[P2P-F] Fwd: Tom Hayden on Venezuela

Fri Feb 28 04:27:06 CET 2014

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Tikkun/NSP <info at spiritualprogressives.org>
Date: Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 8:14 PM
Subject: Tom Hayden on Venezuela
To: Michelsub2004 at gmail.com

     <http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=mcLLNEBS7jjWrl9tSKreWz%2FtKduJzb4r>

My comrade from the 1960s Tom Hayden has an important perspective on the
current conflict in Venezuela that you won't get from NPR or most of the
media, much less from the politicos who every day send you emails begging
for your money. We at the NSP support an extension of democracy both to
countries around the world and also to us in the U.S.--please read our
"money out of politics" plan called the ESRA Environmental and Social
Responsibility Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Until it has mass
support in this country, there is no stopping US corporations and the super
wealthy from getting their way both here in the US and around the world.
www.tikkun.org/ESRA<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=TCOcBSn5%2F6iPILfw371UiD%2FtKduJzb4r>.--Rabbi
Michael Lerner   RabbiLerner.Tikkun at gmail.com

Tom Hayden discussing the crisis in Venezuela, February 25, 2014.

It's difficult to grasp the facts behind the murky fog of Venezuelan
crisis. Based more or less on intuitions, but also credible documents, some
blame most of the crisis on the CIA. Some national security types,
abhorring populism, claim that the Venezuela state is consolidating
dictatorial power precisely by winning so many elections! Others, while
friendly to Venezuela, blame the Caracas government for failing to address
the problems of violent crime and economic malaise.

President Barack Obama may or may not know what various US operatives are
doing. We have seen evidence of a "state within the state" before, going
back as far as the CIA's operations against Cuba. In Obama's time, the
president correctly named the 2009 coup in Honduras a "coup", and then
seemed powerless to prevent it. At his first Summit of the Americas, a
friendly Obama shook the hand of Hugo Chavez before Obama's top adviser
tried to sabotage the warming of relations.

Call me naive, but I do not believe President Obama wants to see President
Maduro overthrown. Chaos would follow. The US would be blamed. Relations
with Latin America would freeze below zero. The president probably thinks
Maduro should thrash in his own domestic contradictions.

But there's another US "government", a secret network that works tirelessly
to undermine any Latin American threat to the dominance of American capital
and military power. They understand that the president must be provided
with "plausible deniability", and so they keep Obama out of the loop.
Sometimes they operate through the CIA, sometimes under
Republican-Democratic "democracy promotion" programs, sometimes through
third parties such as the Florida-based FTI Consulting. Democratic Party
political consultants and pollsters have worked for Venezuela's opposition.
It's difficult even for a president to keep a grip on it all. And that
being the case, transparency disappears for the US Congress and public.

 Obama's public statements this week certainly gave moral support to the
street demonstrations. While also including a vague call for "dialogue",
Obama is playing with fire. Obama immediately needs to rein in the entire
entourage of US-supported agents of destabilization and issue them a clear
cease-and-desist order, or he and the US government will be blamed for what
may happen in the weeks ahead. He needs request and support whatever
consensus emerges this week from the region's elected governments and the
United Nations.

The American Congress and public are becoming used to street protests
overthrowing elected governments regardless of the issue of national
sovereignty. "Humanitarian intervention" in the affairs of other nations
means willfully ignoring sovereignty where egregious human rights abuses
are at stake and no negotiations are possible. The argument is somewhat
attractive up to the point where it revives the Law of the Jungle. In the
case of Venezuela, not only sovereignty but representative democracy are at
stake, in a region which only recently began to shed the US-supported rule
of oligarchs and generals.

The forgotten facts amidst the mounting frenzy is that President Maduro won
the April 2013 Venezuelan election by slightly under two percent, and his
alliance were victors by ten percent in last December's nationwide
municipal elections.

The losers of those Venezuelan elections have turned into Leninists of the
Right, seeking to create a counter-revolutionary situation in which the
government apparatus crumbles and they seize power. The leaders want
martyrs in the streets. In their apocalyptic view, a coup in Venezuela
would spiral swiftly into the collapse of the oil-dependent Bolivian,
Ecuadoran and Nicaraguan governments, and be a deathblow to Cuba.

If this frightening vision fails, the anti-Maduro forces will regroup and
resume their strategy of destabilization on a permanent basis, a virtual
civil war in the guise of a political conflict, in hopes that a segment of
Maduro's present voting bloc - estimated at fifty to 56 percent - switches
sides in a future election out of simple desire for "normalcy".

The peace and justice movement in the US, along with Congressional allies,
have a potentially-important role in pressuring Obama, and secretaries
Kerry and Hegel, to rein in the agents of America's dirty wars. A
Congressional coalition led by the Miami Cuba Lobby is already agitating
for Maduro's demise. Where are the Congressional progressives? Despite
frequent denials by US officials, for example, the State Department's
own Inspector
General<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=ga8vXeINNrOGLcaL5D0X1XadjCmem9nT>
found
that the Pentagon and US "democracy programs" supported individuals and
groups "actively involved in the brief ouster of the Chavez government" in
the 2002 coup attempt.

You can read more of Tom Hayden's smart commentaries in the Peace Exchange
Bulletin at TomHayden.com
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