Kerry’s Lonely Crusade Against Venezuela

[Judi Lynn]

Weekend Edition March 21-23, 2014
Class War From Above

Kerry’s Lonely Crusade Against Venezuela

by MARK WEISBROT


Images forge reality, granting a power to television and video and even still photographs that can burrow deep into people’s consciousness without them even knowing it. With a wide variety of sources and people on the ground to talk to, I thought I was immune to the repetitious portrayals of Venezuela as a failed state in the throes of a popular rebellion. But even I was not prepared for what I saw in Caracas: how little of daily life appeared to be affected by the protests, the normality that prevailed in the vast majority of the city. I, too, had been taken in by media imagery.

Major media outlets have reported that Venezuela’s poor have not joined the right-wing opposition protests, but that is an understatement. It’s not just the poor who are abstaining – in Caracas it is almost everyone outside of a few rich areas like Altamira where small groups of protesters engage in nightly battles with security forces, throwing rocks and firebombs and running from tear gas.

Walking from the working class neighborhood of Sabana Grande to the city center, there is no sign that Venezuela is in the grip of a “crisis” that requires intervention from the Organization of American States (OAS). The metro also runs very well – much better than in Washington DC, and at a tiny fraction of the price — although I couldn’t get off at Alta Mira station, where the rebels had set up their base of operations at Alta Mira square until their eviction this week.

I got my first glimpse of the barricades in Los Palos Grandes, an upper-income area where the protesters do have popular support, and neighbors will yell at anyone trying to remove the barricades – which is a risky thing to attempt (at least four people have apparently been shot dead for doing so). But even here, some traffic is snarled but life is otherwise pretty normal. On the weekend the Parque del Este is full with families and runners sweating in the 90 degree heat – before Chávez, you had to pay to get in, and the residents here, I am told, were disappointed when the less well-to-do were allowed to enter for free. The restaurants are also crowded at night.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/21/kerrys-lonely-crusade-against-venezuela/

[Sarah Ibarruri]

1. Thank you. Your posts are always excellent. nt

[Marksman_91]

2. Just wondering, why not post a different article instead of one you already posted?

It's obvious this is the exact same article you posted in this thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/110828077

Just wondering, why not simply bump that thread again instead of trying to pass it off as a different pro-government article written by the same propagandist?

[Judi Lynn]

3. Different headline, different publication, you are delusional to call him a propagandist.

He's far more capable, far more INFORMED than any greed-driven fascist could ever hope to be.

I think it's damned well worth reading twice.

If you don't like it, don't re-read it.

[noiretextatique]

4. us imperialism crosses party lines

excellent article. i knew these co-called protests were bullshit.

[Flatulo]

5. Never underestimate your opposition. I keep

thinking back to the student protesters and even the civil right marchers of the sixties.

Life was perfectly normal for the vast majority of Americans, yet those protesters ended a war and fundamentally changed our society.

I think the point Mr. Weisbrot may be missing is that a country doesn't have to be in full-blown civil war to have powerful forces working for change. During our own revolution against Great Britain, most colonials were unaffected.

[Judi Lynn]

7. The U.S. Americans demonstrating for civil rights, and protesting the war had MORAL power

on their side, moral clarity, not physical force, nor assholes stringing up wire across the streets to decapitate their opponents.

They took the punishment themselves. NO GUARIMBA. Their moral force carried their movements forward, because they were on the side of righteousness, opposing war against the innocents in Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos, and most certainly pushing hard and NON-VIOLENTLY against a system which had brutalized, tortured, murdered and terrorized an entire race, as well as anyone else who supported the cause, for hundreds of years.

NO comparison whatsoever.

From two entirely different moral realms.

[Judi Lynn]

8. Life was NOT normal for a vast majority of Americans during the Viet Nam war.

Last edited Sat Mar 22, 2014, 04:23 AM - Edit history (1)

It was normal for the a-holes, but families who had children who came back dead, those 60,000 young people, or wildly harmed and disfigured, but also those who lived in fear their children would be sent to be used as cannon fodder in the future.

Students in college lived in fear that if their grades fell, they could lose their deferrments, their teachers realized any grades they gave could doom a young person to serve in the military to get his head blown off.

Everyone I knew went to school with someone who was slaughtered in that war, or was related to someone who was murdered for POLITICS.

By no means did life simply continue to mosey along as it always had. The country started ripping apart then as it had never been before. Racism and right-wing viciousness surged to the surface in full bloom to look for new enemies to destroy, and they never ran out of targets. You know how the right-wing is, of course.

Tragic, and grotesque history right in our own country.

[Flatulo]

9. I lived through that era too, and almost got drafted. Yes, there was anxiety about getting called

up, but we went to the store and bought groceries. We went to movies. We went out to eat. We got stuck in traffic. We went to school. All the same things that Weisbrot is seeing in VZ, and calling it perfectly normal to marginalize the protests, happened here too, yet the protests were profoundly eventful. Just because you see no moral standing in the VZ protests, doesn't mean that there is none. You view things from the perspective of the regime, as does Weisbrot, but believe it or not, there is an opposing perspective. Many here can see it.