Support Venezuela
By John Pilger and Michael Albert
February 16, 2015 "ICH"
- "ZNet"
-
Albert: Why would the
U.S. want venezuela’s government overthrown?
Pilger: There are
straightforward principles and dynamics at
work here. Washington wants to get rid of
the Venezuelan government because it is
independent of US designs for the region and
because Venezuela has the greatest proven
oil reserves in the world and uses its oil
revenue to improve the quality of ordinary
lives. Venezuela remains a source of
inspiration for social reform in a continent
ravaged by an historically rapacious U.S. An
Oxfam report once famously described the
Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua as ‘the
threat of a good example’. That has been
true in Venezuela since Hugo Chavez won his
first election. The ‘threat’ of Venezuela is
greater, of course, because it is not tiny
and weak; it is rich and influential and
regarded as such by China. The remarkable
change in fortunes for millions of people in
Latin America is at the heart of U.S.
hostility. The U.S. has been the undeclared
enemy of social progress in Latin America
for two centuries. It doesn’t matter who has
been in the White House: Barack Obama or
Teddy Roosevelt; the US will not tolerate
countries with governments and cultures that
put the needs of their own people first and
refuse to promote or succumb to U.S. demands
and pressures. A reformist social democracy
with a capitalist base – such as Venezuela –
is not excused by the rulers of the world.
What is inexcusable is Venezuela’s political
independence; only complete deference is
acceptable. The ‘survival’ of Chavista
Venezuela is a testament to the support of
ordinary Venezuelans for their elected
government – that was clear to me when I was
last there. Venezuela’s weakness is that
the political ‘opposition’ — those I would
call the ‘East Caracas Mob’ – represent
powerful interests who have been allowed to
retain critical economic power. Only when
that power is diminished will Venezuela
shake off the constant menace of
foreign-backed, often criminal subversion.
No society should have to deal with that,
year in, year out.
What methods has the
U.S. already used and would you anticipate
their using to unseat the Bolivarians?
There are the usual crop of
quislings and spies; they come and go with
their media theatre of fake revelations, but
the principal enemy is the media. You may
recall the Venezuelan admiral who was one of
the coup-plotters against Chavez in 2002,
boasting during his brief tenure in power,
‘Our secret weapon was the media’. The
Venezuelan media, especially television,
were active participants in that coup, lying
that supporters of the government were
firing into a crowd of protestors from a
bridge. False images and headlines went
around the world. The New York Times joined
in, welcoming the overthrow of a democratic
‘anti-American’ government; it usually does.
Something similar happened in Caracas last
year when vicious right-wing mobs were
lauded as ‘peaceful protestors’ who were
being ‘repressed’. This was undoubtedly the
start of a Washington-backed ‘colour
revolution’ openly backed by the likes of
the National Endowment for Democracy – a
user-friendly CIA clone. It was uncannily
like the coup that Washington successfully
staged in Ukraine last year. As in Kiev, in
Venezuela the ‘peaceful protestors’ set fire
to government buildings and deployed snipers
and were lauded by western politicians and
the western media. The strategy is almost
certainly to push the Maduro government to
the right and so alienate its popular base.
Depicting the government as dictatorial and
incompetent has long been an article of bad
faith among journalists and broadcasters in
Venezuela and in the US, the UK and Europe.
One recent US ‘story’ was that of a ‘US
scientist jailed for trying to help
Venezuela build bombs’. The implication was
that Venezuela was harbouring ‘nuclear
terrorists’. In fact, the disgruntled
nuclear physicist had no connection
whatsoever with Venezuela.
All this is reminiscent of
the unrelenting attacks on Chávez, each with
that peculiar malice reserved for dissenters
from the west’s ‘one true way’. In 2006,
Britain’s Channel 4 News effectively accused
the Venezuelan president of plotting to make
nuclear weapons with Iran, an absurd
fantasy. The Washington correspondent,
Jonathan Rugman, sneered at policies to
eradicate poverty and presented Chávez as a
sinister buffoon, while allowing Donald
Rumsfeld, a war criminal, to liken Chavez to
Hitler, unchallenged. The BBC is no
different. Researchers at the University of
the West of England in the UK studied the
BBC’s systematic bias in reporting Venezuela
over a ten-year period. They looked at 304
BBC reports and found that only three of
these referred to any of the positive
policies of the government. For the BBC,
Venezuela’s democratic initiatives, human
rights legislation, food programmes,
healthcare initiatives and poverty reduction
programmes did not exist. Mission Robinson,
the greatest literacy programme in human
history, received barely a passing mention.
This virulent censorship by omission
complements outright fabrications such as
accusations that the Venezuelan government
are a bunch of drug-dealers. None of this
is new; look at the way Cuba has been
misrepresented – and assaulted – over the
years. Reporters Without Borders has just
issued its worldwide ranking of nations
based on their claims to a free press. The
U.S. is ranked 49th, behind Malta, Niger,
Burkino Faso and El Salvador.
3. Why might now be a
prime time, internationally, for pushing
toward a coup? If the primary problem is
Venezuela being an example that could
spread, is the emergence of a receptive
audience for that example in Europe adding
to the U.S. response?
It’s important to understand
that Washington is ruled by true extremists,
once known inside the Beltway as ‘the
crazies’. This has been true since before
9/11. A few are outright fascists. Asserting
US dominance is their undisguised game and,
as the events in Ukraine demonstrate, they
are prepared to risk a nuclear war with
Russia. These people should be the common
enemy of all sane human beings. In
Venezuela, they want a coup so that they can
roll-back of some of the world’s most
important social reforms – such as in
Bolivia and Ecuador. They’ve already crushed
the hopes of ordinary people in Honduras.
The current conspiracy between the US and
Saudi Arabia to lower the price of oil is
meant to achieve something more spectacular
in Venezuela, and Russia.
4. What do you think
the best approach might be to warding off
u.s. machinations, and those of domestic
Venezuelan elites as well, for the
Bolivarians?
The majority people of
Venezuela, and their government, need to
tell the world the truth about the attacks
on their country. There is a stirring across
the world, and many people are listening.
They don’t want perpetual instability,
perpetual poverty, perpetual war, perpetual
rule by the few. And they identify the
principal enemy; look at the international
polling surveys that ask which country
presents the greatest danger to humanity.
The majority of people overwhelmingly point
to the U.S., and to its numerous campaigns
of terror and subversion.
5. What do you think
is the immediate responsibility of leftists
outside Venezuela, and particularly in the
U.S.
That begs a question: who are
these ‘leftists’? Are they the millions of
liberal North Americans seduced by the
specious rise of Obama and silenced by his
criminalising of freedom of information and
dissent? Are they those who believe what
they are told by the New York Times, the
Washington Post, the Guardian, the BBC? It’s
an important question. ‘Leftist’ has never
been a more disputed and misappropriated
term. My sense is that people who live on
the edge and struggle against US-backed
forces in Latin America understood the true
meaning of the word, just as they identify a
common enemy. If we share their principles,
and a modicum of their courage, we should
take direct action in our own countries,
starting, I would suggest, with the
propagandists in the media. Yes, it’s our
responsibility, and it has never been more
urgent.