The Chris Moeller Archives

In Bolivia, where their lithium is prized, and in Venezuela, where the desired natural extraction is crude oil, the presence of a Socialist president loyal to the interests of the indigenous population cannot be tolerated by U.S. business henchmen. As Henry Kissinger once asserted of the neighboring country of Chile, "I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves." Times they do not change. 

A very similar scene as yesterday played out in Bolivia in November of 2019. Fascist mobs took over public institutions during the bloody coup that switched out then-president, Socialist Evo Morales, with a brutal right-wing regime set to satisfy the greed of foreign investors. 

In Venezuela, only eight months earlier, the fascist cretin who, in a prescient image to yesterday, literally hopped the fence of the seat of government to become what Donald Trump called the "true and legitimate president of Venezuela." He wore a blue sport coat rather than the tri-cornered hat, beaver pelts, and antler horns favored by the Trump army, but he was Juan Guaido, an unelected right-wing leader opposed to the democratically-elected Nicolas Maduro, and U.S. lawmakers gave him a standing ovation when Trump dropped his name during the 2020 State of the Union address. Another fascist leader there named Carlos Vecchio encouraged violence and attacks on government buildings, then was welcomed as Guaido’s ambassador in Washington, shaking hands and having his picture taken with Nancy Pelosi, an American politician who has been publicly hyperventilating over the threat of foreign election meddling for the better part of four years. 

In February of 2019, yesterday’s hero of democracy, Mike Pence, made a claim to the lap dogs in the American news media that Maduro loyalists had turned on their own people, setting fire to a truck filled with food and medicine meant for the Venezuelan people. A subsequent New York Times investigation, however, revealed that the stunt for the cameras was actually orchestrated by the Maduro opposition. It’s how the CIA conducts business and always has. There was the fabricated Gulf of Tonkin attack designed to trigger war with Vietnam. There were the false claims that Saddam Hussein was ripping babies out of incubators in Kuwait. Then the lie about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq a decade later. CNN and National Public Radio lied to the world about the truck in Venezuela. And it didn’t end there. Power outages and chronic supply shortages there are blamed on Maduro when they’re most certainly a result of crippling and illegal U.S. sanctions against the country. As is increasingly the case within the United States, the news media only sees an election as fair and legitimate if their favored candidate wins. 

These events of Wednesday are mostly without precedent in the United States, but they’re the modus operandi of the CIA beyond our borders, and when they’re employed, it’s always with much more violence than what we just witnessed here, particularly in South and Central America. In addition to the coups in the aforementioned nations, there was Chile, with the assassination of the democratically-elected Salvador Allende in 1973. There were regime changes in Honduras, Nicaragua, and Guatemala during the ‘80s. It’s a lengthy list-- Paraguay and Brazil also. Haiti, El Salvador, Panama, Argentina, the Dominican Republic. When the CIA-backed interventions take place, always to the financial benefit of the American ruling class, politicians here and the subservient news media cheer the developments. There’s no hand-wringing like we saw yesterday, rushes to label "domestic terrorism," "sedition," or "treason." There are no heartfelt odes from commentators about the fragility of democracy. In the Brown Americas, we simply welcome the new marionette of the multinationals and back up the truck. 

We’ve also learned from the debacle of Iraq not to let partisanship keep stepping in the way. Leaders of both parties championed the "humanitarian" intervention of the United States in Venezuela and Bolivia. For Maduro and Venezuela, the choices provided by the U.S. were to be removed by force or for the president to leave peaceably. The self-rule of the people of Venezuela is nobody’s choice in Washington. Liberals don’t care. Rachel Maddow, champion of all things progressive, went on MSNBC after the coup to embrace John Bolton, the militarist who has proclaimed that “this is our hemisphere.” She launched into a tirade about how President Trump had obstructed Bolton’s efforts to topple Maduro. To her, Venezuelan self-determination is just another victory for Vladimir Putin. Nevertheless, the Venezuelan people prevailed. They returned Maduro’s party to power in 2020.

Venezuelans have seen it, and they had a strong message for Americans yesterday, translated…