This letter is addressed to the People of America. Please forward this text far and wide, across the land.Americans can then make up their mind. Am I in favor or against the Trump administration’s resolve to intervene militarily against Venezuela?

If I know anything, it is about people, such as you, I am a man of the people. I was born and raised in a poor neighborhood of Caracas. I forged myself in the heat of popular and union struggles in a Venezuela submerged in exclusion and inequality.
I am not a tycoon, I am a worker of reason and heart, today I have the great privilege of presiding over the new Venezuela, rooted in a model of inclusive development and social equality, which was forged by Commander Hugo Chávez since 1998 inspired by the Bolivarian legacy.
 

 
We live today a historical trance. There are days that will define the future of our countries between war and peace. Your national representatives of Washington want to bring to their borders the same hatred that they planted in Vietnam. They want to invade and intervene in Venezuela – they say, as they said then – in the name of democracy and freedom. But it’s not like that. The history of the usurpation of power in Venezuela is as false as the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It is a false case, but it can have dramatic consequences for our entire region.
 
Maduro to Americans: You Are Bigger than Trump, Don’t Let Him Start A ‘Vietnam’ War Against Venezuela
 
Venezuela is a country that, by virtue of its 1999 Constitution, has broadly expanded the participatory and protagonist democracy of the people, and that is unprecedented today, as one of the countries with the largest number of electoral processes in its last 20 years. You might not like our ideology, or our appearance, but we exist and we are millions.

I address these words to the people of the United States of America to warn of the gravity and danger that intend some sectors in the White House to invade Venezuela with unpredictable consequences for my country and for the entire American region. President Donald Trump also intends to disturb noble dialogue initiatives promoted by Uruguay and Mexico with the support of CARICOM for a peaceful solution and dialogue in favour of Venezuela. We know that for the good of Venezuela we have to sit down and talk, because to refuse to dialogue is to choose strength as a way. Keep in mind the words of John F. Kennedy: “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate”.

Are those who do not want to dialogue afraid of the truth?

The political intolerance towards the Venezuelan Bolivarian model and the desires for our immense oil resources, minerals and other great riches, has prompted an international coalition headed by the US government to commit the serious insanity of militarily attacking Venezuela under the false excuse of a non-existent humanitarian crisis.

The people of Venezuela have suffered painfully social wounds caused by a criminal commercial and financial blockade, which has been aggravated by the dispossession and robbery of our financial resources and assets in countries aligned with this demented onslaught.
And yet, thanks to a new system of social protection, of direct attention to the most vulnerable sectors, we proudly continue to be a country with a high human development index and low inequality in the Americas.

The American people must know that this complex multiform aggression is carried out with total impunity and in clear violation of the Charter of the United Nations, which expressly outlaws the threat or use of force, among other principles and purposes for the sake of peace and the friendly relations between Nations.

We want to continue being business partners of the people of the United States, as we have been throughout our history. Their politicians in Washington, on the other hand, are willing to send their sons and daughters to die in an absurd war, instead of respecting the sacred right of the Venezuelan people to self-determination and safeguarding their sovereignty.

Like you, people of the United States, we Venezuelans are patriots. And we shall defend our homeland with all the pieces of our soul.

Today Venezuela is united in a single clamor: we demand the cessation of the aggression that seeks to suffocate our economy and socially suffocate our people, as well as the cessation of the serious and dangerous threats of military intervention against Venezuela.
We appeal to the good soul of American society, victim of its own leaders, to join our call for peace, let us be all one people against warmongering and war.

Long live the peoples of America!
 
NicolásMaduro
President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
 
The original source of this article is Bolivarian Government of VenezuelaCopyright © Nicolas Maduro, Bolivarian Government of Venezuela, 2019
 
 
A Note to Global Research Readers
“Disinformation by Omission”: Not a single Western mainstream media has published, quoted or commented on President Nicolas Maduro’s Open Letter to the People of the United States (see Google search).

The post You Are Bigger than Trump, Don’t Let Him Start A ‘Vietnam’ War Against Venezuela: Maduro to Americans appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image Courtesy: BBC

French diplomats speaking off the record are feeding a stream of threats to the media, making clear that Paris will support a bloody intervention to topple President Nicolas Maduro. “Indifference would be even worse than intervention,” one diplomat said. Another told Le Monde the European powers had given Maduro an eight-day ultimatum to step down “to give Nicolas Maduro a little time to decide whether he wants to be Gorbachev or Bashar al-Assad.”

As the Trump administration threatens to blockade Venezuela and even invade the country, a threat echoed by Brazil’s far-right government, the implications of this threat are unmistakable. Either Maduro hands over Venezuela to the imperialist powers, or they may target it for a proxy war as in Syria, where hundreds of thousands died.

As they face growing repression of “yellow vest” protests, it is critical for workers in France and across Europe to oppose the imperialist threats against Venezuela.

As it faces threats of blockade, a disintegration of its currency as inflation surges, and a collapse of broad sections of the working population into poverty, Venezuela is being targeted by a relentless campaign of provocations in the European media.

Speaking to France Inter, Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian stated that Maduro’s ouster and his replacement by Guaidó was necessary: “Only free elections will allow the state to have a renewed authority and democracy.” He said, “We have noted President Maduro’s refusal to hold presidential elections that would work to simplify, clarify and make more serene the situation in Venezuela, and we believe Mr Guaidó has the capacity and the legitimacy to organize such elections.”

The claim that Guaidó has the legitimacy to decide the fate of Venezuela is absurd. A 35-year-old right-wing operative who was politically unknown prior to the coup attempt, Guaidó has been backed and funded by the US NGOs and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a long-standing front for CIA interventions in Latin America and around the world.

The purpose of the coup attempt is not to restore democracy, but to plunder the country. Top Trump administration officials have not hidden the strategic aims of installing a US-backed operative as head of a state that currently has close ties, both military and economic, to Russia and China. Last month, US National Security Advisor John Bolton told Fox News: “It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.”

The European ruling elite is deploying its bottomless hypocrisy as it portrays its intervention to back Guaidó, following that of Trump, as a disinterested democratic act. Asked on France Inter whether his position constituted an intervention in Venezuelan politics, Le Drian shamelessly denied it, declaring it to be a “call” or a response to “a request for help.”

In the meantime, European papers are downplaying or furiously denying the obvious: that they are trampling Venezuelan sovereignty underfoot, backing a right-wing coup launched by Trump. “The capitals that are the most implicated, including Paris, appear to be acting in line with Washington,” France’s Le Monde wrote, while Spain’s El Pais proclaimed: “The announcement made by Spain and other European countries is not a break with legality, but precisely an attempt to task the interim president with restoring it…”

Both papers insisted that their policy is a better way to install Guaidó in power and tried to distance themselves from Trump, claiming that they are in fact fighting his Latin American policy by opposing calls for a US invasion of Venezuela.

In its editorial “Support for Guaidó,” El Pais wrote: “US President Donald Trump’s aggressive rhetoric helps no one who wants a return to democracy in Venezuela. On the contrary, it strengthens Nicolas Maduro and his followers. Not only do constant calls for a possible military intervention by Washington cause understandable international concern, but the European Union and Latin America must clearly confront them. This is a red line that should in no manner be crossed. The 20th century was the end of US interventions in Latin America.”

As for Le Monde’s editorial, “Venezuela: supporting not intervening,” it reiterated calls for a coup: “The crucial factor is that the Venezuelan army has not for now changed camp. Mr Guaidó must continue his efforts to manage to convince them.”

It pointed, however to the danger of a US conflict with Russia and China, as well as the politically explosive situation in Latin America, after the recent elections of Jair Bolsonaro’s fascistic regime in Brazil and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s populist government in Mexico. It wrote, “In this volatile situation, one thing is certain: US military intervention, which President Trump is threatening, would be a grave error.”

Such attempts to present European imperialism as pursuing a fundamentally different, more responsible and less aggressive policy than Trump are false to the core—dictated principally by the concern about opposition in the European and international working class to their policies.

Behind the scenes, powerful inter-imperialist rivalries are no doubt exploding between Washington and the EU. The scramble to divide up profits and oil from Latin America is especially bitter as Trump threatens the EU with trade war measures like tariffs on German car exports, and with Europe’s role as the top investor in Latin America in the balance. The European powers are no doubt afraid of the consequences, both economic and political, of a disastrous US occupation of Venezuela.

Presenting the European powers as opposing wars and coups is, however, a political lie. The 21st century has seen a drastic upsurge in US and European imperialist bloodshed, with wars in the Middle East, Africa and also the Western hemisphere, where US-led military interventions took place from Haiti to Colombia. However bitter their conflicts with Washington, the European powers themselves deployed troops to Afghanistan, Iraq, Mali, Syria, Libya and beyond. Their support for a coup in Venezuela only confirms that they have descended into utter lawlessness.

Originally published in WSWS.org

Courtesy: Countercurrents.org
 

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Democracy is at risk worldwide. And the economy may be, too.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro created a new cryptocurrency called the ‘Petro’ to combat hyperinflation. Reuters/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

Seventy-one out of the world’s 195 countries saw their democratic institutions erode in recent years, according to the 2018 year-end report by democracy watchdog Freedom House, a phenomenon known as “democratic backsliding.” Signs of backsliding include elected leaders who expand their executive powers while weakening the legislature and judiciary, elections that have become less competitive and shrinking press freedom.

When government institutions erode like this, it isn’t just bad for democracy – it also hurts countries economically, research shows.

To understand why, we applied our background as political scientists focused on developing economies to study Venezuela, Turkey and Hungary – all countries that have seen varying degrees of democratic backsliding in recent years.
 

The authoritarian economic problem

All three countries have struggled economically as their democratically elected leaders turned nakedly authoritarian over the past five years.

In Turkey, President Recep Erdoğan has been steadily consolidating presidential powers for years while attacking the independence of both the legislative and judicial branches, as well as restricting press and academic freedoms. Turkey’s economy has struggled in kind, with gross domestic product dropping about 60 percent between 2013 and 2016. Its currency, the lire, also collapsed last year, plunging the country into crisis.

Under the autocratic leadership of President Nicolás Maduro – who is now in a bitter power struggle to retain the presidency – Venezuela has seen financial ruin. Inflation hit 80,000 percent there last year, and food and medicine are scarce. Venezuela’s government stopped releasing economic data in 2014, but its gross domestic product is believed to have shrunk by around 15 percent for each of the last three years.

Meanwhile, Hungary has stagnated as Prime Minister Victor Orbán has become increasingly undemocratic. Since the 2014 election, when Orban’s grip on power really tightened, growth has mostly dropped, from 4 percent in 2014 to 2 percent in 2016. The World Bank predicts that Hungary’s economy will continue to contract through 2020 and beyond.
 

Leaders are fallible

Authoritarianism isn’t always bad for the economy. Autocratic China and Singapore are both economic success stories, growing at double digits – a pace largely unseen in Western democracies.

But these countries were never set up to be democracies.

When a one-time democracy turns toward authoritarianism, however, the economic effect is often negative. That’s because, in a democracy, economic policy is meant to be made jointly, by various elected officials from the executive and legislative branches. Other independent government agencies, like the U.S. Federal Reserve or central bank, help decide economic policy, too.

Lawmakers check impulsive decisions by presidents in a number of formal and informal ways, our research shows. Policies that relate to government investments, taxing and spending, among other issues, are generally the result of negotiation between the two branches.

When legislatures can no longer effectively serve this function – because they’ve been sidelined, as in Venezuela and Turkey, or because they are dominated by the ruling party, as in Hungary – there’s little to prevent authoritarian leaders from making bad choices that hurt the economy.

Turkey is a good example of the risks that come from having one all-powerful, fallible leader.

In July 2018, President Erdoğan expanded his executive powers to include making key appointments to Turkey’s central bank and appointed his son-in-law to lead economic policy in Turkey. Erdoğan then restricted the bank from raising interest rates to curb rising inflation – despite warnings from economists that this move would lead the value of the Turkish currency to plummet. And, of course, it did.

Turkey’s currency, the lire, collapsed after a series of unwise economic decisions made largely by President Erdoğan. Reuters/Khalil Ashawi
 

Social unrest is bad for the economy

Legislatures play an important role in setting economic policy also because, as representative bodies made up of different political parties, they serve as channels through which people and social groups can make demands on policymakers.

In healthy legislative debate in a functioning democracy, opposing parties develop economic policies that help their constituents. They also try to change laws that they believe will hurt the people they represent.

When authoritarian leaders sideline opposition parties and stack the legislature with their supporters, the only way for citizens to air their grievances is on the streets.

Venezuelans staged months of mass daily protests in 2017 after President Maduro stripped Venezuela’s opposition-dominated parliament of its powers. They are marching again now, demanding Maduro’s ouster.

Social unrest can deepen economic woes, especially when it gets violent. Riots may destroy physical infrastructure like oil pipelines or block highways that keeps the country running. People may flee for their own safety, leaving jobs undone and critical positions unfilled.
 

Democratic backsliding reduces foreign investment

International markets, too, dislike social unrest. When protests are prolonged or if the governments crack down violently, it is common for investors to flee.

International investors get worried, too, when parliaments have too few opposition parties to effectively check the executive branch, our study finds.

When democratically elected leaders turn authoritarian, investors get nervous, withdrawing funds and reducing investments.

Since 2013, Hungary, Venezuela and Turkey have all seen notable declines in their foreign direct investment, a measure of global confidence in a country, according to the World Bank. Declines range from 66 percent in Venezuela to 300 percent in Hungary.

One reason investment drops as democracy erodes is because investors fear the government could begin meddling in their businesses in ways that reduce profits.

This is a common strategy of authoritarian leaders from both the right and the left.

Since taking sweeping control of Hungary’s parliament in 2018, for example, President Orban’s right-wing Fidesz party has reasserted government control over major energy firms, taking over public utilities and increasing government oversight of foreign companies that operate in the country.

In Venezuela, the left-wing Maduro has taken over food production in the country, ordering companies like Nestle and Pepsi to vacate their factories in 2015.
 

It’s all about the legislatures

Our study found one condition that allows economies to thrive even when democracy is in decline: functioning political parties in independent legislatures.

In the Philippines, hard-right president Rodrigo Duterte has imprisoned, even killed, thousands of citizens as part of his “war on drugs.” Duterte has also arrested powerful people who criticize his policies. So far, however, the Filipino parliament is still fairly functional, with opposition parties that operate freely.

Consequently, the Filipino economy remains unaffected by Duterte’s authoritarianism. Gross domestic product has grown at a good rate of around 7 percent since 2012. Foreign investments have also been increasing.

Sharing some power with lawmakers gives the economy a boost. Ultimately, that may help these authoritarian-leaning leaders stay in power longer.
 

Nisha Bellinger, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Boise State University and Byunghwan Son, Assistant Professor of Global Affairs, George Mason University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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To the People of Venezuela

Yet again, the United States elite has decided to attempt to impose its will on the people of another nation, in this case, and not for the first time either, your country Venezuela.

On 23 January 2019, following careful secret planning in the preceding weeks and a late night telephone call the previous day from US Vice President Mike Pence – see ‘Pence Pledged U.S. Backing Before Venezuela Opposition Leader’s Move’ and ‘Venezuela – Trump’s Coup Plan Has Big Flaws’ – the US initiated a coup against your President, Nicolás Maduro, and his Government, whom you democratically re-elected to represent you on 20 May 2018. See ‘The Case for the Legitimacy of Maduro’s Second Term’.

By organizing, recognizing and supporting as ‘interim president’ the US puppet trained for the purpose over the past decade – see ‘The Making of Juan Guaidó: How the US Regime Change Laboratory Created Venezuela’s Coup Leader’ – the United States government has simply brought into clearer focus and now precipitated its long-standing plan to seize control of Venezuela’s huge oil, gas, gold, water and other natural resources, with the oil and gas conveniently close to Texan refineries. In relation to gold, for example, see ‘Bank of England refused to return $1.2bn in gold to Venezuela – reports’ and then ‘Bank Of England Urged To Hand Over Venezuela’s Gold To Guaidó’.

Of course, this coup is perfectly consistent with US foreign policy for the past two centuries, the essential focus of which has been to secure control over key geostrategic areas of the world and to steal the resources of foreign nations. For a list of only the ‘most notable U.S.
interventions’ in Central/South America over that period, see ‘Before Venezuela: The long history of U.S. intervention in Latin America’. But you can also read a more complete list of US interventions overseas (only since 1945) in William Blum’s ‘Overthrowing other people’s governments: The Master List’.

Needless to say, this latest attempt at ‘regime change’ is in clear violation of international law on so many counts it is difficult to document them concisely. First, the ongoing US intervention over an extended period has always been a violation of international law, including Chapter IV, Article 19 of the Charter of the Organization of American States. Second, sanctions are illegal under so many treaties it is sickening. See ‘Practice Relating to Rule 103. Collective Punishments’. And third, the coup is a violation of Venezuela’s constitution. See ‘The Failure of Guaido’s Constitutional Claim to the Presidency of Venezuela’.

Unfortunately, international law (like domestic law) is simply used as another means to inflict violence on those outside the elite circle and, as casual observation of the record demonstrates, is routinely ignored by elites in the US and elsewhere when their geopolitical, economic and/or other interests ‘require’ it.

As usual, there is no remotely reasonable pretext for this coup, despite the usual alphabet of sycophantic US allies such as Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Israel…. – see, for example, ‘Australia recognises Juan Guaidó as Venezuela president’ and ‘Emmanuel Macron, Pedro Sanchez, Angela Merkel and Theresa May Have No Right to Issue an Ultimatum to Venezuela’ – as well as the elite-controlled corporate media, lying that there is such pretext. Mind you, given the flagging domestic support for many of these political leaders in light of their obvious incompetence in dealing with issues of critical import to their own constituencies – is this where we mention words like ‘Brexit’ and ‘Yellow Vests’, for example? – it is little wonder that the distraction offered by events elsewhere is also used to provide some relief from the glare focused on their own ineptitude.

Of course, a submissive Organization of American States (OAS) – recognizing Guaidó in violation of its own Charter – and the cowardly European Union (EU), also kneeling in the face of US pressure to ignore international law, simply add to the picture of a global system devoid of moral compass and the rule of law, let alone courage.

It is true, as most of you are well aware, that Venezuela has been experiencing dire economic circumstances but, as most of you also know, these circumstances have been caused by ‘outside intervention, internal sabotage and the decline in oil prices’, particularly including the deepening economic sanctions imposed by the United States in recent years. For solid accounts of what has taken place in Venezuela in recent times, particularly the external factors causing these dire economic circumstances, see the report on behalf of the United Nations Human Rights Council written by Alfred de Zayas ‘Report of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order on his mission to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and Ecuador’ which identified the crisis the US ‘economic warfare’ was precipitating – see ‘Former UN Rapporteur: US Sanctions Against Venezuela Causing Economic and Humanitarian Crisis’ – as well as the research reported in ‘Opposition Protests In Venezuela Rooted In Falsehoods’, ‘Trump’s Sanctions Make Economic Recovery in Venezuela Nearly Impossible’, ‘US Regime Change in Venezuela: The Documented Evidence’ and ‘Venezuela: What Activists Need To Know About The US-Led Coup’.
But lest some people think this US coup is only about resources, geopolitical control is also vital. As noted by Garikai Chengu: ‘America seeks control of Venezuela because it sits atop the strategic intersection of the Caribbean, South and Central American worlds. Control of the nation, has always been a remarkably effective way to project power into these three regions and beyond.’ See ‘Sanctions of Mass Destruction: America’s War on Venezuela’.

Of course, even though the outstanding problems in Venezuela have been primarily caused by the ongoing illegal US inteference, the eminently reasonable government of your country remains willing to engage in dialogue to resolve these problems. See, for example, ‘Venezuela leader Nicolas Maduro seeks talks with Obama’ and ‘Maduro Reaffirms Willingness For Dialogue’. However, this willingness for dialogue does not interest the US elite or its sycophantic western and local (both within Central/South America and within Venezuela) allies who, as noted above, are intent on usurping control from the people of Venezuela and stealing your resources.

In any case, and most importantly, for those of us paying attention to the truth, rather than the garbage reported in the elite-controlled corporate media – see, for example, ‘Can Venezuela Have a Peaceful Transition?’ but outlined more fully in ‘“Resistance” Media Side With Trump to Promote Coup in Venezuela’ – we are well aware of what you all think about this. Because, according to recent polling, you are heavily against US and other outside intervention in any form.See ‘86% of Venezuelans Oppose Military Intervention, 81% Are Against U.S. Sanctions, Local Polling Shows’.

Fortunately, of course, you have many solidarity allies including countries such as Russia, China, Cuba and Turkey who acknowledge your right to live with the government you elected and do not wish to steal your resources. Moreover, at an ‘emergency’ meeting of the UN Security Council on 26 January 2019, called by the United States to seek authorization for interference in Venezuela, the Council was divided as China, Equatorial Guinea, Russia and South Africa opposed the move, with Côte d’Ivoire and Indonesia abstaining. See ‘UN political chief calls for dialogue to ease tensions in Venezuela; Security Council divided over path to end crisis’.

And there is a vast number of people, including prominent public intellectuals, former diplomats and ordinary people who are solidly on your side as you defend yourselves from the latest bout of western imperialism. For example, Professor Noam Chomsky and other prominent individuals have publicly declared their support – see ‘Open Letter by Over 70 Scholars and Experts Condemns US-Backed Coup Attempt in Venezuela’ – and former UK ambassador Craig Murray has argued that ‘The Coup in Venezuela Must Be Resisted’.

Anyway, given your existing and ongoing resistance to the coup in defense of your elected government, I would like to offer another avenue of support for you to consider. My support, if you like, to plan and implement a comprehensive nonviolent strategy to defeat the coup.
So what is required?

I have explained in detail how to formulate and implement a strategy for defeating coup attempts such as this in the book The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach.

However, I have also outlined the essential points of this strategy on the website Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy. The pages of this website provide clear guidance on how to easily plan and then implement the twelve components of this strategy.

If you like, you can see a diagrammatic representation of this strategy by looking at the Nonviolent Strategy Wheel.

And on the Strategic Aims page you can see the basic list of 23 strategic goals necessary to defeat a coup of the type you are resisting at the moment. These strategic goals can easily be adopted, modified and/or added to if necessary, in accordance with your precise circumstances as you decide.

If you want to read a straightforward account of how to plan and conduct a nonviolent tactic so that it has strategic impact, you can do so here: ‘Nonviolent Action: Why and How it Works’.

This will require awareness of the difference between ‘The Political Objective and Strategic Goal of Nonviolent Actions’.

And, to ensure that your courage is most powerfully utilized, you are welcome to consider the 20 points designed to ensure that you are ‘Minimizing the Risk of Violent Repression’whenever you take nonviolent action where repression is a risk. The information is useful for both neutralizing violent provocateurs but also in the event that sections of the police or army defect to support the US puppet Guaidó in the days or weeks ahead, as often happens in contexts such as these.

In essence, your ongoing resistance to the coup is essential if you are to defeat the coupmakers and defend your elected government. But the chances of success are vastly enhanced if your struggle, and that of your solidarity allies around the world, is focused for maximum strategic impact and designed to spread the cost of doing so.

Remember, it is you who will decide the fate of Venezuela. Not the US elite and not even your President and government.
Of course, whether or not you decide to consider and/or adopt my proposed strategy, you have my solidarity.

Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.

Courtesy : https://countercurrents.org/

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They are fighting against a socialism that does not exist. They are fighting against an anti-utopia that does not relate to anyone. They imagine a world without families, without order, without markets, without freedom. The right-wing liberals of the world invented a ghost, they draped on the label of socialism and now they find it everywhere, among all, and every time they look at Venezuela. Enough with this.

Because this socialism against which they struggle is not the one that our inclusive democracy exists in, full of people that live in the 21st century. Our socialism is particular, popular and profoundly Latin American. As we clearly said during the UN General Assembly last September: Ours is an autonomous project of democratic revolution, of social assertion, it is a model and a path of our own, based in our own history and culture.

And clearly, our democracy is distinct because it was neither founded by nor for the elite, as the liberal democracies of Europe and the United States were. We rebelled against this model and that is why, 20 years ago, we proposed our own democracy, founded in the sovereign heart of the Venezuelan people.

What happened is that, at the end of the 20th century – when Latin America exited the period of dictatorship imposed by the United States – they tried, with their idea of liberal democracy, to wrap us in a gift package, some Trojan Horse, with all of the values of their own concept of modernity. But we want to say to them that here in Latin America we also have an identity and values, and we want to involve our own values before all others in our democracy. Not just those values of capital and the individual. But also those of solidarity and community. For us, the homeland is the latter.

We learned our lesson – well, it happened to us for centuries. Over time, by adding to our own culture with that from afar, the Latin American elite and their liberal modes tried to permanently re-found Europe in the heart of América. Destroying step-by-step everything that seemed different. Elites for whom the “other” – the native and the black – were more monkey than human.

We fervently believe in our own Latin American democracy, because in Venezuela we believe in and adhere to three fundamentals as essential and necessary: First, we hold elections systematically, regularly and peacefully. Over the past 20 years we have held 25 elections, each one observed by national and international institutions and political figures. Some we have won overwhelmingly, others we have lost. Second, in Venezuela the citizens – by mechanisms of direct democracy, fundamentally the neighborhood organizations and political parties – have access and control over public resources. And third, in Venezuela the people rule, not the elite. Before me Chávez governed, a soldier descended from blacks and natives who became the father of the homeland. For six years now, Venezuela has been governed by a modest trade unionist and bus driver. In Venezuela it is the people who govern, because it was their Constituent Assembly that conceived and wrote their constitution.

We are not nor do we want to become a model of democracy. We are, instead, a democracy defined and defended by its people, who gather in a daily effort against lies and false claims – an imperfect democracy, working every day for everyone and to be more just.
 

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The fact that for America the issue in Venezuela is oil, not democracy, will surprise only those who watch the news and ignore history. Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves on the planet.

America seeks control of Venezuela because it sits atop the strategic intersection of the Caribbean, South and Central American worlds. Control of the nation, has always been a remarkably effective way to project power into these three regions and beyond.

From the first moment Hugo Chavez took office, the United States has been trying to overthrow Venezuela’s socialist movement by using sanctions, coup attempts, and funding the opposition parties. After all, there is nothing more undemocratic than a coup d’état.

United Nations Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur, Alfred de Zayas, recommended, just a few days ago, that the International Criminal Court investigate economic sanctions against Venezuela as a possible crime against humanity perpetrated by America.

Over the past five years, American sanctions have cut Venezuela off from most financial markets, which have caused local oil production to plummet. Consequently, Venezuela has experienced the largest decline in living standards of any country in recorded Latin American history.
Prior to American sanctions, socialism in Venezuela had reduced inequality and poverty whilst pensions expanded. During the same time period in America, it has been the absolute reverse. President Chavez funnelled Venezuela’s oil revenues into social spending such as free+6 healthcare, education, subsidized food networks, and housing construction.

In order to fully understand why America is waging economic war on the people of Venezuela one must analyse the historical relationship between the petrodollar system and Sanctions of Mass Destruction: Prior to the 20th century, the value of money was tied to gold. When banks lent money they were constrained by the size of their gold reserves. But in 1971, U.S. President Richard Nixon took the country off the gold standard. Nixon and Saudi Arabia came to an Oil For Dollars agreement that would change the course of history and become the root cause of countless wars for oil. Under this petrodollar agreement the only currency that Saudi Arabia could sell its oil in was the US dollar. The Saudi Kingdom would in turn ensure that its oil profits flow back into U.S. government treasuries and American banks.

In exchange, America pledged to provide the Saudi Royal family’s regime with military protection and military hardware.

It was the start of something truly great for America. Access to oil defined 20th-century empires and the petrodollar agreement was the key to the ascendancy of the United States as the world’s sole superpower. America’s war machine runs on, is funded by, and exists in protection of oil.
Threats by any nation to undermine the petrodollar system are viewed by Washington as tantamount to a declaration of war against the United States of America.

Within the last two decades Iraq, Iran, Libya and Venezuela have all threatened to sell their oil in other currencies. Consequently, they have all been subject to crippling U.S. sanctions.

Over time the petrodollar system spread beyond oil and the U.S. dollar slowly but surely became the reserve currency for global trades in most commodities and goods. This system allows America to maintain its position of dominance as the world’s only superpower, despite being a staggering $23 trillion in debt.

With billions of dollars worth of minerals in the ground and with the world’s largest oil reserves, Venezuela should not only be wealthy, but her people the envy of the developing world. But the nation is essentially broke because American sanctions have cut them off from the international financial system and cost the economy $6 billion over the last five years. Without sanctions, Venezuela could recover easily by collateralizing some of its abundant resources or its $8 billion of gold reserves, in order to get the loans necessary to kick-start their economy.

In order to fully understand the insidious nature of the Venezuelan crisis, it is necessary to understand the genesis of economic sanctions. At the height of World War Two, President Truman issued an order for American bombers to drop “Fat Man” and “Little Boy” on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing 140,000 people instantly. The gruesome images that emerged from the rubble were broadcast through television sets across the world and caused unprecedented outrage. The political backlash forced U.S. policy makers to devise a more subtle weapon of mass destruction: economic sanctions.

The term “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD) was first defined by the United Nations in 1948 as “atomic explosive weapons, radioactive material weapons, lethal chemical and biological weapons, and any weapons developed in the future which have characteristics comparable in destructive effect to those of the atomic bomb or other weapons mentioned above”.

Sanctions are clearly the 21st century’s deadliest weapon of mass destruction.

In 2001, the U.S. administration told us that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction; Iraq was a terrorist state; Iraq was tied to Al Qaeda. It all amounted to nothing. In fact, America already knew that the only weapons of mass destruction that Saddam had were not nuclear in nature, but rather chemical and biological. The only reason they knew this in advance was because America sold the weapons to Saddam to use on Iran in 1991.

What the U.S. administration did not tell us was that Saddam Hussein used to be a strong ally of the United States.  The main reason for toppling Saddam and putting sanctions on the people of Iraq was the fact that Iraq had ditched the Dollar-for-Oil sales.

The United Nations estimates that 1.7 million Iraqis died due to Bill Clinton’s sanctions; 500,000 of whom were children. In 1996, a journalist asked former U.S. Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, about these UN reports, specifically about the children. America’s top foreign policy official, Albright, replied: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it.” Clearly, U.S. sanctions policies are nothing short of state-sanctioned genocide.

Over the last five years, sanctions have caused Venezuelan per capita incomes to drop by 40 percent, which is a decline similar to that of war torn Iraq and Syria at the height of their armed conflicts. Millions of Venezuelans have had to flee the country. If America is so concerned about refugees, Trump should stop furthering disastrous foreign policies that actually create them. Under Chavez, Venezuela had a policy of welcoming refugees. President Chavez turned Venezuela into the wealthiest society in Latin America with the best income equality.

Another much vilified leader who used oil wealth to enrich his people, only to be put under severe sanctions, is Muammar Gaddafi. In 1967 Colonel Gaddafi inherited one of the poorest nations in Africa; however, by the time he was assassinated, Gaddafi had turned Libya into Africa’s wealthiest nation. Perhaps, Gaddafi’s greatest crime, in the eyes of NATO, was his quest to quit selling Libyan oil in U.S. Dollars and denominate crude sales in a new gold backed common African currency. In fact, in August 2011, President Obama confiscated $30 billion from Libya’s Central Bank, which Gaddafi had earmarked for the establishment of an African Central Bank and the African gold-backed Dinar currency.

Africa has the fastest growing oil industry in the world and oil sales in a common African currency would have been especially devastating for the American dollar, the U.S. economy, and particularly the elite in charge of the petrodollar system.

It is for this reason that President Clinton signed the now infamous Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, which the United Nations Children’s Fund said caused widespread suffering among civilians by “severely limiting supplies of fuel, access to cash, and the means of replenishing stocks of food and essential medications.” Clearly, U.S. sanctions are weapons of mass destruction.

Not so long ago, Iraq and Libya were the two most modern and secular states in the Middle East and North Africa, with the highest regional standards of living. Nowadays, U.S. Military intervention and economic sanctions have turned Libya and Iraq into two of the world’s most failed nations.

“They want to seize Libya’s oil and they care nothing about the lives of the Libyan people,” remarked Chavez during the Western intervention in Libya in 2011.

In September 2017, President Maduro made good on Chavez’s promise to list oil sales in Yuan rather than the US dollar. Weeks later Trump signed a round of crippling sanctions on the people of Venezuela.

On Monday, U.S. National Security adviser John Bolton announced new sanctions that essentially steal $7 billion from Venezuela’s state owned oil company. At that press conference Bolton brazenly flashed a note pad that ominously said “5,000 troops to Colombia”. When confronted about it by the media, Bolton simply said, “President Trump stated that all options are on the table”.

America’s media is unquestionably the most corrupt institution in America. The nation’s media may quibble about Trump’s domestic policies but when it comes to starting wars for oil abroad they sing in remarkable unison. Fox News, CNN and the New York Times all cheered the nation into war in Iraq over fictitious weapons of mass destruction, whilst America was actually using sanctions of mass destruction on the Iraqi people. They did it in Libya and now they are doing it again in Venezuela. Democracy and freedom have always been the smoke screen in front of capitalist expansion for oil, and the Western Media owns the smoke machine. Economic warfare has long since been under way against Venezuela but military warfare is now imminent.

Trump just hired Elliot Abrams as U.S. Special Envoy for Venezuela, who has a long and torrid history in Latin America. Abrams pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the Iran Contra affair, which involved America funding deadly communist rebels, and was the worst scandal in the Reagan Era. Abrams was later pardoned by George Bush Senior. America’s new point man on Venezuela also lied about the largest mass killing in recent Latin American history by U.S. trained forces in El Salvador.

There is nothing more undemocratic than a coup d’état. A UN Human Rights Council Rapporteur, Alfred de Zayas, pointed out that America’s aim in Venezuela is to “crush this government and bring in a neoliberal government that is going to privatise everything and is going to sell out, a lot of transitional corporations stand to gain enormous profits and the United States is driven by the transnational corporations.”

Ever since 1980, the United States has steadily devolved from the status of the world’s top creditor country to the world’s most indebted country. But thanks to the petrodollar system’s huge global artificial demand for U.S. dollars, America can continue exponential military expansion, record breaking deficits and unrestrained spending.

America’s largest export used to be manufactured goods made proudly in America. Today, America’s largest export is the U.S. dollar. Any nation like Venezuela that threatens that export is met with America’s second largest export: weapons, chief amongst which are sanctions of mass destruction.

Garikai Chengu is an Ancient African historian. He has been a scholar at Harvard, Stanford and Columbia University. Contact him on garikai.chengu@gmail.com

Courtesy: https://countercurrents.org/
 

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EPA/Alexei Druzhinin

As the table below indicates, the number of dictators who’ve fallen in recent years for all sorts of reasons is a cause for optimism.

But has their demise led to any kind of democratic reform? It’s a mixed picture to say the least. While a handful of promising cases deserve praise, only a few of the dictatorships that have fallen in recent years have given way to lasting, stable democracies.
 

The 2010s began with tremendous optimism for the future of global democracy, reaching an apogee with the Arab Spring protests in 2011. Across the Middle East and North Africa, several dictators fell in a row: after Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Muammar Gaddafi of Libya was toppled in a civil war. Fighting also erupted in Yemen, leading to the eventual flight of longtime strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh.
 

It seemed for a moment that in one fell swoop, a clutch of countries were suddenly shaking off authoritarianism at last. But with the exception of Tunisia – whose situation is still somewhat fragile – none of them have developed into democracies.
 

Egypt’s brief spell under the elected Muslim Brotherhood came to an end in 2013, when a military intervention brought General Abdel Fatteh al-Sisi to power. He remains president today, legitimised by largely meaningless elections. Libya is still a weak state beset by instability and violence; Yemen has slipped into devastating conflict and humanitarian crisis. Though protests exploded throughout the Middle East, only modest reforms took place elsewhere. And in Syria, the Assad regime’s crackdown on the 2011 protests helped spark a nightmarish conflict that has torn the country apart.
 

Iraq and Afghanistan, meanwhile, saw a change in leadership with the elections that forced Nouri al-Maliki and Hamid Karzai out of power. But neither country’s democracy has notably improved. Afghanistan is still authoritarian and unstable, and in Iraq, Maliki is still very powerful behind the scenes.
 

Mixed bag

Latin America was home to a clutter of military dictatorships for decades, but since the mid-to-late 1980s, most of its countries have been flawed but functioning democracies.
 

The two notable holdouts were Venezuela under Hugo Chávez and Cuba under Fidel Castro – and in the last decade, the two have diverged considerably. While Cuba has reformed a little under the rule of Fidel’s brother Raúl, who has now handed over to Miguel Díaz-Canal, Venezuela is falling apart under the dictatorial leadership of Chavez’s hand-picked successor, Nicolás Maduro. Other regimes in Latin America continue to hold free and fair elections, but struggle to uphold the rule of law.
 

In Asia, meanwhile, a few less-than-democratic countries have made strides towards reform, but most authoritarian regimes have stayed the same. Still, some reforms and resignations are noteworthy. In the Caucasus, Armenia’s Serzh Sargsyan was recently forced to resign after mass protests against his rule. Almazbek Atambayev of Kyrgyzstan also stepped down after elections, the first peaceful handover of power in the country’s history.
 

In South-East Asia, most of the attention since 2015 has been on surprising events in Myanmar, when the military regime that ran the country for decades allowed open elections for the first time since 1990. Myanmar’s military government was oppressive even by authoritarian standards, so it was quite something to see it holding elections, releasing political prisoners and allowing more press freedom. The regime’s leader, Thein Sein, stepped down to make way for Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy.
 

But the democratic transformation was short-lived. The regime has continued to violate the human rights of its minority groups, most notably the Rohingya minority, and civil liberties and press freedoms are in serious jeopardy.
 

Turfed out

One place where things are looking up for democracy is Sub-Saharan Africa. The last decade has seen the overall standing of democracy in Africa improve. In the early 1980s, only five countries in Africa could be considered democratic: Botswana, Gambia, Mauritius, Senegal and Zimbabwe. The end of the Cold War saw the expansion of elections and civil liberties. But more recent years has seen the fall or peaceful resignation of important authoritarian figures, many of them old men who had clung on to power for decades.
 

Yahya Jammeh of the Gambia eventually fled the country in 2017 after he lost the presidential elections to the opposition. Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso resigned after political protests broke out in 2014, following nearly three decades in power. José Eduardo dos Santos of Angola resigned after nearly 40 years in power (though he remains influential in Angolan politics). All three countries have become slightly more democratic as a result.
 

But the biggest tree felled in Africa was undoubtedly Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. In his capacity as president since 1980, Mugabe had become increasingly dictatorial and brutal, and his misguided leadership plunged the country into chaos. When he unceremoniously fired his vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa at the end of 2017, his previous backers in the military decided they had finally had enough. With parliamentary impeachment hearings in the offing, Mugabe eventually resigned, and new elections are scheduled for July 2018.
 

The bloodless Zimbabwean transition was a heartening spectacle, but there are nonetheless plenty of other countries to worry about. Hungary’s Viktor Orban is threatening to constrict his country’s democracy by clamping down on civil liberties, even as he wins landslide election victores. China’s Xi Jinping recently orchestrated the removal of term limits, giving him power to rule indefinitely. Thailand’s military is heading the most repressive government the country has seen in years. Still, while many countries have taken an authoritarian turn, others have made a success of their escape from dictatorship.
 

As recent events in Armenia attest, citizens the world over are becoming more involved in politics and taking their displeasure to the streets. And while it’s true that most dictators who fall are replaced by another dictator, there are enough examples to the contrary to give the defenders of democracy some hope.
 

Natasha Ezrow, Senior Lecturer, University of Essex

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Former President of Argentina, Cristina Kirchner, and the former President of Brazil,Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, president of Brazil.19 November 2007. Fabio Rodrigues Pozzebom/A. Brasil/Wikimedia Commons.

Lenin Moreno won the presidential elections in Ecuador and the Latin American Left, after several consecutive setbacks, has been able to take a breath of fresh air. But it is rather a sigh, for Moreno lacks the charisma, the economic resources and the popular support needed to carry on with the Correísta agenda. The challenge in Ecuador and in most Latin American countries is not to resist the end of the progressive cycle – a process with growing contradictions and setbacks – but how to rearm the forces working for progressive social change.

The news is good, for there are other forces on the left showing the way: they are pulling off micro-revolutions at the local level. Those who remain in power, and those who want to get it back, should take good notice and start reinventing themselves if they want to avoid definitely losing the battle against the steadily advancing Right throughout the continent.

End of cycle

The wave that started with Hugo Chávez in 1999 was an innovative proposal: a reaction to neoliberal policies and to the need to rebuild politics with the "kick them all out" social demand as a backdrop. Evo Morales, Rafael Correa and Lula da Silva brought new players into the political system, whole sectors of the population who had never been a part of it, and Kirchnerism too activated previously apathetic social sectors. Bolivia and Ecuador reformed their constitutions to include indigenous rights and the rights of nature. Tens of millions became middle class, public services were expanded, and wealth distribution improved.

Opponents explain that these advances were due to high global commodity prices. They indeed made it possible, but they do not explain it. There were other high commodity price periods in history, such as that of the agro-mining export model (between 1870 and the First World War), or the 1970s, which it is doubtful whether they in fact contributed to advancing rights. As opposed to these previous periods, an agenda was now in place for the extension of rights.

We have of course been talking about the end of the progressive cycle for some time now. The fall in the price of commodities left bare many of the contradictions of the region’s left-wing governments. Some critics, both on the Left and the Right, complain that these governments consolidated the extractive model, re-primarized the economy, signed free trade agreements, and implemented neoliberal adjustment plans, alienating popular sectors and indigenous groups who had been supporting them.

Most serious still, they became a force that stopped looking ahead. They entrenched themselves in government, concentrating and verticalizing power, co-opting other institutions and the media, and furiously resisting any criticism. I myself heard one of the main figures of the Workers' Party in Brazil complain about the "ungrateful" people who were taking to the streets to protest. We have recently seen the followers of impeached Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo reach an agreement with the current president, Horacio Cartes.

That is, the Left has stopped listening to the street. In the more extreme cases of late Chavism in Venezuela and Sandinism in Nicaragua, the Left has reached absolute degradation.

At the same time, the Right has been reinventing itself. It has stopped talking about the past and has begun to promise a future. With a positive discourse and plenty of colour balloons, it is now competing for public spaces by organizing marches, or choses to create political parties (the Republican Proposal in Argentina, the NOVO Party in Brazil, Creating Opportunities in Ecuador, the Anti-Corruption Party in Honduras), instead of knocking at the doors of the military barracks, as it used to do in the past.

Of course, this has allowed leaders linked to the Panama Papers to take power, it has made it possible for a bunch of deputies and senators involved in corruption cases to remove a president from office on charges of administrative irregularities, and has led a banker linked to the worst crisis in the history of Ecuador to having real chances of becoming president.

There are no contradictions this time around: the neoliberal agenda is coming back, social spending is being frozen, salary increases are being negotiated in a Spartan way, while payment to international creditors and tax exemption to mining companies are being decreed.

This is why it is crucial that the Left (in all its diversity) should renew itself. Not to romantically long for the return of those gone by, but to reinvent itself. Which means proposing again an agenda for the expansion of rights, for the redistribution of income, for political autonomy, for diversity and for defending the environment – and carrying it out.

Political experimentation

The good news is that this agenda is already under way. Not in the parties’ establishment, but in the streets. A constellation of creative initiatives is making its way, experimenting from below with new narratives and new power forms. Traditional groups and social movements which defend human rights, biodiversity, sustainable economies, inclusion and gender diversity are now being joined by actors who are also contending for political power.

The Wikipolititians in Guadalajara, Mexico, are pursuing a national strategy aiming at changing the noxious relationship between money and politics, and they are not only proposing it but actually following it.

Former Chilean student leaders who are fighting in Congress for public education are currently organizing the Broad Front, which includes Valparaiso’s municipal experience.

Porto Alegre in Brazil is experimenting with citizen candidacies. And in Brazil also, the Activist Bench has been calling upon a great variety of organizations to support candidates from different parties who defend agendas for citizen participation and the inclusion of Afro-descendants, feminists and LGBTI people.

In the Colombian periphery, a group linked to the Green Alliance won the elections, established the first open government platform in the country and is now experiencing with creative teaching in public schools.

In Nicaragua, a political party is emerging that intends to organize itself through "sociocracy", a decision-making methodology which avoids verticality. And they are all looking very closely across the ocean at the two women mayors of Madrid and Barcelona in Spain, ​​who are constantly innovating in participatory and collaborative public policy mechanisms.

For reasons of virtue, survival, or strategy, the Left must necessarily get back to listening to the streets. This is what recently elected Lenin Moreno in Ecuador, Evo Morales in Bolivia, and the Coalition of Parties for Democracy in Chile must face if they want to stay in power, the Workers’ Party and Kirchnerism if they want to get it back, and Morena in Mexico if they want to win it next year.

Matías Bianchi is a political scientist with a PhD from the Institute d´Études Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) and the director of the think tank Asuntos del Sur. He tweets as @matiasfbianchi
 

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