Neil Clark writes:
Repeat
after me: (by orders of the NeoCon Thought Police): "I condemn the evil
dictator Nicolas Maduro and support a US-led humanitarian intervention to save
the people of oil rich Venezuela! I condemn the evil dictator Nicolas
Maduro..."
You might have thought that
in the so-called "Free World," people would be free
to support or praise whatever governments or political systems they want
to, without any serious consequences to themselves or their
livelihoods.
But if the country or government you want to praise is an
"Official Enemy" of the western elites, it's a very different
story.
The War Party's enemies have to be ours. Yes, siree.
Think of Orwell's 1984,
and the Two Minutes Hate.
Right now, it's the former bus driver Nicolas Maduro
who is playing the role of Emmanuel Goldstein — the man who we are
expected to shake our fists at when we watch the
"telescreen" — giving those regular "bad guys" Bashar
al-Assad and Vladimir Putin a bit of a break.
Over the last week or so there's been a hysterical campaign to get
prominent figures in Britain, who in the past had expressed
their solidarity with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela —
like Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn — to issue public
denunciations.
Never mind if the individuals concerned were on their
summer holiday — as Jezza was. That's no excuse.
The "Labour silence" was tantamount
to treachery, the War Party cried.
Cycling around Croatia
in your short-sleeved white shirt, shorts and socks and admiring the
beauty of the old quarter of Dubrovnik is just not on, when there's
another leftist government sitting on huge reserves (and which has friendly
relations with Syria), to urgently topple.
Over the last week or so there's been a hysterical campaign to get
prominent figures in Britain, who in the past had expressed
their solidarity with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela —
like Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn — to issue public
denunciations.
Interestingly there have been no such
calls for Tories (or Blairite Labour MPs) to break off from
their vacations to denounce the genuinely undemocratic leadership
of Saudi Arabia or NATO ally Erdogan in Turkey, who's has a right old
crackdown since the attempt to topple him in a coup last year
failed.
And the people demanding condemnations of Venezuela for being
a "dictatorship" have been very quiet about the eye-catching 98.63%
vote achieved by Tony Blair's friend Paul Kagame in Rwanda
earlier in August.
The
neocon Establishment — with onion slices concealed in their
handkerchiefs — feign humanitarian concern for the plight of the
masses in Venezuela, while, at the same time turn a blind eye
to the devastating cholera epidemic currently
spreading across war-torn Yemen.
Any genuine humanitarian who cared
about human suffering on this planet would put Yemen as the top
of his/her concerns, but its the western bombs which are doing
the damage in that country, so the War Party are very keen
to divert our attention elsewhere.
Establishment-friendly media has played its
full part in The Great Venezuela Inquisition.
Earlier in August there
was a ludicrous exchange on Newsnight, the BBC's regime-change addicted
"flagship" current affairs program, in which a Corbyn-supporting
Labour MP Chris Williamson was asked by presenter Evan Davis if he was
closer to Hugo Chavez or Tony Blair.
That's right. A choice between a
man who worked tirelessly to help the poor and to make his country
independent from the neo-colonialists and a snake oil salesman who invaded
Iraq on a lie, and whose warmongering left over one million people
dead.
To
ask the question "Blair or Chavez?" is to answer it.
No genuine
socialist or progressive could possibly opt for the man who assured us
Iraq had WMDs, which threatened the world and which could be activated
within 45 minutes.
As part of the War Party's
propaganda campaign, the words of those who have committed the heinous
"crime" of expressing support for "Chavism" have been
shamefully distorted.
Countering the blatant lie that multi-party Venezuela was
a dictatorship, the former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone pointed
out that the late Hugo Chavez didn't go around executing his
enemies — the sort of thing genuine dictators do.
That was twisted
into headlines such as "Ken
Livingstone: Venezuela Crisis due to Chavez's failure to kill
oligarchs."
Livingstone was forced to respond to the media
representations of what he had actually said:
"I have not said that Hugo Chavez should
have killed anyone and nor would I ever advocate it. I even dispelled this
accusation in the very interview that is being extensively quoted.
"The point I was
making is that, contrary to some misrepresentations, Hugo Chavez didn't
repress the former ruling elite in Venezuela."
Only violence carried
out by government supporting forces counts.
The violence carried
out by opposition activists against United Socialist Party supporters,
the police and the security services does not qualify.
Those killed or injured
in such attacks, like the young black man burned to death
in early June, are "un-people," like the
victims of terrorist attacks by CIA-backed "rebels"
in Syria, those killed in the 2014 Odessa fire,
and the 16 media workers who lost their lives when
NATO bombed Serbian TV in 1999.
The
double standards of the "You Must Condemn Maduro" Thought Police
are truly breathtaking.
Anti-government street protesters at home are
routinely labeled "thugs and scum," but violent ones, who go out on
to the streets in "Official Enemy" countries
to try and topple their governments are lauded.
Establishment respect for
"law and order" and condemnation of ''anarchy" and "mob
rule" is not universal — it only applies in "approved"
nations.
Call for a riot in the UK, and you'll be arrested before you
have time to do your next weekly shop in Aldi, but call
for one in Venezuela and you'll probably get State Department/NED
funding (that's if you aren't already on the CIA's or MI6's payroll).
If what's playing out before our very
eyes in Venezuela seems familiar then it's not surprising. This is a movie
we've seen many times before.
Think of the "pro-democracy"
US-backed anti-government protests in Yugoslavia in 2000, which
toppled the Socialist-led administration there, and the
"pro-democracy" US-backed-ones in Ukraine in 2014.
On both
occasions, the "target" governments — and their
leadership — were placed in a very difficult position.
If they
responded to what were clear attempts to usurp power
by force — by using force themselves — they knew they would
be condemned by the War Party and its media stenographers as
"dictators, human rights abusers, war criminals, Nazis, Stalinists" —
take your pick.
If they did nothing and allowed the protesters to act
with total impunity, they'd lose power.
It's
important for the neocon regime changers that we don't see the bigger
picture.
We're not supposed to reflect on the millions of dollars
which has poured into opposition coffers from the US — just imagine the outcry if the Venezuelan government
bankrolled anti-government activists in western countries.
We're
not expected to focus either on the economic warfare that the US and
the western financial/corporate elites have waged on Venezuela
for the country's refusal to toe the line.
Of course, Maduro's
government has made mistakes, with the biggest being the failure
to diversify the economy when oil prices were high — a point that
Jeremy Corbyn made earlier.
But acknowledging this is a very different thing
from joining in with State Department calls for "regime
change" against a legitimate and democratically elected government
which still has sizable popular support.
The excellent media monitoring
organization Media Lens has compared and contrasted the "deep
concern" shown by War Party media propagandists for "human rights"
in a "target" country, before a
western-sponsored regime change takes place, and their lack of interest
in the people's plight afterwards, when things invariably get much worse.
Neocon/liberal-imperialist hacks couldn't stop writing about Iraq
in late 2002 and early 2003, and the need to "liberate" its
people and make the world safe from its non-existent WMDs, but after
the invasion, when the country descended into total chaos and bombs were
going off on a daily basis, Iraqis were of no interest to them.
The papers were full of op-eds calling for "action" to save
the people of Libya in early 2011, but after Gaddafi was toppled
and Libya became a failed state and a jihadists playground, it all went very
quiet.
The same will happen again if Maduro falls.
The War Party are going crackers over Caracas only because they want
Venezuela's government forcibly removed from office.
Nothing else matters
to them.
If we are to issue public condemnations,
then let it be of the serial warmongers and "regime-changers,"
who caused so much devastation in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and
Syria — and who have the nerve to always point the finger
of blame at others.
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