Thursday 28 February 2019

THE COUP

Boots Riley, frontman of the ( now ironically named ) hip hop group The Coup, calls out the u.s. government for their lies about Venezuela. Meanwhile, dipshit bernie sanders lines up with fuckface trump and other spineless democrats to voice his support for regime change in that country. Fuck him and his whining garbage. 

Shout Out to Boots Riley for Calling Out the CIA on Venezuela

 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

While accepting an award for his film Sorry to Bother You for Best First Feature at the Independent Spirit Awards on February 23, Boots Riley called out the CIA for “trying to have a coup in Venezeula....” While far too few artists with a platform are speaking out against the crimes of this government being carried out in our name, Boots used his platform to speak the truth and call on others to do the same: “We should all be putting our voices out there to stop the U.S.  from having regime change for oil in Venezuela.”
According to Indiewire, Boots continued speaking out backstage about the lies being told about this invasion and the history behind this kind of bullshit: “Obviously, the CIA, every time they targeted a country for regime change, they tell you the same things. They tell you the same things in Iraq, they tell you the same things that they did in Chile in 1973. They all say, ‘They’ve lost support, they’re dictators. We’re just helping people.’ We know. C’mon. Everybody knows that’s not true. Right now, under the guise of humanitarian aid, they’re doing the same thing the US did in Guatemala in the ’80s, which was sneak guns to right-wing forces in Central America through what they call ‘humanitarian aid.’ Now, when the Russians were trying to get ‘humanitarian aid’ into Ukraine a few years ago, the MSM out here correctly said, ‘Oh, we know they’re sneaking guns in that way.’ All of a sudden, nobody’s saying the same thing in the mainstream media. The people of Venezuela are the ones that should be deciding who rules them. The US has been working with opposition forces there for years.”

Wednesday 27 February 2019

NO TRUST

You can display how braindead you are as much as you want with as many "support the troops" stickers on your truck as you can slap on there , it doesn't change the fact that the army is in place first and foremost to defend the government and the system they represent . And if the people should decide they don't want the system anymore, the troops you so proudly and uncritically support will turn on you, because that's what they are trained to do. You can not trust this system or it's enforcers.

Canadian military flouts access to information law

If Canada’s armed forces exist to protect our democracy why does its leadership flout laws meant to protect citizens’ rights to know what the government is doing?
Recently the Ottawa Citizen’s David Pugliese reported that top military officers denied the existence of an internal report even though they were warned doing so would be illegal under the Access to Information Act, which gives individuals the right to government records for a small fee.The office of the Canadian Forces’s top legal adviser, Judge Advocate General Commodore Geneviève Bernatchez, denied the existence of an internal report highlighting problems with the court martial system. But, in reality, there were electronic and paper copies of the document.
This incident falls on the heels of a DND official telling the pre-trial hearing of Vice Admiral Mark Norman that his superiors deliberately omitted his name from documents to skirt Access to Information rules. After receiving an access request concerning Norman, the official brought it to his superior. According to the testimony, “he gives me a smile and says … ‘Don’t worry, this isn’t our first rodeo. We made sure we never used his name [in internal communications]. Send back nil return.” (Feeling the need to protect  the military witness from reprisals, the judge ordered a publication ban on their name.)
In fact, DND has repeatedly broken access laws. Informed that an officer attended a talk that Rideau Institute director Steven Staples delivered about the war in Afghanistan on January 26, 2006, Pugliese requested all CF documents mentioning public speeches in Halifax between January 15 and 30 of that year. Department officials claimed they did “a thorough and complete search” and couldn’t find any record of an officer who attended the function and wrote a report. But, the officer assigned to Staples’ speech inadvertently left a record. When the Ottawa Citizen turned it over to the information commissioner, DND finally acknowledged the record existed.
The secrecy is long-standing. In 1996 Information Commissioner John Grace pointed to a “culture within ND[national defense]/CF of secrecy and suspicion of those seeking information.” As part of its cover-up of the murderers committed by Canadian soldiers in Somalia, CF officials illegally doctored documents concerning the brutal murder of Shidane Arone. As part of an investigation into the March 1993 slayings in Somalia, CBC reporter Michael McAuliffe requested briefing notes for officers dealing with the media. DND was caught hiding documents, wildly inflating the cost of releasing them and altering files. At the 1995-97 inquiry into the killings in Somalia, Chief of Defence Staff Jean Boyle admitted the CF deliberately violated the spirit of Access rules, while a colonel and commander were convicted by a military court of altering documents requested under that legislation. Dishonoured Legacy: The Lessons of the Somalia Affair: Report of the Commission of Inquiry Into the Deployment of Canadian Forces to Somalia described DND’s “unacceptable hostility toward the goals and requirements of access to information legislation.”
The secrecy is not about security. DND can restrict information under access legislation for numerous reasons. This includes if information is deemed “injurious to the conduct of international affairs, the defence of Canada or the detection, prevention or suppression of subversive or hostile activities.”
DND also has more explicit means of bypassing access requests since the law doesn’t apply to much of the military. Since the early 2000s DND has massively expanded the special forces — Canadian Special Operations Forces Command now has nearly 3,000  personnel — partly because they are not required to divulge any information about their operations. But, noted the late Toronto Sun columnist Peter Worthington, “a secret army within the army is anathema to democracy.”
It seems the military leadership would prefer the public only learn about the Canadian Forces what they deem necessary to release, despite laws that say otherwise.
Should we trust an institution that flouts the rules of democracy to defend democracy?

Tuesday 26 February 2019

AIDING WHAT, EXACTLY ?

Anytime an imperialist government offers "aid" to an oppressed country, questions need to be asked. These things are NEVER without strings attached. The aid offered is invariably used to keep the nation receiving said "aid" dependent on the country giving it. Read about the help kkkanada is giving to Venezuela.

Canadian ‘aid’ to Venezuela part of plan to overthrow government

Canadian ‘aid’ has long accompanied war and coups designed to protect ‘Western interests’
If more people understood that “aid” often goes hand in hand with military intervention there would be less uncritical support for it.
An important, though little acknowledged, principle of Canadian ‘aid’ policy is that military intervention elicits international assistance. Or, in the case of Venezuela ‘aid’ is a tool being used to stoke military conflict.
In fact, a long-standing element of foreign policy is that wherever Canadian and US troops kill Ottawa provides ‘aid’. This military-intervention-equals-aid pattern dates back at least to the 1950-53 Korean War when the south of that country was a major recipient of Canadian assistance. Canadian ‘aid’ flowed  to south Vietnam during the U.S. war there and to Grenada after the 1983 US invasion. During the 1990-91 Iraq war Canada provided $75 million in assistance to people in countries affected by the Gulf crisis. Hundreds of millions of dollars flowed into Haiti after Canadian troops helped overthrow the country’s elected government in 2004. In the years after the invasions, Afghanistan, Iraq and Haiti were the top three recipients of Canadian ‘aid’. A sizable proportion of the $2 billion in ‘aid’ Canada spent in Afghanistan was a public relations exercise to justify the war.
The intervention-equals-aid pattern is an outgrowth of the primary objective of Canadian overseas assistance, which is to advance Western interests, particularly keeping the Global South tied to the US-led geopolitical order (as articulated  in 1950 when Ottawa began its first significant non-European allocation of foreign aid through the Colombo Plan).
Justin Trudeau announced Canada would deliver $53 million in ‘aid’ to Venezuelans at the most recent “Lima Group” meeting. The Ottawa gathering also called on the Venezuelan military to oust  the elected president and urged the military not to impede humanitarian assistance from entering the country. The US and self-appointed interim president Juan Guaidó have made delivering ‘aid’ central to their campaign to oust Maduro. US military planes have transported hundreds of tons of ‘aid’ to the Colombian border City of Cucuta. To test the military’s loyalty to the government, Guaidó announced plans to force ‘aid’ into the country.The US and Colombia clearly aimed exploit this moment to intervene.
Billionaire Branson’s concert drew a much smaller crowd than the 300,000 predicted.
Whether it reaches the point of armed confrontation, the ‘aid’ gambit is a public relations strategy. The aim is to exaggerate the scope of the economic downturn and to portray Nicolas Maduro as indifferent to the population’s (real) hardships.The public relations campaign even included a “Live Aid” style Venezuela fundraiser put on by billionaire Richard Branson in Cucuta last night before Guaido said he will seek to force ‘aid’ into the country. The concert fizzled with only about 5,000 people showing up and some artists pulling out at the last minute.
For their part, the International Red Cross and UN have refused to participate in the US led ‘aid’ endeavor. A UN spokesperson called Washington’s ‘aid’ plan “politicised”.
The politics driving the ‘aid’ deployment is obvious, but some progressives have been seduced by the label. In an internal memo responding to media backlash over their principled criticism of Ottawa’s regime change efforts in Venezuela, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) said it supports the federal government’s decision to increase humanitarian assistance to Venezuelans. But, the slow-moving coup attempt and Canadian ‘aid’ disbursements can’t be separated. They are simply different parts of a single plan.
It’s not uncommon for progressive organizations to support ‘imperial aid’ as a way to soften their criticism of international policies. At their 2006 convention, for instance, the NDP leadership sought to temper the “troops out” of Afghanistan demand pushed by activists by including language in the resolution that called for “support[ing] the continuation of development assistance to Afghanistan.” But, the ‘aid’ there was obviously designed to support Canada’s military occupation.
In the academic literature it’s understood that the Canadian International Development Agency was “not a policy maker, but a policy taker.” The dissolution of CIDA into Global Affairs Canada in 2013 further subordinated aid policy to foreign policy objectives.
Far and away the largest contribution announced, Canada’s humanitarian assistance to Venezuela is not designed to alleviate suffering. Its aim is to overthrow the government, which may spark and/or require war. If that disastrous situation develops, we need to add the ‘aid-leading-to-military intervention principle’ to our critical foreign policy lexicon

Monday 25 February 2019

NO DIFFERENCE

All of the hype about trying to " bring democracy and freedom " to Venezuela is complete and utter garbage. No, I won't call it "fake news " as fuckface trump would label anything written against him, but these are outright fucking lies. The amerikkkans sanction starve and steal from Venezuela, and then accuse their government of doing just that because they won't bow down to imperialist demands. Don't forget, the government of kkkanada is on board with this mafia type shit also. Fuck 'em both.

Venezuela: Escalated War Threats and U.S. “Aid” as Weapon

U.S. Media and Democrats Obediently Line Up with Fascist Trump/Pence Regime on Regime Change in Venezuela

 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

This weekend there’s been a drumbeat of coverage of the clashes on Venezuela’s borders with Columbia and Brazil. According to the U.S. media’s storyline and talking points from the fascist Trump/Pence regime, all trumpeted by major Democrat leaders: Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro has been starving his people, and now, outrageously, he’s refusing to allow humanitarian aid—generously provided by the U.S. and its allies—into Venezuela. So everyone should get behind the righteous U.S.-backed effort to remove Maduro and install U.S.-backed Juan Guaidó,1 who represents “democracy” and the interests of the Venezuelan people.
The REALITY: The U.S. imperialists have been starving the Venezuelan people for the last two years with crippling economic sanctions. They’ve seized billions of Venezuela’s own funds, preventing its government from buying needed food and medicine. Outside the public view, the U.S. rulers talk to each other bluntly of accelerating Venezuela’s “collapse” even if innocent people die of hunger and disease. Trump is threatening Venezuelan military leaders with death if they don’t bow down to his demands.

“We Had to Starve the Venezuelan People to Save Them”

During the Vietnam War, a U.S. military commander infamously uttered some truth about America’s mass slaughters there when he remarked after the battle of Bến Tre, “We had to destroy the village to save it.”
Now, as the rulers discuss strategy among themselves, one top official admits the U.S. is applying this same criminal logic to Venezuela.
Former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela William Brownfield is pushing for even harsher U.S. sanctions on Venezuela, saying “perhaps the best solution would be to accelerate the collapse” of Venezuela. He acknowledges that this will kill innocent people, increase malnutrition, and bring “fairly severe punishment” for “millions and millions” of Venezuelans “who are already having great difficulty finding enough to eat, getting themselves cured when they get sick, or finding clothes to put on their children before they go to off to school.” But according to Brownfield, “the desired outcome [of installing a pro-U.S. regime] justifies this fairly severe punishment.”
Bloomberg News sums up the cynical U.S. strategy: “U.S. sanctions on the oil industry, Venezuela’s only real source of hard currency, threaten further suffering in a nation wracked by hyperinflation and hunger. The sanctions are part of a two-pronged approach by Guaidó and his U.S. supporters—strip Maduro of cash to buy even the scraps of food he’s been distributing to citizens, then ride to the rescue with critical supplies of their own.”
This amounts to holding a whole nation hostage and driving millions into hunger, starvation, misery or death caused by the lack of life-saving medication to further U.S. imperialist objectives. This is nothing less than mass murder and a crime against humanity!
None of this is about humanitarian aid or bringing “democracy” or liberation to the Venezuelan people! It’s about the U.S. provoking and acting on a crisis to seize greater control over the people and wealth of Venezuela, an oppressed country of 30 million people, while blocking rival powers Russia and China from doing so. This is brutal U.S. imperialism, and if successful it will greatly intensify the oppression and suffering of the Venezuelan people!

What Lies at the Root of Venezuela’s Crisis and Suffering? U.S. Imperialism

Who and what are really responsible for this crisis and the terrible suffering of the Venezuelan people? It starts with the hemisphere’s dominant power, the United States.
As Bob Avakian incisively points out in BAsics 1:3:
The essence of what exists in the U.S. is not democracy but capitalism-imperialism and political structures to enforce that capitalism-imperialism. What the U.S. spreads around the world is not democracy, but imperialism and political structures to enforce that imperialism.
This has meant that for over 200 years, the U.S. capitalists, now capitalist-imperialists, have considered Latin America their “backyard” to dominate and exploit. They have intervened literally scores of times over these centuries, carried out dozens of coups, and plundered Mexico and Central and South America for its oil, its gold, its rich agriculture and its human labor (see the revcom.us American Crime series). This has been driven by capitalism-imperialism’s expand or die compulsion to extract profit and dominate whole swaths of the globe in ruthless competition with other powers.
The U.S. does not consider the Maduro regime and its predecessor, the regime of Hugo Chávez, as sufficiently compliant with U.S. interests as expected of “backyard” neighbors.2
Despite the denunciations of Trump and the claims of Maduro, Venezuela is not and has never been a genuine socialist state. In fact, in a number of Latin American countries, sections of the national ruling classes have adopted the label of “socialist” to pursue programs of resistance to some elements of U.S. imperialism, in order to cut a better deal within the imperialist system as a whole. They combine this with social welfare programs popular among the masses and call it “socialism,” but it has nothing in common with genuine revolutionary socialism which aims to break out of imperialist relations as part of fighting for a communist world WITHOUT such oppression.
In Venezuela, former President Hugo Chávez and now Maduro have funded their social welfare programs through profits from selling the country’s oil through the world capitalist market. Together with this, Chávez initiated, and Maduro continued, a process of fostering the allegiance of the military to their regime. While not under direct U.S. domination, this arrangement has left Venezuela firmly locked within the framework of the global capitalist system—and subject to its anarchic workings and economic blackmail and warfare by imperialist powers like the U.S.3
Since Venezuela is dependent on oil sales to buy food, medicines, and other needed goods, when global oil prices dropped in 2014, Venezuela and its people were hit hard, with prices rising and shortages of basic items, like medicine and food, growing more common. The U.S. seized on this crisis to move against the Maduro regime with punishing sanctions which greatly increased the suffering of the Venezuelan people while aiming to cleave significant sections of the military away from the regime. Trump’s threats to the Venezuelan military should be seen in this light.4
As part of this, the U.S. is refusing to give Venezuela access to over $2 billionin assets it holds in the U.S. and Britain, and the U.S. has deprived it of tens of billions in oil sales. In contrast, the much-vaunted “aid” at the center of this controversy is in the scale of $20 million, over 500 times less than what the U.S. is withholding in sanctions.

Pelosi and Democrats Join Coup Chorus

As the Trump/Pence regime starves and openly threatens Venezuela, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats joined right along in the imperialist coup chorus.
On January 24, Pelosi tweeted: “America stands by the people of Venezuela as they rise up against authoritarian rule and demand respect for human rights and democracy.” Pelosi echoed Trump, denouncing “Nicolás Maduro’s regime of repression and impoverishment” while demanding his “decision to block bridges and cut off channels of food and supplies ... must be immediately reversed.”
This is another illustration of the fact that the Democrats and the Republicans both represent U.S. capitalism-imperialism, and both have been responsible for and carried out mass murder, coups, military interventions, and plunder in Latin America and the rest of the world as this chart makes clear. Their differences aren’t over whether or not to exploit and dominate—they’re over the most effective ways to exploit and control!
As we go to press, Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris join this chorus.

STOP Wars of Empire, Armies of Occupation, and Crimes Against Humanity!

After the pro-U.S. opposition failed to break the Venezuelan government’s border blockade on Saturday, February 23, Guaidó called for the U.S. and its allies to keep “all options open” in their campaign to remove Maduro. On Monday, Vice President Pence will fly to Bogota, Colombia, for an emergency meeting with Guaidó and some Latin American officials. All this raises the specter of further escalation of U.S. aggression against Venezuela, perhaps direct military intervention.
Everyone with an ounce of principled concern for humanity and the truth should be screaming with outage!
Wars of empire are inherent and built into the functioning of this system of capitalism-imperialism as long as it exists, and what is needed is an ACTUAL revolution. (See video clip from Bob Avakian, “The Five Stops—Why this System Can’t Be Reformed.” The interests of the people lie in vigorously opposing the imperialist wars of empire and standing with the great mass of humanity, as part of bringing forward a movement FOR revolution, to overthrow this system and embark on the road of overcoming all relations of exploitation and oppression, and all the destructive antagonisms among people, all over the world.5


1. Juan Guaidó was elected to Venezuela’s National Assembly, which has been its main legislative body, in 2015, and then chosen to lead the National Assembly in December 2018. On January 23, 2019, after directly consulting with the Trump/Pence regime, Guaidó declared that President Nicolás Maduro—who had been re-elected in May 2018—was illegitimate and that he (Guaidó) was Venezuela’s legitimate interim president. (Wall Street Journal, January 25, 2019) Guaidó’s declaration was immediately recognized by the U.S. and a number of its global and Latin American allies.  [back]
2. Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton said in a late January interview on Fox Business: “It’ll make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela”  [back]
3. See “Hugo Chávez Has an Oil Strategy... But Can This Lead to Liberation?” by Raymond Lotta, revcom.us, July 1, 2007  [back]
4. For instance, the U.S. blocked Venezuela from financing its debt (as most countries do) or selling its oil in the U.S.  [back]
5. See the strategy for this revolution in HOW WE CAN WIN—HOW We Can Really Make Revolution.  [back]

Sunday 24 February 2019

FANFUCKINGTASTIC

We just played a show with Class Of 1984 and Automatic Chaos. Jake from C.O. 1984 put it on, and it was a raging success. Great turnout, great people , high energy and an overall positivity made it  terrific. I will remember this one for a long time to come.
  Thanks to everyone who came out, and to Jake for making it happen.
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Saturday 23 February 2019

BEHIND THE SMILE

Behind trudeau's shallow hollywood smile lurks the mindset and attitude of an imperialist bully, in full collusion with everything trump wants to and will do. This is the reality.


Step aside USA, Canada is the new bully in our South American ‘backyard’

Is this the new face of the Ugly Canadian?
Photo by G20 Argentina
Many Canadians are familiar with the Monroe Doctrine. First issued by the United States in 1823, it warned European powers against renewed colonization of the Western Hemisphere. Presented as anti-imperialist, the Monroe Doctrine was later used to justify US interference in regional affairs.
We may be seeing the development of a Canadian equivalent. The ‘Trudeau Doctrine’ claims to support a “rules-based order”, the “constitution” and regional diplomacy independent of the US. But, history is likely to judge the rhetoric of the Trudeau Doctrine as little more than a mask for aggressive interference in the affairs of a sovereign nation.
For two years Canada’s Prime Minister has been conspiring with Juan Guaidó’s hardline Voluntad Popular party to oust the government of Nicolas Maduro. In May 2017 Trudeau met Lilian Tintori, wife of Voluntad Popular leader Leopoldo López. The Guardian recently reported on Tintori’s role in building international support for the slow-motion coup attempt currently underway in Venezuela. Tintori acted as an emissary for Lopez who couldn’t travel to Ottawa because he was convicted of inciting violence during the “guarimbas” protests in 2014. According to a series of reports, Lopez is the key Venezuelan organizer of the plan to anoint Guaidó interim president. Canadian diplomats spent “months”, reports the Canadian Press, coordinating the plan with the hard-line opposition. In a story titled “Anti-Maduro coalition grew from secret talks”, the Associated Press reported on Canada’s “key role” in building international diplomatic support for claiming the head of the national assembly was president. This included Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland speaking to Guaidó “the night before Maduro’s swearing-in ceremony to offer her government’s support should he confront the socialist leader.”
Just before the recent Lima Group meeting in Ottawa Trudeau spoke with Guaidó and at the meeting of countries opposed to Venezuela’s president he announced that Canada officially recognized Guaido’s representative to Canada, Orlando Viera Blanco, as ambassador. The PM has called the leaders of France, Spain, Paraguay, Ireland, Colombia and Italy as well as the International Monetary Fund and European Union to convince them to join Canada’s campaign against Venezuela. “The international community must immediately unite behind the interim president”, Trudeau declared at the opening of the Lima Group meeting in Ottawa.
At the UN General Assembly in September Canada announced it (with five South American nations) would ask the International Criminal Court to investigate the Venezuelan government, which is the first time a government has been formally brought before the tribunal by another member. Trudeau portrayed this move as a challenge to the Trump administration’s hostility to the court and described the ICC as a “useful and important way of promoting an international rules-based order.” In other words, Trudeau would challenge Washington by showing Trump how the “international rules-based” ICC could undermine a government the US was seeking to overthrow through unilateral sanctions, support for the opposition and threatening an invasion, which all contravene the UN Charter.
While Trudeau claims to support an “international rules-based order”, his government has adopted three rounds of illegal sanctions against Venezuela. It has also openly interfered in the country’s affairs, which violates the UN and OAS charters.
The Trudeau Doctrine emphasizes its interpretation of Venezuela’s constitution. On a whole series of platforms the Prime Minister has cited “the need to respect the Venezuelan Constitution”, even responding to someone who yelled “hands off Venezuela” at a town hall by lecturing the audience on article 233 of the Venezuelan constitution, which he claims makes the head of the National Assembly president. It doesn’t.
More fundamental to the Trudeau Doctrine is the mirage of a regional coalition independent of the regional hegemon – the United States.
Ottawa founded the anti-Maduro Lima Group coalition with Peru. Amidst discussions between the two countries foreign ministers in Spring 2017, Trudeau called his Peruvian counterpart, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, to “‎stress the need for dialogue and respect for the democratic rights of Venezuelan citizens, as enshrined in the charter of the Organization of American States and the Inter-American Democratic Charter.” But the Lima Group was established as a structure outside of the OAS largely because that organization’s members refused to back Washington and Ottawa’s bid to interfere in Venezuelan affairs, which they believe defy the OAS’ charter.
While many liberal Canadian commentators promote the idea that the Lima Group operates independently of Washington, their US counterparts are not deceived. In a story titled “Intervening Against Venezuela’s Strongman, Trump Belies ‘America First’” the New York Times described US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s influence over the Lima Group declaration of January 4 that rejected Maduro’s presidency. The paper reported that Pompeo is in “close contact with” Freeland “who has played a leading role in rallying global criticism of Mr. Maduro.”
The claim the Lima Group is independent of Washington conjures up a story Jean Chrétien recounts telling US President Bill Clinton in My Years as Prime Minister: “Keeping some distance will be good for both of us. If we look as though we’re the fifty-first state of the United States, there’s nothing we can do for you internationally, just as the governor of a state can’t do anything for you internationally. But if we look independent enough, we can do things for you that even the CIA cannot do.”
While currently focused on Venezuela, the nascent Trudeau Doctrine has wider regional implications. Freeland has justified Canada’s aggressive interference in Venezuela’s affairs by saying “this is our neighbourhood” while Trudeau’s personal representative for the G7 Summits and recent appointee to the Senate, Peter Boehm told CBC, “this is our backyard, the Western hemisphere. We have a role here.”
Describing Latin America as “our backyard” is the language favoured by so-called Ugly American politicians seeking to assert the Monroe Doctrine. Latin Americans should beware of the emergence of Ugly Canadians promoting the Trudeau Doctrine.
On February 23 protests are planned in Canada and around the world calling for “No War on Venezuela!”

Friday 22 February 2019

WHAT THEY'RE KEEPING FROM YOU

There are many things the western murderous powers are not telling you about what they are doing to Venezuela . It is fucking criminal, and they want you to repeat their lies without any thought or attempt at independent investigation of your own. And most people will go along with the program  blindly and stupidly.

An Open Letter to the People of the United States from President Nicolas Maduro

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A Note to Global Research Readers
“Disinformation by Omission”: Not a single Western mainstream media has published, quoted or commented on President Nicolas Maduro’s Open Letter to the People of the United States (see Google search).
This letter is addressed to the People of America. Please forward this text far and wide, across the land.
Americans can then make up their mind. Am I in favor or against the Trump administration’s resolve to intervene militarily against Venezuela?
Forward. Make it Go Viral.
Feb. 10, 2019
***
If I know anything, it is about people, such as you, I am a man of the people. I was born and raised in a poor neighborhood of Caracas. I forged myself in the heat of popular and union struggles in a Venezuela submerged in exclusion and inequality.
I am not a tycoon, I am a worker of reason and heart, today I have the great privilege of presiding over the new Venezuela, rooted in a model of inclusive development and social equality, which was forged by Commander Hugo Chávez since 1998 inspired by the Bolivarian legacy.
We live today a historical trance. There are days that will define the future of our countries between war and peace. Your national representatives of Washington want to bring to their borders the same hatred that they planted in Vietnam. They want to invade and intervene in Venezuela – they say, as they said then – in the name of democracy and freedom. But it’s not like that. The history of the usurpation of power in Venezuela is as false as the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It is a false case, but it can have dramatic consequences for our entire region.
Venezuela is a country that, by virtue of its 1999 Constitution, has broadly expanded the participatory and protagonist democracy of the people, and that is unprecedented today, as one of the countries with the largest number of electoral processes in its last 20 years. You might not like our ideology, or our appearance, but we exist and we are millions.
I address these words to the people of the United States of America to warn of the gravity and danger that intend some sectors in the White House to invade Venezuela with unpredictable consequences for my country and for the entire American region. President Donald Trump also intends to disturb noble dialogue initiatives promoted by Uruguay and Mexico with the support of CARICOM for a peaceful solution and dialogue in favour of Venezuela. We know that for the good of Venezuela we have to sit down and talk, because to refuse to dialogue is to choose strength as a way. Keep in mind the words of John F. Kennedy: “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate”.
Are those who do not want to dialogue afraid of the truth?
The political intolerance towards the Venezuelan Bolivarian model and the desires for our immense oil resources, minerals and other great riches, has prompted an international coalition headed by the US government to commit the serious insanity of militarily attacking Venezuela under the false excuse of a non-existent humanitarian crisis.
The people of Venezuela have suffered painfully social wounds caused by a criminal commercial and financial blockade, which has been aggravated by the dispossession and robbery of our financial resources and assets in countries aligned with this demented onslaught.
And yet, thanks to a new system of social protection, of direct attention to the most vulnerable sectors, we proudly continue to be a country with a high human development index and low inequality in the Americas.
The American people must know that this complex multiform aggression is carried out with total impunity and in clear violation of the Charter of the United Nations, which expressly outlaws the threat or use of force, among other principles and purposes for the sake of peace and the friendly relations between Nations.
We want to continue being business partners of the people of the United States, as we have been throughout our history. Their politicians in Washington, on the other hand, are willing to send their sons and daughters to die in an absurd war, instead of respecting the sacred right of the Venezuelan people to self-determination and safeguarding their sovereignty.
Like you, people of the United States, we Venezuelans are patriots. And we shall defend our homeland with all the pieces of our soul.
Today Venezuela is united in a single clamor: we demand the cessation of the aggression that seeks to suffocate our economy and socially suffocate our people, as well as the cessation of the serious and dangerous threats of military intervention against Venezuela.
We appeal to the good soul of American society, victim of its own leaders, to join our call for peace, let us be all one people against warmongering and war.
Long live the peoples of America!

Nicolás Maduro
President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
*
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