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Anyone Buying This Venezuela Bullshit Is A Complete Fucking Moron
Anyone Buying This Venezuela Bullshit Is A Complete Fucking Moron
#VenezuelaAidLive is trending on Twitter in the USA as I write this, forced to the forefront of public consciousness and into everyone’s eyeballs by a concert staged by billionaire plutocrat Richard Branson. Branson’s Virgin Group controls hundreds of companies and brings in some $21 billion annually, with Branson himself valued at around five billion dollars.
The concert is pure narrative control operation, designed to advance the proven lie that the Venezuelan government is shutting out all humanitarian aid from its people, and the proven lie that it has blockaded a bridge to prevent the aid from getting through, both of which are also currently being promoted by American mainstream media despite being thoroughly disproven. In reality, the Venezuelan government has been taking in humanitarian aid from all around the world to help its people, just not from America’s regime change operation that is so blatant even NPR recognizes it, and the bridge Branson has been posing in front of for his “billionaire philanthropist” photo ops has never been open for travel.
“We are on a bridge. Today we want to build a bridge of hope” — @RichardBranson. I’m so proud of my dad and everyone involved in #VenezuelaAidLive. You can live stream the concert all around the world, right now: https://venezuelaaidlive.com
They’re lying to us about Venezuela. Anyone with access to alternative media has access to the fact that they’re lying to us about Venezuela. We know this for a fact. We also know for a fact that Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves on planet Earth, and that in spite of all these appeals to the humanitarian impulses of the US empire the Trump administration is openly interested in controlling that oil.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
VIDEO: Investigating Venezuela’s ‘Humanitarian Crisis’: Max Blumenthal Tours a Supermarket in Caracas
VIDEO: Investigating Venezuela’s ‘Humanitarian Crisis’: Max Blumenthal Tours a Supermarket in Caracas
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The corporate media claims Venezuela has no basic food or supplies, so The Grayzone investigated — at a giant supermarket in Caracas.
This video was produced in collaboration with our friends at Mint Press
The Planning of a Coup against Venezuela: Chile, September 11, 1973: The Ingredients of a Military Coup. The Imposition of a Neoliberal Agenda
The Planning of a Coup against Venezuela: Chile, September 11, 1973: The Ingredients of a Military Coup. The Imposition of a Neoliberal Agenda
Chicago Economics: Neoliberal Dress Rehearsal of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP)
The main objective of the US-supported military coup in Chile was to impose the neoliberal economic agenda. “Regime change” was enforced through a covert military intelligence operation. Sweeping macro-economic reforms (including privatization, price liberalization and the freeze of wages) were implemented in early October 1973.
Barely a few weeks after the military takeover, the military Junta headed by General Augusto Pinochet ordered a hike in the price of bread from 11 to 40 escudos, a hefty overnight increase of 264%. This “economic shock treatment” had been designed by a group of economists called the “Chicago Boys.” “While food prices had skyrocketed, wages had been frozen. From one day to the next, an entire country had been precipitated into abysmal poverty.
In 1973, I was teaching economics at the Catholic University of Chile. I lived through two of the most brutal US sponsored military coups in Latin America’s history: Chile, September 11, 1973 and less than three years later, Argentina, March 24, 1976 under Operation Condor, which initiated Argentina’s Dirty War: “La Guerra Sucia”.
And today, the Trump administration is threatening to invade Venezuela with a view to “restoring democracy”, replacing an elected president (casually described by the Western media as a “dictator”) by a US proxy, speaker of Venezuela’s National Assembly.
***
Author’s Introduction
More than forty-five years ago on September 11, 1973, the Chilean military led by General Augusto Pinochet, crushed the democratically elected Unidad Popular government of Salvador Allende.
The objective was to replace a progressive, democratically elected government by a brutal military dictatorship.
The military coup was supported by the CIA. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger played a direct role in the military plot.
Is Washington’s ongoing initiative directed against Venezuela modelled on Chile?
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Cuba Accuses US Of Preparing For Military Action In Venezuela
Cuba Accuses US Of Preparing For Military Action In Venezuela
At a Havana press conference Tuesday, the Cuban government accused the Trump administration of preparing a military operation against Venezuela, suggesting that humanitarian aid is a pretext for intervention.
“You’re starting to see American military transports that originate in U.S. military installations, where marine infantry and special forces operate and plan covert action,” Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said in Havana.
Rodriguez told journalists that the US military is quickly building up assets unbeknownst to Caribbean governments where their bases are located.
Journalists questioned what evidence Cuba has the US is preparing to stage a military operation to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Rodriguez told Local 10’s Cuba correspondent Hatzel Vela to examine the airports where he would uncover evidence of the buildup.
At a speech in Miami on Monday, President Trump called on the Venezuelan military to overthrow Maduro whose failed socialist policies have turned the oil-rich country into an economic hellhole. Trump’s speech came two weeks after Washington imposed new sanctions against Venezuela’s national oil company, a move that could topple the finances of the Maduro regime.
President Trump on Venezuela: “We seek a peaceful transition of power, but all options are open” https://t.co/E9TewE5X6g pic.twitter.com/yh95ICvrOZ— CBS News (@CBSNews) February 18, 2019
Trump said the first US military transport plane carrying humanitarian aid for Venezuelans landed in the Colombian border city of Cucuta last week.
A US military plane with humanitarian aid for Venezuela has landed in Colombia amid political crisis. (A previous tweet incorrectly stated the plane landed in Venezuela. It has been removed).
CNN’s Nick Valencia reports from the Colombia-Venezuela border https://t.co/gcmOcnDAvXpic.twitter.com/Cvjz4fPnHd— CNN (@CNN) February 16, 2019
Rodriguez said large-scale efforts to deliver humanitarian aid with military transport aircraft are being used as a test run for a possible armed intervention.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Everyone Has Fallen for the Lies About Venezuela
Everyone Has Fallen for the Lies About Venezuela
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’t need one.
- Wild animals are breathtakingly majestic until they’re crawling up your pant leg.
- 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.
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.
That country is Venezuela. I’ll get back to this in a moment.
Let’s take a second to go over the big three. 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 of these things, the U.S. might screw with you. If your country has two of these things, the U.S. will definitely screw with you. If your country has three of these things, then look behind you, because the U.S. is currently screwing you:
1. Being socialist.
Pretty self-explanatory. If you don’t have the same economic system as we do, we treat it like you have candy and we’re not allowed to have any, so we slip razor blades in yours and tell everyone your candy kills people.
2. Dropping the U.S. dollar.
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.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Is Venezuela On The Verge Of Becoming Another Syria?
Is Venezuela On The Verge Of Becoming Another Syria?
Establishment elites have always had a predilection for regime change. Obviously, this strategy helps weed out nation states that might be uncooperative with their future plans for a fully centralized global economic and political order. We have also seen regime change occur when former puppet leaders go rogue and refuse to follow the script they have been given. Most of these men have acted as dictators and are not very empathetic public figures, so we rarely care when they get overthrown or murdered. That said, there are always wider implications to such events.
I believe the reasons for regime change and the destabilization of particular countries have evolved in recent years. In the past it was about bringing each countries under the new world order umbrella. Today, the goal seems to be an attempt to create points of global contention. That is to say, the elites want to draw much of the world into various forms of conflict, and they are using special regions of the globe as nexus points for these conflicts.
Syria was and still is one of those nexus points. The transmutation of Syria began as an extension of the Arab Spring. Western funded and organized coups in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt inspired even more extremism as well as a vast flow of black market military grade armaments. The CIA under the Obama Administration in particular took advantage of this chaos to fill training camps in Jordan with “moderate rebels”, the same rebels that would go on to launch ISIS and start a civil war in Syria.
While the billion dollar program to arm and supply Syrian rebel groups, many of which were closely tied to ISIS, was finally “officially ended” under the Trump administration in 2017, more covert US support continued for these groups as well support for Israeli incursions into sovereign Syrian air space.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The International Rogue Nation: America
The International Rogue Nation: America
In 2003, America (and its lap-dog UK) invaded and destroyed Iraq on the basis of lies to the effect that the U.S. (and UK) regime were certain that Saddam Hussein had and was developing weapons of mass destruction. These U.S. allegations were based on provable falsehoods when they were stated and published, but the regime’s ‘news’-media refused to publish and demonstrate (or “expose”) any of these lies. That’s how bad the regime was — it was virtually a total lock-down against truth, and for international conquest (in that case, of Iraq): it was mass-murder and destruction on the basis of sheer lies.
That’s today’s U.S. Government — that’s its reality, not its ‘pro-democracy’ and ‘human rights’ myth. (After all: its main ally is the Saud regime, which the U.S. regime is now helping to starve and kill by cholera perhaps millions of Houthis to death.)
In 2011, the U.S. regime, then under a different nominal leader than in the Iraq invasion, invaded and destroyed Libya — also on the basis of lies that its press (which is controlled by the same billionaires who control the nation’s two political Parties) stenographically published from the Government and refused ever to expose as being lies.
In 2011-2019 (but actually starting undercover in 2009), the U.S. regime (and its then allies King Saud and Tayyip Erdogan, and the Thanis who own Qatar) hired tens of thousands of jihadis from around the world to serve as foot-soldiers (the U.S. regime calls them ‘rebels’), in order to bring down Syria’s secular, non-sectarian, Government, and thereby, via these jihadist proxy-forces, they invaded and destroyed Syria — likewise on the basis of lies that the ‘news’-media hid, secreting from the public such facts as that “The US Government’s Interpretation of the Technical Intelligence It Gathered Prior to and After the August 21 Attack CANNOT POSSIBLY BE CORRECT.” But the lies are never publicly acknowledged by any of the participating regimes and their press.This is an international empire of death and destruction based upon lies.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Bill Dudley Slams MMT: “It Failed In Germany, Venezuela And Zimbabwe”
Bill Dudley Slams MMT: “It Failed In Germany, Venezuela And Zimbabwe”
While there has been much disagreement among the financial elite about the ultimate consequences of central bank activism and market manipulation, with some – usually those who do not manage money for a living and are not paid by investors – predicting fire and brimstone, while a separate, far more optimistic group expects the world’s greatest experiment in monetary policy to somehow have a happy ending, when it comes to socialism disguised as monetary policy, besides a certain, politically-influenced fringe, the condemnation against “helicopter money” wrapped in a convenient political wrapper has mostly been uniform.
We are talking, of course, about MMT, which stands for Modern Money Theory, but would make far more sense if it stood stand for Magic Money Tree, as the theory effectively espouses unlimited money printing and skipping central banks as intermediaries in money creation which, however, the theory claims does not result in hyperinflation because, somehow, taxation manages to limit the amount of money in circulation and the result is monetary utopia.
It is therefore hardly a surprise that MMT has emerged as the pet financial theory for such socialist politicians as Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Ocasio-Jones (the biggest proponent of MMT is finance professor Stephanie Kelton who previously worked on Sanders’ presidential campaign and was a “chief economist for the Dems on the Senate Budget Committee”), who get to promise their potential voters pretty much everything while also vowing not to worry about the insane costs that delivering “everything” would entail (AOC’s Green New Deal is said to cost over $6 trillion and according to some, the bill would be north of $20 trillion).
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Siege of Venezuela and the Travails of Empire
The Siege of Venezuela and the Travails of Empire
Illustration by Nathaniel St. Clair
Here’s the bullet-point version:
+ It’s imperialism.
+ It’s American imperialism, a bipartisan national project.
+ American imperialism is the global management of capitalist class power.
+ It’s a binary situation in which one side or the other will win via the use and threat of armed force.
+ It’s trouble for Venezuela and for imperialism.
+ There’s no such thing as Progressive Except Imperialism.
Here’s the long rant:
The United States government’s new offensive against Venezuela is an act of naked imperialism.
I predicted last year that Venezuela would be the first new country hit by the Trump administration’s indispensable need to establish its American-exceptionalist, “Presidentialist,” bona fides. It is the Goldilocks target. Not too small:It is, in fact, a significant country with world’s largest oil reserves, and a proclaimed socialist government that’s been a thorn in the gringo boot on Latin America for almost twenty years. Not too big: It’s no military match for U.S. & Latin American proxy armed forces, and nobody will start WWIII to defend it. Just right: A decisive win, at little apparent cost. And just the kind of amuse-boucheneeded to get the U.S. population’s juices flowing for a more costly and difficult attack on the ultimate target—Iran. At least, that’s the way they think.
But I couldn’t anticipate the anger and frustration I would feel, seeing this crock of shit being shoved down the throats of the world, and being swallowed whole by the bipartisan political and media establishment, with nothing more than a few hard gulps from even most U.S. “progressives.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Cuba Warns US Moving Special Forces Closer to Venezuela Under Guise of ‘Humanitarian Intervention’
Cuba Warns US Moving Special Forces Closer to Venezuela Under Guise of ‘Humanitarian Intervention’
“It is worth recalling that similar behaviors and pretexts were used to by the U.S. during the prelude to wars it launched against Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Libya.”
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel visited Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in May of 2018. (Photo: EFE/El Nuevo Diario)
As Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro urges the international community to condemn an ongoing U.S.-backed effort to overthrow him and calls for peaceful negotiations with critics led by self-declared “Interim President” Juan Guaidó, the Cuban government—which supports Maduro—claimed on Thursday that the Trump administration is moving special forces closer to Venezuela “in preparation for a military adventure under the guise of a ‘humanitarian intervention.'”
In a lengthy statement denouncing the steps President Donald Trump and his allies have taken to oust Maduro—particularly National Security Advisor John Bolton and Republican Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.)—the Cuban government said:
Between February 6 and 10 of 2019, several military transport aircraft have flown to the Rafael Miranda Airport in Puerto Rico, the San Isidro Air Base in the Dominican Republic, and other strategically located Caribbean Islands, most certainly without the knowledge of the governments of those nations. These flights took off from U.S. military facilities where Special Operation Troops and U.S. Marine Corps units operate. These units have been used for covert operations, even against leaders of other countries.
Pointing to a draft resolution that the Trump administration recently introduced at the U.N. Security Council that expresses concern about the humanitarian conditions of Venezuela, Cuba concluded:
[T]he U.S. intends to fabricate a humanitarian pretext in order to launch a military attack on Venezuela and, by resorting to intimidation, pressure, and force, is seeking to introduce into this sovereign nation’s territory alleged humanitarian aid…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Oil, Agriculture and Imperialism: Averting the Fast-Track to Armageddon?
Oil, Agriculture and Imperialism: Averting the Fast-Track to Armageddon?
Image source
US National Security Advisor John Bolton has more or less admitted that the ongoing destabilisation of Venezuela is about grabbing its oil. He recently stated:
We’re looking at the oil assets… We’re in conversation with major American companies now… 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 US’s hand-picked supposed leader-in-waiting, Juan Guaido, aims to facilitate the processand usher in a programme of ‘mass privatisation’ and ‘hyper-capitalism’ at the behest of his coup-instigating masters in Washington, thereby destroying the socialist revolution spearheaded by the late Hugo Chavez and returning to a capitalist oligarch-controlled economic system.
One might wonder who is Bolton, or anyone in the US, to dictate and engineer what the future of another sovereign state should be. But this is what the US has been doing across the globe for decades. Its bloody imperialism, destabilisations, coups, assassinations, invasions and military interventions have been extensively documented by William Blum.
Of course, although oil is key to the current analysis of events in Venezuela, there is also the geopolitical subtext of debt, loans and Russian investment and leverage within the country. At the same time, it must be understood that US-led capitalism is experiencing a crisis of over-production: when this occurs capital needs to expand into or create new markets and this entails making countries like Venezuela bow to US hegemony and open up its economy.
For US capitalism, however, oil is certainly king. Its prosperity is maintained by oil with the dollar serving as the world reserve currency. Demand for the greenback is guaranteed as most international trade (especially and significantly oil) is carried out using the dollar. And those who move off it are usually targeted by the US (Venezuela being a case in point).
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Deep Hurt: Lessons From American Coups
The Deep Hurt: Lessons From American Coups
As the world watches aghast at another US and allies’ attempt to engineer a coup in Venezuela, I would like to offer a few insights from Stephen Kinzer’ provocative chapter, “The deep hurt,” (pp. 227-250) in his book, The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of the American Empire (2017). This remarkable text carries some hope and lessons for all of us. It tells the story of the great conflict around the turn of 20thcentury about the role that the US might play in either dominating the world or building a cosmopolitan democracy where all people feel secure that they reside in one country, the earth. Indeed, Kinzer states: “Anti-imperialists decisively influenced American history by helping to ensure that the first burst of American annexation would be the last” (p. 228).
Even swash-buckling Teddy Roosevelt was influenced, losing his zest for the idea of conquest. When he charged into the White House he held two views simultaneously, intervene to help other people, without oppressing them. Kinzer thinks that this dichotomy “torments our national psyche” (p. 229). In the early parts of the book Kinzer sets out the anti-imperialist (Mark Twain) and pro-imperialist visions (Henry Cabot Lodge). These speeches are worth gathering round for reflection.
During the following hundred years much of what the anti-imperialists predicted has come to pass. The United States has become an “actively interventionist power. It has projected military or covert power into dozens of countries on every continent except Antarctica”(ibid.). George Frisbie Hoar was right, Kinzer points out, when he “warned that intervening in other lands would turn the United States into a ‘vulgar, commonplace empire founded upon physical force”” (ibid.).
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
U.S. Warns The World Against Buying Venezuelan Oil
U.S. Warns The World Against Buying Venezuelan Oil
U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton has warned countries and companies against buying crude oil from Venezuela, after the Latin American country’s Oil Minister Manuel Quevedo said during a surprise visit to India that Venezuela wants to sell more oil to the fast-growing Indian market.
In a tweet with a Bloomberg article on Venezuelan-Indian oil relations attached, Bolton wrote: “Nations and firms that support Maduro’s theft of Venezuelan resources will not be forgotten. The United States will continue to use all of its powers to preserve the Venezuelan people’s azsets and we encourage all nations to work together to do the same.”
“We have a good relationship with India and we want to continue this relationship. The relationships with India will continue, the trade will continue and we will simply expand all the trade and relationship,” Indian outlet Business Today quoted the Venezuelan minister as saying on the sidelines of the Petrotech conference in India this week.
At the start of the Venezuelan political crisis last month, Indian media reported that the Asian country continues to be one of the main buyers of Venezuelan crude oil. Indian refiners keep buying more than 400,000 bpd of oil from the troubled Latin American country, which is sitting on the world’s largest crude oil resources.
In separate Venezuela-and-sanctions-related news, Bulgarian security officials said on Wednesday that they had blocked several bank accounts in a local bank that have received millions of euros from Venezuela’s state oil firm PDVSA, on which the U.S. slapped sweeping sanctions at the end of January.
Bulgaria’s security services and prosecutor’s office were tipped off by the U.S. about those money transfers and have blocked transfers out of the bank accounts.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Making Globalism Great Again
Making Globalism Great Again
Maybe Donald Trump isn’t as stupid as I thought. I’d hate to have to admit that publicly, but it does kind of seem like he has put one over on the liberal corporate media this time. Scanning the recent Trump-related news, I couldn’t help but notice a significant decline in the number of references to Weimar, Germany, Adolf Hitler, and “the brink of fascism” that America has supposedly been teetering on since Hillary Clinton lost the election. I googled around pretty well, I think, but I couldn’t find a single editorial warning that Trump is about to summarily cancel the U.S. Constitution, dissolve Congress, and proclaim himself Führer. Nor did I see any mention of Auschwitz, or any other Nazi stuff … which is weird, considering that the Hitler hysteria has been a standard feature of the official narrative we’ve been subjected to for the last two years.
So how did Trump finally get the liberal corporate media to stop calling him a fascist? He did that by acting like a fascist (i.e., like a “normal” president). Which is to say he did the bidding of the deep state goons and corporate mandarins that manage the global capitalist empire … the smiley, happy, democracy-spreading, post-fascist version of fascism we live under.
I’m referring, of course, to Venezuela, which is one of a handful of uncooperative countries that are not playing ball with global capitalism and which haven’t been “regime changed” yet. Trump green-lit the attempted coup purportedly being staged by the Venezuelan “opposition,” but which is obviously a U.S. operation, or, rather, a global capitalist operation. As soon as he did, the corporate media immediately suspended calling him a fascist, and comparing him to Adolf Hitler, and so on, and started spewing out blatant propaganda supporting his effort to overthrow the elected government of a sovereign country.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Store Gold Bullion In Safest Ways – Learning from Tragic Venezuela Today
Store Gold Bullion In Safest Ways – Learning from Tragic Venezuela Today
– Store gold bullion in the safest ways possible and learn from Venezuela’s gold battle with the Bank of England and Trump’s White House
– What in the world is happening in Venezuela and to the people of Venezuela’s gold?
– How you store gold and invest in gold is vitally important in these uncertain times
As a sovereign nation, Venezuela should have the right to take possession of and sell their gold on the open market. As sovereign individuals, we should too.
It is a difficult issue as the recent election is in doubt and the concern is that the euros (or dollars) garnered by the sale of the people’s gold reserves may be squandered trying to prop up the Maduro government rather than looking after the humanitarian needs of the people of Venezuela.
Central banks are repatriating and taking possession of their gold and indeed buying gold today. This tragic story highlights the importance of all people owning gold in the safest ways possible.
We must all become our own central banks!
What are the ‘7 Key Gold & Silver Storage Must Haves’?
1. How to store gold bullion and the importance of owning individually segregated and allocated coins and bars
2. Can you visit, view and collect your bullion whenever you want and is liquidity and competitive pricing ensured?
3. Chain of integrity that ensures the authenticity of your store of gold bullion
4. Bailment and legal structures that best protects the investor
5. Risks inherent in ETF, electronic & digital gold (online gold platforms or bullion vaults)
6. Vital insurance considerations to know: Ensure that your bullion provider and its storage partners have adequate insurance cover
7. Can you visit, view and collect your gold bullion whenever you want and is liquidity and competitive pricing ensured?
