Former UK Ambassador Craig Murray
Explains Venezuela
In Venezuela a Washington stooge,
Juan Guaidó, who has never been a candidate in any election for president has
declared himself president of Venezuela and has sworn himself in with the
support of the US government and the CIA controlled countries of Latin America.
So far the Venezuelan military has stood by the elected president Maduro, but
Washington is busy at work buying up the Venezuelan military.
The Coup in Venezuela Must Be
Resisted
Amb. Craig Murray
Venezuela has elections. Juan Guaidó
has never even been a Presidential candidate. Despite massive CIA opposition
funding and interference over years as Big Oil tries to regain control of the
World’s largest oil reserves, Nicolas Maduro was democratically re-elected in
2018 as President of Venezuela.
The coup now under way is illegitimate.
I opposed Maduro’s move to replace the elected National Assembly. Sometimes I
read back things I wrote in the past and decide I was wrong. Sometimes I think
the article was right, but a bit of a potboiler. Occasionally I am proud, and I
am proud of my analysis on Venezuela written on 3 August 2017. I believe it is
still valid.
Hugo Chavez’ revolutionary politics
were founded on two very simple tenets:
1) People ought not to be starving in dreadful slums in the world’s most oil rich state
2) The CIA ought not to control Venezuela
1) People ought not to be starving in dreadful slums in the world’s most oil rich state
2) The CIA ought not to control Venezuela
Over the years, Chavez racked up real
achievements in improving living standards for the poor and in providing health
and education facilities. He was widely popular and both he and his successor,
Nicolas Maduro, also racked up very genuine election victories. Maduro remains
the democratically elected President.
But the dream went sour. In
particular it fell foul of the tendency of centrally planned economies to fail
to get the commodities people want onto shop shelves, and to the corruption
that goes with centralisation. The latter was certainly not worse than the
right wing corruption it replaced, but that does not diminish its existence.
Every revolution will always displace
an existing elite who are by definition the best educated and most articulate
section of the population, with most access to resources including media – and
to CIA secret backing, which has continued throughout at an increasing rate.
Chavez did not solve this problem in the way Robespierre, Stalin, Trotsky or
Mao would have done. He embraced democracy, let them be – and largely left
their private offshore billions, and thus their power, untouched.
Inevitably the day came when economic
and administrative failings cracked the solidity of support from the poor for
the revolution. The right then stepped up their opposition with a campaign led
by corrupt billionaires, which the western media has failed to acknowledge has
been throughout murderously violent.
The problem with revolutionary
millenarianism is that its failure to achieve utopia is viewed as disaster by
its proponents. Maduro ought to have accepted that it is the nature of life
that political tides ebb and flow, ceded power to the opposition gains in
parliament, maintained the principles of democracy, and waited for the tide to
turn back his way – taking the risk that the CIA might not give him the chance.
Instead he has resorted to a constitutional fix which dilutes democracy, a
precedent which will delight the right who in the long term have most to fear
from the populace. Given the extreme violence of the opposition, I am less
inclined to view arrests as unquestionably a straightforward human rights
matter, than are some pro-western alleged human rights groups. But that Maduro
has stepped off the democratic path I fear is true. He has, bluntly, gone
wrong, however difficult the circumstances. I condemn both the departures from
human rights best practice and the attempt to use a part indirectly elected
body to subvert the elected parliament.
But, even today, Venezuela is still
vastly more of a democracy than Saudi Arabia, and a far greater respecter of
human rights than Israel in its dreadful repression of the Palestinians. Yet
support for Israel and for Saudi Arabia are keystones of the foreign policy of
those who today are incessant in their demands that we on the “left” condemn
Venezuela. The BBC has given massively more news coverage to human rights abuse
in Venezuela this last month than in a score of much worse countries I could
name – than a score put together.
Human rights abuse should be
condemned everywhere. But it only hits the headlines when practised by a
country which is on the wrong side of the neo-con agenda.
Anybody who believes that a country’s internal democracy is the determining factor in whether the West decides to move for violent regime change in that country, is a complete idiot. Any journalist or politician who makes that claim is more likely to be a complete charlatan than a complete idiot. In recent years, possession of hydrocarbon reserves is very obviously a major factor in western regime change actions.
Anybody who believes that a country’s internal democracy is the determining factor in whether the West decides to move for violent regime change in that country, is a complete idiot. Any journalist or politician who makes that claim is more likely to be a complete charlatan than a complete idiot. In recent years, possession of hydrocarbon reserves is very obviously a major factor in western regime change actions.
In Latin America over the last
century, the presence of internal democracy has been much more likely to lead
to external regime change than its absence, as maintenance of US imperialist
hegemony has been the defining factor. That combines with oil reserves to make
the current move a double whammy.
It is disheartening to see the
Western “democracies” so universally supporting the coup in Venezuela. The EU
in particular has leapt in to support Donald Trump in the quite ludicrous act
of recognising corrupt Big Oil puppet Guaido as “President”. The change of the
EU into full neo-con mode -so starkly represented in its bold support for
Francoist violence in Catalonia – is what led me to reconcile with Brexit and a
Norway style relationship.
When I was in the FCO, the rule on
recognition was very plain and very openly stated – the UK recognised the
government which had “effective control of the territory”, whatever the
attributes of that government. This is a very well established principle of
international law. There were very rare exceptions involving continuing to
support ousted governments. The pre-1939 Polish government in exile was the
most obvious example, though once Nazism was defeated Britain moved to
recognise the Communist government actually in charge, to the fury of exiled
Poles. I was involved in the question of the continued recognition of President
Kabbah of Sierra Leone during the period in which he was ousted by military
coup.
But I can think of no precedent at
all for recognising a President who does not have and has never had control of
the country – and has never been a candidate for President. This idea of the
West simply trying to impose a suitably corrupt and biddable leader is really a
very startling development. It is astonishing the MSM commentariat and
political class appear to see no problem with it. It is a quite extraordinary
precedent, and doubtless will lead to many new imperialist adventures.
One final thought. The right wing
Government of Ecuador has been one of the first and most vocal in doing the
West’s bidding. The Ecuadorean government has been colluding with the United
States over the efforts to imprison Julian Assange, and at this very time has
arranged for FBI and CIA personnel in Quito to take false and malicious
statements manufactured by the Ecuador government in collaboration with the
CIA, about Julian Assange’s activities in the Embassy in London.
Ecuadorean government documents had
already been produced out of Quito, and shown to MI6 and CIA outlets like the
Guardian and New York Times, purporting to show the diplomatic appointment of
Julian Assange to Moscow in December 2017. I have believed throughout that
these fake documents were most likely produced by Ecuador’s new CIA influenced
government itself.
Today Ecuador, once a key part of the
Bolivarian revolution, is simply a puppet of the CIA, voicing support for a US
coup in Venezuela and working to produce fake testimony against Assange. I warn
you firmly against giving credence to Luke Harding’s next “scoop” which will
doubtless shortly emerge from this process. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/11/assange-never-met-manafort-luke-harding-and-the-guardian-publish-still-more-blatant-mi6-lies/
The
Vultures of Caracas
Amb. Craig Murray
We are frequently told that people in
Venezuela have no food, clothing or toilet paper, and that popular discontent
with the left wing government is driven by real hunger. There are elements of
truth in this story, though the causes of economic dislocation are far more
complex than the media would have us believe.
But I ask you to look at this photo
of supporters of CIA poster-boy, the West’s puppet unelected “President” Juan
Guaido, taken at a Guaido rally in Caracas two days ago and published yesterday
in security services house journal The Guardian. Please take a really close
look at the photo. Blow it up as big as you can. Scan individual people in the
crowd, one by one. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/category/uncategorized/
These are not the poor and most
certainly not the starving. As it chances I have a great deal of life
experience working amongst seriously deprived, hungry and despairing people. I
know the gaunt face of want and the desperate glance of need. Look at these
Guaido supporters, one by one by one. This designer spectacled, well-coiffed,
elegantly dressed, sleekly jowled group does not know hunger. This group does
not know want. This is a proper right wing gathering, a gathering of the nicely
off section of society. This is a group of those who have corruptly been
siphoning Venezuela’s great wealth for decades and who want to make sure the
gravy train flows properly in their direction again. It is, in short, a group
of exactly the kind of people you would expect to support a CIA coup.
Those manicured hands raised in the
air will never throw rocks, or get involved in violence unless against a
peasant strapped to a chair for them. It is not this crowd which will suffer as
public disorder is manipulated and directed by the CIA. These wealthy ones are
immune, just as Davos serves as nothing but an annual reminder of how very
poorly God aims avalanches.
There is real suffering in Venezuela.
The CIA is working hard to stoke violence, and the genuine poor will soon start
to die, both in those egged on to riot and in the security services. But do not
get taken in by the complete nonsense that this is a popular, democratic
revolution. It is not. It is yet another barefaced CIA regime change coup.
UPDATE Such wisdom as this blog finds
is often crowd-source, and with thanks to a commenter below here is some useful
information from Jill Stein:
Elliott Abrams appointed by Trump to
oversee the US coup against Venezuela “backed death squads in Latin America
that murdered 1000s for right-wing dictators, lied to congress to cover up
treasonous Iran-Contra affair, led 2002 US coup attemmpt in Venezuela. Still
think this is about democracy & human rights?”
Elliott Abrams was Assistant
Secretary of State for Human Rights and Assistant Secretary of State for
Inter-American Affairs in the Reagan administration. He was convicted of misleading
Congress about the Iran-Contra affair but was pardoned by President George H.W.
Bush.
In the George W. Bush regime Abrams
was Deputy National Security Advisor for Global Democracy Strategy. Trump has
now returned Abrams to the scene of his crimes. “Global Democracy Strategy” is
the euphemism for US hegemony. It means the overthrow of governments that stand
in the way of US interests whether private or government.
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