To help Venezuela, the U.S. must use diplomacy, not a military coup

[Judi Lynn]

03/11/2019, 05:00pm


By Jesse Jackson

The United States is pushing for an overthrow of the government of Venezuela. The Trump administration has denounced Nicolas Maduro as a “dictator,” dismissing the 2018 election, which the opposition boycotted. Instead of a good neighbor policy or a policy of non-intervention, the Trump administration has set out intentionally to overthrow the regime.

Long before Trump, the United States was a bitter opponent of the Hugo Chavez regime. The fact that Chavez was wildly popular and freely elected made no difference. He represented a revolution that embraced Fidel Castro’s Cuba and implemented plans to redistribute wealth and empower the poor. In 2002, when the Venezuelan military moved to overthrow Chavez, an official in the Bush administration reportedly met with the coup leaders. The coup attempt was frustrated, however, when Venezuelans rose up in mass against the plotters.

Now with Chavez gone, the current president Nicolas Maduro unpopular, the economy a mess — in significant degree because the price of oil is near record lows — the Trump administration is apparently orchestrating another attempt.

OPINION
It has continued to ratchet up pressure. It has imposed brutal sanctions on Venezuela, making a bad situation far worse, all the while blaming the government for the misery. Trump has openly threatened a “military option” for Venezuela. His bellicose national security adviser, John Bolton, boasted that “The troika of tyranny in this hemisphere — Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua — has finally met its match.”

More:
https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/venezuela-trump-administration-coup-president-maduro/

Editorials and other articles:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016228283

[MRubio]

1. The 2018 election was boycotted by the opposition after........

......Maduro hand-picked who in the opposition could run against him.

Would you participate in those types of "elections"?

[Ghost Dog]

8. Is this May 2018 Al Jazeera report inaccurate?

... What is the opposition boycotting?

The Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), a coalition of parties that in recent years worked together and represented the opposition against Chavez and Maduro, declared it would boycott the election.

But the coalition faced internal division between those who think that taking part in this election would legitimise Maduro's rule and those who believe that participation is an opportunity for change.

In a statement, the MUD said the election was "premature" and lacked "proper conditions," and called it "a show by the government to give an impression of legitimacy that it does not have in the midst of Venezuelans' agony and suffering."

Most of the candidates who might have run against Maduro have been barred from running, including Henrique Capriles and Leopoldo Lopez. Capriles was banned from holding office for 15 years due to "administrative irregularities", and Lopez is facing house arrest.

Henri Falcon broke with the MUD and decided to run against Maduro. "You will disappear as politicians and as parties for not understanding the dynamics of a country that demands solutions and not conflict," Falcon told the MUD...

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/05/venezuela-elections-2018-key-points-180518100733025.html

It says candidates were barred, and references two cases due to judicial proceedings or sentences, not parties. The MUD parties chose to boycot the elections, perhaps for lack of agreeable candidates, or was it that they couldn't agree on a unity candidate amongst themselves?

[Miguel M]

2. OH SHIT!!11!! Trigger words.

FIDEL CASTRO

[Judi Lynn]

5. Yes, and he is continuing to rule Venezuela, through Maduro, from t-h-e g-g-g-r-a-v-e.

[denverbill]

3. Charles Koch is running this show.

I had no idea until Palast's article that Koch owned the Texas refineries that processed Venezuelan crude, but after finding that out, it's blatantly obvious who is calling the shots here. The Koch's haven't spend hundreds of millions of tax deductible dollars buying politicians for the last 20 years for nothing. Venezuela nationalized one of their fertilizer companies and jacked up the price they charge for their crude, and Koch's refineries can only process heavy crude. Wonder why there is a crisis in Venezuela? The Koch's created it.

It also explains why Republickers are so obsessed with getting the XL pipeline approved since Koch could also process that, if only they had a government supported pipeline to the Gulf of Mexico.

Pathetic that the arch-libertarian Koch brothers buy the US govt and us taxpayer funds to stage a coup for their own personal gain. They don't give a rat's ass about the Venezuelan people obviously.

Also reminds me that in 2015, US newspapers were publishing stories about toilet paper shortages in Venezuela. As toilet paper kings, I immediately wondered if they were behind that as well. At the time, I didn't know about their oil refineries.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Looking forward to what time will reveal as deeper looks become possible.

The Kochs are horrendously destructive parasites, aren't they? The damage they have done to this earth, this environment, to the lives of men, women, children, old people, the earth's animals and plant life, is incalculable. There's almost no end to it.

Anything they have touched is doomed.

Is there anything left they haven't wrecked?

They and their fellow predators have the audacity to pretend to the world that they are far superior in every way to those they run right over, and destroy every day.

I remember how much fun the fascists had reveling, wallowing in their fantastically ignorant return to toilet paper jokes obsessively, and didn't know at that time about the Koch's gnarly, thin-skinned, untouched by human labor, sticky fingers reaching far into that industry, too. Oh, barf.

[2naSalit]

6. K&R

[GatoGordo]

7. The only person praying for US military intervention is Maduro

This guys wet dream is US marines coming ashore and creating chaos. I imagine he has pictures of little old ladies, wearing their red "iViva Chavez!" shirts laying on the ground, in a pool of blood with a rifle by her side, ready for dissemination.

Yes, ONLY a US invasion can save the legacy of Chavismo. Anything less would prove that their Stalinistic management of a country is a failure.

[Miguel M]

9. That might be true.

If so, then what does the support for a US backed coup accomplish, comrade?

[GatoGordo]

10. What coup?

Nobody sees a coup except the cheer-girls for Chavismo.

A. Maduro has the FANB properly inline. Fully infiltrated by G2.
B. The only citizens with guns in Venezuela are colectivos.
C. No USMC landing craft approaching Venezuela.

What coup?