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There are three things I know for sure in this fanciful, sometimes inglorious experience we call life:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- You will never have a safety pin when you need one, and you will have thousands when you don\u2019t need one.<\/li>
- Wild animals are breathtakingly majestic until they\u2019re crawling up your pant leg.<\/li>
- A U.S. presidential administration will never admit that it invaded another country or backed a coup attempt in order to essentially steal the natural resources (oil) of said country.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
This is why it was so very shocking last week when members of the Trump administration admitted they were backing a coup attempt in order to essentially steal the natural resources (oil) of another country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That country is Venezuela. I\u2019ll get back to this in a moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s take a second to go over the big three<\/em>. There are three things that seem to provoke the ornery United States into overthrowing or bringing down a foreign government, no matter how many innocent civilians may die in the process. (If enough die, the perpetrators often get nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.) If your country has one <\/em>of these things, the U.S. might screw with you. If your country has two of these things, the U.S. will definitely <\/em>screw with you. If your country has three <\/em>of these things, then look behind you, because the U.S. is currently <\/em>screwing you:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
1. Being socialist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pretty self-explanatory. If you don\u2019t have the same economic system as we do, we treat it like you have candy and we\u2019re not allowed to have any, so we slip razor blades in yours and tell everyone your candy kills people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
2. Dropping the U.S. dollar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Iraq dropped the dollar. We invaded.
Syria dropped the dollar. We invaded.
Iran dropped the dollar. We want to invade.
Libya dropped the dollar. We invaded.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPakistan dropped the dollar in trade with China, and the following day the U.S. added them<\/a> to the list of countries violating religious freedom. (I guess you could argue they did indeed violate our <\/em>religion: The dollar.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Basically, we do NOT<\/em> take kindly to countries dropping the dollar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In unrelated news, Venezuela dropped the dollar<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
3. Having oil or other natural resources the U.S. needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In case you were curious, Venezuela has the largest oil reserves<\/a> in the known world. (But we haven\u2019t checked northern Wyoming yet, because it\u2019s a long, cold drive with nary a 7-11.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So these are the three ACTUAL <\/em>reasons the U.S. has created an attempted coup in Venezuela over the past several weeks. And right now, you are falling into one of two categories. Either you\u2019re saying to yourself, \u201cOf course those are the reasons. Those are the only reasons the U.S. ever <\/em>tries to bring down governments.\u201d OR you still have some strange, deep-rooted faith in our Pepsi-and-pharmaceutical-owned media outlets, and therefore you\u2019re thinking, \u201cThat\u2019s not true. The U.S. supports the opposition in Venezuela because we want to help those poor starving people.\u201d But if that were accurate, we would be tripping over ourselves to help starving and sick people around the world. Instead we (oddly) only seek to help them when they have oil under their feet. And in fact, data has proven this true. A study a few years ago<\/a> from the Universities of Portsmouth, Warwick and Essex found that foreign intervention in civil conflicts is 100 times more likely if the country has a great deal of oil, versus none.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So who is feeding the average American the idea that our involvement in Venezuela is about helping people? Only EVERY <\/em>mainstream media channel in America\u2014from MSNBC to Fox News to NPR to Bill fuckin\u2019 Maher. It\u2019s truly mind-numbing to watch so-called \u201cliberals\u201d march in lockstep with the likes of John Bolton, Elliott Abrams, Donald Trump and every neocon not currently in a coma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These outlets froth at the mouth while presenting segments explaining that the Venezuelan people are starving, but they also purposefully avoid mentioning that a lot of Venezuela\u2019s hardships are due to U.S. sanctions<\/a>. This isn\u2019t to say Venezuela\u2019s president, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, has done an awesome job. But whether he has or not, saying we must sanction them to help them is like if somebody fell through a plate glass window and you said, \u201cLet\u2019s help him! Let\u2019s start cutting the glass shards out of his skin with this rusty flathead screwdriver I found in an abandoned mine! Then we\u2019ll pour Mountain Dew and sewage water in the wounds to help them heal!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But that\u2019s what our sanctions are designed to do. They\u2019re devised from day one to hurt poor and average people the most, in order to make them angry enough to rebel. Over a year ago, when Rex Tillerson was secretary of state, he publicly said<\/a> we could tell our sanctions on North Korea were working great because poor fishermen were washing up on the beaches starved to death. (One is perplexed by how difficult it is at times to tell the difference between \u201chelping other countries\u201d and mass murder.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sanctions are not smart bombs. They destroy everybody<\/em>, except the rich\u2014who have enough money to weather the sanctions. Come to think of it, sanctions are <\/em>kind of like smart bombs. We\u2019re told they\u2019re only going to hit the bad guys, but in fact \u201csmart bombs\u201d kill all kinds of innocent civilians, just like sanctions do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Furthermore, the U.S. \u201chumanitarian aid\u201d that we claim to be sending is not what it seems. Even NPR took a break from its traditional role as State Department stenographer-in-training to reveal that<\/a> the \u201chumanitarian aid\u201d is actually meant to create regime change. And McClatchy last week uncovered<\/a>that the North Carolina-based private freight company 21 Air LLC has made 40 secretive flights to Venezuela from the U.S. in the past month, and the Venezuelan government claimed the flights were filled to the brim with assault weapons and ammunition destined for opposition forces. (Apparently we thought the Venezuelans were going to cook up a fresh pot of bullet stew to ease their hunger pains.) To make matters worse, two executives at the company<\/a> have ties to an air cargo company that helped the CIA \u201crendition\u201d supposed terrorists to black sites for \u201cinterrogation\u201d (read: torture).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next piece of propaganda lovingly pedestalled by our mainstream media robot-heads is simply calling Juan Guaid\u00f3 the \u201cinterim president\u201d without mentioning that he was not elected to that position and only 30 out of 200 nations recognize him<\/a> as such. He just declared himself president. Last I checked, that\u2019s not really how governments work. But if it is\u2014OK, I hereby declare myself governor of \u2026 let\u2019s say, Idaho. No one will really notice. I\u2019m pretty sure the current governor is a hedgehog in a bow tie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are many other things CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and all the rest don\u2019t want you to know about Juan Guaid\u00f3. For example, until he named himself<\/a>president, 81 percent of Venezuelans<\/a> didn\u2019t even know who he was, according to a poll conducted by the Venezuela-based firm Hinterlaces. And he only won his own assembly seat with 26% of the vote. In order to win elections in any country, you often need more than 30 percent of the people to have heard of you. Pauly Shore has more name recognition among Venezuelans than Juan Guaid\u00f3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On top of that, Guaid\u00f3 went to George Washington University. As the Grayzone Project reported,<\/a> \u201c[In 2007] He moved to Washington, D.C., to enroll in the Governance and Political Management Program at George Washington under the tutelage of Venezuelan economist Luis Enrique Berrizbeitia, one of the top Latin American neoliberal economists. Berrizbeitia is a former executive director of the International Monetary Fund. \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Guaid\u00f3 went to GW, trained under Mr. IMF, and then we declared him president of Venezuela. That\u2019s like studying at the WWE, training under Henry Kissinger, and then the U.S. declares you the King of Japan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it doesn\u2019t stop there, according to the Grayzone Project:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cJuan Guaid\u00f3 is the product of a decade-long project overseen by Washington\u2019s elite regime change trainers. While posing as a champion of democracy, he has spent years at the forefront of a violent campaign of destabilization.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Furthermore, Juan Guaid\u00f3 has already said he wants to sell Venezuela\u2019s oil to foreign companies and let the IMF back in, which will drown the country in debt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So he\u2019s an American regime-change pawn who was groomed by the IMF to take over Venezuela and give away their natural resources. What a catch. \u2026 But if this is what the Venezuelan people really want, then we should respect their wishes. The corporate media tells us this is what the people want, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Except that it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAccording to a study<\/a> conducted in early January 2019 \u2026 86 percent of Venezuelans would disagree with international military intervention,\u201d Grayzone\u2019s Ben Norton reported last month. \u201cAnd 81 percent oppose the US sanctions that have gravely hurt the nation\u2019s economy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, based on the Hinterlaces poll, most Venezuelans didn\u2019t know Guaid\u00f3 until recently. Most Venezuelans still support Maduro even if they believe corruption in the government has increased (whether you personally like Maduro or not doesn\u2019t matter), and most Venezuelans don\u2019t want military intervention or U.S. sanctions. Yet CNN and NPR and Fox News and the BBC and every other corporate outlet will have you thinking everyone is starving to death, on their knees begging for America\u2019s democracy bombs to rain down like dollar bills at a strip club.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But maybe I\u2019m wrong. Maybe those people really need our help, and U.S. intervention will work out great<\/em>\u2014exactly like it did in Syria,
and Yemen,
and Iraq,
and Iran,
and Afghanistan,
and Chile,
and Honduras,
and Haiti,
and Somalia,
and Libya,
and Guatemala,
and Nicaragua,
and Colombia,
and Panama,
and Fraggle Rock,
and those tree forts where the EWOKS LIVED<\/em>!<\/p>\n\n\n\nNow that we have a general understanding of the situation (and why Anderson Cooper is not keen to remind viewers what happened with Fraggle Rock in the early \u201990s), let\u2019s get back to the question of oil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I first started writing this, I didn\u2019t have proof <\/em>the American government wanted Venezuela\u2019s oil; it was just a hunch. Kinda like if you put a balloon in a room with a porcupine, you have a hunch he\u2019ll pop the balloon. But I didn\u2019t have a quote from a top Trump administration official saying, \u201cWe\u2019d like to take their oil.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then national security adviser and Mustache of Doom John Bolton said, \u201chold my beer.\u201d While on Fox News he stated clearly<\/a>, \u201cIt will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s Beltway Speak for \u201cWe want their oil.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For 20 years we\u2019ve been trying to destroy Venezuela, and our government always gives the standard line: \u201cWe want to help the people. We care about their democracy. They have a lot of inflation, and that\u2019s why we need to drop our freedom bombs on their heads.\u201d They\u2019ve trotted out that bullshit brigade under Bush, Obama and now Trump. The officials never just say, \u201cYeah, there\u2019s like, tons of oil there, and we want it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet, here it is. The disguise of neoliberal world domination has come off. (Ironically, the fake mustache was yanked off to reveal a much larger mustache.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Also, it\u2019s amazing how monotone and matter-of-fact Bolton is as he speaks. A U.S.-backed coup often ends in terrible violence with tens of thousands of innocent people killed. It\u2019s truly heartbreaking, no matter which side you support. Sometimes it ends up with a brutal military junta taking control. Yet, here is John Bolton discussing it the same way he would analyze whether to have chocolate fudge ice cream or apple pie for dessert. (\u201cHmmm, possible death of a hundred thousand people? That sounds good\u2014I\u2019ll have that.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is all the more horrifying because these policies are decided by unelected<\/em>maniacs like Elliot Abrams, Mike Pompeo and John Bolton. Trump just named Abrams special envoy to Venezuela despite the fact the guy has a resume that would make Josef Mengele blush. And what\u2019s even more jaw-dropping is watching the liberati like Rachel Maddow<\/a>, Bill Maher and nearly every democrat in Congress get in line to support the talking points of right-wing warlords (the belligerati) like Bolton, Abrams, Pompeo, Trump, Hannity and nearly every Republican in Congress. The mountains of propaganda put forward make it hard to breathe (the air is thinner up here).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Worse yet\u2014even the Wall Street Journal stated the<\/a> U.S. push to oust Maduro is just the first shot in the oligarchy\u2019s plan to reshape Latin America. It turns out sociopathy is addictive. Our American empire knows no bounds to its nation-building (after nation-destroying).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Venezuelan people deserve self-determination, no matter how you feel about the current government. The absolute last thing <\/em>they need is to be turned into a neocon \/ neoliberal parking lot in which America rips all their resources out from under them while calling it \u201cfreedom.\u201d Luckily, there are already many signs <\/a>this U.S.-created attempted coup is failing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you think this column is important, please share it. Also you can join Lee Camp\u2019s free email newsletter <\/em>here<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
This column is based on a monologue Lee Camp wrote and performed on his TV show, \u201c<\/em>Redacted Tonight<\/em><\/a>.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Lee Camp (truthdig.com) February 19, 2019 There are three things I know for sure in this fanciful, sometimes inglorious experience we call life: You will never have a safety pin when you need one, and you will have thousands when you don\u2019t need one. Wild animals are breathtakingly majestic… Continue reading