Venezuelan pharmacy at a time when Time (5/19/16) was telling readers, “Basic medicines like aspirin are nowhere to be found” in Venezuela.
I was sitting in my apartment in Caracas, Venezuela, reading the online edition of Time magazine (5/19/16), which carried a report that there was not even something as basic as aspirin to be found anywhere in Venezuela: “Basic medicines like aspirin are nowhere to be found.”
I walked out of the apartment to the nearest pharmacy, four blocks away, where I found plenty of aspirin, as well as acetaminophen (generic Tylenol) and ibuprofen (generic Advil), in a well-stocked pharmacy with a knowledgeable professional staff that would be the envy of any US drugstore.
A few days after the Time story, CNBC (6/22/16) carried a claim that there was no acetaminophen to be found anywhere, either: “Basic things like Tylenol aren’t even available.” That must have taken the Pfizer Corporation by surprise, since it was their Venezuelan subsidiary, Pfizer Venezuela SA, which produced the acetaminophen I purchased. (Neither Time writer Ian Bremer nor CNBC commentator Richard Washington was in Venezuela, and there was no evidence offered that either of them had ever been there.)
I purchased all three products, plus cough syrup and other over-the-counter medications, because I doubted that anyone in the United States would believe me if I couldn’t produce the medications in their packages.
Unrelenting drumbeat of lies
Venezuelan Youth Orchestra in New York City, 2016
In fact, I myself wouldn’t have believed anyone who made such claims without being able to produce the proof, so intense and unrelenting has been the drumbeat of lies. When the Youth Orchestra of Venezuela gave a concert in New York in early 2016, before I moved to Caracas, I went there thinking, “Gee, I hope that the members of the orchestra are all well-dressed and well-fed.” Yes, of course they were all well-dressed and well-fed!
When I mentioned this in a talk at the University of Vermont, a student told me that he’d had the same feeling when he was following the Pan American soccer championship. He wondered if the Venezuelan players would be able to play, because they’d be so weakened from lack of food. In fact, he said, the Venezuelan team played superbly, and went much further in the competition than expected, since Venezuela has historically been a baseball country, unlike its soccer-obsessed neighbors Brazil and Colombia.
Hard as it may be for followers of the US media to believe, Venezuela is a country where people play sports, go to work, go to classes, go to the beach, go to restaurants and attend concerts. They publish and read newspapers of all political stripes, from right to center-right, to center, to center-left, to left. They produce and watch programs on television, on TV channels that are also of all political stripes.
Supporters of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro (photo: TeleSur)
CNN was ridiculed recently (Redacted Tonight, 2/1/19) when it carried a report on Venezuela, “in the socialist utopia that now leaves virtually every stomach empty,” followed immediately with a cut to a demonstration by the right-wing opposition, where everybody appeared to be quite well-fed.
But surely that’s because most of the anti-government demonstrators were upper-middle class, a viewer might think. The proletarians at pro-government demonstrations must be suffering severe hunger.
Not if one consults photos of the massive pro-government demonstration on February 2, where people seemed to be doing pretty well. This is in spite of the Trump administration’s extreme economic squeeze on the country, reminiscent of the “make the economy scream” strategy used by the Nixon administration and the CIA against the democratic government of President Salvador Allende in Chile, as well as many other democratically elected governments.
Rival demonstrations
Últimas Noticias on Twitter (2/1/19): “Capriles: The Parties Weren’t Supporting the Auto-Inauguration of Guaidó”
That demonstration showed considerable support for the government of President Nicolás Maduro and widespread rejection of Donald Trump’s choice for president of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó. Guaidó, who proclaimed himself to be president of the country and was recognized minutes later by Trump, even though a public opinion poll showed that 81 percent of Venezuelans had never heard of him, comes from the ultra-right faction in Venezuelan politics.
The pro-Maduro demonstration suggested, not surprisingly, that Guaidó had failed to win much popular support outside the wealthy and upper-middle class. But Guaidó couldn’t even win support from many of them. The day before rival rallies February 2, Henrique Capriles, the leader of a less extreme right-wing faction, gave an interview to the AFP that appeared in Últimas Noticias (2/1/19), the most widely read newspaper in Venezuela. In it, Capriles said that most of the opposition had not supported Guaidó’s self-proclamation as president. That may explain the surprisingly weak turnout at Guaidó’s demonstration, held in the wealthiest district of Caracas, and obviously outshone by the pro-government demonstration on the city’s main boulevard.
The New York Times did not show pictures of that pro-government demonstration, limiting itself to a claim by unnamed “experts” (2/2/19) that the pro-government demonstration was smaller than the anti-government one.
Readers can look at the photos of the rival demonstrations and judge for themselves. Both groups did their best to pull out their faithful, knowing how much is riding on a show of popular support. The stridently right-wing opposition paper El Nacional (2/3/19) carried a photo of the right-wing opposition demonstration:
If that was the best photo it could find, it was remarkably unimpressive compared to the photos in the left-wing papers CCS (2/2/19)….
…and Correo del Orinoco (2/3/19), which were only too happy to publish pictures of the pro-government event:
Unlikely humanitarian
A huge anti-government demonstration was supposed to make possible a coup d’état, a maneuver the CIA has used repeatedly—in Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Brazil in 1964 and many more, straight through to Honduras in 2009 and Ukraine in 2015. The turnout at the Trump administration’s demonstration was disappointing, and the coup d’état never occurred. The result is that Trump has expressed a sudden interest in getting food and medicine to Venezuelans (FAIR.org, 2/9/19).
Trump, who let thousands die in Puerto Rico and put small children in cages on the Mexican border, seems to be an unlikely champion of humanitarian aid to Latin Americans, but the corporate media have straight-facedly pretended to believe it.
The CBC (2/15/19) acknowledged that the bridge depicted as being blocked to humanitarian aid has in fact never been opened.
Most have suppressed reports that the Red Cross and the UN are providing aid to Venezuela in cooperation with the Venezuelan government, and have protested against US “aid” that is obviously a political and military ploy.
The corporate media have continued to peddle the Trump-as-humanitarian-champion line, even after it was revealed that a US plane was caught smuggling weapons into Venezuela, and even after Trump named Iran/Contra criminal Elliott Abrams to head up Venezuelan operations. Abrams was in charge of the State Department Human Rights Office during the 1980s, when weapons to US-backed terrorists in Nicaragua were shipped in US planes disguised as “humanitarian” relief.
Canada’s CBC (2/15/19) at least had the honesty to acknowledge that it had been had in swallowing a lie from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that the Venezuelan government had blockaded a bridge between Colombia and Venezuela to prevent aid shipments. The newly built bridge has not yet been opened: it has never been open, apparently because of hostile relations between the two countries, but the non-opening long predates the US government’s alleged food and medicine shipments.
The absurdity of $20 million of US food and medicine aid to a country of 30 million, when US authorities have stolen $30 billion from Venezuela in oil revenue, and take $30 million every day, needs no comment.
‘Failed state’
The Financial Times (4/11/16) reported in 2016 that Venezuela was a “failed state,” “pure chaos” with “something akin to a civil war going on.”
The campaign of disinformation and outright lies about Venezuela was kicked off in 2016 by the Financial Times. Ironically, it chose the 14th anniversary of the 2002 failed coup d’etat against President Hugo Chávez—April 11, 2016—to claim that Venezuela was in “chaos” and “civil war,” and that Venezuela was a “failed state.” As with the Time and CNBC reports, the Financial Times reporter was not in Venezuela, and there was no evidence in the report that he had ever been there.
I asked right-wing friends in Venezuela whether they agreed with the Financial Times claims. “Well, no, of course not,” said one, stating the obvious, “there is no chaos and no civil war. But Venezuela is a failed state, since it has not been able to provide for all the medical needs of the population.” By that standard, every country in Latin America is a failed state, and obviously the United States too.
The New York Times has run stories (5/15/16, 10/1/16) claiming that conditions in Venezuelan hospitals are horrendous. The reports enraged Colombians in New York, who have noted that a patient can die on the doorstep of a Colombian public hospital if the patient has no insurance. In Venezuela, in contrast, patients are treated for free.
One Colombian resident in New York said that his mother had recently returned to Bogotá after several years in the United States, and had not had time to obtain medical insurance. She fell ill, and went to a public hospital. The hospital left her in the waiting room for four hours, then sent her to a second hospital. The second hospital did the same, leaving her for four hours and then sending her to a third hospital. The third hospital was preparing to send her to a fourth when she protested that she was bleeding internally and was feeling weak.
“I’m sorry, Señora, if you don’t have medical insurance, no public hospital in this country will look at you,” said the woman at the desk. “Your only hope is to go to a private hospital, but be prepared to pay a great deal of money up front.” Luckily, she had a wealthy friend, who took her to a private hospital, and paid a great deal of money up front.
Such conditions in Colombia and other neoliberal states go unmentioned in the US corporate media, which have treated the Colombian government, long a right-wing murder-squad regime, as a US ally (Extra!, 2/09).
“Latin American Juvenile Cardiac Hospital, Caracas: It’s Chávez’s Fault!” (YouTube, 3/31/11)
Well, OK, but are the reports of conditions in Venezuelan hospitals true or grossly exaggerated? “They are much better than they were ten years ago,” said a friend who works in a Caracas hospital. In fact, he said, ten years before, the hospital where he worked did not exist, and new hospitals are now being opened. One was dedicated recently in the town of El Furrial, and another was opened in El Vigia, as reported by the centrist newspaper Últimas Noticias (3/3/17, 4/27/18). The government has also greatly expanded others, like a burn center in Caracas and three new operating rooms at the hospital in Villa Cura.
Meanwhile, the government is inaugurating a new high-speed train line, The Dream of Hugo Chávez, in March (Correo del Orinoco, 2/6/19). Since the US media have never allowed reporting on any accomplishments in the years since Chávez took office in 1999, but only any alleged, exaggerated or, as noted, completely invented shortcomings, readers have to consult an alternative history. Here is one offered by a Venezuelan on YouTube (3/31/11): “Por Culpa de Chávez” (“It’s Chávez’s Fault”). Depicting new hospitals, transit lines, housing, factories and so on built under Chavismo, it might help many understand why the Maduro government continues to enjoy such strong backing from so many people.
Economic warfare
This is not to minimize Venezuela’s problems. The country was hit, like other oil-producing countries, and as it was in the 1980s and ’90s, by the collapse of oil prices. That failed to bring down the government, so now the Trump administration has created an artificial crisis by using extreme economic warfare to deprive the country of foreign exchange needed to import basic necessities. The Trump measures seem designed to prevent any economic recovery.
Like any country at war (and the Trump administration has placed Venezuela under wartime conditions, and is threatening immediate invasion), there have been shortages, and products that can mostly be found on the black market. This should surprise no one: During World War II in the US, a cornucopia of a country not seriously threatened with invasion, there was strict rationing of products like sugar, coffee and rubber.
The Venezuelan government has made food, medicine and pharmaceuticals available at extremely low prices, but much of the merchandise has made its way to the black market, or over the border to Colombia, depriving Venezuelans of supplies and ruining Colombian producers. The government recently abandoned some of the heavy price subsidies, which resulted initially in higher prices. Over the past few weeks, prices have been coming down as supplies stayed in Venezuela, especially as the government gained greater control over the Colombian border to prevent smuggling.
There has never been a serious discussion of any of this in the US corporate media, much less any discussion of the campaign of lies or the Trump administration warfare. There has been no comparison with conditions in the 1980s and ’90s, when Venezuela’s neoliberal government imposed IMF economic recipes, resulting in a popular rebellion, the bloody 1989 Caracazo, when wholesale government repression took the lives of hundreds (according to the government at the time) or thousands (according to government critics), and martial law took the lives of many more.
Efforts by the right-wing opposition to provoke a similar uprising, and another Caracazo that could justify a foreign “humanitarian intervention,” have failed repeatedly. So the US administration and corporate media simply resort to the most extreme lying about Latin America that has been seen since the Reagan administration wars of the 1980s.
“[B]ut the corporate media have straight-facedly pretended to believe it.”
Thank you, Mr. Cook.
The corpress doesn’t naïvely “swallow” the lies of power
They wilfully regurgitate them.
AS Goebbels says ” If you say a lie, tell the big one” And had hear all big ones” WMD I Iraq, ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia, Assad was killing his own people, and on. But all these lies to demonizes the target have used to unleash bloodiest and unjustifiable wars.
Wow, people without food and they can’t get medicines, and joblessness is huge too. What is wrong with that government! OMG—-it’s it’s —oh wait—that’s America. I wonder why the BIG CORPORATE MEDIA doesn’t cover that.
The same thing ocured to me. They’re talking about the USA.
Wait a second, “back to the golden age of lying???” When did it stop? Governments lie and the media lies for the government. I hope this country wakes up to how the media lies.
Yeah, today on Democracy Now, Amy interviewed an Venezuelan academic in Caracas and behind him was a normal looking cityscene with cars, trucks and bused moving normally on freeway ramps and it all looked so strange, because based on the US media propaganda saturation, I was expecting to see some kind of disaster scene with soldiers gunning down starving citizens scrambling for the last scraps of bread and the like.
It is so funny the way the US media will manufacture absurd perceptions of a place pursuant to its interests. From childhood in the 1960s, I still have, in my head, these wildly exaggerated cartoon images of Eastern Europe and Russia and Yugoslavia as endless lines of starving people dressed in rags in grey skies and bitter cold waiting for days for a small loaf of bread and the like…
Please. I’m as anti-war as anyone else but I also live in a Colombian border town. I have seen the Venezuelans cross in waves, begging for food on the streets, half starved. I have also listened to their stories.
You are a disgrace. Just tell the truth, one way or the other. Venezuela has been looted by a tyrannical regime.
IF you see so many lies, why didn’t you name a single one and refute it? You’re the one lying.
I long to live in Venezuaela,aperfect socialist utopia-screw trump!
I live in California,USA and I can walk less than a mile and see people living in tents, begging for money & food.
Guess we have been looted by a tyrannical regime, as well.
It’s nice to hear Columbia has eliminated those things – except for the people coming in from Venezuela.
Thanks smh. I too was left wondering why it’s necessary for US TV networks to spend so much money flying reporters and camera crews to Venezuela, when for the price of a taxi ride across town, they could have plenty of footage of people looking in the garbage for food, in Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Detroit, New York, and Washington, D.C.
Thanks, Carlos, for your comment, and I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you earlier.
As noted in the article and elsewhere in these exchanges, the economic hardships of Venezuelans are overwhelmingly the result of two factors: first, the dramatic drop in oil prices, caused by US and Saudi collaboration beginning in 2014 to flood the world market with oil; and second, the draconian economic sanctions imposed by the US authorities, beginning with Obama, for the explicit purpose of provoking popular discontent with Venezuela’s democratically elected government and causing its overthrow.
My question to you is the following: If the economic conditions in Venezuela are as bad as you claim, why do you think the US authorities feel it is necessary to worsen them by imposing the sanctions in the first place, and now by increasing the sanctions so dramatically, as they are indisputably doing?
As I’m sure you know, the position of the US authorities and the US corporate media has been that conditions are so unbearable that the only thing that is keeping the Maduro government in power is the military, and the military is only loyal because the top command have grown rich from corruption and want to continue it. As for the common foot soldiers, whose families are suffering, they would love to rebel but dare not do so: the command structure of any military organization is so strong that troops rarely rebel even when they have powerful motives to do so.
At least, that was the official Washington line, until to the coup flop on April 30. On that day, the common foot soldiers DID rebel against their commanders. The only thing was, they rebelled against their commanders when they discovered that the commanders were attempting a coup d’état against the Maduro government and in favor of Washington’s puppet Juan Guaidó.
The soldiers involved were rousted out of bed early in the morning and moved to an assembly point three blocks from La Carlota Airbase, a huge base (airport, airstrip and all) in the wealthiest district of Caracas. The troops were given a fake reason for assembly. They realized they had been tricked when who should turn up at the assembly point but Juan Guaidó and Leopoldo Lopez, the leader of the most extreme rightwing faction of the old oligarchy and the longtime sponsor of Guaidó. These two fine gentlemen left no doubt as to the reason the troops were assembled.
“This is no good,” the soldiers muttered among themselves, according to their own account. On a signal from their sergeant, they broke and ran the three blocks to the airbase. Police, who had also been assembled at the site, were ordered to open fire on the fleeing troops. They did as they were ordered, but managed to shoot exclusively into the air or into the ground and avoided hitting anyone.
When the soldiers made it inside the airbase, they reported that a coup d’état was in progress, and provided the names of the commanding officers and the number of troops involved. The government quickly mobilized loyal troops and suppressed the coup. Only a handful had participated in the attempted putsch: one general, along with some colonels and majors, most of whom had also been misled. Within hours, the coup leaders had sought refuge in the Brazilian embassy.
The shooting by the police awoke a Japanese film crew from Tokyo Television, who were staying in the Caracas Intercontinental Hotel, next door to the Carlota Airbase. It is their reporting that I am relying on for this material, along with comments by the soldiers who bolted and raced to the base, as given on-camera to Telesur.
The failure of the US authorities and Guaidó to incite a rebellion by the military rank and file, or more exactly the success in inciting such a rebellion, but against Guaidó instead of in favor of him, left official Washington routed and visibly demoralized. The Maduro government obviously enjoys widespread support, as any honest journalist cannot help but notice. And as the response of the common foot soldiers made clear.
This article is a disgrace! Shame on you, I’m a Colombian with Venezuelan family and I have seen first hand the disgrace that is hurting Venezuelans. Do you have the courage to show this article to the 3 million Venezuelans who has left the country in the past years? There are people dying in the Colombian mountain roads WALKING out of their country looking for a new chance in life and away from the regimen. So you tell me how all the media ALL OVER THE WORLD And in different languages agree? I invite you to go shopping as a regular Venezuelan stop spreading shameful lies!
Susana, thank you for your comment. With all due respect, it’s remarkable that with your claimed inside knowledge as a Colombian with Venezuelan family, you are regurgitating material from a particularly ridiculous piece that appeared a couple of days ago in the New York Times.
Has it occurred to you to wonder why “people are dying in the Colombian mountain roads, WALKING out of their country”? Why do they need to travel on mountain roads to get from Venezuela to Colombia? Do you know anything about the geography of the border area?
In fact, even the Times, with its customary drumbeat of lies about Venezuela, didn’t claim (if you read the article carefully) that people were ”dying in mountain roads” to get from Venezuela to Colombia. The Times only tries to create that impression, with classic Orwellian Newspeak. It says they are trying ”to put as many miles as possible between themselves and the collapsing country they had fled” and later on in the article says that their final destination might be Ecuador or Peru. “But no matter their destination, the vast majority come through these treacherous roads in Colombia: a 125 mile journey over a 12,000 foot pass here in the Andes mountains.”
Really, crossing the Andes to get from Venezuela to Colombia? I don’t think so.
Mark I am a Venezuelan residing in the US for fifty years. In the last 3 years I have had to supply my family with medicines and money in order to help them survive the situation. The devaluation of the bolivar, the inflation which you do not mention on your biased reports have made utterly impossible to afford many things. Most of my second cousins, the young generation, have had to leave in order to survive and get a better life. Don’t you belive the Thugs that roam the streets and threat anyone that speaks against the goverment, which is not a democracy but a Klepo-Oliarchic goverment? I don’t know where you get your information from but since you are so in love with the Maduro regime, go and see the hospitals, the schools and go to the jails and there you will see the real living. The demostrations of January 23 should tell you that the majority of the people are against your praised totalitarian goverment, that little by little changed the constitution to fit their agenda and I wonder why there are so many Cubans in my country, they are sucking the life out of the oil producing country in order to keep theirs up.
Thank you, Zuleika for your comments. It’s interesting that you mention “in the last 3 years.” These are, by amazing coincidence, the years since the US authorities started their extreme economic squeeze on the country, an artificial “make the economy scream” strategy such as they used in Chile from 1970-73 in preparation for the Pinochet coup d’etat and so many other democratic countries. The phrase comes from what CIA Director Richard Helms scribbled on a note pad during a meeting with then-President Richard Nixon about how to bring down the government of Chilean President Salvador Allende.
The “3 years” you mention began with Obama, who imposed the draconian economic strangle with the laughable claim that Venezuela is a threat to the United States. The only threat is the same “threat” that Nicaragua represented in the 1980s, the threat of a good example. It was the same “threat” represented by Allende in Chile, Michael Manley in Jamaica in the 1970s, Joao Goulart in Brazil in the 1960s, Jacobo Arbenz in the 1950s, Mohamed Mossadegh in Iran in the 1950s, and so many other democratically elected governments the CIA has overthrown.
In each case, (1) the US authorities put the country’s economy in a squeeze; (2) the CIA flew in a hoard of “journalists” who all filed the same story for media outlets around the world about how the economy was a mess, all of them ignoring the obvious fact that that was the exact purpose of US policies; and (3) the US worked with the most reactionary elements in the targeted country, especially (if possible) in the armed forces, to overthrow the democratically elected government.
In the Church Committee US Senate hearings in the 1970s about CIA clandestine operations, F.A.O. Schwarz Jr., chief counsel to the Committee, expressed amazement that the CIA was able to fly 300 “journalists” into Chile, all of whom filed the exact same story for media outlets around the world. Those are the same stories that are being filed right now about Venezuela: the economy is a mess and it’s the government’s fault. The US sabotage of the economy goes unmentioned, although it is staring everybody in the face.
And with all due respect, Zuleika, the rest of your comments are the exact same talking points, right down to the reference to “Cubans in my country”, although you have lived in the United States for 50 years, that have been used over and over, in one targeted country after another. I presume you are including the doctors and sports trainers in economically marginalized communities who are invariably accused by the imperial media of being spies, or something bad. They actually are welcomed in those communities, in countries around the world.
So this doesn’t upset you as a Venezuelan, “US authorities have stolen $30 billion from Venezuela in oil revenue, and take $30 million every day”?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id–ZFtjR5c
See anything familiar there? Venezuela is a DIVIDED country and the rich/right want to go back to the old days of rightwing dictatorship.
I seriously doubt you’re one of the regular people in Venezuela.
The rich have their money in Switzerland, Russia, Panama etc, and until recently in the US. The rich, buy their kids 4-5 million dollar apartments in Paris to live in while studying. The rich ARE are are the Boliburgeois.. get with the program!M
The rich have their money UNTIL RECENTLY in the US? What happened? What did I miss? The rich in the US lost their money!?
Susana, as for your claim about 3 million people having left Venezuela: if you are Colombian with Venezuelan relatives, you should know that 5.5 million Colombians have been living in Venezuela in recent years, people who emigrated there when oil prices were high. Venezuela has served for decades as an escape valve to relieve economic pressures elsewhere in Latin America, especially in Colombia but in Ecuador, Peru and other countries as well. When oil prices collapse, the Venezuelan economy does too, and many return home. That has happened repeatedly, but especially in the devastating years of the 1980s and 1990s.
The only difference in the current situation is the effort by US officials to overthrow the Venezuelan government. They have been attempting that unsuccessfully since 2002, through attempted coups, massive economic sabotage and murderous armed revolts. They have tried to depict the current outflow, which they have exaggerated spectacularly (another figure is 800,000) to claim that the emigration is a threat to neighboring states (although it’s mostly people returning home) in order to justify a foreign invasion to overthrow the Venezuelan government
So since you are the expert on things journalism, why don’t you contribute what all has changed (if anything lol) over the last 20 years. You mentioned you live there, must be nice being so fortunate and cushy that you can avoid such a stark reality!
Thank you, Mo. If you check out the article, you can see the video “Por Culpa de Chavez!” (“It’s Chavez’s Fault!”) showing new housing, hospitals, transit lines, factories and the like built during Chavismo, which would explain ongoing support by many for the Maduro government despite recent hardships.
The hardships were caused initially by the collapse in oil prices. Now, however, they are the artificial result of the Trump administration’s extreme economic squeeze, which has become an economic choke-hold. Hard as it may be to believe, some people understand that.
If you don’t think the hardships are caused by Trump’s measures, why do you think the Trump administration feels they are necessary? Obviously, Trump’s advisors feel they are necessary to create enough misery and discontent to bring down the government.
This is so fake, please say the true venezuela is in a real crisis the economic war is inside venezuela not from outside and the real people who made this conflict began is chavez and the socialist party. Please stop the represion please stop the control of the economy let venezuela be a free country.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id–ZFtjR5c
You mean like the last time? Right…the US has no involvement.
https://www.thenation.com/article/trumps-sanctions-make-economic-recovery-in-venezuela-nearly-impossible/
There is an economic war of sabotage by the US government against the real people of Venezuela.
Yes it’s an economic war by the Trump administration on Venezuela.
https://www.thenation.com/article/trumps-sanctions-make-economic-recovery-in-venezuela-nearly-impossible/
Very much in agreement with the whole article.
Thanks Ignasi!
And yet, here in Guayaquil, Ecuador, I talk daily with people from Venezuela telling me that it is just as bad as the American press says it is. And these are people from all walks of life, from doctors, lawyers, and engineers to people who had worked unskilled labor. Here, uniformly, all of these people (other than doctors) all of them are scraping by, mainly working very low paying jobs in restaurants.
I don’t know where you got your OTCs, but from what I hear from citizens who have fled there, it wasn’t from any pharmacy that they would have been able to been able to purchase them from. It seems that you may have been given a “Potemkin’s village” tour, comrade.
The pharmacy where I bought it is in the Santa Monica area of Caracas. It’s the pharmacy in the photo. If you look at the medicines on the top shelf in the photo, you can see the acetaminophen that I bought: the package labeled Atamel Forte. If you expand the photo you can easily see the name Pfizer in the upper right corner of the packages, above where it says 650 mg. in the lower right corner. You can probably read that too.
And yes, the media lying was so intense that I also thought there had to be some explanation: this pharmacy must be an exception. So I checked several other pharmacies. They all had the same products.
And the other pharmacies I checked were, like this one, local pharmacies, usually chain outlets but not megastores or anything like that. I first went to this one because it was closest to my apartment building, but there are several others within easy walking distance. Some are a good deal larger than this one: a couple sell wheelchairs and similar equipment, which I don’t believe this one does.
But they all have a knowledgeable professional staff. I have always asked at the pharmacy counter for various prescription medications. In this one, the woman in front of me had seven prescriptions, and the pharmacist quickly filled them all. I asked whether they had sumatriptan (generic Imitrex) or similar migraine medications. No, they didn’t (and still don’t) but I haven’t found them anywhere else in Latin America either, although I’ve tried in five countries. The pharmacist always directs me to the same over-the-counter migraine medication you can find in any US pharmacy, essentially double-strength ibuprofen.
There have been reports in the US media of a lack of insulin in Venezuela, among other prescription medicines that are or have been in short supply. This is the height of irony: Americans are dying right now from a lack of insulin (there have been several stories recently in the same US media that have reported on the Venezuelan shortage), not because there isn’t enough in the US, but because the price of insulin has shot through the roof as a result of spectacular profiteering by drug companies and Wall Steet hedge funds. The price has gone up seven-fold in the last two decades, and a full month’s supply is now simply beyond the reach of many. Some have tried to get by on less than they need, taking a chance that they will be ok, all too frequently with tragic results.
Thus is not a patent issue, or shouldn’t be: insulin was developed by Canadian researchers a century ago. They sold the patent to the University of Toronto for one dollar, so that such an essential medication could be a gift to the world. Instead, it has become a gift to the drug companies, which use a battery of lawyers to prevent a generic form from being permitted, and to keep jacking up the price. (In Great Britain, patients get it for free as part of the National Health.)
In Venezuela, there was a shortage because the economic strangle imposed by the Trump administration prevented Citibank from cashing a check to purchase insulin, for months.
Frankly, I haven’t seen anybody, even in the wildest and craziest war propaganda, claim that there’s a “Potemkin Village” somewhere in Caracas.
So, why are there thousands of Venezuelans in Guayaquil, looking for work, also on the street corners, begging? I am not an activist, or organizer, but I do like to communicate with people. I’ve talked with, perhaps fifty of them here about conditions in Venezuela, and they tell me that things are not being exaggerated. Why would that be?
You were careful to timestamp your observations, and I appreciate that as being honest. Could it be that news reports were exaggerated then, but things have become worse and that they are as is being told?
WHY would that be? Come on, Dan! You ARE aware of DECADES of American sanctions and coup attempts, right?
What if the US would just let Venezuela participate in the international marketplace? I mean, c’mon – you sound incredibly disingenuous here. It’s like you’ve never heard of Cuba. WHY are they driving 50-year old cars, Dan? Any guesses? Perhaps AMERICAN sanctions and a veritable blockade, assisted by our allies in Europe?!
Do I really need to post links here that tie Venezuela’s “crisis” to the US sanctions which only got worse in the latter part of 2018, thanks to Trump’s cabinet and Marco Rubio?
You like to talk to people – do you like to read? If so I have many links.
I don’t think so, I’m afraid they were lying then and they are lying now.
Yes, things have become worse because of the extreme economic squeeze play by the US authorities against Venezuela. Unfortunately, this did not start with Trump. Obama had already started it with the absurd claim that Venezuela represented a threat to the security of the United States.
The raises a question for the media:
If things were as bad as the media, and you, say they are, why should it be necessary to inflict this much extra pain on the people of Venezuela? Surely the US authorities should not have to create an artificial economic crisis to get the population to rebel?
Yet the Trump gang and its designated puppet Juan Guaido flopped miserably Saturday. They were hoping to get the Venezuelan armed forces to revolt, or at least to desert. Nothing of the sort occurred. A few soldiers deserted, which only served to show that it could be done.
From Dan Locke’s LinkedIn page:
So forgive us if we take Mr. Cook’s account of things more seriously than your own.
I don’ t think I could care less about how seriously you or others consider my observations, “KC”. To my credit, I have observed things on my own, here in Ecuador, talking with real people who claim to be refugees from there. It appears to me all you have done is watch youtube videos and read an article. (Please note that the youtube link you shared, here on my computer at least, resolves to youtube.com, and not to any particular video.)
(Now that’s fine; that’s usually all I can do as well. It’s just my circumstances that have allowed me to talk with these people, it hasn’t been by design. There are troubles all over the world and there are conflicting reports, probably, about all of them. So, I don’t mean to be blameful here.)
At least Mark Cook has been civil and informative in his responses, as you have been snide and deprecating.
I’d like to reconcile these seemingly contrary data and am wondering how I’ll do that.
By the way, regarding these photographs you give of crowd shots. Images such as these where the depth of field is such that a majority of the shot is well out of focus, seem to be very easy to doctor to make appear larger than they are. I don’t know about these shots particularly, but I have seen other crowd shots analyzed by specialists where the subtle and careful doctoring was made obvious.
With all due respect, the speculation that the photographs of the crowd could have been doctored seems to come from the grasping-at-straws department. Yes, of course, any photo can be doctored, but if there was any evidence that they had been, we would have heard about it by now.
Let’s leave speculation aside. Trump’s humiliating fiasco with his cynical “aid shipment” at the Venezuelan-Colombian border Saturday Feb. 23 made obvious what any honest journalist knows: that Venezuela’s constitutional government and Chavistas in general enjoy a great deal of popular support, despite Trump’s economic squeeze play (now more of an economic choke-hold).
Trump and his designated puppet Juan Guaidó were counting on a military coup d’état, a rebellion by dissident army officers and units, or at least wholesale desertion by Venezuelan troops. None of those occurred.
The Trump gang thought it would be easy: the Venezuelan troops were right on the Colombian border, so desertion would not have been hard. The tiny handful who did, some with their families, served perfectly to make that clear.
In fact, Trump had made it hard not to do what he said. He threatened those who did not follow his orders (i.e., support Guaidó as president) with extreme punishments, meaning lengthy prison sentences in Guantanamo or some US super-max, or death in a US invasion like the one in Panama in 1989. And he offered large bribes to those who knuckled under.
It says a great deal about the courage and the integrity of the members of the Venezuelan constitutional government and the Venezuelan armed forces that they ignored both stick and carrot. The whole world, whatever their political opinions, can be proud of the Venezuelans and the way they stood up to an imperial bully.
This link? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id–ZFtjR5c
If that resolves straight to YouTube’s main page, it’s because it – no surprise given you are in Ecuador – being censored by Google and likely the new rightwing Ecuadorian government which is VERY friendly to US Monroe Doctrine policy in Latin America.
The title of the movie is “The Revolution Will Not Be Televized” and it chronicles, directly and in real-time, the failed 2002 coup attempt to oust Chavez and install a pro-American, pro-elite, pro-privatization military (contrary to their frequent protestations otherwise) dictatorship. I highly recommend seeking it out, as it has indeed been censored by various groups and governments – and if you watch it you’ll see why. And guess what? The current situation is nearly the EXACT same thing, but with “lessons learned” being implemented by the US and the “opposition”….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Revolution_Will_Not_Be_Televised_(film)
The most balanced report I have read to date.
Thank you for the clarity and depth.
I wonder why my uncle left Venezuela and move back to Peru? I wonder why he was so skinny? I guess he is just lying about not being able to afford food?
I also wonder why my Venezuelan babysitter takes care of my children? Perhaps she is lying when she says she needs the money to send back to her two sons?
Or perhaps the Venezuelan gynocologist that treats my mother-in-law at the Peruvian government clinic. She must be telling lies about her situation.
I don’t know why any Venezuelan would want to move to poor Peru with all it’s problems if everything was okay in their country. But Venezuelans are everywhere in Peru. They were coming to Peru (albeit at a slower pace) prior to sanctions.
The nurse that took care of my dying Grandmother was from Venezuela. She must have really just liked the food if she decided to leave Venezuela for Peru, considering everything was peachy keen back home.
I get that the media is exaggerating. They do that to get eyeballs and sell ads. But don’t you think being a relatively rich citizen of the Empire with dollars allows you to buy things that are out of reach of Bolivar-earning Venezuelans?
Your entire comment is rendered moot and meaningless by the fact that the majority (that is the POOR) in Venezuela SUPPORT Maduro.
What do you have to say about that?
The last time that Maduro had majority support was in 2013. That is assuming that the 14 or so million voters in total represent the general population. I’ve hear numbers of 20-ish million eligible voters. If that’s the case, then Maduro has never been supported by the majority. Every recent data point puts his support around 20-30 percent, but I don’t trust polls.
After the 2015 thumping in the National Assembly poll, Maduro resorted to voter suppression and manipulation techniques to stay in power. That impact of Madruo-PSUV’s new strategy voter suppression strategy showed up in regional elections in 2017. Even then, the PSUV only managed 55% of votes cast which would be around 40%ish of previous vote counts (benchmarking the 2012 poll and the 2013 special election with 14 to 14.5M voters). After the PSUV/Maduros manipulations, the opposition began boycotting because they couldn’t get a fair election. The Republicans and the Maduro/PSUV have a lot in common when it comes to voter suppression.
Fritz, thank you for your comment.
I don’t think I wrote that everything is “peachy keen”. In fact, I wrote about the economic squeeze play that began with Obama and has become really extreme under Trump, that is causing hardship and that is designed to cause a great deal more hardship. The purpose is to cause enough misery to get people to rebel.
If Maduro were making such a hash of things by himself, why do you think the US authorities (both Obama and Trump) have had to create this artificial crisis?
I have to say, I like your remark about eyeballs. “I get that the media is exaggerating,” you write. “They do that to get eyeballs and sell ads.”
But no, I’m afraid you don’t get it. They are lying, about a country they would otherwise be ignoring, in fact didn’t even bother to visit in order to file their stories, for the purpose of bringing down the government. In the Time, CNBC and Financial Times stories, had they actually visited Venezuela, they would have seen that what they were reporting was a pack of lies. They are not “exaggerating” to “get eyeballs and sell ads.” They are lying to serve imperial purposes. If they didn’t do it, their employers would sack them, and replace them with somebody who would.
The reports we get are in the USA are CONFLICTING at best. Trump supports Maduro, then not. No troops required, then we do. Polosi sides with Trump, then not. We’re getting involved, then we’re not. Trying to get news about Venezuela from USA sources is a mess. Most news here is about how some actor changed their hairstyle; what news we have about Venezuela contradicts itself before you can find more. In one article I found, a USA security adviser said USA military action in Venezuela is NOT imminent; shortly before that interview, he was seen holding a sign saying the US is sending 5,000 troops to Colombia. On another site I was looking at, it reported USA supports Guaido; on another it said the USA supports Maduro. These were not political sites I was looking at, they’re news sites. We are NOT getting anything here but complete BS. Thank you FAIR for having real information. I will be letting other people know your site is here. I hope the best for the people of Venezuela; I do NOT support USA involvement, they are likely only after oil. We are having big problems in the USA, there is a shadow government operating here made up of fascists, many I suspect are Confederates. Corporations are getting whatever they wish for, while we get screwed and fed lies up one side and down the other. Thank you for helping me get real information. To the people of Venezuela, please helps expose USA involvement. We have not been told of Cuba’s influence on your country either. Thank you FAIR!
Kevin
The “Corporations” are fleeing the lowest paid workforce in the world. What vile corporation couldn’t make a killing by paying their employees 18 cents per day? That is the minimum wage in Venezuela.
Bridgestone. Clorox. Kimberly Clark. General Motors. Smurfit Kappa. Kelloggs. General Mills. Goodyear. Pepsi. Pirelli. Almost every international airline. (Maiquetia is a ghost town)
So I’ll ask again (for Marks sake). Why can’t vile corporations turn even a minimum profit in the Socialist Utopia of Venezuela? Or, are all of these companies abandoning Venezuela more “media lies”, as Mark insists?
Let me have a go at it, “jasper” – Here’s an article from 2015: https://www.just-food.com/news/kraft-heinz-facing-sabotage-investigation-in-venezuela_id131837.aspx
The Venezuelan WORKERS say that they are being operated at extremely low capacity for 4 years now. These corporations are made up of the rich/elite/”opposition” and they have been intentionally sabotaging the production, distribution and sale of food for some time now. The ONLY thing PREVENTING problems as a result has been Maduro’s policies! So why do you lie and make this about “socialism”?
If you really want to understand the politics of food in Venezuela (and we know you don’t), here’s a great, very long article that covers the situation dating back to colonial times: https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/
It’s funny how a socialist magazine can put together an accurate, scholarly, bulletproof analysis of the “crisis” but all you have is cries, moans and screams of “BUT SOCHULIZM!!”….
I think the FAIR-contributor-PSUV-party-line narrative includes something about economic war by all these firms in collaboration with the MUD and the Empire. It has to be a conspiracy because Venezuela is a paradise that is misportrayed by the corporate media. If it is in the Empire’s corporate media, the counter-narrative must be true. Thus, the PSUV’s leadership and all the undemocratic moves by Maduro to neuter the National Assembly are correct, intelligent, and just. There is no corruption in the PSUV leadership, it is not a narco-state, they are not supporting terrorists like the ELN, and everything would be alright without the Empire’s meddling. All other explanations are neoliberal, right-wing, fascist, and reactionary. Democracy and freedom of speech are secondary. Revolution is primary.
P.s., If we can dox you, we’ll put you on the list for the first to be sent to the gulag. If you are lucky you will only be re-educated. Don’t worry. It’s for your own good.
@James –
Yes, just one big conspiracy, right? Let’s look back to 2017:
https://www.reuters.com/article/venezuela-politics-kraft-heinz-idUSL1N13R07820151202
How about 2015:
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Venezuela-to-Investigate-Food-Giant-Kraft-Heinz-for-Sabotage-20151201-0041.html
So we have accusations from within Venezuela, scarcely reported by the American MSM, that these corporations which are managed by the rich, opposition elite, are sabotaging the means of food production – AND – we have separate reports that they are also hoarding, smuggling and selling other food (including aid) for a profit in Colombia. What have you to say about those very purely capitalistic ventures?
As for the idea that anyone wants to “dox” someone – yeah right – like that’s going to happen in this day and age where bots and paid trolls abound. You DO also realize that the Maduro people are currently cut off from all access to their own money and oil, correct? If anyone can afford to wage a campaign of paid trollery, it’s the opposition and its supporters in the US government and with US energy and food corporations. But you don’t understand that either, right? How convenient.
Please answer this: If Maduro has the whole power of the SEBIN and their Cuban advisors, why is there still smuggling of goods out of the country? (1) Either SEBIN and Maduro are incompetent and unable to track it down or (2) they are looking the other way because the smugglers are connected to the ruling party. I vote for #2. The graft is not an economic war waged by the opposition. It’s a function of good-old-fashioned corruption that shows no loyalty to principles. The government puts price controls on basic goods in an effort to make them affordable to the common citizen. That is nobel. But, the price is below market value, so the PSUV-connected people can buy up the goods — literally get in front of the line — and ship them off to Colombia or the black market for a profit. They would have to be connected to the Maduro government or SEBIN would get them. But, instead SEBIN/Maduro look the other way. I bet some likely funnel some of the product to Farmacias that are somehow (hear no evil, see no evil) exempt from price-controls where Mark can take pictures about how well stocked they are back in 2016 (but at what price?). I’ve seen some places mention that $1 trillion dollars has been robbed from Venezuela this way over the past 20 years by having the two-currency system.
I don’t want anyone to invade Venezuela. I just want them to finish this off by having elections that are monitored by reputable outside groups. From what I understand Guida’s party is part of Socialist International. If that is true, that would make him more left-wing then the neoliberal Democratic Party in the USA. I wonder what Trump would think if he knew that?
You think that being able to stop all or even MOST smuggling is an indication on the effectiveness of government? Of border control?
The US would love to have a talk with you then, because our borders are nowhere near as porous or unpatrolled as those of Venezuela’s yet we manage to have quite a smuggling problem, dontcha think?
Nonsense. All of the previously disputed elections have been monitored and approved/certified by every international observer who witnessed them. In addition, the “opposition” themselves boycotted the most recent ones, only in the effort to have them de-certified and declared non-binding. That did not happen so we find ourselves where we are, looking over the precipice of another US regime change operation, one that is definitely being asked for by the hardline Venezuelan elite/right and the likes of Marco Rubio and Elliott Abrams.
This is from 2013 – https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesleadershipforum/2013/05/14/venezuelas-election-system-holds-up-as-a-model-for-the-world/#3aa777ba71e2
This is from this month: https://original.antiwar.com/ted_snider/2019/02/03/what-the-media-wont-tell-you-about-the-venezuelan-coup/
I think it’s fair to say that while neither side is operating in PERFECT good-faith, it’s the “opposition” and its American backers who are completely disingenuous here.
That’s great, ‘James’ but what do you have to say regarding specific refutation of anything the author has said in his article or in comments? So far as I can tell you’re just wasting pixels by playing comments scold and not really demonstrating any proverbial intellectual flesh in the game, unless I’m supposed to assume from your writings that “socialism is bad and therefore Maduro has failed and should go” or something highly simplistic like that.
What has the author or anyone in comments that is anti-intervention, anti-sanctions, and anti-invasion, said which you consider to be “pro-Maduro” or “pro-Dictatorship” and what specific new light can YOU shed on this situation by way of links, personal anecdotes or just your own informed opinion?
Mark writes:
“Juan Guaidó. Guaidó, who proclaimed himself to be president of the country and was recognized minutes later by Trump, even though a public opinion poll showed that 81 percent of Venezuelans had never heard of him, comes from the ultra-right faction in Venezuelan politics.”
Actually, Mark is wrong. Juan Guaidó’s party is Voluntad Popular. It is a member of Socialist International. http://www.socialistinternational.org/viewArticle.cfm?ArticlePageID=931 Just scroll down to Venezuala. 3 parties listed there are part of the Opposition and all left-wing. That would make Juan Guaidó more left wing than most Democrats in the USA. He’d have more in common with Ocosio Cortez (and most FAIR readers) than the neoliberal Trump or Pelosi.
That being said. There should be no military intervention from the USA. Cuba is already intervening on Venezuela’s side, but yeah, let’s all cover our eyes.
Thanks KC and Mark Warner for really excellent information
James, there’s no “reply” tag to click under your entry, so let me thank you for your information that Guaidó is really a democratic socialist. That must explain why he’s being sponsored by those other democratic socialists Trump, Pence, Bolton, Marco Rubio and Elliott Abrams.
There is a further comment about the Socialist International just below this, so there is no need to repeat it here.
Because the corporations are owned and managed by the same “opposition” elite who have controlled the food production, distribution and sales chain since before the Bolivaran Revolution. These are the same people who were intentionally bringing down production contrary to what the workers said they could do, dating back to at least 2015. These are also the same people hoarding, smuggling and selling food over the border in Colombia which they received for free or for a very low price from the Maduro government, which was in the process of investigating/prosecuting Kraft-Heinz for the aforementioned sabotage. Hmmmm…wonder where that went.
Nobody is saying Maduro has been perfect or even close. But the Western media lies have to be countered and you are merely carrying water for war criminals like Elliot Abrams and John Bolton, apparently blind to the history of US interventions in Latin America, or per Marco Rubio’s recent (deleted) tweet – Libya and Qaddafi.
James, there’s no “reply” tag to click under your entry, so let me thank you for your information that Guaidó is really a democratic socialist. That must explain why he’s being sponsored by those other democratic socialists Trump, Pence, Bolton, Marco Rubio and Elliott Abrams.
Why do you write things that you can’t possibly expect anybody to take seriously? You do know who the head of the Socialist International is, don’t you? Papandreo père must be turning over in his grave, after what his son did to Greece.
As for another prominent party, the French Socialists under François Hollande so discredited the party that they couldn’t even make it into the top four parties in the last presidential election (the real socialists bolted to France Insoumise). ‘
When Hollande was running for president, he swore that he’d have nothing to do with the banks. No sooner was he elected than he named as his top economic advisor Emmanuel Macron, a notorious banker with perhaps the most powerful merchant bank in the world. And then he named him Economics Minister. Macron is president of France today because people felt they had to defeat the neofascist candidate LePen, but he is widely detested for his extreme neoliberal economic policies, and the sneering, contemptuous way that he imposes them. At least Macron doesn’t pretend to be a socialist; at least I don’t think he does.
Whataboutism. What about Stailn making a pact with Hitler to buy time to build up an army and defenses? History is full of realpolitik and strange bedfellows between Socialists and Fascists and Liberals. Socialist movements (like any human-powered endeavor) are full of poor leadership and personal failings. I won’t say that SI is perfect. But, it’s much more established and consistent than the contrarianism found in your writing.
Here’s a good mantra: The enemy of my enemy is not my friend. Repeat until internalized.
And thanks Mike for some really excellent points.
James, Guaidó is not now, nor has he ever been, a socialist, not even a “non-practicing socialist” like Hollande and other “socialistes non pratiquants” who are in fact neo-liberal toadies to bankers. It is simply disinformation (and pretty ludicrous disinformation at that) to pretend that he is.
Mike. With all due respect, the Panama Papers add facts that points to a vastly different conspiracy. They are full of PSUV-connected individuals siphoning off money from Venezuela. I don’t doubt that every opposition figure is clean. But, the “economic war” was fostered by poor policy (2-currency exchange system) that allowed gov’t connected individuals to make crazy profits through arbitrage of oil and goods that was enabled by corruption. Blaming it entirely on the opposition is too simple to be true. It’s a nice distraction that can feed the parties sheep while the PSUV-connected elite fill their coffers in Andorra and the UAE. It appears that SEBIN is only killing poor people these days — good old Cuban tactics. Why not go after the corrupt and purge the PSUV of back actors? Well, because it goes all the way to the top!
Mark
Is the news media lying about 1.7 million percent inflation last year? That the minimum wage is 18 cents per day? (are you getting paid in Soberanos, living in your Caracas apartment?) That the Bolivar (national currency of Venezuela) has lost 99.99999979% of its value since Chavez took office in 1999?
These are FACTS that can easily be verified. With a calculator. On your smart phone. RIGHT NOW. By either you or your fellow truth detector, Max Blumenthal.
I don’t work for the media, but I do have relatives in Venezuela. And what THEY see is entirely different from your spin.
Dear Mark,
as someone who was brought up under a socialist regime, I believe I understand and I feel for you. I was brought in today’s Czech Republic like a proper pioneer – I could spell “Gagarin” before I could spell my own name s and as a child I have won competitions drawing Aurora and reciting Mayakovsky. At that time, at that age, I was perfectly happy to live in and die for my socialist state and there was no doubt in my mind that anything to the west of us was evil. Than the revolution came and almost over night I have found myself in a similar situation you find yourself today. Like you, I also kept constructing increasingly complicated and improbable narratives to justify all the blood and pain that started bubbling up from everywhere. Tens of thousands of political prisoners, hunger, poverty, rape, corruption – I could discard it all as a disinformation, capitalistic lies, conspiracy theories. The whole 90’s for me were spent trying to deal with the reality. I will not claim that I have ever succeeded.
But in your article – After decades of not thinking about the hellish 90’s – I can see my words and my arguments that I have hoped I have finally forgot about – it would be laughable – if it wasn’t so sad.
* Your argument about medicaments is 3 years old – and no – none of the drugs you have mentioned are on the accompanying picture (to be hones, not sure how in South America – but the things on the picture could be bought in a regular supermarket or petrol station in most of the Europe)
* The argument about Youth Orchestra could be equally well used on North Korea and their hockey players or their “Moranbong” pop group. And I don’t think you would make such a mistake because you didn’t understand how socialist regimes operate. It is because you are lying to yourself :(
* On one hand you would never stoop to the level of Donald J Trump – but there you go – making conclusions based on photographs of crowds found in media ;)
* All border crossings were blocked, not just one with a bridge ;)
* .All in all – learn from my mistakes: If you see two guys fighting and you know for sure that the one on the right is evil, it doesn’t make automatically the one the left a good guy.
Thomas Barborik, with all due respect, you seem to have missed the point completely.
1. The reason I chose aspirin and acetaminophen is that Time and CNBC were lying in the most extreme way about the availability of them when they said that “basic medicines like aspirin are nowhere to be found” and “basic things like Tylenol aren’t even available.” As I indicated, a walk to the nearest pharmacy would have shown these claims to be ridiculously false. (But of course they weren’t in Venezuela.)
2. The reason for picking 2016 was not because the situation has changed but because, as I wrote, that year was the kick-off to the ongoing campaign of lies in which a palpably false claim of a lack of basic medicine was being used to justify the overthrow of a democratically elected government. As noted in the article, the Financial Times led the campaign with fantasy tales about a country in “chaos” and “civil war”, tales which were even ridiculed by right wing friends, who were merely stating the obvious.
3. As I noted in response to another writer, the acetaminophen that I bought can be seen on the top shelf in the pharmacy photo. It is the package labeled Atamel Forte. If you expand the photo, you can easily see the brand-name Pfizer in the upper right corner of the packages, above where it says 650 mg in the lower right corner (which is why it is “Forte” or extra-strength). The issue is not whether such medicines are available in petrol stations in Europe, but that Time and CNBC were telling absurd lies to justify the overthrow of the elected government. The truth obviously didn’t matter to them in the slightest, for if it had, they would at least have checked the story out before running it. But Venezuela is in the Empire’s cross-hairs, so anything goes.
4. I don’t think the now world-famous Youth Orchestra of Venezuela needs any defense, but your remarks suggest that you are unfamiliar with it, so maybe it needs to be pointed out that Simon Rattle, Director of the Berlin Philharmonic, came to Venezuela and said that “the future of classical music is here in Venezuela” because of recruitment of youngsters from economically marginalized neighborhoods as Orchestra members (and because if you go to a concert in Carnegie Hall in New York or similar places the average age of the audience is about 60 whereas the average age in concerts in Venezuela is about 20). My point was not the integrity of “El Sistema”, the project which has created youth orchestras all over Venezuela no matter which government has been in office (although it was greatly expanded with Chavez) but you have made it your point so it needs a response.
Dear Mark,
thank you for your response – I have to confess I didn’t expect one.
As for point 1-3 . As you have already noticed, I am not a big admirer of “proving something with a pictures”. This article is a perfect example why. On this page, the only version of the picture is a 300*225 thumbnail so no – you can’t see anything on the picture provided no matter how hard you “zoom”. It is a prime example of a typical “UFO proof” like milions others online. Pro-tip: if you have to use a picture, yes – use a thumbnail so you don’t slow down rendering of the page, but make it an anchor leading to the original picture with it’s full meta-data. Based on your response – I have had to used google picture search to find a better version here: http://www.politicalforum.com/index.php?threads/lying-about-venezuela.551434/ (I suspect the site is familiar, the article is verbatim) so I am inclined to believe that you are not trying to mislead me ;).
4) Yes – I am totally unfamiliar with the Youth Orchestra but I am quite familiar with youth organizations in socialist countries in general – I’ve been member of several. Some of us were also “allowed” to travel abroad, but only those whose parent’s were in the party (eg. enchufados) and who were perfectly reliable (eg. smart enough to understand that me and my family would pay heavily if I did /say something the party would not like). No matter how terrible the famine is in North Korea, you will never see any sign of it on its sportsmen, it’s UN representation or it’s pop band. I therefore don’t find your student’s surprise of Youth Orchestra’s health and apparent well being significant of anything . Actually if they were hungry – that would be strange – how could such incompetent regime survive for so long? You should see me at their age, bright eyed 10yearold with better English than most (all) of my handlers and willing to talk for days about the magnificent country I comes from and the great things we achieve there on daily basis. I couldn’t get outside anyway, because my grandma was considered an incurable victim of a small town bourgeoisie.
I don’t expect you to change your opinion based on my experience. It was bad call on my side. Since you have said you have lived in Venezuela (the buying of drugs), I have thought you had some experience with socialist methods and organizational structures and that we can find some common language. Maybe the Venezuelan regime really is so much different from what I have lived through. Even though nothing points to it: PDVSA is employing more people and producing less oil than ever before, there are over 2000 generals – absolute majority without any troops they could lead or anything to do, the media are under total control of the government and the golden reserves are being sold abroad without the nation knowing. I loved Chavez, I would really like you to be right – but I don’t believe that.
Let me add a little note I didn’t know about: There are several hundreds of people with Czech roots who are in the process of returning back to CZ, after decades spent in Venezuela. They all have Venezuelan citizenship. They are doing so with the assistance of our state – because they would not be able to move back without our assitance. (https://www.idnes.cz/zpravy/domaci/venezuela-totalitni-rezim-krajane-nicolas-maduro- cesko-navrat.A180418_163110_domaci_evam)
Most of them are 2nd 3rd or even 4th generation Venezuelan (moved to Venezeuela between 48 and 68), who can’t speak Czech and know little about the country. Their reasons are – confirmed by our embassy and not mentioning the political situation:
* no drugs
* no water
* no gas
* no electricity
* no baby formula, diapers or women higiene products
* If you don’t get killed by a thief, the police will be happy to finish you off
Are we also part of the conspiracy? I am asking because our political scene is made of semi-retarded idiots who have proven over and over again that they can’t hold a secret – plus most of my current government is squarely and public-ly under the influence of our Russian ex-siblings with Vladimir Vladimirovic Putin himself being a great pal of our current president.
“the media are under total control of the government”
Apparently you can’t read Spanish. If you know somebody who can, you might ask them to look at El Nacional, El Nuevo Pais, Tal Cual, El Universal, 2001. These papers are all strongly opposed to the government; three are quite rightwing; one is center-right; one is more centrist. These are all Caracas newspapers; there are also opposition newspapers in other cities. And there are pro- and anti-government TV channels.
The other points you have made have already been addressed in responses to other contributors.
There is one point that you’ve mentioned that I didn’t address elsewhere. You obviously want to make it appear that Venezuela bears some resemblance to a one-party state like North Korea or where all the media is government controlled. This is transparently absurd. But your claim that young people traveling abroad have to do what the government tells them brings to mind the US invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965 to prevent the democratically elected socialist government of Juan Bosch from taking office and installing instead the rightwing dictatorship of Joaquin Balaguer, the top henchman of dead dictator (also Washington-imposed, of course) Rafael Trujillo.
The pretext for the US invasion was to protect the Peace Corps volunteers in the country. The Peace Corps volunteers had the courage to sign a unanimous statement that they were not threatened at all, and to object to the US military invasion. They were threatened, of course, that this would destroy their future careers, and the CIA, FBI and other agencies made sure that those threats were real.
In another episode, Jonathan Kwitny, a political conservative and correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, wrote the book in the 1980s Endless Enemies: How America’s Worldwide Interventions Destroy Democracy and Free Enterprise and Defeat Our Own Best Interests. He got a weekly show on PBS, the (supposedly) public television network: a conservative critic of US foreign policy. One night he stated the obvious, “if you live in Latin America and you’re opposed to the government of your country, you stand a much better chance of staying alive if you live in Cuba or Sandinista Nicaragua than if you live in one of the US dominated countries of the hemisphere.”
He was fired the next day. He also lost his job at the Wall Street Journal. He died a few years later, still in his forties, working as a correspondent for a few smaller town newspapers in the state of New Jersey, covering events in the state capital: quite a fall from the front page of the Wall Street Journal and a weekly national television show. And he was lucky to have gotten that, after such a seditious remark.
As for your claim that PDVSA produces less oil but has a larger staff than before: let’s leave aside the US economic warfare on the country and its oil sector, already introduced by the Obama administration. Can we at least agree that over-staffing is not restricted to “socialist” countries, and also exists in capitalist corporations?
There is the old, humorous study of the British Royal Navy which had fewer and fewer ships but a larger and larger staff. What did all these people do? Well, they were all quite busy. First, there was the personnel office, charged with hiring and firing all these people and dealing with other human resources issues that came up; then there was the payroll office which produced the paychecks for all these people including those in the personnel office; and then there were the workers in the staff cafeteria, who were obviously necessary if the employees were to have a place for lunch; and then the management to oversee all this, some of whom were probably taking work home at night because they had so much to do.
But it’s not limited to the public sector, either. I worked once while a student on summer vacation as a temporary computer operator in the New York office of a large pharmaceutical company. The department paid “campaign contributions” to politicians, to enlist the politicians’ support for legislation the pharmaceutical company wanted passed.
But I had nothing to do, and I couldn’t understand why they needed to have a temp worker. Eventually, my boss told me. If he had a temp worker in the office 40 weeks out of the year, he explained, he could make the case to higher-ups that the department needed another permanent worker. Another permanent worker in the department would raise the boss to the next higher pay grade, which would mean an extra $10,000 a year for him after taxes, which was exactly the amount of money his wife needed for a new coat.
You seem to find nothing good to say about “socialist” countries, or nationalized industries. Even in the worst of cases, the wealth at least remains in the country, even if it’s only to give somebody’s brother-in-law a job, instead of being sucked out by the owners of Exxon Mobil, Citibank, or similar operations, which usually benefit the country not at all. It’s not an ideal situation, but neo-liberal regimes that benefit only super-rich foreign stockholders are much worse, as people around the world have noticed, especially when it means, as it did in Venezuela, that most of the population lived in poverty and lacked access to even the most basic medical services, schools, and public transportation. They now have them, so in spite of current difficulties (now overwhelmingly the fault of the Trump economic squeeze), huge numbers of people continue to support Maduro and the Chavistas.
And good grief, what’s wrong with Yuri Gagarin? By all accounts, he was an incredibly sweet guy, with a smile that, as the director of his space program said, “lit up the whole Cold War stricken world.” Is there something wrong with that?
The same goes for Mayakovsky, a wonderful poet, but I really don’t understand why you think any of this has anything to do with Venezuela.
While FAIR is one of my favorite news sources and I agree with much of your Venezuela coverage, I think there’s some whitewashing of the Maduro govt in your pieces. While US sanctions and imperialism undoubtedly play a pivotal role in Venezuela’s economic crisis, I think FAIR could get this across without ignoring the failures of Maduro’s govt.
While FAIR has repeatedly (and accurately) pointed out that MUD boycotted the last election, you have also repeatedly failed to mention that MUD boycotted it after the Supreme Court barred it’s two most popular candidates from running. Amnesty just published a report stating that the Venezuelan government has executed and arbitrarily detained protesters. I’m not saying this to absolve the US for promoting poverty and civil unrest in Venezuela or to lionize Guaido & MUD, but it makes me wonder about FAIR’s trustworthiness when these realities aren’t reflected at all in your coverage.
This piece makes me even more concerned about whether I can continue to use FAIR for insight into Venezuela’s crisis. While I admire your goal of complicating mainstream media narratives, some of the evidence you’re presenting is anecdotal and questionable. You’re speculating whether people are malnourished or well-fed based on photos. You reference a 7 year-old Youtube video made by a private citizen who doesn’t seem to be associated with any news outlet. And just because you personally were able to purchase medications in Caracas 3+ years ago (before the 2017 US sanctions), doesn’t necessarily mean everyone can access them now.
Ultimately, I just wish FAIR trusted its readers a little more on this front. I’m able to understand that Venezuela, while facing major obstacles, isn’t solely defined by them. I don’t see Venezuela’s problems as a blanket statement against socialism in all its forms. I can critique Maduro’s anti-democratic tendencies and still steadfastly oppose US warmongering. And I imagine most FAIR readers feel the same way.
Thanks PJ for your comments.
If you are going to use Amnesty International as a reliable source on governments that the US authorities are trying to overthrow, you really need to deal with their record. Some examples:
1. In 1986, Amnesty published a report on Nicaragua, just at the time the Reagan administration was seeking to renew overt funding for the contras, which had been banned by Congress. Amnesty printed lies spoon-fed to it by rightwing groups in the pay of the US Embassy. It never bothered to confront the Nicaraguan government with the charges, something that any competent human rights organization or journalist would normally do. Had it done so, the claims could easily have been shown to be false. The report ultimately caused an embarrassing scandal for Amnesty, covered by leading British newspapers and the BBC. It was unfortunately too late to stop the renewal of US Congressional approval of contra aid, which had been halted earlier because of public revulsion at contra atrocities. Reagan got what he wanted, and Amnesty played an important role in helping him get it.
2. In 1989, Amnesty trumpeted a concoction that Iraqi soldiers had taken babies out of incubators in a Kuwait hospital during their invasion of Kuwait, leaving the babies to die on the floor so that they could take the incubators back to Baghdad. The Kuwaiti “nurse”, who testified before a congressional committee in Washington that she had witnessed the episode, was not a nurse at all but the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington. Then-President George H.W. Bush held aloft Amnesty’s report as justification for the first Persian Gulf War. The story, a complete fabrication by the notorious PR firm Hill and Knowlton, received massive play in the media. Many media reports quoted Amnesty International.
3. Amnesty’s record is not the only one that requires review. Human Rights Watch claimed that as a matter of policy, it could not take a position on the US war against the government of Nicaragua, even though the US was denounced by the World Court. However, it then reversed its “policy” in order to lead a campaign IN FAVOR OF another war of aggression (both lacked the authorization of the UN or even the OAS): the US invasion of Panama to oust Panamanian ruler Manuel Noriega. Human Rights Watch (HRW) claimed that the beating, jailing and killing of demonstrators would end once Noriega was removed from office. Instead, far more were killed in the invasion and aftermath, especially through the U.S. bombing of downtown Panama City.
After that invasion, HRW asserted that the claim of thousands dead in the bombing was exaggerated; it was more like hundreds, it said, or at any rate the higher figure could not be substantiated. It then stated, astoundingly, that while the US government bore responsibility for failing to exercise greater care in avoiding civilian casualties, the Panamanian government also bore blame for locating a military base in a civilian populated area. (For comparison, imagine if HRW had said that the US government bore some responsibility for the World Trade Center bombing because it placed the New York office of the CIA in the Trade Center complex.)
Whatever his sins, Noriega’s human rights crimes did not come close to the behavior of Reagan administration-imposed governments like the ones in El Salvador and Guatemala. Yet HRW did not advocate the overthrow of those governments. Nor did Amnesty. Instead, Amnesty attacked the democratically elected government of Nicaragua, with a pack of lies, and greatly helped the Reagan administration.
There is a consistent element in all these episodes, and many more: the US authorities were trying to overthrow a government and were using human rights organizations to justify it. And these two human rights organizations were happy to comply.
Those three episodes were in the good old days, before HRW established a revolving door with the State Department, CIA and NATO, in which officials from those organizations took top jobs at Human Rights Watch and vice versa. Amnesty tried to do the same but backed down in the face of sharp criticism.
Both organizations can and do produce honest, carefully written and fair reports — on countries where the government is not targeted for overthrow by Washington. But when the country’s government is in the cross-hairs of the Pentagon and the CIA, fairness and accuracy go right out the window.
Great article confirms my suspicions everyone should read this watching a nice bit of propaganda on cnn as I post this how sad!
Excellent report. Wouldn’t have thought the anti-Moduro coverage in mainstream media could be so brazenly propagandistic and misleading.
Notice how all the comments here from people with family or friends in Venezuela, or with first hand contact with Venezuelan refugees, have seen right through this pro-Maduro propaganda. The reality is that the country has been experiencing extremely grave economic problems going all the way back to 2013, when wages collapsed due to the governments absurd economic policy of printing money that it didn’t have.
I also have family in Venezuela, among them is my niece who is insulin-dependent. If it were not for us constantly sending money, and a wide network of family and friends constantly buying insulin and sending it from abroad, my niece would surely be dead by now. Indeed, not too long ago, the 12-year-old daughter of a family friend died because they could not find insulin for her anywhere, not even in the hospitals. My wife’s best friend also died last year in a hospital because they had no blood to give her. This has been the situation at hospitals across the country for some time now, causing the deaths of tens of thousands of people. A recent study shows that over 1500 people have died in the last 3 months alone due to a lack of basic medical supplies.
So who should we believe, Mr. Cook who spent a weekend in Venezuela back in 2016 and was able to buy aspirin at a pharmacy in Caracas? Or maybe we should believe our friends and family, many of who have died from a lack of basic medicines? Maybe we should believe the millions of Venezuelans pouring across the border into neighboring countries with nothing but the clothes on their backs? The writer makes the absurd claim that these are Colombians that lived in Venezuela who are returning home. The Colombian migration into Venezuela occurred over a period of several decades. Right now there are 5,000 people leaving Venezuela every single day according to the United Nations estimates. Among them are many of my own family members, who have had to go to Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Chile to find a way to make a living.
Fair.org should be ashamed to publish such outrageous lies in the name of “challenging media bias”.
“I also have family in Venezuela, among them is my niece who is insulin-dependent.”
And you cannot afford to bring them here? I wonder why. Yes it sure is a big coincidence isn’t it, that this comment section became overrun with people telling the same lies as what the author clearly demonstrated the NYT was telling?
If you really want to see regime change in Venezuela, why don’t you take your hard earned money and go down there and do it, rather than advocating that MY government by way of MY tax dollars goes there and destroys the country.
Do you honestly think we don’t understand how DIVIDED Venezuela is along ‘racial’ and economic lines? If the US goes in and puts Guaido in power, do you think there will not be MASSIVE uprisings? Why can’t the rich in Venezuela ever do things right and by the book? You have been pissed off ever since Chavez won and actively trying to sabotage the economy from within and with help from the United States so that your favored right-wing dictators (or Punto Fijo) can come to power again. It’s your right to wish for this, but STOP TELLING LIES TO MAKE MY GOVERNMENT INVADE YOUR COUNTRY. We have seen what happened in Iraq and Libya. If the US invades your country will be destroyed and I will have to fund that rather than my own healthcare or education for my kids.
LEAVE US OUT OF IT!!!!
Dan, thank you for your comments, but maybe you should try reading other comments beside your own, and the responses, so that it’s not necessary to keep repeating them.
There have been reports in the US media of a lack of insulin in Venezuela, among other prescription medicines that are or have been in short supply. This is the height of irony: Americans are dying right now from a lack of insulin (there have been several stories recently in the same US media that have reported on the Venezuelan shortage), not because there isn’t enough in the US, but because the price of insulin has shot through the roof as a result of spectacular profiteering by drug companies and Wall Steet hedge funds. The price has gone up seven-fold in the last two decades, and a full month’s supply is now simply beyond the reach of many. Some have tried to get by on less than they need, taking a chance that they will be ok, all too frequently with tragic results.
Thus is not a patent issue, or shouldn’t be: insulin was developed by Canadian researchers a century ago. They sold the patent to the University of Toronto for one dollar, so that such an essential medication could be a gift to the world. Instead, it has become a gift to the drug companies, which use a battery of lawyers to prevent a generic form from being permitted, and to keep jacking up the price. (In Great Britain, patients get it for free as part of the National Health.)
In Venezuela, there was a shortage because the economic choke-hold imposed by the Trump administration prevented Citibank from cashing a check to purchase insulin, for months.
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The western media going nuts as wedtern officials who are running the office of each rich countrys such as Usa uk,australia,france,canada,
spain,…..
Many teachers in every part of the world said…
They are having problem teaching moral science to students…coz they think ..if you are rich,powerfull then its ok to abuse weak and poors…..coz they see news in tv and you tube ….
…usa/saudi arabiya and their alieds abusing poor countrys..killing poor innocent people all over the world by sending boms and stealing from them….lying openly…
So it looks like world is fkd now..
Another God needs to come and fix it all…
…so confuse..
“I was sitting in my apartment in Caracas, Venezuela, reading the online edition of Time magazine (5/19/16), which carried a report that there was not even something as basic as aspirin to be found anywhere in Venezuela: “Basic medicines like aspirin are nowhere to be found.”
I walked out of the apartment to the nearest pharmacy, four blocks away, where I found plenty of aspirin, as well as acetaminophen (generic Tylenol) and ibuprofen (generic Advil), in a well-stocked pharmacy with a knowledgeable professional staff that would be the envy of any US drugstore.”
Did you seriously write about one particular encounter that you had while in Caracas and assumed the whole reporting was a lie? Also, where the hell were you– let me guess: Chacao, Altamira, La Castellana, La Lagunita? Just because you have lived there you are not immune to privilege. Venezuela is not as simple as you depicted it and there are in fact people dying from basic needs that are not accessible to them. Also, the market fluctuates… as a scientist myself- go check that pharmacy every day for the next year and see what the trend is… switch the neighborhood… socioeconomic status. Please, stop disguising yourself as a leftist self-righteous writer and stop adding to the fuel. This isn’t helping anyone and just because your leftist agenda shames the happenings doesn’tmake it right for the people that are on the ground suffering.
“Please, stop disguising yourself as a leftist self-righteous writer…”
LMAO! Why don’t you provide any direct links to people starving, not just one-off accounts from the MSM that we are supposed to believe hook, line and sinker (that’s an American colloquialism, I don’t expect you to understand).
Do you honestly think, as a “scientist” that there is an elaborate plan by the POOR of Venezuela to go around and stock SOME store shelves in various neighborhoods in the hopes that a Western journalist will be there? You don’t sound very smart if so.
So you’re saying the market fluctuates?! Well, then! They do have a MARKET – no American invasion or sanctions needed!
You should identify yourself so that we know who you are and what interests you represent. Otherwise you sound like a bot or one of the far-right Venezuelans who are eager to return to the days of murderous rightwing dictators that the US and its puppets in Latin America favor so much. What do you have to lose, “ariana” by telling us who you are and what your relation to Venezuela is?
You could be asked the same question (slightly revised for context):
You should identify yourself so that we know who you are and what interests you represent. Otherwise you sound like a Russian bot or one of the many privileged patronizing armchair revolutionaries who are eager to continue support of the murderous and corrupt Maduro that Cuba, Russia, China and its puppets in Latin America favor so much. What do you have to lose, “KC” by telling us who you are and what your relation to Venezuela is?
Seriously, you are the one doxxing people on this board. If anyone needs to identify themselves, it’s you.
No problem!
I’m a regular American taxpayer in Texas with ties to Latin America (Mexico, Costa Rica, Venezuela), although none to anyone in power or even close to it. I have a friend or two from Venezuela, and it should be noted that their families fled the pre-Chavez governments known for “punto fijo” and tendencies toward right wing dictatorship in all but name. I’m using my real “name” (I go by initials) and FAIR has my personal email address. I donate to FAIR as well and have several of their t-shirts.
I have done extensive reading on Venezuela and I have come to the conclusion that it is a very divided country – along economic and racial/ethnic lines – dating back to colonial times and after when the largely white Venezuelan ruling class imported a bunch of white Europeans (from various countries – there is someone here talking about their Czech friends) so as to offset the democratic aspirations of the majority mestizo/aboriginal people who had been colonized hundreds of years prior. Please read the article linked above about the politics of food in Venezuela. Here it is again: https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/
It’s too long to read in less than 30 minutes, so if you respond immediatey I will know you didn’t read it.
Regarding the constant moaning you’re doing about “doxxing” – for all I care these people could provide a Twitter handle or other means to demonstrate who they are, meaning what they represent. So far – as Mark Cook – has pointed out, they have done nothing but repeat the tropes and lies that he already countered in his article, and which he was nice enough to do again here, in comments. Still wasn’t good enough because YOU and your cohorts are bent on regime change, by way of American intervention/sanctions/coup/invasion/sabotage, and it’s already been going on for decades. I mean come on – are you NOT aware of the constant coup attempts and interference in the Venezuelan economy by the US, our allies and with a lot of help from within (the opposition elite)?
Now, why don’t you tell us who YOU are or at least what YOU can bring to the table by way of information OTHER than what the author has already refuted and which is being propagated by the American and British MSM? What can you offer here, “James” other than meta-commentary and being the resident nanny/scold? Lemme guess: “but SOCHULISMZ!!!” right?
Actually, I’m very much in favor of socialism, but of the democratic variety. But, I’m very adamantly against corruption, which I see as the root cause of what is transpiring in Venezuela. Look for the mention of corruption in the article you linked. None. Zero. (FYI, I read the article several months ago). The unfortunate truth is that socialism doesn’t function well where there is rampant corruption. And at this point SEBIN isn’t rooting out corruption, but defending the corrupt.
As for me, I’m a lowly hispanic IT guy living in Florida and married to a beautiful mestizo woman trying to make ends meet while taking care of two adorable cachorros. I have interest and read most everything about the Cold War battlefield of Latin America and how the CIA, KGB, and DI funded and trained various groups. In a way that’s what brought me to reading FAIR. I came here searching for other perspectives on the situation. Although I don’t think answering unbalanced propaganda with similarly unbalanced propaganda is the way to go. The truth is somewhere in the ethereal fog. The reality is far more complex.
Your comment on the divisions in VZ is very true. When Maduro is gone, the reaction of the ELN, FARC, and MRT groups operating within VZ and their DI advisors is going to be bad. If whoever takes over doesn’t manage that well, VZ is going to turn into terror-filled Colombia of years past (and lately present) real fast. They will have to pivot and get help from the Cubans/DI to help diffuse those groups, or else. Not that VZ is peaceful, but adding quasi-political-narco-terrorism to the mix won’t help.
As a general note to those just finding this comments section, it’s widely known (although not in US media circles) that the anti-Chavista elite/opposition in Venezuela have a very active social media presence, and as such they will often descend on comments under articles like this to spread the same lies or half-truths that the Western MSM is spreading, and to which FAIR.org is trying to present the other side. The below is an excellent example – Use Google Translate for best results if you’re not a Spanish speaker/reader:
https://www.publico.es/tremending/2019/02/24/guaido-se-proclama-continuador-de-chavez-y-los-antichavistas-colapsan/
The antichavistas, very present and very active in social networks, did not give credit to what the self-proclaimed president said. The thousands of responses to his thread demonstrate a collapse between the support of Guaidó. His attempt to win over the Chavista voter has screamed too much between the networks.
There are simply too many Twitter responses to relay here, but trust me – they are a very active group online and they will continue to be in the desire to see a US invasion/intervention and continued sanctions designed to starve the people of Venezuela into accepting regime change.
This is also a point that nobody is making. Guiado is actually a Democratic Socialist. He’s not some ultra-right wing guy that Mark mistakenly labeled him as. His party is Voluntad Popular and is part of Socialist International. The right-wing only accepts him as an alternative to Maduro. They don’t really accept Guiado per se.
Mike’s auto-translation is pretty bad, but gets to some of the point. The TLDR is that Guiado is trying to portray himself as a successor of Chavez and says that Maduro basically screwed it all up. He’s trying to win over the army to turn on Maduro. Saying something even mildly conciliatory about Chavez is making the right-wing folks flip there sh*t on twitter.
https://popularresistance.org/the-making-of-juan-guaido-how-the-us-regime-change-laboratory-created-venezuelas-coup-leader/
Some democratic socialist. Mentored by Leopoldo Lopez, from Venezuela’s oligarchic ultra-right, he has served as a ventriloquist’s dummy for Mike Pence, Marco Rubio, John Bolton, Elliott Abrams and Donald Trump.
He, like his mentor Leopoldo Lopez, has no support among the working class and the poor, as was admitted even in the CNN report I noted in the article, the one that spoke of “the socialist utopia that now leaves virtually every stomach empty”, followed immediately with a cut to a demonstration by the right-wing opposition, where everybody appeared to be quite well-fed.
The Trump administration assigned Guaidó the task of inciting a Venezuelan armed forces revolt, or failing that, widespread desertions, during the cynical “humanitarian aid” show on the Colombian border Feb. 23. He flopped.
Guaidó then obediently called for an “intervention” by the “international community” — that is, an invasion by the United States. (Some “president.”) He and Mike Pence came to a meeting of the Lima Group of right-wing Latin American governments in Bogota, calling for just that. To the astonishment of Pence and Guaidó, even that “coalition of the willing” rejected military action against the government of Venezuela.
People can call themselves “democratic socialists” or “social democrats” or “human rights activists” and often do. It sounds better than “Washington toadies”.
But the facts are pretty plain.
You didn’t really offer any credible proof to your assertion.
You are the “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” variety. Well, then your case is not of humanitarian principle, but of conspiracy. This is the inconsistency of the contrarian left. The fact that Guiadó is accepting Empire’s help is a bridge too far? I have seen not statement from “Socialist International” against the actions of Juan Guiadó. That carries much more weight than some random statement from “Mark Cook” FAIR contributor or “Max Blumenthal” and ‘Dan Cohen” of Strategic Culture. The contrary is true. http://socialistinternational.org/viewArticle.cfm?ArticleID=2577 Here is an organization with actual clout and credentials contradicting your narrative.
Any real socialist must look at Maduro as as a failed leader. It really hurts me to say this. I am watching the interviews, and I can see real pain Maduro during the interviews. He wanted to be Chavez. He really believes in the revolution. But, He was never Chavez’s successor. He was played by the corrupt PSUV elite that ran the country into the ground by grafting off the currency and price controls. What recourse did he have? If he cracked down, they would have revolted against him and Cabello would be President (and his pop-star daughter VP). The Chavez clan and the aligned colectivos, after all, still wield great power and own significant corruption-financed human and financial capital. The veritable house of cards is falling around him and it shows. The more the MRT, ELN, and FARC -aligned colectivos lash out at what’s going on, the less control Madruo actually has. He can’t control them, but the Empire is increasingly hold him accountable for their actions. This will be the unfortunate pretext for bloody action. It’s unfolding as I write.
Maduro still has cards to play. He could dissolve the constituent assembly (which was initiated by his decree), allow the national assembly to purge and reappoint members of the TSJ to proper 2 year terms — per the 1999 constitution — which Guiadó’s party accepts (although the coalition may not — this could fall apart). If Maduro is uncorrupted, then there shouldn’t be any problem with that. Things can return to normal. It’ll be messy, like any democracy, but not bloody. I’m sure the Odebrecht bribes will be on the table. Corruption is corruption. Maduro will likely get impeached and new elections will be called anyways. He will get jail time, but could potentially live in exile somewhere. Hell, if it’s a peaceful transition he could even live in Miami and have freedom to travel and tap his off-shore money that he’s stolen from the VZ people. The empire doesn’t really have principals. The alternative… well, I think Little Marco took care of that on twitter.
It has come to my attention on another site that the following comment has been either censored or deleted here, much like the film in question:
Some people have said that this link resolves only to YouTube’s home page, which means that you are being censored based on location or other criteria. This is highly recommended viewing given the parallels with present day Venezuelan unrest:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id–ZFtjR5c
The title of the movie is “The Revolution Will Not Be Televized” and it chronicles, directly and in real-time, the failed 2002 coup attempt to oust Chavez and install a pro-American, pro-elite, pro-privatization military (contrary to their frequent protestations otherwise) dictatorship. I highly recommend seeking it out, as it has indeed been censored by various groups and governments – and if you watch it you’ll see why. And guess what? The current situation is nearly the EXACT same thing, but with “lessons learned” being implemented by the US and the “opposition”….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Revolution_Will_Not_Be_Televised_(film)
Is there any reason this comment gets censored every time? Fill in the blanks on the URLs.
http s://w ww.youtube.com/watch?v=Id–ZFtjR5c
The title of the movie is “The Revolution Will Not Be Televized” and it chronicles, directly and in real-time, the failed 2002 coup attempt to oust Chavez and install a pro-American, pro-elite, pro-privatization military (contrary to their frequent protestations otherwise) dictatorship. I highly recommend seeking it out, as it has indeed been censored by various groups and governments – and if you watch it you’ll see why. And guess what? The current situation is nearly the EXACT same thing, but with “lessons learned” being implemented by the US and the “opposition”….
ht tps://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/The_Revolution_Will_Not_Be_Televised_(film)
Here is a good description of the ‘disputed’ elections in Venezuela, dating back quite some time:
https://original.antiwar.com/ted_snider/2019/02/03/what-the-media-wont-tell-you-about-the-venezuelan-coup/
An excerpt:
This is hardly groundbreaking. After the 6 December 2015 National Assembly elections when the PSUV coalition got thumped by the opposition and lost 41 seats, the PSUV coalition undertook GOP-style voter suppression techniques. They moved polling stations, had a voter ID law, and bribed people with CLAP (subsidized food) boxes in the 2017 regional elections. It worked! So, they PSUV resolved to repeat the tactics in the “Constituent Assembly” elections of 2017 that were called by Maduro’s presidential proclamation. Note, when Chavez called for a re-write of the constitution in 2007, he did so with a referendum that was voted down by the majority. Maduro called for a re-write with a proclamation (because he knew it wouldn’t be approved by the majority) and his action was backed up by his hand-picked supreme court (TSJ) with approval from the outgoing PSUV dominated National Assembly.
It’s like Trump stacking the Supreme Court of the USA with his hand-picked men (of course they’d be white men) and approved by GOP dominated Senate in December after a November election loss where the Democrats won a super-majority in both houses. Trump declares a re-write of the constitution via a Constitutional Convention to his liking, which his stacked Supreme Court backs — even though it is unconstitutional. And in the mean time, he proclaims whatever he wants via executive order and it is “law” because the Supreme Court and Constitutional Convention would allow it. If both the democratically-elected House and Senate tried to pass anything with their super-majority, the supreme court would simply strike it down. Would that make Trump a dictator? If you can’t answer in the affirmative to that question, you are beyond lost. Because, this is VZ right now. Extending this narrative, Guiado is Nancy Pelosi trying to restore democracy.
What would you do as a Venezuelan? You are without a steady work and lack food security. Colectivos are activated and patrolling your streets. They randomly kidnapping, extorting, and killing your neighbors. They have a lot to lose since they are moving a lot of black market products at a profit — drugs from Colombia, CLAP (subsidized food) boxes, price controlled items to the black market — with the PSUV/FAN (VZ Army) looking the other way. Their territory is “okay” but they don’t care much about your neighborhood. If you were faced with this sort of anarchy and the potential (albeit a long-shot) of normalcy with Guiado, what would you do? This is where a lot of the VZ people are at right now. It’s a Faustian gamble. If they get the timing wrong, they or members of their family could die prematurely at the hands of Maduro-aligned colectivos or the SEBIN. Or in the scenario nobody wants but the NeoCons, the Empire invades and we have Lybia 2.0 with Russia’s Wagner Group, Cuba’s DI, and the USA’s CIA carving up the country with the MRT, ELN and FARC held territories in the mix and aligned to the highest bidder.
Sadly, I think Libya 2.0 is the reality. Lots of people will die. And….Trump will win 2020 elections as a result. It’s not about oil. It’s about re-election. I wish that I was wrong.
Im actually from Venezuela. I hate Trump and any extreme right parties but this article saying that things there are fine is just insane. I lived in Venezuela my whole life and my family is still there, it’s a horrible time for everyone there and if you went and live there and you think that everything was great I think you have some sort of perception problem or you are just extremely biased towards the extreme left. The insecurity is insane, the hospitals barely have medicines, getting food is a caos, devaluation went over a million percent last year..etc. When Chavez was alive things actually worked but now Nothing works, Maduro is the worst leader I have ever witness in my life, thanks to him most of our companies are bankrupt and useless, he has no self critic whatsoever.
Thanks, Ricardo. So why does the Trump administration find it necessary to “make the economy scream”, as CIA Director Richard Helms scribbled on a note pad during a meeting with then-President Richard Nixon about how to bring down the government of Chilean President Salvador Allende?
I really do appreciate your comment, but I’m left wondering how you can write it without at least mentioning the US government effort to wreck the Venezuelan economy. And it didn’t start with Trump. Obama started it, invoking the laughable claim that Venezuela represented a threat to US national security.
And it didn’t start with Venezuela now, or Chile in the 1970s. The same “make the economy scream” strategy was used against the democratic governments of Prime Minister Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, President Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, President Goulart in Brazil in 1964, Prime Minister Manley in Jamaica in 1978-80, President Ortega in Nicaragua throughout the 1980s and once again now, and on and on.
For example, there was Argentina. In the summer of 1974, I was working as a student assistant in the executive office of one of the most important Wall Street banks. My boss, the vice president for finance of the bank, came back from lunch one day to tell me, “You know what I just heard in the Street?” (That was their cute way of saying that they’d just had lunch with somebody important in Wall Street.) He said that he’d just had lunch with a senior banker at Morgan, and they had discussed Argentina.
“The plan,” he said, “is to let Argentina go absolutely, totally, utterly to hell economically, and then bring in a military government and go as far to the right as possible, as fast as possible.”
His source was extremely well-informed. My boss told me this in July or August, 1974, and that was exactly what the transnational banks and the US authorities did throughout the rest of 1974, all of 1975, and the first months of 1976. By then, in March, 1976, with the economy flat on the floor and the country’s currency practically worthless, the military and the right pulled their coup. He meant what he said: “as far to the right as possible, as fast as possible.” They created a death-squad military dictatorship of the most extreme type, with neoliberal economic recipes that would impress Milton Friedman and the Chicago Boys.
The neoliberal economic measures were disastrous, as usual, not just disastrous for the working class but disastrous in general (and as they are once again now in Argentina). By 1982 the economy was in such terrible shape that the military dictatorship of General Galtieri tried a Hail Mary pass with the invasion of the Falklands/Malvinas. That mobilized a nationalist frenzy, but when the Argentine military lost the war, Galtieri went down with it.
Of course, a lot of people had been killed, most of them tortured in the most unspeakable ways, using chuzos eléctricos provided by USAID and used on students’ testicles and vaginas. Labor leaders, too. And journalists like Jacobo Timerman, who survived miraculously, to tell us what they did, in his book Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number.
The coup was a Wall Street and Washington affair, just like the one they are planning right now in Venezuela.
As John Bolton has said, the plan is to re-privatize Venezuelan oil, giving it to US-based transnational oil companies, which he said would be good for the oil companies, good for Americans and good for Venezuelans. Of course.
The Venezuelan people voted in a referendum in the 1970s to nationalize the oil, can’t think why. But the oil companies and Wall Street want it back.
My wife is Venezuelan, I am not, but I have been there myself and seen the mess this regime has created. Most of the country is lawless, Maduro is inept and continuing the Chavez policies have utterly failed. Generals and Government fat cats enrich themselves while they starve its people. The Chavez daughters becoming billionaires is somehow the fault of the United States? The Chavez family is now the largest private landowner in Venezuela and flies around on private jets while every day people eat from dumpsters… Think about that for a moment.
“This is not to minimize Venezuela’s problems. The country was hit, like other oil-producing countries, and as it was in the 1980s and ’90s, by the collapse of oil prices”
Sure, what you fail to say is that during the “1980s and ’90s” the Chavistas were not in power. As a matter of fact that is when Chavez attempted to overthrow the government in a failed military coup or are coup bad only when attempted by the right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Venezuelan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat_attempts
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/05/hugo-chavez-venezuela-failed-coup-1992
“Like any country at war (and the Trump administration has placed Venezuela under wartime conditions, and is threatening immediate invasion), there have been shortages, and products that can mostly be found on the black market. This should surprise no one: During World War II in the US, a cornucopia of a country not seriously threatened with invasion, there was strict rationing of products like sugar, coffee and rubber.”
Sure, because shortages are a new thing in Venezuela. So let me school you a little bit. In Venezuela there is a parallel economy called “bachaqueo”. Bachaqueo consist in procuring heavily subside products to sell them on the street (buhoneros) at very high mark-ups. Keep in mind that for the bachaqueros to get product to begin with there has to be a very corrupt supply chain run by the officials who control product distribution (a.k.a the government).
One more thing is also a fact that you fail to mentioned. The US has been the country that never failed to pay for Venezuelan oil (at international prices). Cuba on the other hand provided “Doctors, and security agents”. BTW do you know how much are those Cuban doctors are paid? This is Brazil during Dilma:
“Leasing healthcare professionals to foreign governments brings in around $11 billion each year”
“Brazil paid around $3,600 per doctor per month to the Cuban government,“
“In Brazil, even with the Cuban government taking most of their salary, they were still getting about $1000 a month, a life-changing sum for their families”
In Venezuela the pay is lower and Cuba gets millions of oil barrels a year from Venezuela in exchange. The doctors are basically slaves to the Cuban government.
http://time.com/5467742/cuba-doctors-export-brazil/
https://blog.euromonitor.com/el-bachaqueo-and-the-striving-venezuelan-black-market-for-tissue-and-hygiene-products/
“Most have suppressed reports that the Red Cross and the UN are providing aid to Venezuela in cooperation with the Venezuelan government, and have protested against US “aid” that is obviously a political and military ploy.”
How about you suppressing this from NPR (hardly right-win)
http://intercrossblog.icrc.org/blog/icymi-weekly-roundup-the-crisis-in-venezuela-friday-july-21-2017
“NPR’s Planet Money calls the disaster, caused by government decisions and triggered by a drop in oil prices, an “economic horror story.” In addition, increased violence—fueled by President Nicolás Maduro call for a July 30 vote to bypass the National Assembly and elect a Constituent Assembly to rewrite the constitution, further consolidating his party’s power—threatens to move the country into even deeper crisis. Read about the ICRC’s work in Venezuela here. ”
“Well, OK, but are the reports of conditions in Venezuelan hospitals true or grossly exaggerated? “They are much better than they were ten years ago,”
The Chavistas have been running the country for 20 years (during which oil has been at record highs) so when you say that hospitals are better compared to 10 years ago forgive me if I’m not impress. Specially when the chavistas have enjoyed record high oil prices which the previous “neo-liberal” governments didn’t have.
http://www.infomine.com/investment/metal-prices/crude-oil/15-year/
From one of your comments: “The pharmacy where I bought it is in the Santa Monica area of Caracas” Funny Santa Monica where your apartment happened to be is in a “high class part of the city”. Why didn’t you rent (if you actually rented) an apartment say in Petare? Also, did you exchange your currency (I’m assuming $US) in the parallel market or did you exchange at the official rate?
“The campaign of disinformation and outright lies about Venezuela”
Those outright lies about Venezuela most definitely come from all sides yours included.
Thanks, Mark. Great journalism, and a sorely-needed dose of truth about Venezuela. Please write more, and keep us informed on developments if you can.
Thanks Steve!
https://www.facebook.com/rietedelgobierno/videos/2768134180078326/?t=60 see Venezuela
Thanks Zuleika. I have one question. If people in Venezuela are starving the way the corporate media constantly tell us, how come there’s all that food in the dump truck in the first place? After all, Venezuela is, according to the CNN piece I referenced, “the socialist utopia that now leaves virtually every stomach empty.” So why are people with empty stomachs throwing food out?
I won’t bother to ask why Jorge Ramos at Univision needed to pay all that money in air fare for himself and a camera crew to fly to Caracas when, for the price of a taxi ride, he could get videos of people scavenging for food in the garbage right at home in Miami.
This morning on CNN John Bolton unashamedly affirmed the justification of US policy on Venezuela was the Monroe Doctrine. He said this after dodging inartfully Jake Tapper’s repeated question about the inconsistency between US attitudes about democracy in Venezuela and Egypt.
As the preceding back and forths make clear, the truth about the situation inside Venezuela, and its primary causes, are hard to discern amidst the political rhetoric and contenting narratives.
Two things however are absolutely clear:
1) The US media has been even more irresponsibly one sided than in the runup to the US invasion of Iraq. The only reporting about US goals and strategy was in the Wall Street Journal. The New York Times has been a complete disgrace and the Washington Post not much better. MSNBC and CNN are equally biased in both their reporting and the emotional spin. They have created a pro-interventionist atmosphere like the yellow press of the late 19th century, leaving the public and politicians totally unprepared for the likely response of many Venezuelans to US military intervention.
I gather that Richard Branson’s pro-Guaido concert was broadcast on MTV, shaping attitudes of a younger audience. (In addition to naively playing into the game of border violating aid as a provocation for military desertion and civil war, it did not seem to occur to him that his allies Marco Rubio and John Bolton were also targeting Cuba. If they roll back travel as feared, Branson won’t have any American passengers on his new cruise to Havana.)
2) Regardless of its economic failures and compromised democracy, the US has no legal or moral right to sponsor an alternative government for a sovereign country, particularly if premised on the Monroe Doctrine. Our self-interested hegemonism is no different than Russia’s in regard to its Near Abroad or China’s in the South China Sea.
Two petition campaigns have been launched urging Congress to put a brake on US intervention. Both can be found in our current newsletter https://conta.cc/2E4siU1
Fund for Reconciliation and Development
Thanks for this, John, and thanks for the link to your excellent newsletter!
I should only add that the Richard Branson concert was a flop. He had hoped for 200,000, and got less than a tenth of what he was expecting, despite massive publicity. The Washington Post initially hyped his concert, then dropped the wildly inflated numbers, and finally quietly excised the reference to Branson’s concert altogether.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-02-24/wapo-secretly-deletes-bransons-venezuela-concert-article-after-fake-attendance
Good day Mark, I have lived here in Cuenca during the last three years with eight Venezuelans who escaped the situation in their homeland. I don’t know what your situation is but I am glad the article is listed under the heading “Opinion”. I can assure you that their experience was much different than yours. In short, I don’t know what your agenda is but the article mostly is a POS.
I have nothing against the socialist programs of Venezuela, but for what ever reason, the economy is in the tank. That is what I have learned from those who have stayed with us here in Ecuador. Not taking sides, but I have no reason to question the experiences of our Venezuelan guests.
Your pos articles was read in Cuenca Highlife and I copied the comments here that were posted there. Thanks for your bs.
This is what I have learned from the Venezuelans who have stayed with us. 1. Maduro’s unqualified loyalist who now head the state run petroleum business, are basically incompetent. 2. The middle class that prospered years ago is almost extinct. 3. There are now two classes: the elite including senior military officers and everyone else. 4. Basic necessities are not available except through the black market. 5. The grocery stores that are stocked are for the ruling elite and the military generals. Most of the items that are on the shelves are considered luxury items. Just a few examples of what I have learned from Venezuelans.
EdGar, thanks for your comments. If the situation is as bad as you say, and is because of the Venezuelan government’s incompetence and corruption, why do you suppose the Trump administration has felt it necessary to impose an economic squeeze on the country, which has now become a choke-hold? Why do you think it needs to make such an artificial “adjustment” to Venezuela’s economic situation, if the Maduro government is already doing such a fine job of making a hash of things? Don’t you think that they would refrain from doing so, since it gives Maduro a way to blame the US government for his government’s mismanagement? Just asking.
p.s Mark while you were getting paid to write this POS propaganda, our Venezuelan friends were and are out trying to earn a living (most at below minimum wage paid under the so called table) here in Ecuador.
thank you very much Dear Mark and Fair, We’ve translated your analysis to french here : https://t.co/rUJBXrMD1r
Merci bien Thierry! Mais je ne vois pas le lien vers la traduction. Celui ici est un lien vers venezuelanalysis. Y a-t-il un autre lien? Je suis enthousiaste à l’idée de continuer à collaborer!
ITS TRUE I WAS IN VENEZUELA THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IS LIEING ABOUT EVERYTHING ON THE NEWS! I HAD NO IDEA WHO AMERICA WAS! COWARD DEVIL WORSHIPERS! GOD DAM THE USA THIEVES! MURDERERS GOD DAM THE MAN IN UNIFORM AND THE USA MILITARY MAN!
THE BLACKS WERE RIGHT AMERICA IS SO EVIL! OH MY GOD THE BLACKS ARE TELLING THE TRUTH ! WHITES ARE RACISTS !
THEIR IS NO AMERICA FOR JEWS BEAUTIFUL ANGEL BLACK FOLKS OR CATHOLICS ,OR MINORITIES.
POLICE ENFORCE WHITE POWER OVER OUR PEOPLE! WE ARE NOT WHITE LIKE THEM SO THEY KILL US!
WE OWN NOTHING IN AMERICA WE HAVE NOTHING HERE! THEY RULE OVER US!
You sellout…how much are you getting paid? Anyone who even infers to like or approve what is going on in Venezuela and Maduro’s regime “government” is either part of the same filthy group or is getting paid. The mere fact of approximately 5 million of Venezuelans escaping the catastrophe for the last 5 years disproves anything you just said. The fact that my family is still there and I can support them more than enough with 100 bucks tells you how our currency is worthless. Any selfish being who dares to be part of this disguised slaughter shall pay in its right moment…and not with money
Thanks for asking, Jose Manuel. I haven’t been paid anything. Nor have friends who have also spoken out against Trump’s war on Venezuela and the lies in the corporate media. We are citizens. We consider speaking truth to power to be our right, and our duty.
How do we do it? Some of us are on Social Security. Some of us go back to New York or some other US city to work for a while as a translator, computer technician or legal assistant in a law firm, and then return. Some of us are grad students working on a doctoral thesis. We usually share an apartment or house. We live modestly.
Why do we do it? We especially object to Trump’s threats of war, and the economic squeeze he is applying to Venezuela, in which he hopes to create enough misery to bring down the government, seize the oil (which Venezuelans voted to nationalize in the 1970s) and hand it over to Exxon, Chevron and Halliburton. (If you think Venezuela’s economic problems are basically Maduro’s fault, why does Trump feel the need to impose this unprecedented level of “make the economy scream” artificial economic hardship?)
More than that, we do it because we have seen the devastation everywhere caused by ultra-rightwing neoliberal economics. We have seen how things become much worse for most people whenever Wall Street and the IMF get their way.
Those economic policies have had the same destructive effect for most Americans: factories have been closed and shipped abroad, to places with no real unions, where workers have died in firetraps or, in one Bangladesh factory, in a building collapse that killed over 1,300 workers.
And back in the US, cities that used to be so proud of their schools have suddenly found that they have lost their tax base and can’t afford to pay their teachers.
Meanwhile, hedge fund operatives become billionaires almost overnight.
But there’s something else. We have been overwhelmed by the way Venezuelans have simply ignored Trump’s stick, and his carrot: they have had the courage to ignore the threat of years in Guantanamo or a US super-max for refusing to obey Trump’s orders, and they have had the integrity to ignore the fantastic bribe offers to betray their country and their fellow citizens.
Trump, Pence, Bolton, Marco Rubio and Elliott Abrams thought soldiers, government workers and Venezuelans generally would be a pushover. But some people try to live by a somewhat higher moral code than those fine gentlemen.
The whole world, whatever our political views, can be proud of Venezuelans for standing up to an imperial bully.
funny how genuine criticism just disappears–like Stalin’s buddies. –AGF
i just finished reading Mark’s article and every comment that followed. I used to donate to FAIR and for some reason I stopped. As soon as i finish this comment I’m hitting the donate button above. I really appreciate seeing an open and honest debate like this and a well written article that offers an alternative view that the you don’t get from the MSM.
Thanks Paul!
I have been a scholar of Venezuela for over 35 years. I wrote my dissertation on Venezuela (Vanderbilt 1991) and have published many articles on Venezuela, the most recent in 2014 in a peer reviewed academic article on Venezuela in the journal Social Justice. I have lived in Venezuela and been there many many times. Since I began my research on Venezuela in the mid-1980s, I have been distressed over the lack of truthful reporting on Venezuela, especially after Chavez was elected into power in 1998. I have read many outright lies and terrible distortions. I know for a fact the CIA was thinking of intervening in Venezuela in 1999 when Chavez refused to let the U.S. build a military base near the border of Colombia to spy on FARC operatives. I have seen all of our recent presidents call Chavez a dictator which was never true, as there have been internationally observed free and fair elections through all elections, until recently when no-one really knows what’s going on. There has been an open and free press and I have watched the mainstream Venezuelan and U.S. press repeatedly attach Chavez and Maduro using bold faced lies even until today. Venezuela is a sovereign nation and the U.S. has no business disrespecting that sovereign nation. We have intervened so many times in Latin America with absolutely disastrous results that have lead to brutal dictators (e.g. Pinochet and Somoza among the worst). Though the situation in Venezuela today is problematic on both sides of the political battlefield, much of the conflict can, with absolutely accurate research, be shown to be the result of the opposition with the help of USAID and The National Endowment for Democracy and other government departments. Leave Venezuela to work out its own problem in discussion with non-biased mediators (even the UN condemns intervention). Dr. Trudie Coker
Once again, my country has invaded anther country for their resources. My God what has to happen to stop our out of control government from waging war on peaceful people who have never harmed the USA?!
So, what is your opinion now that pictures and videos have gone public of the Venezuelan military running over citizens protesting, or how they are shooting at the people..