People’s victory

Since 2015, when US President Obama issued a decree declaring Venezuela “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security of the United States”, the White House launched a series of ilegal economic sanctions making it the 5th most sanctioned nation in the world, according to the International Criminal Court. These unilateral coersive measures are demonstrably illegal under international law. The illegal sanctions were accompanied by paramilitary attacks carried out by Washington’s instrument, Colombia.

Despite all this, the Venezuelan people have stood firm in their resolve to defend their Constitution and sovereignty in face of these extreme attacks, that destroyed its currency and almost wiped out its economy. Instead of overthrowing the government of President Maduro, as the sanctions were intended to do, they brought the nation together in the face of a hostile foreign nation and its lackeys.

The price that Venzuelans have had to pay for refusing to be colonized, oppressed, and dictated to about how to govern themselves has been severe.

First and foremost, they paid with their lives. The illegal sanctions of Washington have directly caused the death of more than 100,000 Venezuelans. The sanctions kill just like a regular war, except that soldiers are not the victims, but the ordinary citizens and worse, the most vulnerable of them, those that need medicines and food the most. Therefore, with these ilegal sanctions the USA has committed a crime against humanity.

United Nations experts on sanctions estimated that the Venezuelan government lost 99 percent of its revenue due to the unilateral coercive measures of the US, Canada, and Europe.

The illegal sanctions have preventing the nation the use the international banking system to buy food or medicines, even during a pandemic. The sanctions have allowed full scale looting of Venezuelan assets: 50 US and European banks have stolen $25 billion of its accounts. The Bank of England has appropriated 31 tons of Venezuelan gold bulllion in its vaults, with a value over 1.6 billion euros. The US stole the Venezuelan oil Company CITGO and its assets and handed its monies to a fake opposition.

Economic losses to the Venzuelan economy amount to $258 billion, enough to buy food and medicine for the entire country for 60 years. The currency (the bolivar) was attacked by manipulating the illegal black market that became a marker of domestic prices, creating a hyperinflation of unheard proportions. With the help of Colombia, a series of paramilitary attacks have been repelled, not just along the border, but even in the capital. Sabotage to the petroleum installations and electicity grid have been constant, including a cyberattack on the electicity system that left the country without electricity for 5 terrifying days. US mercenaries invaded, intent on killing President Maduro in order to get $2 million, the price which Trump put on Maduro’s life, just like in the wild west.

Washington tried to create an alternative universe, with a fake president and government with a hapless venal nobody Juan Guaido, a common thief, who stole not just Venezuela’s assets but also stole from the US, as USAID finally acknowledged. He has been relegated to the dustbin of history.

Why this animosity towards a country that, obvious to anyone, cannot possibly be a threat to the nation with the largest armed forces in the world? Venezuela has not endangered that country nor has it done any wrong to any of its citizens. Furthermore, Venezuelans do not hold any particular animosity towards people in the North at all, having always enjoyed their baseball, music and films. Even more reason why its government’s malice towards Venezuelans is hard to take.

The truth is that for the United States, Latin America is without question the most important geopolitical area in the world; not Europe, not the Middle East, not Russia or China. It is in Latin America that the US has 78 military bases; it is in Latin America that Washington has invaded, overturned or destabalized over 90 governments since 1900. There is no Monroe Doctrine for any other part of the globe. Washington has long believed the region to be its own backyard and has the right to dominate it.

Then along comes Venezuela, led by Hugo Chavez, now with inmortal stature, and Nicolas Maduro, having garnered towering respect and admiration, leading his country and region, setting a dignified example of serving his people and defending their sovereignty.

Excerpted: ‘Heroic Venezuela’.

Courtesy: Counterpunch.org