Written by Finian Cunningham; Originally appeared on strategic-culture.org
US imperialists are so desperate in their regime-change predations over Venezuela, they seem to have a problem controlling their drooling mouths.
The latest orgy of American gloating was triggered by the massive power outages to have hit Venezuela. No sooner had the South American country been blacked out from its power grid collapsing, senior US officials were crowing with perverse relish.
Republican Senator Marco Rubio – who has become a point man for the Trump administration in its regime-change campaign in Venezuela – was a little too celebratory. Within minutes of the nationwide power outage last Thursday, Rubio was having verbal orgasms about the “long-term economic damage”… “in the blink of an eye”. But it was his disclosure concerning the precise damage in the power grid that has led the Venezuelan government to accuse the US of carrying out a sabotage.
Information Minister Jorge Rodriguez noted how Rubio, in his tweeted comments “three minutes” after the power outage, mentioned failure of “back-up generators” in Venezuela’s main hydroelectric plant, known as the Guri Dam, located in Bolivar State. The dam supplies some 80 per cent of the Venezuelan population of 31 million with its electricity consumption.
Rodriguez mockingly ascribed “mystic skills” to Rubio because the Florida Republican senator appeared to know the precise nature of the power failure even before the Venezuelan authorities had determined it.
The Venezuelan government has since claimed that the failure in the electric grid was caused by a cyber attack on the computer system controlling the Guri Dam turbines. Caracas said it will present proof of its claims to the United Nations.
Apart from Rubio’s apparent insider information, there are several other indicators that Venezuela’s latest turmoil from power blackout was indeed caused by US sabotage, and specifically a cyber attack.
The South American country has experienced recurring power cuts over recent years due to economic problems and Washington’s sanctions. But the latest outage was widespread – at least 70 per cent of the country – and sustained for more than four days, rather than being rectified within hours. That scale of disruption suggests an unprecedented event, way beyond intermittent problems of maintenance.
The duration of the blackout in the capital Caracas and other major cities also indicates that the nature of the problem was difficult to reverse, which would be consistent with a cyber attack on the power grid. “It was a kill-shot,” says American political analyst Randy Martin.
Furthermore, US officials like President Trump’s national security advisor John Bolton as well as “special envoy” on Venezuelan affairs Elliot Abrams have been warning that Washington is seeking new ways to pile pressure on Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro to stand down.
Abrams was caught out last week in a prank phone call made by two Russian entertainers posing as Swiss President Ueli Maurer in which Abrams openly advocated crushing the Venezuelan banking system in order to topple the government in Caracas. The American envoy, who was convicted over the Iran-Contra affair in the 1980s for sponsoring terrorism to sabotage Nicaragua, appeared to balk at using overt US military power against Venezuela. That suggests Washington was persuaded on the efficacy of cyber warfare to inflict social chaos and incite popular anger against the Maduro government.
The immediate reaction by Washington officials and the US-backed political opposition in Venezuela was to blame the Maduro government for the power disorder. The failure was flagged up as a sign of “incompetence” and “mismanagement” of the oil-rich country by the socialist administration. Opposition leader Juan Guaido, who has declared himself the rightful president with Washington’s blessing, conveyed the logic of blackmail when he declared, “the lights will come back on when usurper Maduro is gone”.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also weighed in with repulsive gloating within hours of Venezuela’s power crisis. Pompeo tweeted: “No food. No medicine. Now, no power. Next, no Maduro.”
The delight openly displayed by Washington officials in regard to aggression against Venezuela has broken new ground in terms of the brazenness of US imperialism.
Only a few weeks ago, Bolton announced that the objective for seeking regime change in Venezuela against the elected President Nicolas Maduro was for US corporations to seize the South American state’s vast oil wealth – reckoned to be the largest known reserves on the planet, far exceeding those of Saudi Arabia.
Such is Washington’s unbridled lust for Venezuela’s natural resources that its imperialist advocates are falling over themselves with naked lies and crimes.
When a US Trojan Horse aid convoy was blocked from entering into Venezuela from Colombia last month, American politicians and media immediately blamed the Maduro government for sabotaging the effort. An aid truck was set alight on a border crossing on February 23. US Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Rubio, as well as CNN, condemned the Venezuelan authorities for “callous” destruction of vital aid delivery to its long-suffering people. It turns out, as even the New York Times has now admitted three weeks later, that the aid truck was torched by US-backed opposition supporters on the Colombian side of the border.
The obscenity of American imperialism is that it has inflicted huge social misery in Venezuela from years of sanctions and illegal confiscation (theft) of billions of dollars in assets belonging to the nation. Then it has the audacity to mount a charade seeming to deliver humanitarian aid.
The latest twist to this sadistic game played by Washington is turning the lights off across the entire nation, in homes, hospitals, airports and schools, among other essential services, and attempting to lay the blame on the Venezuelan government.
We may, however, be thankful for Washington’s overweening arrogance and criminality. Because, as Marco Rubio’s rash remarks concerning the latest power outage show, the American gangsterism towards Venezuela is being exposed for the naked aggression that it is.
US-based political analyst Randy Martin, in comments for this column, says that what Washington is doing to Venezuela is tantamount to the “rape of democracy”. “American imperialism has no longer any shame,” he said. “It used to rape countries under the cover a seedy alleyway of false excuses and hollow claims of righteousness. Now it has its trousers around its ankles and trying to rape Venezuela right on the global Main Street.”
Who would agree,that the world is sick and tired of zionist controlled US,and its bully in occupied Palestine daily spewing out its warmongering BS,while literally getting away with genocide,murder,theft,illegal invasions of countries,and has the audacity to preach human rights to nations.The American people better wake up pronto,before its too late.
I am. But Russia is not a solution. The only hope is that the American people wake up, I doubt that would happen soon, however never is too late.
American people cannot wake up ,on main stream news. Russia & China should get in Venezuela (now). The world, does need to challenge the US bully today. If countries ,continue to be destroyed by the US ! Only the Nuke card will be left for Russia & China etc, Goodnight World.
Most anti-americans on the Internet are suicidal teens
Your the type to paint everything with the same brush…just like my wife.
I said most. Some are not teens, just retarded.
Americans have been dumbed down to the level of sheep, they will walk to their death dreaming of a cheeseburger. Lets be honest, what is the economic advantage of keeping them alive. They are only capable of menial tasks, and are simply not worth feeding. That’s probably why Americas rulers have decided to terminate them. It will be good for the economy to repopulate with fresh less obese people who have drive and a willingness to work.
Americans have the highest productivity of work, better than the Japanese. They are so strong that created a way for you to freely wish them death and they don’t care. Let’s be honest, you are walking with their death in mind. You are a walking cheeseburger.
The sick and morally bankrupt Empire is sinking.
It is the Jewish project for the new American century, it is clear that they do not respect any international law, their Talmudic ideology of chosen people considers other peoples beasts to use or destroy.
I don’t really buy that, most Jews live in America, and Americas actions are going to get it nuked. The Jews want everybody’s money, it’s America that gets pleasure from killing, that’s why they get America to kill for them.
The Jews are smart, they know you can’t spend money once you are dead. It’s Americans that plan to leave the world like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid.
This is good for atheistic or secular Jews, not for the true Jewish followers of the rabbis and the Talmud. The Arab party Balad is excluded from the elections in Israel, a racist, fascist state that aims to give a blow to the political representation of Arab citizens. The exclusion of Hadash’s left-wing Kasif party is also a fact, because it spoke of the “creeping genocide” of the Palestinians, called Ayelet Shaked “neo-Nazi scum” and dared to compare Israel and its army to the Nazi regime. Kasif also claimed to be fighting the “Judeo-Nazis”. I completely agree with this Israeli democratic patriot. America is in the hands of the Zionists of the new american century, they are the followers of the Talmud, destroyers of the world, waiting for the Messiah for world domination and the III temple of Jerusalem.
“Little Marco” had not been heard from in a while. He finally got invited to play with the big kids and is now on the Neocon team with Bolton, Abrams, Pompeo, and Pence.
yeah another one waiting to be lampposted asap!
Exactly! :-)
Well little Rubio seems to have admitted supplying material support for terrorism. Will he be arrested or snuffed out like Bin Laden. You know if some country issued an arrest warrant for Marco on charges of terrorism, the monkeys in Washington would go ballistic.
The immediate reaction by Washington officials and the US-backed political opposition in Venezuela was to blame the Maduro government for the power disorder. The failure was flagged up as a sign of “incompetence” and “mismanagement” of the oil-rich country by the socialist administration. Opposition leader Juan Guaido, who has declared himself the rightful president with Washington’s blessing, conveyed the logic of blackmail when he declared, “the lights will come back on when usurper Maduro is gone”……”
Juan guaido became the rightful leader of Venezuela on January 10, 2019 according to the constitution of Venezuela. It’s that simple. According to Lawfare (Guaidó, Not Maduro, Is the De Jure President of Venezuela http://www.lawfareblog.com/guaido-not-maduro-de-jure-president-venezuela):
Any plausible reading of the constitution shows that Maduro was not reelected and, indeed, that there has been no election at all for the term beginning Jan. 10. Article 293 governs the process for calling and organizing new presidential elections, delegating to the National Electoral Council control over the process. Members of that body are nominated through a complicated scheme that gives significant power to the National Assembly, the country’s unicameral legislature, under Article 296. To Maduro’s chagrin, however, the National Assembly has been under opposition control since 2015.
In an attempt to circumvent the National Assembly, Maduro created a parallel legislature under Articles 347 and 348. These provisions, however, were meant solely to call for a constitutional convention and required a national referendum (like the one in 1999). Knowing that a popular vote would defeat his proposal, Maduro concocted an “electoral” process that would ensure every member of that alternate assembly would be under his control. That entire process was outside of the constitutional structure and violated the procedures prescribed by Article 347 and Venezuelan law. Under any sensible reading of the constitution, there was no basis for a parallel legislature nor the process by which it was staffed.
Here’s the key connection between that parallel body and the Venezuelan presidential elections: In 2018, the unconstitutional assembly called for, and organized, a presidential election—in direct violation of the constitution. The alternate assembly sidelined the actual National Assembly’s role, staffed the National Electoral Council with Maduro loyalists, and ensured another “election” that would keep Maduro in power.
All of that unconstitutional procedure means that the so-called presidential election of 2018 was de jure null and void.
Trashing the constitution is, of course, ignored by Maduro apologists. Trashing the economy is also ignored by Maduro apologists.
Absolute nonsense. TL:DR version: The legislature is in contempt of court. Maduro had every right to hold elections for a constituent assembly. The constituent assembly elections were free and fair. The constitution gives the assembly sweeping powers, which certainly include ordering new elections. The opposition were for new presidential elections before they were against them. The presidential elections were free and fair. Maduro was thus democratically elected in free and fair elections. There is no case to be made that someone who was not elected president should now be the president instead of someone who was. Article 233 does not say what Guaido et al claim it says; his claim to the presidency is fraudulent (and would be even if the elections had been problematic in some way, since there’s nothing in Article 233 about that kind of thing).
(As a side note, I can’t help finding any site called “lawfare” a bit suspect. As in, it carries out warfare by means of law.)
First of all, the National Assembly is in contempt of court. A lot of the crap that has happened since then stems from that basic point. The Venezuelan electoral process is pretty bulletproof, but no electoral process is proof against directly bribing voters, and there are a few seats with particularly low populations where that’s feasible. So, some newly elected representatives (mostly opposition, but also a couple PSUV) got caught with their hands in the cookie jar, and the National Electoral Council ordered new elections for those seats. The PSUV took its medicine. The opposition refused to accept the NEC’s authority over elections, it went to court, the supreme court told them the NEC’s decision stood, and the opposition still refused to hold by-elections. They insisted that the guys who cheated to get in were going to sit come hell or high water. So the court said OK, as long as those guys are sitting in the legislature, the legislature is in contempt and all its actions are null and void as long as those invalid votes would be counted. Let’s be clear: Those guys aren’t real representatives. They were not validly elected. They cheated. They should be out on their ears and new by-elections for those seats should be held. If they were held, the opposition would have a comfortable majority in a legislature no longer in contempt of court. But they probably would lose some or all of those by-election seats, and so wouldn’t have a two thirds majority. So why would the opposition do this? I have three non-exclusive hypotheses. First, they were desperately looking for a way to create deadlocks in government and have something to rag on Maduro about, and voila, an excuse. Second, they were specifically interested in that two thirds majority–they wanted, not to govern in the normal sense or pass ordinary laws or budgetary measures, but to change the constitution to their advantage. The few laws they did try to pass before all this went down were mainly unconstitutional, which kind of shows how useful changing the constitution would be to them. Part of both of these points is that the opposition know perfectly well that while lots of people are upset with how things are going in Venezuela, mighty few are happy with the kinds of things the opposition want to do. If they started acting like a normal government and enacting the policies they want, in a smallish way due to the constraints of the constitution, it would become all the more obvious what they actually want, everyone would hate them, and their chances of getting all the power would go further down the tubes. So they only want to govern if they have the whole enchilada–the presidency, the legislature, the ability to turf the constitution, ideally some way to avoid further elections. Third hypothesis, they’re idiots. Plenty of evidence for that one.
All right. Moving on, article 348: “The initiative for calling a National Constituent Assembly may emanate from the President of the Republic sitting with the Cabinet of Ministers; from the National Assembly by a two-thirds vote of its members; from the Municipal Councils in open session, by a two-thirds vote of their members; and from 15% of the voters registered with the Civil and Electoral Registry.”
So. The president totally had the legal authority to call for an election of a constituent assembly. The election itself was, as usual in Venezuela, free and fair. The opposition, as they often do, boycotted it, and as always happens when they boycott an election, they got hardly any of their guys in. Well, duh. They’re idiots.
So then you have this constituent assembly and no legislature, because it refuses to stop being in contempt of court. And the constitution gives the assembly sweeping powers, and specifies that nobody can get in its way. So they give themselves the power to do some legislature stuff. It’s irregular, but constitutionally they can totally do that because constitutionally they can do practically anything. As to whether they should have, well, someone had to. It could have been the legislature itself except the opposition types in the legislature refused to govern without the guys who shouldn’t be there. It could still be the legislature itself if they’d just hold by-elections without the cheaters and stop being in contempt of court.
So then. Once you realize that the constituent assembly is in fact legitimate, the whole notion of it being illegal for Maduro to call elections becomes nonsense. The first constituent assembly ordered elections, too. And in fact, most of the opposition themselves did not until recently claim it was illegitimate for Maduro to call elections. After all, they were in negotiations with Maduro for months (with former Spanish prime minister Jose Zapatero mediating), with one of the main topics being the calling of elections. Initially, they wanted early elections, and Maduro eventually agreed to early elections. Then they got upset about that and wanted later elections–they needed more time to get ready. So Maduro agreed to later elections. Then the Americans told them to pull out of the negotiations and insist on not holding elections at all. But obviously, if Maduro had refrained from holding elections at all, the US would then have turned around and said he was illegitimate because he hadn’t held elections. Zapatero advised the elections be held anyway, and that’s what Maduro did. The opposition mostly, on US orders, boycotted the elections. Unsurprisingly, as always when they boycott elections, they lost, although Henri Falcon, a much more significant opposition figure than Guaido, gave it a good try. Unsurprisingly, those international observers who went concluded that as usual, the elections were free and fair. The Americans didn’t send anyone and, with the US leaning on them, neither did the UN, so they have no real basis for any claims they might make to the contrary.
Now Guaido. He claims the presidency based on article 233. “Article 233: The President of the Republic shall become permanently unavailable to serve by reason of any of the following events: death; resignation; removal from office by decision of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice; permanent physical or mental disability certified by a medical board designated by the Supreme Tribunal of Justice with the approval of the National Assembly; abandonment of his position, duly declared by the National Assembly; and recall by popular vote. When an elected President becomes permanently unavailable to serve prior to his inauguration, a new election by universal suffrage and direct ballot shall be held within 30 consecutive days. Pending election and inauguration of the new President, the President of the National Assembly shall take charge of the Presidency of the Republic.”
OK. So, Maduro didn’t die, he didn’t resign, the Supremes didn’t remove him (although they did remove some National Assembly members who refuse to go), he has no permanent mental or physical disability, and he hasn’t abandoned his position. In short, Article 233 doesn’t apply to him at all. There is nothing in Article 233 about anyone having a problem with the elections that were held. Guaido is no more president of Venezuela than I am. Furthermore, if he was, he would have had to order new elections by now–in fact, they should have happened by now, because it’s been 30 days since he tried it on. He has shown no signs of being interested in the new elections that the constitutional article he fraudulently relies on mandates.
One month ago Maduro was going to present evidence about this sabotage. I have not seen a recent article that outlines his assertions. Does anyone have a link that they could provide?
I will admit to being a knee jerk free market guy, but I can be convinced through effective argument of otherwise. I will also admit to only getting information from American news outlets. The things I have read that trouble me are Maduro’s reported fixing of elections and nationalizing businesses that openly oppose him. I have trouble getting past that.