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Venezuela's Counter-Attack, by Eric Striker

2-12-2019 < UNZ 23 1044 words
 

When the Trump administration revived Reagan-relic Zionist Elliot Abrams early this year to orchestrate regime change in Venezuela, a new era of instability was born in the Western Hemisphere.


Approaching a year into this project, the domestic flames have mostly been put out by the willful Nicolas Maduro, while Washington-backed liberals in Chile, Colombia, Bolivia and Ecuador face popular unrest.


This is another neo-conservative bomb that underestimated its opposition and has blown up in the Trump administration’s face.


In Chile, once held up as the model of liberal democracy and global capitalist development, falling copper demand, low wages, mass unemployment and a rise in the subway fare have led to massive street demonstrations against president Sebastian Pinera.


Pinera, a corrupt multi-billionaire who made his money through credit card usury, has an approval rating of 14%.


Rather than resign, the man who attacked Maduro as a “dictator” is dispatching the military against his own people to cling to power, showing the world what liberal “democracy” looks like underneath the flashing billboards and rainbow flags.


Pinera’s security forces have so far killed multiple people and maimed thousands. In true cowardly form, the president is now condemning his own troops for defending his regime.


Oligarchs prefer institutions that pretend to be neutral so that they can spin personal blame off onto underlings and abstract scapegoats.


In Colombia, the rule of another Pentagon puppet, Ivan Duque Marquez, has also been tested.


Marquez has proudly touted Colombia’s GDP growth in recent years as an achievement (which he always contrasts with regional rival, Venezuela), but like in Chile, the financial prosperity has only benefited the urban elite. Plans to cut old age pensions and lower the minimum wage were the straw that broke the camel’s back.


These incidents are irony on steroids. Pinera and Marquez both worked with Abrams to undermine Venezuela, giving Maduro’s government “hours” until collapse during the flare up last spring.


Now the human rights democrats are the ones facing disorder, this time largely organic rather than NED created, and they are behaving no different than Maduro’s government did.


In Ecuador, Lenin Moreno’s attempts to undo reforms by his predecessor Rafael Correa led to riots that forced him out of the nation’s capital. Moreno has embarked on a mass privatization spree and famously revoked Julian Assange’s asylum in exchange for a $4.2 billion dollar International Monetary Fund loan his people don’t want, and definitely don’t want to have to pay back.


Who’s to Blame?


According to an enraged Abrams, 88-year-old Raul Castro and Venezuelan agents are responsible for the regional chaos. There is some evidence to suggest Bolivarian agents are indeed playing a role in at least supporting these uprisings.


But if true, that would mean tiny Cuba and struggling Venezuela are able to seriously challenge US hegemony in its own satellite states. Whatever the extent of Cuban or Venezuelan subversion is, they clearly have a lot to work with. New world order economics are very unpopular.


US sanctions have made it impossible for Venezuela to import necessary goods, while nothing is hampering Chile.


On paper, Chile’s per capita income is the highest in Latin America, at $25,222, higher than the regions two traditionally white-majority states of Argentina (third, at $20,567) and Uruguay (second, $23,530).


But Chile’s GINI coefficient, a measure of income inequality, is sandwiched in between Venezuela and Ecuador (two countries whose abusive plutocracies led to populist revolutions) at 46.6 compared to Uruguay, at 39 (the least unequal country in Latin America).


In other words, working class Chileans see that there is plenty of wealth circulating in the system yet its public institutions lack funding or are non-existent. The backlash is long overdue.


As for Abrams’ project, a transsexual leading the anti-Maduro opposition has basically admitted that their hopes have been dashed.


Other signs suggest that they are putting this objective on the backburner. The Jew appointed by pretend-president Juan Guiado to restore Wall Street’s control of Venezuela, Ricardo Hausmann, has given up and disassociated from the clown crowned “legitimate leader” of a major OPEC country over Instagram.


How Many More Foreign Policy Blunders?


Now the attention deficit disordered Pentagon is fixating on Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, an old foe of Abrams.


Here, the CIA is bringing together radical feminists, businessmen and Catholic clerics into a bizarre coalition in hopese of overthrowing the elected Sandinistas.


Last week the White House declared Nicaragua’s internal political issues a “national emergency.” Why this is a national emergency for America is not explained in the bombastic press release.


Former Bush administration official, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, has been highly critical of US interventions in Latin America, and specifically blamed Abrams’ economic strangulation of Venezuela for causing millions of its citizens to emigrate. If the Venezuelans are now organizing their own operations in Chile, Ecuador, etc, they wouldn’t have been without attempts at overthrowing Maduro. Trying to starve the Nicaraguans will likely end the same.


Like with Iran, the Obama administration’s passive-aggression has proven more effective than the Trump administration’s in-your-face Zionist hawks.


By forcing the Venezuelans, Iranians, Chinese, and Russians into a corner, permanent Washington has provoked a fight or flight response.


These nations now understand that they’re much stronger than they previously thought. They are vigorously striking at the giant’s clay feet.


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