Ol’ Blind Joe

The US Government, its right-wing allies and an obedient corporate media have repeatedly referred to Venezuela’s actual president, Nicolás Maduro, as an “authoritarian dictator”, and declared the need for a coup – it would make heaven weep.

A coalition of Canadian unions, church leaders and other officials declared the election to be “a transparent, secure, democratic and orderly electoral and voting process”.

However, US President Donald Trump has recognised unelected right-wing opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the new ‘president’ who has pledged to carry out a mass privatisation of state assets and to implement harsh neoliberal capitalist policies.

US-aligned states Ecuador, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Costa Rica reportedly back the US-led ‘diplomatic coup’.

All of them are countries where the US has taken out democratically elected governments and installed dictators or stooges.

The US said five months before last year’s Venezuelan elections took place that it would not accept any result.

The US military has invaded Latin American and Caribbean countries 96 times, including 48 times in the 20th century.

That total constitutes only direct interventions and doesn’t include coups fomented by the US, such as Guatemala in 1954 and Chile in 1973.

Venezuela, which has the world’s largest oil reserves and has challenged the hegemony of the US dollar, has long been a target of US aggression.

In 2002, the US supported a military coup that briefly ousted democratically elected President Hugo Chávez and replaced him with the right-wing oligarch Pedro Carmona.

Tens of thousands of people surrounded Government house to protect it from the Gringos and demanded the release of President Chavez.

US intervention, including crippling economic sanctions, has continued since then and they’ve got forty billion dollars of Venezuelan gold locked up in US and UK banks.

Seventy Latin American political science and history scholars oppose US intervention.

US troops are deployed at 800 bases in more than 160 countries; and as many as 300 bases are ‘off the books’.

The US has 95 per cent of the world’s foreign military bases, compared with France, Russia and UK with 10-20 each, and China has one.

The true Left – whether in Brazil, Venezuela, Britain or the US – does not control the police or military, the financial sector, the oil industries, the arms manufacturers or the corporate media.

It was these very industries and institutions that smoothed the path to power for President Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Hungary and Trump in the US.
I turn my mind’s eye to that sham that the US laughingly refers to as its justice system.

A mate of mine was FBI trained and I’ve read a dozen books on controversial former FBI director J Edgar Hoover, training manuals and the history of the FBI since that bastard ran the joint.

Hoover was more interested in infiltrating hippy groups, environmentalists and anti-war movements, and hated US civil rights leader Martin Luther King.

In a strange twist, he liked dressing up in women’s clothing.

Hoover’s manicured mannequins with white shirts and crew cuts perfected a technique I call ‘trip and flip’.

You ping a guy for some corruption that goes on in the White House or wherever every day, then you offer him a deal and flip him to give up the dirt on some other poor sucker.

You cut a deal and he might still be left with a career – if he’s lucky.

There is no god higher than truth – Indian Independence leader Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948).