Re: [blind-democracy] Re: Venezuela: Another US Coup Attempt - and Why It Failed

If we look back to the pre USA days, immigrants came to America out of
desperation or persecution, and lived under the rule of whoever ran
the particular colony. Imagine how desperate people must have been to
leave their homes, in a time when most people had generations of roots
in the same place, and crammed into the stinking holds of leaky ships
and traveled many long days to reach an unknown land.
But the American Revolution was unique in many ways. In particular it
brought into existence a document that put the ruling of the nation
into the hands of the People. What our history books gloss over, or
ignore, is just who those "people" were, because the majority of folks
living here did not get to vote. It was an Oligarchy made up of the
White Landed Gentry. While they no longer trusted the King to rule
fairly, they certainly had no intention of allowing the "Rabble", the
"commoners" to determine the nation's fate. So, by my understanding
of what democracy is, we began this nation built on a lie, or at least
it was a different understanding of what democracy was all about.
Despite all the many distractions, the struggle has always been
between the moneyed, White landholders, and the Working Class.
Currently I'm reading a history book entitled, These Truths: A History
of the United States. It's on BARD. One of the things I notice as I
read, is that for the "Common" citizens there have been no "Glory
Days". Even though there was relief under Roosevelt's New Deal, a
great many people found little improvement. Especially People of
Color, immigrants, dirt farmers and slum dwellers.
While many of our European immigrants moved together for practical
reasons, and were thus easy targets for discrimination, it was mostly
their children and grand children who escaped into the general
population. Although so many of those later generations turned their
backs on their roots, it was the sacrifices of those original
immigrants that allowed them to gain the education and opportunities
they needed.
Certainly times were difficult back then, but are they any better
today? A Korean man and his Japanese wife bought the grocery store in
Quilcene. They lived carefully, and seemed to be making a go of it.
For 13 years they served the town, and then filed bankruptcy. In the
same tradition of sacrificing to give their children a better life,
these people had taken out large loans to pay for their sons
education. In the recent Great Recession, local businesses found
their customers were not spending at former levels. Several
businesses went under, a service station, the town tavern, the town's
long popular restaurant, and the grocery store.
I was brought up to believe that we are a nation so we can take care
of our citizens. But just what value is a government that only takes
care of those citizens who are wealthy enough that they don't really
need government support? What value is there in a government that
allows the Predators to use our children in order to enrich their bank
accounts? What use is a government that enlists our youth to defend
the privileged lives of the wealthy? We need to turn to the task of
caring for our own, and let the wealthy look out for themselves...as
they have done to us, lo these many generations.

Carl Jarvis

On 8/10/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> You know, I'm not sure that the American experience was revolutionary, or at
> least, not in the way that American propaganda says it was. People did
> emigrate here to have a better life, and they were welcomed when this
> country needed their labor, or rather, their labor was welcomed, not the
> people. But somehow, for many, the American dream that was sold to them
> worked. I think of all those European Jews who came to the lower east side
> of New York to labor in sweat shops, and ended up, decades later, as
> professionals, living in affluent suburban communities on Long Island or in
> Westchester County. It worked for them because of FDR's New Deal, because we
> had a social welfare state which really did help white working class
> immigrants become educated, often at no cost or at very little cost, and
> provided low interest home buyers' loans. That is the piece of the American
> dream that I know about from personal experience.
>
> By the way, your mention of Cuba reminds me that I've recently read several
> novels which include the current version of its recent history being
> provided to the book reading public. You know, the same thing was done
> regarding Israel. Well, the picture of Cuba being provided, shows a country
> of poor, deprived people who resent their government, but who stayed because
> they were patriotic. It describes the revolutionaries as either honest but
> misguided, or power hungry from the start. It provides a sympathetic picture
> of the people who left, very wealthy people, good people, who, through no
> fault of their own, lost everything and had to start over in Florida. It
> does provide a bit of negative information about Batista and a sense of the
> wish of some young men who mistakenly joined the revolution because they
> wanted things in their country to improve. This is sort of a rough summary
> of what was in those 3 or 4 novels, all of which, except for one, written
> within the past 7 or so years, There isn't a word about how the US embargo
> impacted the Cuban economy or about the kinds of public services that are
> available to the people. Not a word about how Cubans have helped so many
> countries in emergencies by sending medical help. When we talk about how
> the media manipulates American citizens, we forget about all of the ficdtion
> that people consume. It's not just movies. It's books.
>
> Miriam
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
> Sent: Saturday, August 10, 2019 11:18 AM
> To: blind-democracy@freelists.org
> Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Venezuela: Another US Coup Attempt - and Why
> It Failed
>
> Hi Miriam,
> Philosophical on the outside, but raging on the inside.
> I recall when I first heard about the Monroe Doctrine, I believed that it
> was America's way of reaching a helping hand out to our friends in Central
> and South America.
> And in a way that was what the American Empire did, extend a helping hand
> that grasped everything it touched.
> When I remember how Working Class Cubans lived under Batista, and how the
> wealthy Cubans and their American backers screamed and swore revenge, I
> cheered Fidel Castro from the Sweatshop, the drapery factory where I labored
> at the time. Score One for the Underdog!
> Cuba, a small nation living off the shore of history's most bloated Empire,
> and surviving. Even with the boycotts placed upon it by the Empire's bully
> boys.
> And when Hugo Chavez turned Venezuela around, and other South American
> nations began to thumb their noses at the American Empire, I believed the
> worm had turned. But never count Greed out.
> As revolutionary as the American experience in democracy was, it was flawed.
> It was flawed because it never resolved the struggle of the People versus
> Greed. We need to gather our wisest minds and examine why Greed corrupts
> our every effort to live at peace with one another.
> We got ourselves into our present mess, and with enough effort and time, we
> can set a new course.
> Carl Jarvis, ever hopeful and forever smelling the roses.
>
> On 8/9/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>> Carl,
>>
>> While you are able to remain philosophical about this situation, I
>> have to tell you that I have been watching it develop step by step for
>> months and months through podcasts and articles and I am extremely
>> upset. Of course I know that the US has done this before, and Cuba is
>> a prime example. But to watch the mass media dishing out lie after lie
>> and the Democrats supporting all of it, while listening to the truth
>> being reported from reporters on the ground there like Max Blumenthal
>> and many others, is a real nightmare. All Amy did, was 2 interviews
>> with one Venezuelan government official. She managed to spend a whole
>> program plus another complete segment, not part of the program, on
>> Toni Morrison, and that's OK. But she's ignoring the murder of a
>> country and its people. The US has stolen Venezuela's oil and its gold
>> reserves. It is blockading it so food will be almost impossible to
>> get. The people most impacted, are the poor and the working class, the
>> people who support Moduro. It's a plot to destroy the people and hand
>> the country over to the white elite, just like Puerto Rico which is
>> such a horror, that I can't even begin to talk about it. And then
>> there's what's happening right here. And all of those people whom ICE
>> is hunting down, are here because of what the US has been doing to
>> their countries of origin for years. And the average American might be
>> mildly disturbed, but not horrified enough, to be out in the streets,
>> protesting. Do you remember that I said that I'm reading a book about
>> a journalist who was being investigated by the House Unamerican Activities
>> Committee because he was a member of the Communist Party? There are all
>> sorts of interesting historical tidbits in that book.
>> One of them is that the auto workers in Detroit were virulently
>> anti-communist. They wanted nothing to do with Communist labor
>> organizers and went on strike until one of them was fired from his
>> job. All this fantasy in which the political left indulges about how
>> the working class will welcome it with open arms. The white working
>> class supported the Vietnam war and a good percentage of it,
>> apparently, supports Trump. Just listen to the folks at his rallies.
>>
>> Miriam
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
>> Sent: Friday, August 09, 2019 10:58 AM
>> To: blind-democracy@freelists.org
>> Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Venezuela: Another US Coup Attempt -
>> and Why It Failed
>>
>> In order to expand, every empire must use force.
>> Every empire must become more and more controlled by fewer and fewer
>> elite.
>> Every empire must force its workers into supporting actions that run
>> counter to the needs of the workers, in order to support the wants of the
>> elite.
>> Every empire reaches a point where it implodes through careless use of
>> resources and pure greed.
>> Every empire is so enthralled by its own image that it never sees its
>> own demise looming on the horizon.
>>
>> Carl Jarvis
>>
>>
>> On 8/9/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>>> Venezuela: Another US Coup Attempt – and Why It Failed By Keith
>>> Brooks, Reader Supported News
>>> 08 August 19
>>>
>>> "How come we're not at war with Venezuela? They have all that oil."
>>>
>>> was in Caracas, Venezuela, on April 30th, the day of the failed coup.
>>> There were eight of us, five from NYC, one Vermonter and one
>>> Canadian, along with the leader of our group, a Venezuelan with whom
>>> I had traveled to Venezuela once before, in 2012, when Hugo Chavez
>>> was still alive. Chavez was elected to power in 1999 leading what is
>>> known as the Bolivarian Revolution. Less than three years later, a
>>> 2002 U.S.-backed coup failed to overthrow him.
>>>
>>> I witnessed back then Chavez's wide base of support, and the reasons
>>> for
>>> it:
>>> a new constitution guaranteeing as human rights health, education,
>>> housing and social welfare, and the laws and projects designed to
>>> make those rights a reality. The results were impressive: one million
>>> new low-cost housing units, a dramatic drop in the poverty rate,
>>> infant mortality rate down from
>>> 19.1 per thousand in 1999 to 10 per thousand by 2012. Health Care was
>>> made free for all Venezuelans, reflected by an increase in life
>>> expectancy.
>>> Working hours were reduced to 6 hours a day and 36 hours per week,
>>> without loss of pay, while the minimum wage became the highest
>>> minimum wage in Latin America. In December 2005, UNESCO said that
>>> Venezuela had eradicated illiteracy. The malnutrition rate fell from
>>> 21% in 1998 to less than 3% in 2012.
>>>
>>> The national management of the oil industry in 2003 put Venezuela in
>>> control over its most valuable natural resource, and used it to fund
>>> many of the social reform programs. Venezuela has the world's largest
>>> oil reserves, which the U.S. has coveted ever since and admittedly
>>> seeks to control, as John Bolton made clear on Fox News: "It 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."
>>>
>>> So the Chavez presidency marked a new day of empowerment for
>>> Venezuela's poor and working-class people, overwhelmingly people of
>>> color. And there was always a sector of the population, mainly the
>>> very wealthy mainly white upper class, who hated Chavez and his
>>> openly socialist policies.
>>>
>>> So I went again this April because I wanted to see for myself if it
>>> was possible the impressions we are now given by the mainstream
>>> corporate media were true – was Venezuela really on the verge of
>>> civil war? Had the Venezuelan people turned against the Bolivarian
>>> revolution and President Maduro, who was elected to office after
>>> Chavez's death in 2013 and re-elected in 2018? Did the U.S.-supported
>>> opposition really have widespread mass support?
>>>
>>> The April 30th Failed Coup
>>>
>>> Back in January, a politician virtually unknown to Venezuelans named
>>> Juan Guaidó, long mentored by U.S. regime-change specialists,
>>> announced himself as the president of Venezuela after receiving a
>>> phone call from U.S. Vice President Mike Pence. Guaidó, who was the
>>> head of the National Assembly, an unelected post, vowed that
>>> President Maduro would be gone by May Day. While blackouts of
>>> electricity rolled across Venezuela, Trump and Secretary of State Pompeo
>>> threatened U.S.
>>> military intervention if Maduro didn't step down.
>>>
>>> We were in Venezuela from April 26th to May 5th. On April 30th, the
>>> morning of the failed coup, we knew something was up as we ate
>>> breakfast in our hotel's restaurant which had an open-air terrace. I
>>> saw a woman banging on a pan standing on a balcony in the apartment
>>> house next door to the hotel, yelling out to others to join her in
>>> denouncing Maduro. No one else joined her. She went back in. We heard
>>> what could have been firecrackers or gunfire. But when we looked out
>>> onto the street, business seemed no different than any of the
>>> previous three mornings we were there – people on their way to work,
>>> students going to school, motorbikes and cars on the streets.
>>>
>>> By the time we left in our van for a housing conference at the Hotel
>>> ALBA celebrating the construction of two and a half million new
>>> low-cost housing units, we learned that there was a coup attempt, yet
>>> we had seen no sign of a military or police presence on the streets
>>> as one might expect if there was a major threat to the government. If
>>> you were in Caracas that day, outside the upper-class neighborhood
>>> where the attempt was made, you would never have known there was a
>>> coup attempt. During a lunch break in the conference, we were able to
>>> watch TV coverage on the attempted coup from both CNN and TeleSUR, a
>>> Venezuelan news outlet. Right in the lobby of the hotel our group
>>> quickly wrote a statement denouncing the Trump administration's
>>> efforts to overthrow the government, and we were interviewed by
>>> Venezuelan government television, which was featured in the news
>>> throughout the day. Our statement said in part, "We are a group of U.S.
>>> and Canadian citizens gathered to denounce the U.S. government's
>>> illegal and immoral actions against the people of Venezuela. We also
>>> oppose the U.S.
>>> sanctions which are not only illegal but are already causing immense
>>> suffering, especially through the denial of much needed medicines and
>>> adequate nutrition ..."
>>>
>>> While we soon learned that the coup had failed, it was not until
>>> later that we heard the incredibly farcical details of what had
>>> transpired.
>>> Some might remember U.S Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claiming the
>>> day before that Maduro was escaping to Cuba. In fact, Guaidó had been
>>> led – actually duped – to believe that high-level military officials
>>> were going to defect and join him outside the airport that morning,
>>> along with large numbers of soldiers.
>>> But almost all the soldiers who showed up – after being lied to that
>>> they were going to receive promotions – quickly ran back to the base
>>> when it was clear they had been tricked into appearing to defect!
>>> Within a short time, the same Venezuelan defense minister that Guaidó
>>> had expected to defect to his side went on national television
>>> surrounded by his generals to say that the military was standing
>>> strong with Maduro and that no coup had taken place.
>>>
>>> An estimated 2,000 Guaidó supporters did gather on an overpass to
>>> watch the highway below where 200 or so violent protesters were
>>> firing on the military and throwing Molotov cocktails near the
>>> airbase – as tens of thousands of Maduro supporters flocked to the
>>> presidential palace to defend it. Guaidó then went into hiding, but
>>> not before calling for the "mother of all marches" for the next day's
>>> May Day celebrations. His "mother of all marches" pulled out at best
>>> 3 to 4 thousand less than 1% of the estimated
>>> 400,000 our group marched with at the Maduro May Day rally, one of
>>> the largest pro-government mobilizations since the days of Chavez.
>>>
>>> It was quite striking even for a longtime activist like myself to
>>> witness the blatant lies and propaganda that saturate our media. It
>>> was like two different worlds as CNN, The New York Times, and
>>> mainstream media reported that a coup was underway in Venezuela. The
>>> NYT reported "a predawn takeover of a military base in the heart of
>>> the capital"– and that Guaidó had made a video appeal for an uprising
>>> from the "liberated" airbase – except they never got on the base. In
>>> another outrageous example, there's a film clip that has been aired
>>> of two military vehicles running into opposition protesters. What's
>>> not shown is what happened next, as the vehicles were surrounded by
>>> soldiers, with the occupants forced at gunpoint to get out and lie
>>> down on the ground! The truth is that the vehicles were driven by
>>> defecting soldiers who rammed into their own protesters to make it
>>> look like it was the government violently suppressing dissent. The
>>> drivers of the vehicle were arrested shortly after by the military as
>>> the rest of the news video clearly showed.
>>>
>>> "This is not the foolish country of yesteryear. This country has
>>> awoken, and that's one of the biggest changes that has taken place
>>> here in these 13 years, a cultural change" – Hugo Chavez, 2012
>>>
>>> So this trip did dispel for me any of the widespread notions spread
>>> 24/7 by the mainstream U.S. corporate media that Maduro and the
>>> Bolivarian revolution have lost popular support and that Venezuela is
>>> a country on the verge of a civil war. While the U.S. sanctions,
>>> along with plummeting oil prices, have created serious challenges to
>>> Maduro, popular support and enthusiasm for the Bolivarian revolution
>>> and the elected government remains.
>>>
>>> Has Venezuela become a dictatorship? Not if judged by the 2 or 3
>>> major newspapers I bought every day that were anti-Maduro (as were
>>> the daily anti-Chavez papers I bought on my 2012 trip), nor by the
>>> rallies called by the U.S. backed coupsters openly inciting violence
>>> and calling for the overthrow of the government. There is, in fact, a
>>> "loyal opposition" that ran against Maduro in the 2018 election, the
>>> leader of which, Henri Falcon, received 32 % of the vote and was
>>> actually threatened with sanctions by the U.S. for participating in
>>> the election! And it deserves mention that I saw marchers at the
>>> Maduro May Day rally evidently feeling comfortable enough to be
>>> wearing Falcon t-shirts. Even Maria Machado, a well known staunch
>>> Guaidó supporter, has stated that Maduro is not a dictator.
>>>
>>> The American people have been propagandized to believe that Trump is
>>> trying to overthrow Maduro out of humanitarian concern for an
>>> economic crisis caused by Maduro's incompetence in handling the
>>> collapse of oil prices over the last five years and to "restore
>>> democracy," a laughable rationale in light of the history: the U.S.
>>> has been trying to overthrow the Bolivarian revolution since the
>>> failed attempt against Chavez in 2002, and then there is the long history
>>> of U.S.
>>> coups and invasions of Latin America and around the world from the
>>> 1954 Guatemala coup, the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba,
>>> U.S. invasions of the Dominican Republic in 1965, the overthrow of
>>> Allende in 1973 in Chile, Grenada in 1983, Panama in 1989, the
>>> removal of Aristide in Haiti in 2004, the Honduras coup in 2009 and
>>> many others. Any government that refuses to be under the thumb of the
>>> U.S.
>>> is a target for overthrow.
>>>
>>> While there is debate over how much Maduro's economic policies have
>>> played a role, it's not the fall in oil prices that have put
>>> Venezuela in crisis and threaten to destroy all the gains over the
>>> last 20 years – it's the sanctions where the U.S. uses its worldwide
>>> economic power to prohibit countries from doing business with
>>> Venezuela. Along with the U.S.-engineered electricity blackouts, and
>>> the failed coup attempts, sanctions have frozen and even confiscated
>>> billions of dollars of Venezuelan assets in banks around the world,
>>> blocked payments for Venezuelan oil, and facilitated other outright
>>> instances of what can only be called piracy. Sanctions are just as
>>> deadly as bombs and bullets, a form of economic terrorism whose
>>> explicit rationale is to escalate the suffering of the civilian
>>> population to get them to turn against their government. A recent
>>> study estimated
>>> 40,000 deaths caused by blockading the shipment of medical supplies
>>> like insulin, HIV medications, and other life-supporting supplies,
>>> such as an emergency food program.
>>>
>>> But all this has failed in the goal of driving the population into
>>> blaming and overthrowing the Maduro government; instead, as Chavez
>>> put it, this is an awakened country that largely understands the main
>>> role the U.S. has played in fomenting a crisis. From what I saw,
>>> Trump has actually united many of those opposed to and critical of
>>> Maduro to join in opposition to U.S. sanctions and military
>>> intervention, as Falcon and others have done.
>>>
>>> While the threat of direct U.S. military intervention is
>>> ever-present, our trip also brought home how it is too easy for
>>> liberals like Bernie Sanders, AOC, and others to oppose military
>>> intervention and avoid taking a stand against the sanctions. Among
>>> Democratic Party candidates running for the presidency, only Tulsi
>>> Gabbard has opposed the sanctions.
>>>
>>> It is also essential to establish that one does not have to defend
>>> Maduro to oppose this latest U.S. imperialist adventure and
>>> understand that the U.S.
>>> has ABSOLUTELY NO RIGHT to sabotage the Venezuelan economy and impose
>>> murderous sanctions to strangle the population into submission. This
>>> didn't start with Maduro, and it is just the latest in the long list
>>> of U.S. coups and overthrows in Latin America and around the world.
>>>
>>> So What Can We Do?
>>>
>>> As we head toward the 2020 election, the issue of Trump's policies
>>> toward Venezuela – as well as Iran – should be front and center in
>>> the debates, yet the Democratic party and the mainstream corporate
>>> media seem to have a tacit agreement to say as little as possible on
>>> these two imminent threats of more U.S. aggression. And a number of
>>> Democrats and liberal media – Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer,
>>> Amy Klobuchar, Kirsten Gillibrand, The New York Times, The Washington
>>> Post, Rachel Maddow, and PBS commentators – are among those leading
>>> liberal figures actually in support of Trump's right to impose regime
>>> change on another people's country.
>>>
>>> It's hard to see how this protracted siege of Venezuela will resolve
>>> itself, but the Venezuelan people are far from a demoralized
>>> population; rather they've been mobilized to resist with the
>>> formation of a people's militia of
>>> 2 million, training with the military and national guard. An
>>> infrastructure of resistance has been created that would make it more
>>> than difficult for any U.S.-installed neoliberal puppet regime to
>>> rule. It could just turn into a people's war, Trump's Vietnam, for
>>> the president who ran claiming he was going to end "all these foolish
>>> wars."
>>>
>>> As U.S. citizens it is our responsibility to demand that our elected
>>> officials stop the threat of war and end the sanctions on Venezuela.
>>> We have a particular responsibility to oppose our government's
>>> actions. Write letters to the editor, sign petitions, call your
>>> elected officials, take part in rallies and demonstrations, and
>>> challenge in whatever ways you can the "official story" we're fed by
>>> the corporate mass media. And I urge anyone interested to go to
>>> Venezuela and see for yourself what is going on.
>>> William Camarada, the Venezuelan who led the two trips I was on, is
>>> planning another highly affordable trip in August. For more
>>> information, contact cbalbertolovera@gmail.com or
>>> estebanbartlett@gmail.com or call 502 / 415-1080.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Email This Page
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Keith Brooks is a longtime anti-war and labor/community activist, a
>>> retired NYC alternative high school teacher, and a member of DSA and
>>> Brooklyn For Peace.
>>>
>>> Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work.
>>> Permission
>>> to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
>>> Supported News.
>>>
>>> e-max.it: your social media marketing partner
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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