Feb. 14, 2014
By Felipe Stuart C.
Yesterday and today, I spent many hours trying to follow events in the current outburst of fascist and anti-Bolivarian violence in Venezuela. In Managua, we have the luxury of cable news access via Telesur, Cuban, Venezuelan, and Nicaraguan special TV programming, and also many radio sources.
Clearly, sections of the Venezuelan extreme right, some incubated by the EMBUSA [USA Embassy] are carrying out a big budget, high stakes agenda. Levels of deliberate, organized violence of this intensity have not been seen since the 2002 failed coup against President Hugo Chavez Frias. Likewise, mobilizations in defence of democracy and the Bolivarian revolutionary process are beginning to take on an accelerating dynamic. Huge actions are now being organized for tomorrow (Saturday, 15th).
Bolivarian socialist leaders, including President Nicolas Maduro and National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello, have been issuing joint appeals (in the name of the Bolivarian government and of the parties in the Patriotic Front including the governing PSUV) to mobilize to confront the fascists in the streets (“the streets belong to the people, not the fascist thugs!”). Simultaneously, they stress the crucial importance of avoiding provocations and traps set by criminal elements.
But whose agenda?
Those best suited, equipped and armed with detailed information, to probe for actionable intelligence to answer that vital question are already on high alert in Venezuela. They can, and are already counting on, extensive collaboration from their counterparts in allied ALBA countries, and allies operating in the new framework constructed by the CELAC -- the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.
In the aftershock of this new round of elite and foreign sponsored fascist violence and street mobilizations, messages of solidarity from ALBA, CELAC, and other foreign governments have already been received in Caracas.
No such messages have been received from Washington or Ottawa. Such thunderous silence echoes a gnawing silence in US President Obama’s “State of the Union” address last week to the traditional Joint Session of the (Imperial) House and (Imperial) Senate. Obama did not let even one word about Latin America or the CELAC slip through his teeth. As he began his all-important remarks, broadcast simultaneously around the globe, another Head-of-State – Cuba’s President Raul Castro – was inaugurating the Second CELAC Summit in Habana. Guests included UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon and José Miguel Insulza, General Secretary of the Organization of American States (OAS).
The CELAC Second Summit, hosted by the revolutionary socialist government of Cuba, registered in spades that the new continental organization had successfully weathered not a few storms and cold fronts unleashed by Washington. President Castro’s speech – almost historic for its modesty and respect for the time restraints of such a gathering – will perhaps most be remembered by future generations for CELAC’s Declaration of a Nuclear Free Latin America and the Caribbean.
The anti-nuclear vote was unanimous – enthusiastically so!
How would Canadian Prime Minister Harper have reacted to that vote had he been present with even consultative voice? His Queen’s UK navy patrols the Argentine Malvinas Islands (which their colonial settlers call the Falkland Islands} with a flotilla that has nuclear arms.
Of course, there’s zero need to ask how Bush or Obama would have voted on anything to do with their nukes.
This is but one example of why the rest of the Americas decided that an organization consciously designed to exclude the two North American imperialist power centres – Canada and the USA – was now more than ever a necessity to enable the CELAC countries to better fend for themselves in the 21st Century’s multipolar world reality.
So why did Obama say nothing, not even a grunt, about the Latino–Caribbean world south of the Rio Bravo?
Of course, in self-defence, the Nobel Peace prize recipient and US Supreme Commander could have advanced the argument that he also made no mention of the political crisis in Egypt! In fact, he did not even once utter the name ‘Egypt’ [nor the words Latino or Latin America!].
Democracy is usually Obama’s theme song.
He talked about his administration’s commitment to democracy – not in Egypt, but in Tunisia, Burma, and the Ukraine! Certainly not in Puerto Rico, a US Caribbean island colony just invited to join the community of Caribbean and Latin American nations at CELAC’s Havana Summit.
How to explain the exclusion of Latin America and the Caribbean – and above all the CELAC (to speak of the ALBA would be tantamount to Obama announcing the ‘second coming’ of Bolivarian hero Hugo Chavez Frias) – from Obama’s survey of The State of Their Union?
I do not know for certain why the US president’s speech writers and advisors decided to seal Obama’s lips on this big, really big issue. But I can hazard a guess.
Much evidence points to disarray in the White House and at State – and in the so-called non-political strategists housed at the Pentagon, at the CIA-NSA, and at their most important think tanks, Foundations, and NGO-fronts such as the infamous NED.
Another possible explanation comes to mind. Was Obama’s Latino-Carib “omission” really a ruse?
Let’s all breathe easy; we’re not even on his radar!
So many questions, but few answers!
What about Uruguay’s decriminalization of marijuana? What to do about China’s new economic weight in the Americas? What to do about Nicaragua’s decision to build a Pacific-Caribbean canal mainly with Asian capital and expertise? How to bring down the Indigenous majority rule government in Bolivia without appearing to revive a de facto apartheid state? How to blow up the Cuban sponsored peace talks between the FARC and Bogota without appearing to want to revive a narco state in Colombia?
How to bring that uppity Dilma, president of Brazil, down to earth? She must be persuaded to cease all solidarity and collaboration with types like Julian Assange and that “traitor” Edward Snowden. How dare this ex-terrorist Brazilian leftist turn down the prize invitation to the year’s one and only White House State Dinner just because she regards the privacy of her phone conversations to be more important than whatever was on the menu of that affair. More to the point, how can the CIA-NSA scuttle the initiative of the Brazilian government to hold in Sao Paulo, in April 2014, the Global Multisector Meeting on Internet Governance?
Who is going to control the Guarani Aquifer, located under the surface ground of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay? Think tank “experts” predict that this underground treasure, as well as the Amazon Basin, will be the motive for future water wars. And, aye, Mexico if only the Long Wall could really work! And what to do about the movements towards local self-arming by citizens trying to protect themselves from armed mafia thugs. Will Mexico become another of their failed states? Or will inspiration from Zapatista Chiapas, the ALBA, and class struggle feedback from Mexican super-exploited laborers on US soil lay the groundwork for a re-edition of the Zapatista revolution of the opening years of the last century – a revolution that helped motivate their Russian admirers to prepare for October 1917?
Incoherence at the Casa Blanca
The White House and State have yet to work out a coherent response to CELAC-style unity and sense of new historic vision expressed at the Havana Summit. President Raul Castro, in his inaugural remarks, said: “we know that among us exist different thoughts and even differences, but the CELAC has emerged from two hundred years of struggle for independence and is based on a deep community of objectives. Therefore, the CELAC is not a series of mere meetings or pragmatic coincidences but a common vision of the Great Latin American and Caribbean Motherland that is due only to their people.”
Is Obama's Pacific Rim pipe dream really an acceptable counter vision to the new Caribbean-Latin American vision of a great, unifying dynamic throughout the non-imperialist continental zones? Not in a long shot!
Much, then, is left to haphazard reaction to events carried off by Southern Command experts and the countless Trojan horses the US has ensconced in the foreign aid-NGO sectors in countries like Venezuela and Bolivia.
This spells danger.
Despite any momentary disarray in Washington at this turn of events – and Obama really does have a lot of ‘eat crow’ on his daily world menu right now – one consistent fact of US-Latin American-Caribbean relations remains crystal clear; and it has remained constant ever since Washington’s war against Sandino in the late 20s – early 30s of the last century. The Monroe Doctrine – Kerry’s buffoonery aside – remains the core of US strategy on its southern flank and its great Caribbean Lake.
Washington will act BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY to destroy the on-going process of unity proclaimed by the CELAC. Above all, just as the Empire has never forgiven revolutionary Cuba for its now 55-year long general strike against global imperialism, it will attack even more viciously against Venezuela’s advancing anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist revolution. Their broader target is the ALBA -- the most advanced expression of popular desire and political will to break away from imperialist domination and capitalist disorganization and destruction of our Madre Tierra, our Pacha Mama.
Today, Cuba and Venezuela are the key targets.
Who is next – Bolivia? Nicaragua? Ecuador?
And tomorrow?
Tomorrow many hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans and compatriots from up and down our Patria Grande will take to the streets to let the Venezuelan fascists know that the lessons of Europe of the 1930s, of the Spanish Civil War, of the disappeared arranged for by Argentine Generals , and of Pinochet’s long Chilean nightmare are not forgotten. Not at all.
Chávez Vive! La Lucha Sigue!
Chávez Vive! La Patria Sigue!
La Patria Grande Sigue! Sigue! Sigue
________________________________________
[1] President Obama delivered his 2014 State of the Union address on Jan. 28, 2014, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. Transcript courtesy of Federal News Service. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/full-text-of-obamas-2014-state-of-the-union-address/2014/01/28/e0c93358-887f-11e3-a5bd-844629433ba3_story.html
President Raul Castro delivered his inaugural address to the Second CELAC Summit in Havana on Jan. 28, 2014 See http://progresoweekly.us/20140128-celac-common-vision-great-motherland/
No comments:
Post a Comment