the Lima Group, which meets in Canada this week, for the “urgent” opening of a humanitarian corridor. Canada has played a junior role in the ongoing coup. Trudeau, who also levied economic sanctions against Venezuela, promised $53 million in humanitarian aid. Media critical of the coup have been denied access to these meetings

The United States launched this major operation in coordination with the right-wing governments of Colombia and Brazil, the most belligerent anti-Maduro allies of Guaido. The US National Security Council confirmed on Saturday that the deployment of aid has already begun. The initial aid will contain medicines, surgical supplies, and nutritional supplements. It was scheduled to come from USAID to Bogota on Monday and then be moved for storage in a collection center in the border city of Cúcuta, the main entrance route for Venezuelans migrating to Colombia. Cúcuta has a high presence of Colombian paramilitaries and smuggling mafias and is where those who attempted to assassinate Nicolas Maduro last year were trained.

One of the goals of the humanitarian aid is to divide the Venezuela militarywhich has refused to recognize Guaido. They seek to deepen the pressure on the military in order to break the solidarity of the Maduro government. TIME Magazine reports, “The aid has become something of a litmus test for the military’s backing of Maduro.” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), said on Twitter that, “Military & police leaders in #Venezuela must now decide to either help food & medicine reach people, or help #Maduro instead.”

UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, who has not recognized Guaido, said the United Nations “will not be part of” distributing the aid, as it wants to maintain “credibility” in order to help “find a political solution to the crisis.”

El Pais reports that “Diplomats from several Latin American countries and from the more moderate sectors of the opposition fear that this will serve as a pretext to drag the conflict into the military.” President Maduro has repeatedly rejected the entry of humanitarian aid because he knew it would provide justification for foreign intervention. He knows the US seeks Venezuela’s oil and other resources,“gold, gas, iron, diamonds, other material riches.”

Maduro called on the international community to stop the US threats of war against Venezuela. He said a war would be a blood bath, a David and Goliath struggle that would “leave Trump bloodstained.” Maduro said the Venezuelan people were prepared to defend their “sacred“ land from a US military invasion, but emphasized that he “prayed to God” such a conflict will never occur. Trump’s “military aggression” must be rejected so that “peace prevails.”

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers are directors of Popular Resistance

6 February 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By K M Seethi

The Unites States withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty (1987) and the subsequent Russian decision to quit the regime generated considerable fears and anxieties across the world about a renewed nuclear arms race and showdown. The allegations and counter-allegations in respect of the violation of the Treaty by both parties continued for several years and Washington and Moscow crossed swords over the issue on many occasions and across different fora. US President Donald Trump had indicated the possibility of Washington’s pull out in 2018, in the wake of the reports about Russian violation of the Treaty. Yet, many tend to believe that the action has been pre-planned to extend the coverage of the regime to China, in the emerging geo-strategic environs involving Russia and China. So far, the INF Treaty is a bilateral instrument between the US and Russia and many nuclear weapon powers are outside the ambit of the Treaty.

President Donald Trump in his statement said that Russia has, for long, violated the Treaty “with impunity, covertly developing and fielding a prohibited missile system that poses a direct threat” to US allies and troops abroad. He said that NATO allies also “fully support” insofar as “they understand the threat posed by Russia’s violation and the risks to arms control posed by ignoring treaty violations” Trump further claimed that Washington “has fully adhered to the INF Treaty for more than 30 years” but it “will not remain constrained by its terms while Russia misrepresents its actions.” Indicating that the US “cannot be the only country in the world unilaterally bound by this treaty, or any other,” he said that the US “will move forward with developing (its) own military response options and will work with NATO and (its) other allies and partners to deny Russia any military advantage from its unlawful conduct (US, White House 2019a).

The White House statement continues:

“Nearly 6 years of diplomacy and more than 30 meetings have failed to convince Russia to return to compliance with the INF Treaty. Enough is enough. At President Trump’s direction, the United States will suspend its obligations under the INF Treaty effective February 2, 2019. The United States will also deliver formal notice on February 2, 2019, to Russia and other Treaty Parties, that the United States will withdraw from the INF Treaty in 6 months. Only Russia’s complete and verifiable destruction of its INF-violating missiles, their launchers, and associated equipment can save the INF Treaty” (US, White House 2019b).

The White House statement accused Russia of having “produced and fielded multiple battalions of its INF-violating, nuclear-capable missile, which threaten our allies and troops in Europe and Asia.” It further warmed that Washington “will move forward with developing its own intermediate-range, conventionally-armed, ground-launched missile system. In addition, China and Iran, which are not parties to the Treaty, each possess more than 1,000 INF Treaty-range missiles” (Ibid).

In December 2018, NATO Allies had declared that Russia “developed and fielded a missile system, the 9M729, which violates the INF Treaty, and poses significant risks to Euro-Atlantic security. Allies strongly supported the finding of the United States that Russia is in material breach of its obligations under the INF Treaty and called upon Russia to urgently return to full and verifiable compliance. Since that announcement, the United States and other Allies have remained open to dialogue, and have engaged Russia on its violation, including at a NATO-Russia Council meeting on 25 January 2019. Allies regret that Russia, as part of its broader pattern of behaviour, continues to deny its INF Treaty violation, refuses to provide any credible response, and has taken no demonstrable steps toward returning to full and verifiable compliance.” It Further said that the United States “is taking this action in response to the significant risks to Euro-Atlantic security posed by Russia’s covert testing, production, and fielding of 9M729 ground-launched cruise missile systems. Allies fully support this action (NATO 2019).

Responding to the US suspending its obligations under the INF Treaty, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that “Moscow’s proposals remain on the table. Moscow issued a ‘mirror’ response to the US move by suspending its own observance of the treaty” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that “Moscow would react to military threats related to the US withdrawal from the INF Treaty “by military-technical means”, i.e. with weapons development” (Sputnik 2019). According to Russian experts, “US plans to build low-power nuclear weapons will sharply lower the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons.” Moreover, Russian Foreign Ministry charged that NATO states were “not ready for meaningful dialogue on the Mk-41 launchers, which are located in Romania, and will appear in Poland next year, in violation of the INF Treaty. These are integrated into the NATO missile defence system, so the alliance is also directly responsible for undermining the treaty”(Ibid). The Russian president said that Moscow would suspend its obligations under the INF Treaty in response to a similar decision announced by US. He reminded that “the use of target rockets and the deployment of Mk 41 launchers in Europe since 2014 by the United States is a direct violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty” (Ibid).

INF Setting

The history of INF Treaty goes back to 1970s when the US was so exercised over the control of intermediate-range missiles emerged in the wake of Moscow’s domestic deployment of SS-20 intermediate-range missiles during the decade. The SS-20 appeared to be qualitatively improved version of Soviet nuclear forces in the European theater by providing a longer-range, multiple-warhead alternative to the earlier versions of Soviet SS-4 and SS-5 single-warhead missiles (Arms Control Association 2019).

NATO ministers responded to this with its “dual-track” strategy—a parallel drive for arms control negotiations with the deployment of intermediate-range, nuclear-armed U.S. missiles (ground-launched cruise missiles and the Pershing II) in Europe to balance the SS-20. Negotiations, however, fell through even a US missile deployments continued in the early 1980s. Efforts began to make headway when Mikhail Gorbachev became the General-Secretary of the CPSU in March 1985. Moscow and Washington held talks and negotiations in the following year(Ibid). The efforts by President Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev eventually culminated in the signing of the INF Treaty on 8 December 1987, and the treaty came into force on 1 June 1988 (US, Department of State 1987).

The ban under the regime originally applied only to US and Soviet forces, but the Treaty’s membership expanded in 1991 with a view to including successor states of the former Soviet Union. Currently, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine, which had inspectable facilities on their territories at the time of the Soviet Union’s disintegration, joined Russia and the United States in the treaty’s implementation. Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan also possessed INF Treaty-range facilities (SS-23 operating bases) but forgo treaty meetings with the consent of the other states-parties (Arms Control Association 2019).

Thus, active states-parties to the regime were just five countries. However, many European countries also dismantled the INF Treaty-range missiles in the post-Cold war era. Germany, Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic dismantled their intermediate-range missiles in the decade, and Slovakia removed all of its missiles by October 2000 after extensive US pressure. On 31 May 2002, Bulgaria, the remaining possessor of intermediate-range missiles in Eastern Europe entered into an agreement with the United States to dismantle all of its INF Treaty-related missiles. Within six months, Bulgaria completed the dismantling of its missiles (Ibid).

By 31 May 2001, the States-parties’ right to carry out on-site inspection under the Treaty came to an end. Yet, the use of surveillance satellites for data gathering followed. The Treaty had set up the Special Verification Commission (SVC) to function as an implementing agency for the Treaty. It apparently addressed issues of compliance and agreeing on measures to “improve (the treaty’s) viability and effectiveness.” Insofar as the INF Treaty is of an indefinite period, states-parties could arrange the SVC at any time (Ibid). However, Article XV of the Treaty says that each party “shall, in exercising its national sovereignty, have the right to withdraw from this Treaty if it decides that extraordinary events related to the subject matter of this Treaty have jeopardized its supreme interests. It shall give notice of its decision to withdraw to the other Party six months prior to withdrawal from this Treaty. Such notice shall include a statement of the extraordinary events the notifying Party regards as having jeopardized its supreme interests” (US, Department of State 1987). It is this clause that enables both parties to pull out from the regime.

However, the INF Treaty’s protocol on missile elimination identified the specific types of ground-launched missiles to be dispensed with and the acceptable means of doing so (Ibid). Under the regime, the US was obliged to get rid of its Pershing II, Pershing IA, and Pershing IB ballistic missiles and BGM-109G cruise missiles. The Soviet Union had to eliminate its SS-20, SS-4, SS-5, SS-12, and SS-23 ballistic missiles and SSC-X-4 cruise missiles. Besides, both the US and Soviet Union were obliged to destroy all INF Treaty-related training missiles, rocket stages, launch canisters, and launchers. Nearly all missiles were done away with through different processes and procedures (Arms Control Association 2019).

Meanwhile, Russia, at least since 2000, began to raise the question of withdrawing from the Treaty arguing that the regime unjustly constrained it from having weapons that its neighbours such as China were developing and deploying. Russia also had warned that the proposed American deployment of strategic anti-ballistic missile systems in Europe might cause its withdrawal from the Treaty. Despite all this, both parties issued a statement at the United Nations General Assembly in October 2007 reaffirming their support for the Treaty and calling on all other states to join them in renouncing the missiles banned by the regime. However, the declaration of such commitments did not continue for long. During 2013-14, several reports indicated that Washington had concerns about Russia’s ‘violations’ of the Treaty. In July 2014, the State Department accused Russia of violating the accord by “producing and testing an illegal ground-launched cruise missile.” Though Russia dismissed such ‘allegations’, the US publicly stated that Russia continued to violate the Treaty. Meanwhile, press reports suggested that Russia had deployed an operational unit of the treaty-noncompliant cruise missile now known as the SSC-8. In March 2017, the Pentagon officials again confirmed that Russia had deployed a ground-launched cruise missile that “violates the spirit and intent” of the INF Treaty. The State Department’s 2017 annual assessment again pointed to Russian noncompliance with the INF Treaty for the fourth consecutive year (Ibid).

In December 2017, the Trump administration brought out an integrated strategy to offset alleged Russian violations of the Treaty. It also involved the initiation of research and development on a conventional, road-mobile, intermediate-range missile system. In October 2018 President Trump announced his intention to “terminate” the INF Treaty, pointing to “Russian noncompliance and concerns about China’s intermediate-range missile arsenal.” On 4 December 2018, the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the United States had “found Russia in “material breach” of the treaty and will suspend its treaty obligations in 60 days if Russia does not return to compliance in that time” (US, Department of State 2019). This was followed by the Trump administration’s suspension of US obligations under the Treaty and announced its plan to pullout in six months. Russian President Putin immediately thereafter announced that Russia would be officially suspending its treaty obligations as well.

The reciprocal actions, on the part of both the US and Russia, in effect wrap up a regime viewed by many as one of the most vital safeguards against nuclear confrontation. The situation makes the US-Russia relations more complicated even as issues from the immediate past remain such as Russia’s attempts to take over Crimea from Ukraine, and its alleged meddling in the 2016 US presidential elections. Experts fear that the INF-free world will help strengthen Russia’s efforts to redesign its strategic balancing in Eurasian geopolitics. Mark Fitzpatrick, Executive Director of the non-proliferation programme at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, says that “Nothing good will come out of the US withdrawal.” According to him, “The Trump administration has made a huge mistake – it’s a breakdown of arms control. It’s a breakdown of trust between US and Russia. The US will have problems with its European allies, and it will engage in a new arms race with China as well” (Al Jazeera 2019). Tom Nichols, a security expert, pointed out that it was “a provocation to menace the Europeans and to see if they could bait the Americans into walking away.” He said that the Washington’s response brought to light how ‘confused’ its nuclear arms policy was (Ibid). Observers also pointed out that most European counties, including NATO Allies would not welcome any land-based intermediate-range missiles that the US might develop. Fitzpatrick, another nuclear expert, says that the ‘real reason’ for the US withdrawal was America’s anxiety over China’s buildup of intermediate-range missiles in the Western Pacific. Reports say that China’s stock holds as much as 2,000 ballistic and cruise missiles, almost 95 per cent of which would violate the INF Treaty if Beijing were a signatory. However, the Treaty prohibits Washington from deploying short and intermediate range missiles on land near China as a deterrent (Ibid). It is not even clear if the American allies in Asia-Pacific such as Japan or South Korea would be willing to let such weapons come to the region (Ibid). However, China appealed to the US and Russia to adhere to the Treaty. It warned that “scrapping the treaty would be the beginning of the collapse of the global arms control system. It’s highly likely a new arms race will start.”

The Global Times editorial says:

“Washington has been hyping the Russian threats in recent years, but Russia’s strategic deterrence is clearly weaker than in the Soviet era. The US has also complained about China’s development of missile capabilities. This is even more unreasonable. China’s nuclear deterrence isn’t comparable to that of the US and Russia. Portraying China’s military development as part of an “arms race,” the US is creating an excuse to suppress China’s legitimate build-up of its national defense. If the treaty is abolished, security risks will be reassessed and major powers will redefine what “security” is. Overall international relations will be implicated. Such a scenario is unfavorable to an end to the nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula and runs the risk of a rise in conflicts in other regions. As far as China is concerned, the US intends to make the INF treaty a multilateral agreement, which may become an excuse for Washington to exert pressure on Beijing. Without the restraints of the treaty, the US may intensify its deployment of offensive missiles and anti-missile systems around China, further increasing China’s strategic security challenges. Beijing will never accept the treaty becoming a multilateral agreement. It must reject any request from the US on the issue. Instead of relying too much on land-based missiles for national security, China must diversify its strategic nuclear deterrence. It’s an urgent task” (Global Times 2 February 2019).

China had taken a similar stand even before. In the UN General Assembly meeting last year, the representative of China said the “Treaty is important, playing a crucial role in history and maintaining global stability. Maintaining the INF Treaty is highly relevant.” China said that “the countries concerned can honour their commitments and properly handle relevant issues through consultation. China opposes any unilateral act of withdrawal. Treaty multilateralization involves a host of legal issues. Many countries have their own concerns about this and do not support Treaty multilateralization (UN, General Assembly 2018).

Obviously, the Trump administration, which has been pulling out of several international treaties during the last three years, on the ground of its opposition to multilateral arrangements that ‘threaten’ the American interests, is reversing its game strategy by withdrawing from a bilateral treaty that has tremendous international implications. While Trump seeks to have promoted more and more bilateral arrangements for international trade and commerce (2-person model), he seems to be fixed for multilateral options on questions of security and strategic balancing. In any case, his game-plan has apparently the larger objective of netting China within a new package and thereby setting a new ‘level playing field’ for a N-persons’ game. The end result is, the global strategic landscape will again witness the fear of an apocalypse of MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction).

References

Al Jazeera (2019): “‘Huge mistake’: Fears of arms race as US, Russia suspend INF pact,” 3 February, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/02/mistake-fears-arms-race-russia-suspend-inf-pact-190203152747235.html

Arms Control Association (2019): “The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty at a Glance,” 2 February , https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/INFtreaty

NATO (2019): “Statement on Russia’s failure to comply with the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, Issued by the North Atlantic Council, Brussels, 1 February 2019,” https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_162996.htm

Sputnik (2019): “Russia to React to US Exit From INF Treaty by Military-Technical Means – Lavrov,”

4 February , https://sputniknews.com/world/201902041072099247-russia-inf-treaty-lavrov-usa/

UN, General Assembly (2018): “General Assembly Rejects Resolution Calling for Strengthening Russian-United States Compliance with Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty,’ 21 December, https://www.un.org/press/en/2018/ga12116.doc.htm

US, Department of State (1987): “Treaty Between The United States Of America And The Union Of Soviet Socialist Republics On The Elimination Of Their Intermediate-Range And Shorter-Range Missiles (INF Treaty), 8 December , https://www.state.gov/t/avc/trty/102360.htm

US, White House (2019a):” Statement from the President Regarding the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty,” 1 February, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-president-regarding-intermediate-range-nuclear-forces-inf-treaty/

US, White House (2019b): “President Donald J. Trump to Withdraw the United States from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty,” 1 February, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trump-withdraw-united-states-intermediate-range-nuclear-forces-inf-treaty/

The author is Dean of Social Sciences and Professor, School of International Relations and Politics, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala. He can be reached at kmseethimgu@gmail.com

5 February 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

Co-Written by Medea Benjamin & Nicolas J S Davies

In his masterpiece, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II, William Blum, who died in December 2018, wrote chapter-length accounts of 55 U.S. regime change operations against countries around the world, from China (1945-1960s) to Haiti (1986-1994). Noam Chomsky’s blurb on the back of the latest edition says simply, “Far and away the best book on the topic.” We agree. If you have not read it, please do. It will give you a clearer context for what is happening in Venezuela today, and a better understanding of the world you are living in.

Since Killing Hope was published in 1995, the U.S. has conducted at least 13 more regime change operations, several of which are still active: Yugoslavia; Afghanistan; Iraq; the 3rd U.S. invasion of Haiti since WWII; Somalia; Honduras; Libya; Syria; Ukraine; Yemen; Iran; Nicaragua; and now Venezuela.

William Blum noted that the U.S. generally prefers what its planners call “low intensity conflict” over full-scale wars. Only in periods of supreme overconfidence has it launched its most devastating and disastrous wars, from Korea and Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq. After its war of mass destruction in Iraq, the U.S. reverted to “low intensity conflict” under Obama’s doctrine of covert and proxy war.

Obama conducted even heavier bombing than Bush II, and deployed U.S. special operations forces to 150 countries all over the world, but he made sure that nearly all the bleeding and dying was done by Afghans, Syrians, Iraqis, Somalis, Libyans, Ukrainians, Yemenis and others, not by Americans. What U.S. planners mean by “low intensity conflict” is that it is less intense for Americans.

President Ghani of Afghanistan recently revealed that a staggering 45,000 Afghan security forces have been killed since he took office in 2014, compared with only 72 U.S. and NATO troops. “It shows who has been doing the fighting,” Ghani caustically remarked. This disparity is common to every current U.S. war.

This does not mean that the U.S. is any less committed to trying to overthrowing governments that reject and resist U.S. imperial sovereignty, especially if those countries contain vast oil reserves. It’s no coincidence that two of the main targets of current U.S. regime change operations are Iran and Venezuela, two of the four countries with the largest liquid oil reserves in the world (the others being Saudi Arabia and Iraq).

In practice, “low intensity conflict” involves four tools of regime change: sanctions or economic warfare; propaganda or “information warfare”; covert and proxy war; and aerial bombardment. In Venezuela, the U.S. has used the first and second, with the third and fourth now “on the table” since the first two have created chaos but so far not toppled the government.

The U.S. government has been opposed to Venezuela’s socialist revolution since the time Hugo Chavez was elected in 1998. Unbeknownst to most Americans, Chavez was well loved by poor and working class Venezuelans for his extraordinary array of social programs that lifted millions out of poverty. Between 1996 and 2010, the level of extreme poverty plummeted from 40% to 7%. The government also substantially improved healthcare and education, cutting infant mortality by half, reducing the malnutrition rate from 21% to 5% of the population and eliminating illiteracy. These changes gave Venezuela the lowest level of inequality in the region, based on its Gini coefficient.

Since Chavez’ death in 2013, Venezuela has descended into an economic crisis stemming from a combination of government mismanagement, corruption, sabotage and the precipitous fall in the price of oil. The oil industry provides 95% of Venezuela’s exports, so the first thing Venezuela needed when prices crashed in 2014 was international financing to cover huge shortfalls in the budgets of both the government and the national oil company. The strategic objective of U.S. sanctions is to exacerbate the economic crisis by denying Venezuela access to the U.S.-dominated international financial system to roll over existing debt and obtain new financing.

The blocking of Citgo’s funds in the U.S. also deprives Venezuela of a billion dollars per year in revenue that it previously received from the export, refining and retail sale of gasoline to American drivers. Canadian economist Joe Emersberger has calculated that the new sanctions Trump unleashed in 2017 cost Venezuela $6 billion in just their first year. In sum, U.S. sanctions are designed to “make the economy scream” in Venezuela, exactly as President Nixon described the goal of U.S. sanctions against Chile after its people elected Salvador Allende in 1970.

Alfred De Zayas visited Venezuela as a UN Rapporteur in 2017 and wrote an in-depth report for the UN. He criticized Venezuela’s dependence on oil, poor governance and corruption, but he found that “economic warfare” by the U.S. and its allies were seriously exacerbating the crisis. “Modern-day economic sanctions and blockades are comparable with medieval sieges of towns,” De Zayas wrote. “Twenty-first century sanctions attempt to bring not just a town, but sovereign countries to their knees.” He recommended that the International Criminal Court should investigate U.S. sanctions against Venezuela as crimes against humanity. In a recent interview with the Independent newspaper in the U.K., De Zayas reiterated that U.S. sanctions are killing Venezuelans.

Venezuela’s economy has shrunk by about half since 2014, the greatest contraction of a modern economy in peacetime. The World Health Organization (WHO) reported that the average Venezuelan lost an incredible 24 lb. in body weight in 2017.

Mr. De Zayas’ successor as UN Rapporteur, Idriss Jazairy, issued a statement on January 31st, in which he condemned “coercion” by outside powers as a “violation of all norms of international law.” “Sanctions which can lead to starvation and medical shortages are not the answer to the crisis in Venezuela,” Mr. Jazairy said, “…precipitating an economic and humanitarian crisis…is not a foundation for the peaceful settlement of disputes.”

While Venezuelans face poverty, preventable diseases, malnutrition and open threats of war by U.S. officials, those same U.S. officials and their corporate sponsors are looking at an almost irresistible gold mine if they can bring Venezuela to its knees: a fire sale of its oil industry to foreign oil companies and the privatization of many other sectors of its economy, from hydroelectric power plants to iron, aluminum and, yes, actual gold mines. This is not speculation. It is what the U.S.’s new puppet, Juan Guaido, has reportedly promised his American backers if they can overthrow Venezuela’s elected government and install him in the presidential palace.

Oil industry sources have reported that Guaido has “plans to introduce a new national hydrocarbons law that establishes flexible fiscal and contractual terms for projects adapted to oil prices and the oil investment cycle… A new hydrocarbons agency would be created to offer bidding rounds for projects in natural gas and conventional, heavy and extra-heavy crude.”

The U.S. government claims to be acting in the best interests of the Venezuelan people, but over 80 percent of Venezuelans, including many who don’t support Maduro, are opposed to the crippling economic sanctions, while 86% oppose U.S. or international military intervention.

This generation of Americans has already seen how our government’s endless sanctions, coups and wars have only left country after country mired in violence, poverty and chaos. As the results of these campaigns have become predictably catastrophic for the people of each country targeted, the American officials promoting and carrying them out have a higher and higher bar to meet as they try to answer the obvious question of an increasingly skeptical U.S. and international public:

“How is Venezuela (or Iran or North Korea) different from Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and at least 63 other countries where U.S. regime change operations have led only to long-lasting violence and chaos?”

Mexico, Uruguay, the Vatican and many other countries are committed to diplomacy to help the people of Venezuela resolve their political differences and find a peaceful way forward. The most valuable way that the U.S. can help is to stop making the Venezuelan economy and people scream (on all sides), by lifting its sanctions and abandoning its failed and catastrophic regime change operation in Venezuela. But the only things that will force such a radical change in U.S. policy are public outrage, education and organizing, and international solidarity with the people of Venezuela.

Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace, is the author of the new book, Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Nicolas J S Davies is the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq and of the chapter on “Obama At War” in Grading the 44th President: A Report Card on Barack Obama’s First Term as a Progressive Leader.

5 February 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Firoz Osman

Forty years ago a momentous event took place when the Shah of the Pahlavi dynasty, installed by the CIA, fled Iran, ushering in the Iranian Islamic Revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini on February 1, 1979.

Western countries and Israel, who had dominated and exploited the oil-rich region through the puppet Arab regimes they installed and protected, felt vulnerable and in danger.

Iran closed the Apartheid SA embassy and halted its oil supplies, 90% of which SA imported from Iran. And within three weeks Iran severed relations with Israel, handing over the embassy to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), and welcoming Yasser Arafat as the first foreign dignitary.

This unexpected, unanticipated and popular revolution sent shockwaves regionally and globally because it was based on Islamic values and principles. It was not just another palace coup in which one set of elite grabbed power from another.

Iran fearlessly spoke out against American and British hegemony, and the Zionist occupation of Palestinian and its holy lands, regarding Israel as a cancer implanted into the heart of the Arab and Islamic world.

They pledged their support to liberate all of Palestine, forming the Resistance Axis with Syria, Hizbullah of Lebanon, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas.

The dominant powers reaction was predictable. The West, Israel and the Arab despotic regimes implemented strangulating embargoes and a series of counter-revolutionary, state-sponsored acts of terrorism and sabotage against the people and the nation of Iran.

Iraq’s Saddam Hussein invaded Iran, armed with Western weapons including chemical weapons, all financed by the Gulf Sheikhdoms. The war lasted eight years at a cost of a million lives.

The Mojahidin-e Khalgh Organisation (MKO), a Western-backed terror outfit, bombed the headquarters of the Islamic Republican Party and other installations killing 1200 leading figures of the Revolution.

The USA, Saudi Arabia and Israel continue to threaten Iran with unprovoked aggression, killing Iranian scientists, provoking protests and engineering instability. Iran is falsely accused of developing nuclear weapons and of posing a “threat” to world peace and stability.

Iran has not attacked or threatened to attack any country. In fact, Iran is surrounded by hostile U.S. forces and is confronting the menace of Israel’s nuclear missiles and U.S. warships. Iran anticipated that the destabilization of Syria and Lebanon was a step towards attacking Iran itself.

The Pentagon, 16 major U.S. intelligence agencies, the National Intelligence Estimate (N.I.E.) and the IAEA confirmed that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons and poses no military threat. Yet, Iran is subjected to sanctions and threatened with military aggression by the U.S. and Israel.

It is déjà vu in Iraq, using the same false propaganda campaign to rally world opinion for war against Iran. The hype about the threat posed by Iraq’s nonexistence “Weapons of Mass Destruction” (WMD) is replaced by the hype about the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear bomb.

Iran has watched the Western -orchestrated destruction, destabilization and regime change in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria, primarily to maintain Western hegemony over the oil supplies and to protect the Zionist entity.

The West and its surrogates have always played the divisive sectarian and tribal card to maintain the inter- Muslim conflict, in this case within the Sunni-Shi’a framework, in order to weaken Iran and its strategic allies.

The war on Syria is a proxy war against Iran. Both Syria and Iran are on the U.S. list of “rogue states” that are targeted for military intervention. Hence, an attack on Syria is an attack on Iran.

The removal of the current Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad will isolate Iran and allows the U.S. and Israel to consolidate their dominance of the region and intensify their aggression against Iran.

Iran is targeted because it stands in the trench of resistance to Western hegemony and Israel’s occupation of Arab and Islamic lands and holy places. Should the Iranians accept Israel’s regional dominance, it will be embraced as a cherished friend and lavished with economic favors.

Iran has not only survived but flourished, without the protection of America. Iran has remained fiercely independent, stoically defending its rights, and succeeded in developing and achieving incredible scientific progress in spite of the illegal Western embargo.

Israel, the West and the Saudis, having failed to secure a surrender from Syria, Hizbullah, Hamas or Islamic Jihad, have now planned a conference in Warsaw, Poland, specifically targeting Iran and its allies.

Mike Pompeo, USA Secretary of State, has called for a summit on 14 February, to form a “Sunni Arab Nato” to spearhead the attack on the Resistance Axis.

So, the challenge for genuine freedom and independence remain. However, there can be little doubt that Iran’s Islamic revolution 40 years ago was a turning point in contemporary history, altering the dynamics of the Middle East and setting the stage for a new world order.

Dr Firoz Osman is an Executive Member of the Media Review Network, an advocacy group based in Johannesburg.

22 January 2019

Co-Written by Ramzy Baroud & Romana Rubeo

Hundreds of Palestinians took to the streets of besieged Gaza to show their support of the democratically-elected government of Venezuela and it’s legitimate leader, President Nicolas Maduro.

Venezuela is struggling to defeat a coup attempt that is supported by the United States, Israel and many Western governments.

The relationship between Venezuela and Palestine has been particularly strong under the presidencies of late Venezuelan leader, Hugo Chavez and current president Maduro. Neither leader has missed an opportunity to show their solidarity towards the Palestinian people, a fact that has always irked Tel Aviv and its western benefactors.

The Gaza rallies, however, were more than a display of gratitude towards a country that had enough courage to break off ties with Israel following the latter’s 2008-9 war on Gaza – a bloody campaign known as “Operation Cast Lead”. Thousands of Palestinians were killed in that one-sided war. No Arab government that has diplomatic ties with Israel severed its relations with Tel Aviv. While Caracas – over 10 thousand kilometers away – did. Then, former President Chavez, accused Israel of “state terrorism”.

But there is more to Palestinian solidarity with Venezuela than this recent history. Palestinians have experienced decades-long collective trauma from US-funded Israeli colonialism and military occupation. The US has imposed itself as an ‘honest peace broker’ as a way to mask its political interference and meddling in the Middle East, while fully and blindly supporting Israeli aggressions.

While the Venezuelan people have every right to protest their government, demanding greater accountability and economic solutions to the crushing poverty facing the country, no one has the right to meddle in the affairs of Venezuela or any other sovereign country anywhere.

We must remember that the US government has hardly ever been a source of stability in South America, certainly not since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. Since then, the US has done more than mere meddling, but outright political and military interventions, supporting various coups that toppled or attempted to overthrow democratically-elected governments.

What is underway in Caracas is a repeat of that sad and tragic history.

The unhealthy relationship between the US and its southern neighbors took an even darker turn when, in 1904, then US President Theodore Roosevelt declared the “right” of his country to hold “international police power” in Latin America. Since then, the entire region has been Washington’s business.

Always looking for opportunities to exploit, Washington now sees a chance to undermine Venezuela and its elected government.

The Venezuelan people are dealing with overwhelming poverty and a very unstable social situation. Hyperinflation and the crumbling of the country’s oil industries led to a dramatic economic downturn, with about 10% of the population fleeing the country. Poor policy choices led to an escalation of the already endemic corruption, to a significant weakening of local production and increasing devaluation of the country’s currency.

However, consensus around president Maduro’s socialist government is still broad, as witnessed by their victory in the 2018 presidential election.

Despite the presence of about 150 international observers from 30 countries and international organizations, which declared that the last Venezuelan election was transparent, domestic opponents, supported by the US and its western and regional allies denounced it as “fraud foretold”, even before Maduro delivered his victory speech.

The US and its Western allies are frustrated by the fact that despite its economic problems, most Venezuelans remained united around Chavez, and now Maduro, who are perceived, especially by the poorer classes, as independent national leaders fighting against constant US destabilization and neocolonialism.

The world order is vastly changing, but US ruling elites refuse to change. While speaking about Washington’s need to “protect democracy” in Venezuela, US National Security Advisor, the infamous Israel supporter, John Bolton admitted that the coup in Venezuela is an opportunity to exploit the country’s oil and natural resources.

“It will make a big difference to the United States economically”, Bolton told Fox News in an interview this week, “if we could have American oil companies invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.”

Tragically, the US boycott against Venezuela forced the country to sell its gold in return for valuable currency, as well as consumer goods, food and medicinal products. The coup is meant to completely push Caracas to its knees.

Western predators are all moving in, each party playing the role entrusted of them, as if history is repeating itself. Bank of England (BoE) has blocked Maduro’s officials from withdrawing $1.2 billion worth of Venezuela’s gold. Worse, brazen interference from foreign countries is becoming so pronounced that UK foreign office minister, Sir Alan Duncan has suggested that the BoE grant access to the gold reserves to the self-proclaimed opposition leader Juan Guaido.

Germany, and France and Spain gave Venezuela’s Maduro an ultimatum: the President has eight days to call elections, otherwise they’ll recognize Guaido as president. On January 31, the European Parliament recognized Guaido as a de facto leader of Venezuela in complete disregard of the democratic rights of the Venezuelan people.

Yet, as odd as this may seem to some, Maduro still enjoys greater legitimacy in his country than Donald Trump or Emmanuel Macron do in the US and France respectively. Yet, no entity is threatening to intervene in France, for example on behalf of the ‘Yellow Vests’, who have protested in their hundreds of thousands for weeks, demanding an end to Macon’s rule.

It is doubly important that Venezuela doesn’t collapse before this US-led sinister campaign because of the rising far-right powers in South and Latin America, namely the upsurge of reactionary forces in Brazil.

If Venezuela’s political order disintegrates, others, too will become target: Bolivia, Cuba, and even Mexico.

Since the US partial withdrawal from Iraq in December 2011, and the Obama Administration’s ‘pivot to Asia’, to challenge the inevitable dominance of China, US policy makers have been keen on staging a comeback in South America as well. More recently, the just-departed US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley was instrumental in shaping the aggressive US policy towards Venezuela.

Now that the country is struggling with extreme poverty – itself resulting from the manipulation of oil prices – the US sees an opportunity to make its move, and reclaim its destructive, domineering role in that part of the world. The election in Brazil of far-right leader, Jair Bolsonaro, who wants to “make Brazil great again’ is tipping the balance in favor of reactionary forces in the whole region.

But the plot against Venezuela is also an opportunity for those who want to challenge the old order, to tell the US government ‘enough is enough’; that the age of coups and blood-soaked interventions should be behind us, and that South America must not be subjugated again.

As Palestinians have fought Israeli tyranny for years, Venezuelans will continue to fight foreign tyranny and unlawful political and military interventions as well. And with true and tangible global solidarity, both nations will prevail – sooner or later.

– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle.

– Romana Rubeo is a writer and freelance translator based in Italy.

4 February 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

Co-Written by Kevin Zeese & Margaret Flowers

A lot has happened and we have learned more since last week when we wrote, Venezuela: What Activists Need To Know About The US-Led Coup. This article updates activists so we remain well-informed and can educate others in the face of a bi-partisan and corporate media narrative supporting the coup.

This weekend, there were competing protests in Venezuela. At a protest celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Bolivarian Process, the day Hugo Chavez was sworn into office, tens of thousands watched as President Maduro called for National Assembly elections. The current Assembly has been in contempt of court since July 2016 and their decisions were nullified because they have refused to remove illegally-elected members. The defunct legislature’s president, Juan Guaido, appointed himself president of the country in violation of Venezuelan law and is under investigation.

Some scenes at Guaido’s rallies were surreal. At the Caracas rally where Guaido spoke, the stage featured massive US and Israeli flags and in the crowd, there were pro-Trump puppets, one with Trump as the Statute of Liberty with a Christian cross around his neck. At another rally, opposition protesters removed the Venezuelan flag replacing it with the US flag.

Details of long term plan for Venezuela’s oil and domination of Latin America

First, it is important to understand why the US is supporting this poorly thought out and poorly planned coup. The Trump coup is a new phase of the long-term goals of US foreign policy when it comes to Venezuela and Latin America.

Vijay Prashad describes the long-term reality of US coups and domination of Latin America in The U.S. 12-Step Method to Conduct Regime Change, writing what is happening in Venezuela is “nothing unique in American history.” Prashad describes the coup in Chile, which Nixon and Kissinger began in 1970 and completed in 1973. In Venezuela, the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID and CIA have been involved in regime change operations and building opposition to Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro from the beginning of this century. The US spends tens of millions of dollars annually to support opposition oligarchs and big business interests.

The Grayzone Project documents the more than ten-year effort by US regime change operatives that created a series of young opposition leaders including fake president Juan Guaido. Guaido was a little known right-wing politician who came in second in a legislative election in the second smallest state in Venezuela. He was thrust on the national scene by the coup. In our last article, we described how Canadian and US officials encouraged him to become a self-appointed president.

In our next Clearing the FOG, we interview Dan Cohen of the Grayzone Project. You’ll find it here.

The Wall Street Journal, in “U.S. Push to Oust Venezuela’s Maduro Marks First Shot in Plan to Reshape Latin America,” reveals the motive is to place Latin America back under US control. Commenting on this article, Yves Smith expresses how the US seems to have not learned from the failed wars in the Middle East, which cost the US trillions and created chaos and suffering while weakening the US’ global standing.

Eric Draitser at Counterpunch focuses on how this coup is about defeating what is perceived as socialism in Venezuela. The defeat of Chavismo is critical to the US controlling the region. Venezuela cannot be allowed to refuse US domination. John Bolton made the coup very personal this week, threatening Maduro to accept Guaido’s offer of amnesty or find himself in the Guantanamo Bay prison.

Mexico and Uruguay announced an international conference set to take place in Montevideo on February 7, but the US is rejecting dialogue. The US and coup plotters do not want dialogue, they want regime change and nothing less.

Dimitri Orlov points to the end of the fracking boom in the US as a reason why there is haste in trying to dominate Venezuela. He writes “the fracking bonanza is ending. Most of the sweet spots have already been tapped; newer wells are depleting faster and producing less while costing more.” Fracking is already losing billions and soon will be losing trillions of dollars. As a result, a “rather large oil shortage is coming, and it will rather specifically affect the US, which burns 20% of the world’s oil.” While a sensible country would use this as a reason for a rapid transition to a clean energy economy, the US seeks to prop up its oil companies by stealing Venezuela’s oil.

The US signaled how abusive it could become by appointing war criminal Elliot Abrams to the coup team. The Intercept details Abrams’ long-term work of violently crushing democracy. His record: In the 1980s, 75,000 Salvadorans died mostly from government death squads; in Guatemala, he supported a government that committed widespread human rights violations in a war that killed 200,000 people; in the Contra War in Nicaragua, Abrams pled guilty to lying to Congress about the Iran-Contra Deal that resulted in tens of thousands of deaths. After he was pardoned by George H.W. Bush, Abrams returned to the White House of George W. Bush where among other things he gave the green light to the failed coup against Hugo Chavez in 2002.

The Economic War as An Excuse for Humanitarian Intervention

The Grayzone Project reports on documents that expose US plans for economic war in Venezuela. Ben Norton writes, the “documents acknowledge that Washington has been using what it clearly describes as ‘financial weapons’ to wage ‘economic warfare’ on the oil-rich South American nation.” Sanctions began under Bush in 2004, escalated under Obama when he declared Venezuela a national security threat in 2015 and escalated under Trump. Sanctions imposed by Trump have bled Venezuela of billions of dollars.

WikiLeaks published an excerpt from what it titled the “US coup manual,” which describes how the US uses “financial weapons” to wage “economic warfare.” These documents describe how sanctions and other punitive economic policies are not a mere prelude to war; they are a form of war. As Norton writes, the US is not considering war, but has “already been waging a war, for years.”

Even under this tremendous economic war, which worsened with a drop in oil prices, the Maduro government has focused on uplifting people. Telesur describes gains made under Maduro’s administration:

• Venezuela expanded its free health care coverage to more than 60 percent of the population.
• Earlier this year, the United Nations Program for Development placed Venezuela among the countries with the highest Human Development Index, surpassing most Latin American countries.
• Venezuela has built 3 million homes for the poor and working class, 1.6 million under Maduro, to house up to ten million people in a population of 30 million.
• Maduro’s administration has provided more than 4,800,000 computers, over 100 million technology textbooks to students across the country, and more than 20,000 schools have received new computer equipment.
• Venezuela ranks sixth in the world in terms of enrollment in primary education and has increased its coverage of secondary education to 73 percent of the population.
• There have also been gains in civil rights of historically oppressed sectors of Venezuelan society, like women, Afro-Indigenous people and the LGBTQ community.

These gains do not make Venezuela a socialist economy, indeed Norway is more socialist than Venezuela. Venezuela remains a capitalist country with 70% of the economy in private businesses. Some on the left criticize Maduro for not moving the country more rapidly to institute a socialist economy. Why is Venezuela attacked and not Norway? Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report argues another reason they are targeted is racism. Another is that Venezuela has rejected US domination.

The combination of tremendous drops in oil prices, the US economic war and oligarch’s undermining the economy has resulted in the economy shrinking by 50% in five years – worse than the US depression.

This week, John Bolton offered to send humanitarian assistance at the request of Guaido. When Venezuela has tried to buy essential goods and pharmaceuticals, they have been blocked and offered humanitarian aid instead. This presents a problem because if Venezuela accepts humanitarian aid, then it would provide an excuse for the Organization of American States (OAS) to intervene. And it would allow US institutions such as USAID into the country to bring the aid.

The irony of the US offering aid while conducting an economic war is evident. The UN rapporteur said that sanctions are killing people in Venezuela. Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Studies writes that the US is seeking to take control of Venezuela even if their actions are illegal and kill thousands of people.

Venezuela wouldn’t need aid if it were not for the sanctions and blockade. Venezuela, which has the second largest gold reserves, is currently raising hundreds of billions of dollars by selling 29 tons of gold reserves to UAE as well as selling gold to Russia.

The Flawed Coup is Failing Because of Mistaken Assumptions

An eye witness account from Venezuela describes how the coup is lacking popularity. A protest called earlier in the week had a very small turnout. Jessica Dos Santos, who writes about daily life in Venezuela, describes people trying to live normal lives and while people have criticisms of Maduro, they are more opposed to US intervention. She writes “when it comes to fighting against foreign intervention, then there isn’t much to think about: Our home country is and must be first. And this is because of our love for it, but also because we have historical awareness. There isn’t one single nation that has come out better after a US or NATO intervention. In addition to that, intervention presupposes that we don’t have the capacity to solve our own problems.”

Moon of Alabama described big flaws in the poorly thought out Trump coup. This includes false perceptions on the ground in Venezuela where they underestimated support for Maduro and opposition to US imperialism among people and the military. He describes the lack of support for the coup in the Venezuelan constitution, with their misinterpretation of Article 233, which requires the president to be unable to serve in order for the president of the National Assembly to replace him. Further, he describes how Guaido has no support base and how the coup was rushed without input from the Pentagon, Southcom, or Department of Justice, who were likely to oppose such a measure.

Guaido is now being investigated in Venezuela. His assets have been frozen and he is not allowed to leave the country. In most countries, he would already have been imprisoned. The vast majority of the military has stood by Maduro. CNN interviewed fake “veterans” not even in Venezuela asking for US military aid. And there have been false reports that the military was recruiting minors (youth) to rise up against Maduro.

Support the Venezuelan People: End the Sanctions and Prevent War

Maduro sent a video message to the people of the United States describing the false media coverage and urging people of the United States to stop their government from intervening in Venezuela. He said “If the U.S. intends to invade us, they will have a Vietnam worse than they can imagine. Let’s not allow violence,” urging viewers to “not permit a new Vietnam in Venezuela.”

People in the United States have a lot of work to do to convince the government not to intervene in Venezuela, i.e. end economic sanctions, stop military threats. Max Blumenthal interviewed members of Congress and asked them about whether the US was meddling in Venezuela. Most denied it or were misinformed and those that understood what was going on refused to speak out. Some have spoken out against the coup, notably, Tulsi Gabbard, Ro Khanna, Barbara Lee, Bernie Sanders, and the Progressive Caucus, although even some of them perpetuate falsehoods about the situation.

Being in solidarity with the people of Venezuela means opposing war and intervention. A recent poll found 86% of Venezuelans oppose war and 81% oppose the economic sanctions.

The threat of war against Venezuela is real. The US already has military bases in Colombia. There was more evidence this week. John Bolton displayed a notepad that said “5,000 troops to Colombia” and US military transport planes are flying over and landing in Colombia.

Activists must demand the United States follow the rule of law. The coup and sanctions violate international law as this letter from NGOs to the United Nations explains. Idriss Jazairy, the UN Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of the unilateral coercive measures, explains how the US economic sanctions violate international law. He wrote, “Coercion, whether military or economic, must never be used to seek a change in government in a sovereign state. The use of sanctions by outside powers to overthrow an elected government is in violation of all norms of international law.” The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recognized Maduro as president and rejected Guaido’s claim to the presidency.

The OAS, which is dominated by the United States, refused to recognize Guaidoand rejected intervening in Venezuela. Even the Lima Group, made up of right-wing governments in Latin America that oppose Venezuela, has rejected military intervention.

This article and Venezuela: What Activists Need To Know About The US-Led Coup, provide people with the information they need to combat the false media narrative about Venezuela. The Alliance for Global Justice has prepared an activist tool kit on Venezuela.

Protests have already been held in the US and around the world have already been held and more are being organized. On Monday, February 4, 2019 at 3PM, at the United States Permanent Mission to the United Nations located on the corner of 45th Street and First Avenue, NYC. On February 23, the one month anniversary of the soup, there will be a national day of actions protesting the coup.

This week Popular Resistance joined a call for a national march on Saturday, March 16, in Washington, D.C. against the Trump administration’s effort to engineer a coup in Venezuela and start a new devastating war there. If we unite and mobilize, we can stop this war and end US sanctions in Venezuela.

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers are directors of Popular Resistance

4 February 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Eric London

President Trump, Vice President Pence and National Security Advisor John Bolton escalated threats to launch a war against Venezuela, as large pro- and anti-government demonstrations filled Venezuela’s streets on Saturday.

In an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation” program that aired before the Super Bowl yesterday, Trump reiterated that military intervention “is an option.” Pence assured a crowd of far-right Venezuelan exiles in Miami on Friday that “this is no time for dialogue, it is the moment for action, and the time has come to end the Maduro dictatorship once and for all… Those looking on should know this: all options are on the table.”

Bolton, who helped author the playbook that was used to launch the 2003 invasion of Iraq, issued a blunt threat Friday that the US would kill or jail and torture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro if he did not resign. Comparing Maduro to Nicolae Ceaușescu and Benito Mussolini—both of whom were killed—Bolton told right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt: “The sooner he takes advantage of that [i.e., resignation], the sooner he’s likely to have a nice quiet retirement on a pretty beach rather than being in some other beach area like Guantanamo.”

Self-proclaimed “interim president” Juan Guaidó, the US and their allies in South America and Europe are preparing a new provocation aimed at forcing the Venezuelan military to abandon Maduro, with Guaidó announcing that the US will deliver aid at three locations along the Venezuelan border in the coming days.

While Maduro and the Venezuelan military leadership have said they will refuse the aid, the US hopes that images of crowds gathering to receive food and medication will either provoke the military to defect to the opposition and help distribute the aid or provide valuable propaganda footage justifying the need for a “humanitarian” intervention.

Over the weekend, hundreds of armed Colombian soldiers dressed in battle fatigues deployed to one of the three “aid distribution” centers, Cúcuta, on the Venezuela-Colombia border. Colombia’s far-right President Iván Duque issued a statement proclaiming, “Few hours remain to the Venezuelan dictatorship.” At a press conference last week announcing Washington’s moves to topple Maduro, Bolton held under his arm a note pad with the words written in plain view: “5,000 troops to Colombia.”

Guaidó also announced that one of the “aid” locations would be on the border with Brazil, which deployed troops to the border last year, while the third would be on an island in the Caribbean.

The stepped-up pressure produced an initial crack in the Venezuelan military, which remains the backbone of the Maduro government. Over the weekend, one Air Force general and a small group of mid-level Air Force officials defected and issued public statements calling on their colleagues to join them.

Germ án Ferrer, a sitting Venezuelan legislator and United Socialist Party member who opposes Maduro, told the CBC that Maduro has disabled combat aircraft for fear the Air Force will turn on the government.

The US is imposing blanket sanctions on Venezuelan oil that amount to a blockade on oil exports. This act of economic war is intended to increase social misery.

Shannon O’Neil of the Council on Foreign Relations told a conference call of bankers, government officials and oil executives last week that the sanctions will lead to “more deprivation, even given the low base we’re at, more among the population.” The sanctions will force thousands to flee the country, she added: “You’re going to see more refugees pouring into countries throughout the hemisphere and elsewhere around the world.”

The Brookings Institution explained that the present stage of the coup operation is aimed at “building an off-ramp for the Maduro regime.” In the parlance of US imperialism, countries whose leaders do not take the “off-ramp” are, like Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Gaddafi in Libya and Assad in Syria, subject to a hailstorm of bombs and missiles from the air and US troops or proxy armies on the ground.

As the Council on Foreign Relations’ O’Neil told the corporate conference call, “If it [sanctions] doesn’t work in dislodging this regime, then there’s not a lot left in the toolkit besides things like military intervention.”

A military intervention in Venezuela—population 30 million—could kill hundreds of thousands or millions of people and transform Latin America into an imperialist slaughterhouse.

The geopolitical intelligence think tank Stratfor recently noted, “A military intervention could quickly snowball into one of the largest worldwide military operations since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.”

Francisco Toro, a Washington Post columnist and anti-Maduro think tank analyst, told the Council on Foreign Relations gathering that a military intervention would lead to “a kind of Syrian civil war” and confrontation between nuclear-armed powers.

He said: “There is this definite threat that if a military operation takes any amount of time in Venezuela, that other countries then start to move in too. And you can imagine, easily, Brazil moving into the southeast, Colombia into the southwest. You can imagine Russia trying to defend its oil interests, because Russia has big oil investments in Venezuela. You can imagine China doing I don’t know what. And Cuba has already intelligence penetration into the Venezuelan armed forces.”

Maduro’s strategy is three-fold. First, he is seeking to present himself as palatable to US imperialism and open to negotiation with the far-right opposition. Second, he is using the threat of “another Vietnam” as bargaining leverage against a US military intervention. Third, he is violently crushing working class opposition over inflation, poverty and record levels of social inequality.

Maduro rejected the demand of several European imperialist powers that he announce by February 2 the holding of new presidential elections. As the deadline passed, European governments—including the UK, France, Spain, Austria, Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany—officially joined the US in recognizing Guaidó as president.

Maduro will now participate in large military exercises scheduled to last from February 5 to February 10. His government has also reportedly armed tens of thousands of members of a civilian reserve force with World War Two-era bolt-action rifles in anticipation of a possible invasion.

Key to the government’s strategy is a ferocious military crackdown on working class demonstrations and food riots. While the military and police have maintained a more passive presence at “official” demonstrations held by the right-wing opposition, government forces have murdered dozens of workers and youth participating in demonstrations over lack of access to food, water and other basic necessities.

The Maduro regime has responded to these demonstrations, which largely take place at night in the slum areas, with midnight raids by death squads, “disappearing” working class opponents in an effort to terrorize the areas that once were bastions of support for Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez Frias. The corporate media does not report these crackdowns.

In this way, Maduro is attempting to prove to his opponents in the US and Europe—as well as his backers in Russia and China—that he remains the best option for ending instability and keeping the oil flowing.

At its roots, Washington’s intensifying efforts at regime-change in Venezuela are part of a “pivot to Latin America” aimed at eradicating Chinese and Russian influence and transforming the whole Western Hemisphere into the exclusive cheap-labor and primary resource platform for US imperialism.

In November 2018, when Bolton announced the “Troika of Tyranny”—Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua—he was elaborating the strategic view that the US cannot successfully conduct operations against Russia in Eastern Europe, against China in South Asia, or against both Russia and China in Central Asia, without eliminating their presence in “America’s backyard” and freeing up the region’s resources for the US war machine. The establishment of a US-ruled “Fortress Americas” was a central foreign policy component of the “America First” movement in the early 1940s.

In a March 2018 document published by the US Army War College titled “The Strategic Relevance of Latin America in the US National Security Strategy,” the Army notes that in the aftermath of the fall of the dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s, “most democratic societies in the Western Hemisphere” are “feckless and unconsolidated, thereby representing a threat to the national security of the United States by external actors (such as China and Russia) opposing US interests in the region.”

The strategy document indicated another reason for possible military operations in Venezuela: the need for the US military to test its operating capacities in heavily populated urban areas.

“Latin American megacities are also a laboratory for the US Army in cooperation with its strategic partners in addressing another important issue, or, perhaps, an old issue in the post-Cold War international system: how to fight a conventional war in an unconventional environment,” the document states. “Megacities are the new arena for conflicts in the 21st century. Therefore, the US Government and Army cannot afford to be caught off guard when called upon to exercise and accomplish its mission.”

Originally published by WSWS.org

4 February 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By George Galloway

20 Jan 2019 – Pirates don’t have to look like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean. They can fly the Union Jack rather than the skull and crossbones. They can be called the Bank of England rather than the Jolly Roger.

The ‘Old Lady of Threadneedle Street’ is a port in a stormy world for all kinds of countries in which to moor their national wealth. And it’s not even necessarily voluntary.

After the fall of the communist regime in Albania, I had a brief tenure as joint chairman of the Britain-Albania Society with the Tory MP Steve Norris. He and I had to move mountains to try and persuade the British government (which then entirely controlled the Bank of England) to give the Albanians back their gold, which had been seized by the British during Second World War.

This week’s brigandry – unnoticed by any commentator I read – took place in an era when the Bank of England is officially independent of government control. And yet it was triggered by a phone call from a foreign government official.

The bank’s decision to seize – a polite word for steal – more than a billion dollars’ worth of Venezuelan gold was reported to have been ordered by the governor after a call from US National Security Advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo – not even the president himself.

If I’m right, then this decision to damage – hopefully irreparably – the safety of deposits in the Bank of England was taken by an unelected, unaccountable Canadian citizen (who only got his British citizenship in November). He is here today but gone tomorrow as the governor of the Bank of England. The foreign policy of the state – whose bank it is – was thus at least anticipated if not usurped by Bolton, a minor official of a foreign country. Was that what the Tory champions of Brexit had in mind when they campaigned for Britain to “take back control”?

Of course the governor, Mark Carney, will have known that Bolton was pushing at an open bank vault door and that Britain is no more independent from the United States than the Bank of England is independent from the British government.

In addition, no Caribbean crocodile could shed tears more insincere than those currently being shed by British politicians for the “poor suffering people” of Venezuela. After all, what kind of monster could seize a billion dollars from “poor and suffering people”?

In around 72 hours last week, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was transformed from somebody hardly anyone in Britain had ever heard of, into the new “Hitler on the Nile.”

This appellation was first applied in post-war Britain to President Nasser of Egypt when he nationalized the Suez Canal. Unfortunately for the imperium, this was actually in Egypt, the country of which he was the president. After all, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, it wasn’t Britain’s fault that God put Britain’s canals in other people’s countries.

And there have been many since: Yasser Arafat, Muammar Gaddafi, Bashar Assad, Slobodan Milosevic, Vladimir Putin, and more.

The transformation has been astonishing to watch, even for me, who has been active in politics for 50 years.

All the carefully tended gardens of NGOs, “independent journalists,” and experts all flooded forward with their long-husbanded narratives about the perfidy of the Chavez revolution in Venezuela. They did universally suffer two disadvantages however: none of them could even pronounce the name of the man in a street in Caracas whose self-proclaimed presidency they were recognizing. And none of them appeared to know that the US had been imposing a medieval siege of sanctions, sabotage and subversion against Venezuela. At least none of them mentioned it.

None of them, like in every other foreign regime-change operation they’d pushed for, had the remotest idea of what would happen in Venezuela if they succeeded, not least how the many millions of armed Chavez supporters might take to their government being overthrown by foreigners. It is hard to work out whether these journalists and politicians demanding civil war on the world’s biggest oil-fields are criminally insane, just criminals, or whether they can plead diminished responsibility on the grounds they didn’t actually know what had already happened in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Ukraine, etc.

The demonization of Venezuela across even those Western countries which scarcely have functioning governments themselves has been a tidal wave. The pitiful resources Venezuela has invested in solidarity work in Britain – or if they did invest it no-one can explain where it went – was summed up by the complete refusal of the Venezuelan Solidarity Campaign to put someone up for my RT show Sputnik last week, referring me to the Cuba Solidarity Campaign next door.

They, in turn, suggested the Englishman who ably edits the British newspaper, the Morning Star. Seldom can a big and important oil-rich country – vulnerable to Western invasion as it has predictably turned out to be – have bothered to make so few friends.

Events on the ground in Venezuela will decide what happens next, however. In my view, there will be many cutlasses flashing and slashing before this is through. And just like in all the other cases I’ve referre

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George Galloway was a member of the British Parliament for nearly 30 years. He presents TV and radio shows and is a film-maker, writer and a renowned orator.

4 February 2019

Source: transcend.org