{"id":43833,"date":"2019-02-15T09:51:42","date_gmt":"2019-02-15T14:51:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43833"},"modified":"2019-02-15T09:51:47","modified_gmt":"2019-02-15T14:51:47","slug":"the-siege-of-venezuela-and-the-travails-of-empire%ef%bb%bf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43833","title":{"rendered":"The Siege of Venezuela and the Travails of Empire\ufeff"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2019\/02\/15\/the-siege-of-venezuela-and-the-travails-of-empire\/\">The Siege of Venezuela and the Travails of Empire<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2019\/02\/D002AB8F-BB41-443C-9DD2-77D508D9354A.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-109321\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Illustration by Nathaniel St. Clair<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here\u2019s the bullet-point version:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>+ It\u2019s imperialism.<\/p><p>+ It\u2019s American imperialism, a bipartisan national project.<\/p><p>+ American imperialism is the global management of capitalist class power.<\/p><p>+ It\u2019s a binary situation in which one side or the other will win via the use and threat of armed force.<\/p><p>+ It\u2019s trouble for Venezuela&nbsp;<em>and&nbsp;<\/em>for imperialism.<\/p><p>+ There\u2019s no such thing as Progressive Except Imperialism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here\u2019s the long rant:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The United States government\u2019s new offensive against Venezuela is an act of naked imperialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I predicted&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thepolemicist.net\/2018\/03\/what-to-expect-from-trump-kim-meeting.html\">last year<\/a>&nbsp;that Venezuela would be the first new country hit by the Trump administration\u2019s indispensable need to establish its American-exceptionalist, \u201cPresidentialist,\u201d&nbsp;<em>bona fides<\/em>. It is the Goldilocks target. Not too small:It is, in fact, a significant country with world\u2019s largest oil reserves, and a proclaimed socialist government that\u2019s been a thorn in the gringo boot on Latin America for almost twenty years. Not too big: It\u2019s no military match for U.S. &amp; 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&nbsp;<em>amuse-bouche<\/em>needed to get the U.S. population\u2019s juices flowing for a more costly and difficult attack on the ultimate target\u2014Iran. At least, that\u2019s the way they think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But I couldn\u2019t 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. \u201cprogressives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Siege of Venezuela and the Travails of Empire Illustration by Nathaniel St. Clair Here\u2019s the bullet-point version: + It\u2019s imperialism. + It\u2019s American imperialism, a bipartisan national project. + American imperialism is the global management of capitalist class power. + It\u2019s a binary situation in which one side or the other will win via [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[20356,5493,24416,827,3142,851],"class_list":["post-43833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-american-imperialism","tag-counterpunch","tag-jim-kavanagh","tag-united-states","tag-us-empire","tag-venezuela"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43833"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43834,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43833\/revisions\/43834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}