NOVANEWS
By: Michael Albert
National Assembly president Diosdado Cabello points out some of the targets of the coup plan.
Will the elephant that is U.S. authoritarian power win the day, week, month, year? Or will a fledgling path to better outcomes persist, grow still more, and spread still farther? It is a world historic question.
Venezuela is a nightmare for the Capitalist world.
Venezuela has spearheaded Latin America’s emergence from literally centuries of subordination to the U.S. regarding media, economic policies, culture, and international relations. That alone is a killable offense in the eyes of Washington. Indeed far less provokes American power to engage in mass murder, as in Iraq, as but one of many examples.
But consider Indochina. Millions of souls were dispatched from this earth with bombs, napalm, bullets, and starvation. The Reason? Vietnam was a nightmare for American elites. Vietnam’s example said to the world of poor and weak nations, you who are exploited by market madness – see, be like us and you can extricate yourselves and take over your own destiny. It was of course a killable offense, and off to war we went. The threat of a good example – which is to say of extricating one’s country from imperial domination by the U.S. – needed to be thwarted. American presidents, one after another, endeavored to prevent extrication, or, failing that, to show that the price of extrication was too high for countries to emulate. Use anything that flies to kill anything that moves. No movement, no country, will lightly risk that.
Now if truth be told, at no time did the U.S. believe, I think, that even a fully successful Vietnamese revolution was going to be a good example for the people of France, say, or Italy, or Australia, much less the U.S. They realized, however, that successful extrication would say plenty to the people of Thailand, Egypt, even Chile, perhaps, Indonesia, and, egad, maybe even India. And that was more than bad enough. Unleash the bombs. And more bombs, and more.
Two things, at least, are quite different now. First, to the good, it is harder to unleash the bombs – at least in certain parts of the world and on a scale sufficient to the task. The U.S. faces constraints at home not least because of the incredible courage of the Vietnamese spurring anti war and anti imperial understanding around the world, but also because of changes in power balances all over.
Second, also good, but very scary, in truth Venezuela is far more of a danger to the masters of war and purveyors of greed than Vietnam ever was. There are many reasons for this. Vietnam had considerable Tungsten but Venezuela has a whole lot of oil. More important, Venezuela is far better integrated into its local sector of the world, and indeed with gorwing connections of great depth throughout Latin America, than Vietnam was in Asia, so the good example of extrication threatens to spread much more easily in Venezuela’s case. But perhaps most of all, Venezuela is not just about escaping U.S. domination. No, Venezuela has been trying and to some degree succeeding, in being a good example for everyone, everywhere, in terms of domestic innovations as well. That is, Venezuela has been trying, and to some degree succeeding, in moving institution by institution, toward real public participation – toward enriched democracy and even self management for its populace – and toward a revamping of economics and kinship and culture all seeking and to a considerable degree attaining gorwing levels of equity, justice, and solidarity. This is hugely unpardonable. Councils? Communes? Imagine Washington contemplating that. Seriously they are seeking to build WHAT? This must be made invisible. This must be reversed.
Of course media lies like crazy to keep it all invisible, and they do this precisely because if the public were to understand that the Bolivarian movement hasn’t trampled democracy but has expanded it – that it hasn’t trampled equitable distribution but has promoted it – that it hasn’t diminished dignity but enlarged it – their eyes would examine the reality rather than the media falsehoods, and with that examination, the good example, the dangerous example, would spread. And what a receptive audience is emerging in Southern Europe!
So the U.S. media keeps lying about Venezuela to hold things in check, and the U.S. government and corporate elites world wide keep trying to stall and reverse the trends by squeezing economically. And then they even try to overthrow the Venezuelan government as a step toward repressing its social movements and annihilating its good example. But whenever coups fall short, which is sad from the point of view of the masters of war, these sadistic devils do not waste time weeping. No, they continue to try to polarize the Venezuelan public, to try to scare them, to try to intimidate them, to try to economically cajole them, and to try to ensure that around the world everyone thinks it is all the Bolivarians’ fault, until Venezuelans, desperate, make choices that will undermine their prospects of being a really threatening example, such as centralizing authority, utilizing force, etc.
U.S. tactics, in other words, are not narrow and simpleminded, nor do they have an expiration date. The masters of war certainly like to win big in a swooping violent thrust – yes, thank you, they might say. Good for war contractors. But mainly, good for scaring the shit out of those who might want to get uppity. So they will try bombs if they can, and, if the balance of forces precludes that, as so far it has and I suspect it will continue to, then they will try and try again to engineer a coup. They will do this by supporting thuggish allies within Venezuela, by spreading tool of violence to those thugs, and, even more so and most importantly, as once in Chile to overthrow Allende, by pummeling the society with economic pressure and blaming the ensuing immensely hurtful dislocations on the Bolivarians, of course, so that the broad public will grow tired, grow angry, and become more easily subdued. That is what current, recent, and past U.S. policy, since Chavez told the U.S. to go to hell, have been about.
Will the elephant that is U.S. authoritarian power win the day, week, month, year? Or will a fledgling path to better outcomes persist, grow still more, and spread still farther? It is a world historic question. And the U.S. masters of war, even more so than the Venezuelan Bolivarians, understands that on one side is the Venezuelan good example (which is extrication plus perhaps even real equity and popular self management) threatening to inspire world wide change, whereas on the other side is fear and imposed obedience hoping to subvert world wide desires until people feel, again, that there is just no alternative so we must give in because if we don’t they will destroy us.
Given the above, and given the emergence of growing signs of very serious resistance – Greece, Spain, Rojava, Latin America – even to a degree Italy, France, and the U.S. too – Venezuela’s future, and I suspect it is no exaggeration to say the world’s future, is currently at play in the conflict.
So: Venezuela versus the U.S. Whose side are you on?
Venezuela has spearheaded Latin America’s emergence from literally centuries of subordination to the U.S. regarding media, economic policies, culture, and international relations. That alone is a killable offense in the eyes of Washington. Indeed far less provokes American power to engage in mass murder, as in Iraq, as but one of many examples.
But consider Indochina. Millions of souls were dispatched from this earth with bombs, napalm, bullets, and starvation. The Reason? Vietnam was a nightmare for American elites. Vietnam’s example said to the world of poor and weak nations, you who are exploited by market madness – see, be like us and you can extricate yourselves and take over your own destiny. It was of course a killable offense, and off to war we went. The threat of a good example – which is to say of extricating one’s country from imperial domination by the U.S. – needed to be thwarted. American presidents, one after another, endeavored to prevent extrication, or, failing that, to show that the price of extrication was too high for countries to emulate. Use anything that flies to kill anything that moves. No movement, no country, will lightly risk that.
Now if truth be told, at no time did the U.S. believe, I think, that even a fully successful Vietnamese revolution was going to be a good example for the people of France, say, or Italy, or Australia, much less the U.S. They realized, however, that successful extrication would say plenty to the people of Thailand, Egypt, even Chile, perhaps, Indonesia, and, egad, maybe even India. And that was more than bad enough. Unleash the bombs. And more bombs, and more.
Two things, at least, are quite different now. First, to the good, it is harder to unleash the bombs – at least in certain parts of the world and on a scale sufficient to the task. The U.S. faces constraints at home not least because of the incredible courage of the Vietnamese spurring anti war and anti imperial understanding around the world, but also because of changes in power balances all over.
Second, also good, but very scary, in truth Venezuela is far more of a danger to the masters of war and purveyors of greed than Vietnam ever was. There are many reasons for this. Vietnam had considerable Tungsten but Venezuela has a whole lot of oil. More important, Venezuela is far better integrated into its local sector of the world, and indeed with gorwing connections of great depth throughout Latin America, than Vietnam was in Asia, so the good example of extrication threatens to spread much more easily in Venezuela’s case. But perhaps most of all, Venezuela is not just about escaping U.S. domination. No, Venezuela has been trying and to some degree succeeding, in being a good example for everyone, everywhere, in terms of domestic innovations as well. That is, Venezuela has been trying, and to some degree succeeding, in moving institution by institution, toward real public participation – toward enriched democracy and even self management for its populace – and toward a revamping of economics and kinship and culture all seeking and to a considerable degree attaining gorwing levels of equity, justice, and solidarity. This is hugely unpardonable. Councils? Communes? Imagine Washington contemplating that. Seriously they are seeking to build WHAT? This must be made invisible. This must be reversed.
Of course media lies like crazy to keep it all invisible, and they do this precisely because if the public were to understand that the Bolivarian movement hasn’t trampled democracy but has expanded it – that it hasn’t trampled equitable distribution but has promoted it – that it hasn’t diminished dignity but enlarged it – their eyes would examine the reality rather than the media falsehoods, and with that examination, the good example, the dangerous example, would spread. And what a receptive audience is emerging in Southern Europe!
So the U.S. media keeps lying about Venezuela to hold things in check, and the U.S. government and corporate elites world wide keep trying to stall and reverse the trends by squeezing economically. And then they even try to overthrow the Venezuelan government as a step toward repressing its social movements and annihilating its good example. But whenever coups fall short, which is sad from the point of view of the masters of war, these sadistic devils do not waste time weeping. No, they continue to try to polarize the Venezuelan public, to try to scare them, to try to intimidate them, to try to economically cajole them, and to try to ensure that around the world everyone thinks it is all the Bolivarians’ fault, until Venezuelans, desperate, make choices that will undermine their prospects of being a really threatening example, such as centralizing authority, utilizing force, etc.
U.S. tactics, in other words, are not narrow and simpleminded, nor do they have an expiration date. The masters of war certainly like to win big in a swooping violent thrust – yes, thank you, they might say. Good for war contractors. But mainly, good for scaring the shit out of those who might want to get uppity. So they will try bombs if they can, and, if the balance of forces precludes that, as so far it has and I suspect it will continue to, then they will try and try again to engineer a coup. They will do this by supporting thuggish allies within Venezuela, by spreading tool of violence to those thugs, and, even more so and most importantly, as once in Chile to overthrow Allende, by pummeling the society with economic pressure and blaming the ensuing immensely hurtful dislocations on the Bolivarians, of course, so that the broad public will grow tired, grow angry, and become more easily subdued. That is what current, recent, and past U.S. policy, since Chavez told the U.S. to go to hell, have been about.
Will the elephant that is U.S. authoritarian power win the day, week, month, year? Or will a fledgling path to better outcomes persist, grow still more, and spread still farther? It is a world historic question. And the U.S. masters of war, even more so than the Venezuelan Bolivarians, understands that on one side is the Venezuelan good example (which is extrication plus perhaps even real equity and popular self management) threatening to inspire world wide change, whereas on the other side is fear and imposed obedience hoping to subvert world wide desires until people feel, again, that there is just no alternative so we must give in because if we don’t they will destroy us.
Given the above, and given the emergence of growing signs of very serious resistance – Greece, Spain, Rojava, Latin America – even to a degree Italy, France, and the U.S. too – Venezuela’s future, and I suspect it is no exaggeration to say the world’s future, is currently at play in the conflict.
So: Venezuela versus the U.S. Whose side are you on?
