Now it’s a DRUGS WAR on Venezuela!

2 Apr

Does anyone still think the USA a force for good in this world, as opposed to a declining and on that count triply dangerous empire wreaking misery, death and mayhem on every continent?

I’d love to hear from them with their reasoning. Meanwhile here’s Caitlin Johnstone today.

US Escalates Warmongering Against Venezuela Because Of… Drug Trafficking?

The Trump administration is sending Navy ships to patrol Venezuela, the latest escalation against the government targeted by an aggressive hybrid US regime change intervention.

“President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that Navy ships are being moved toward Venezuela as his administration beefs up counter-narcotics operations in the Caribbean following a U.S. drug indictment against Nicolás Maduro,” AP reports in an article packed with pro-US disinformation.

“As governments and nations focus on the coronavirus there is a growing threat that cartels, criminals, terrorists and other malign actors will try to exploit the situation for their own gain,” said Trump. “We must not let that happen.”

“The Venezuelan people continue to suffer tremendously due to Maduro and his criminal control over the country, and drug traffickers are seizing on this lawlessness,” added Defense Secretary Mark Esper.

All of this, of course, is bullshit. The US government does not care about “the Venezuelan people” (a term only ever invoked to advance pro-regime change narratives); if they did they wouldn’t be murdering them by the tens of thousands using starvation sanctions and targeting them with backdoor biowarfare by cutting off their ability to protect themselves from a deadly pandemic.

The US government is also not interested in “drug traffickers”. As journalist Ben Norton notes, “Even the US government’s own data admit the vast, vast, vast majority of drugs (mostly cocaine) coming from Latin America come from Colombia — a right-wing US colony.”

“70% of the coca grown in the whole world came from Colombia in 2017 according to the UN,” Norton adds. “Right-wing US colony Colombia is the CIA’s favorite drug dealer, used to fund death squads and Contra terrorist wars to overthrow leftist governments.”

As Venezuela Analysis points out, in 2009 George W Bush awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to then-president of Colombia Álvaro Uribe Vélez, previously listed by US intelligence as one of Colombia’s leading narco-traffickers.

So no, the US government does not care about drug trafficking, and it does not care about the Venezuelan people. What the US government cares about is securing control over the largest proven oil reserve on planet Earth, located beneath Venezuelan soil.

Top 20 Countries With The World’s Largest Proven Oil Reserves:

      1. Venezuela – 300 billion barrels
      2. Saudi Arabia – 269 billion barrels
      3. Canada – 171 billion barrels
      4. Iran – 157.8 billion barrels
      5. Iraq – 143 billion barrels
      6. Kuwait – 104 billion barrels
      7. Russia – 80 billion barrels
      8. United Arab Emirates – 98 billion barrels
      9. Libya – 48.3 billion barrels
      10. Nigeria – 37 billion barrels
      11. United States –  36.5 billion barrels
      12. Kazakhstan – 30 billion barrels
      13. Qatar – 25 billion barrels
      14. China – 24 billion barrels
      15. Brazil – 15 billion barrels
      16. Algeria – 12 billion barrels
      17. Mexico – 10 billion barrels
      18. Angola – 9 billion barrels
      19. Ecuador – 8.8 billion barrels
      20. Azerbaijan – 7 billion barrels

It’s so precious how the US empire pretends its transparent resource control agendas are about protecting humanitarian interests. It reminds me of the excuses the guys make when they get busted on To Catch A Predator: “No, Chris Hansen, honest! I just drove 300 miles because I wanted to give the 13 year-old girl a talking to about the dangers of flirting with strangers online.” No you didn’t America, you drove 300 miles because you wanted to steal that little girl’s oil reserves you pervert.

The Trump administration has already admitted that its sole interest is in toppling the Venezuelan government with its ridiculous offer to cease murdering civilians via economic warfare if Maduro leaves office; adding a bunch of unrelated gibberish about narco-trafficking on top of this does nothing to obfuscate this. Warships have been sent to Venezuela because the Trump administration is waging a deadly war on Venezuelans and that’s what you do during a war. These continued escalations are directed at nothing other than shoring up more power and control for the globe-spanning US-centralized empire, which works tirelessly to dominate the world by dominating its resources.

I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t remember voting for a paradigm where powerful governments pour the lion’s share of riches into sabotaging, toppling and destroying nations which don’t bow before their demands. This dynamic exists without the consent of ordinary human beings, and it brings nothing but harm to ordinary human beings. It harms human beings abroad with overt and covert applications of deadly force, and it harms human beings at home by robbing them of riches and resources for agendas which benefit them in no way, shape or form.

All these Venezuela shenanigans are occurring as revelations emerge that the Pentagon had predicted the exact sort of disruptions a deadly coronavirus pandemic would cause way back in 2017. The Nation‘s Ken Klippenstein shows that the Department of Defense had warned that unless changes were made an outbreak of a novel virus would see a shortage of “ventilators, devices, personal protective equipment such as face masks and gloves”, which “will have a significant impact on the availability of the global workforce.”

Hey America? If your Department of “Defense” is not being used to defend the American citizenry from the deadly threats it perceives, but is being used to patrol the shores of an oil-rich nation that has nothing to do with you, then maybe that department needs a new name. And maybe you need a new kind of government. Just a thought.

Thanks Caitlin. Lucid and informed as ever. As for me, I’m just waiting for that person who sees America (to be precise, its ruling class) as a force for good in this vale of tears to fill me in on whatever it is I’m not getting.

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9 Replies to “Now it’s a DRUGS WAR on Venezuela!

  1. Meanwhile (have had difficulty finding these stories from other sources) even supposed friends and allies can expect little better:

    Providing a stark example of exactly what MAGA actually means in practice.

    Whilst no situation is off limits when it comes to being the biggest, baddest and bestest in the school playground

    The only way to deal with such bullies and cowards is to give them a taste of their own behaviours. It is way past time the rest of the world boycotted and sanctioned such a rogue State to change its behaviour.

  2. “We need the masks, we don’t want other people getting it… That’s why we are instituting a lot of Defense Production Act. You could call it a retaliation, because that’s what it is, it’s a retaliation. If people do not give us what we need for our people, we are going to be very tough.”

    https://www.rt.com/usa/484995-trump-face-masks-piracy/

    And the record demonstrates this attitude and approach is not limited to any one specific item but includes everything of anything they want and feel entitled to take.

    More succinct and blunt than Kennen’s well known quote:

    “We have about 50% of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3% of its population. … In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity. … To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. … We should cease to talk about vague and … unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.”
    —George F. Kennan, Policy Planning Study 23 (PPS23), Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1948

    But nonetheless revealing.

    • Kennen’s quote may be well known to you Dave but it’s new to me. Brutally honest, it reflects the Hobbesian worldview of the Right – and/or the currently powerful.

  3. Apologies Phil.

    I’m always falling into this problem where I assume if a numpty like me knows something everyone else will already be aware of it.

    Eight of your formative years in a kids home seems to hang around your neck like an albatross no matter how old you get.

    • No apology needed Dave. I’m glad to add this quote to my lexicon, filed alongside “we are an empire: we make our own reality” in the burgeoning Those Moments They’re So Cocky They Don’t Even Bother Lying To Us folder.

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