It’s all about the Benjamins Baby: Deep State goes nuts after truth teller tells the truth

“There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.”  ― Theodore Roosevelt

God/Allah bless Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar for having the courage to stand up to the Israeli lobby AIPAC and call a spade and spade.  After Omar pulled the proverbial curtain aside to expose the deeply entrenched lobby’s control over members of congress, she was immediately condemned by the very wealthy, bought-and-paid-for agents of the AIPAC in the American congress.  From Mehdi Hasan at The Intercept:

Excerpt:

There Is a Taboo Against Criticizing AIPAC — and Ilhan Omar Just Destroyed It

IN 2005, STEVEN Rosen, then a senior official with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, sat down for dinner with journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, then of the New Yorker. “You see this napkin?” Rosen asked Goldberg. “In twenty-four hours, [AIPAC] could have the signatures of seventy senators on this napkin.”

I couldn’t help but be reminded of this anecdote after Rep. Ilhan Omar, of Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, was slammed by Democrats and Republicans alike over her suggestion, in a pair of tweets, that U.S. politicians back the state of Israel because of financial pressure from AIPAC (“It’s all about the Benjamins baby,” she declaimed). Was the flippant way in which she phrased her tweets a problem? Did it offend a significant chunk of liberal U.S. Jewish opinion? Did it perhaps unwittingly play into anti-Semitic tropes about rich Jews controlling the world?

Yes, yes, and yes — as she herself has since admitted and “unequivocally” apologized for. But was she wrong to note the power of the pro-Israel lobby, to point a finger at AIPAC, to highlight — in her apology — “the problematic role of lobbyists in our politics, whether it be AIPAC, the NRA or the fossil fuel industry”?  No, no, and no.

Rosen, after all, wasn’t the first AIPAC official to boast about the raw power that “America’s bipartisan pro-Israel lobby” exercises in Washington, D.C. Go back earlier, to 1992, when then-AIPAC President David Steiner was caught on tape bragging that he had “cut a deal” with the George H.W. Bush White House to provide $3 billion in U.S. aid to Israel. Steiner also claimed to be “negotiating” with the incoming Clinton administration over the appointment of pro-Israel cabinet members. AIPAC, he said, has “a dozen people in [the Clinton] campaign, in the headquarters … and they’re all going to get big jobs.”

Go back further, to 1984, when Sen. Charles Percy, a moderate Republican from Illinois, was defeated in his re-election campaign after he “incurred AIPAC’s wrath” by declining to sign onto an AIPAC-sponsored letter and daring to refer to Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat as more “moderate” than other Palestinian resistance figures. AIPAC contributors raised more than a million dollars to help defeat Percy. As Tom Dine, then-executive director of AIPAC, gloated in a speech shortly after the GOP senator’s defeat, “all the Jews, from coast to coast, gathered to oust Percy. And the American politicians —  those who hold public positions now, and those who aspire — got the message.”

NEARLY FOUR DECADES later, as members of the U.S. political and media classes pile onto Omar, are the rest of us supposed to pretend that AIPAC officials never said or did any of this? And are we also expected to forget that the New York Times’s Tom Friedman, a long-standing advocate for Israel in the American media, once described the standing ovations received by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, from members of Congress, as having been “bought and paid for by the Israel lobby”?

Or that Goldberg, now editor-in-chief of The Atlantic and dubbed “the most influential journalist/blogger on matters related to Israel,” called AIPAC a “leviathan among lobbies, as influential in its sphere as the National Rifle Association and the American Association of Retired Persons are in theirs”? Or that J.J. Goldberg, former editor of the Jewish weekly newspaper The Forward, said in 2002, in reference to AIPAC, “There is this image in Congress that you don’t cross these people or they take you down”?

Are we supposed to dismiss Uri Avnery, the late Israeli peace activist and one-time member of the Zionist paramilitary, the Irgun, who once remarked that if AIPAC “were to table a resolution abolishing the Ten Commandments, 80 senators and 300 congressmen would sign it at once,” as a Jew-hater?...

WHAT MAKES THIS whole row over Omar’s remarks so utterly bizarre is that so many leading Democrats, loudly and rightly, decry the pernicious and undeniable impact of special interests, lobbyists, and donations on a whole host of issues — from the role of Big Pharma and Big Finance; to influence-peddling by Saudi Arabia; to the “grip” that the NRA has on the debate over gun control, to quote Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal. But any mention of AIPAC and lobbying in favor of Israel? “Anti-Semitism!”…

Today, the Palestinians continue to be bombed, besieged, and dispossessed by their Israeli occupiers — with the full military and financial support of the United States government. There are a variety of credible explanations for this support: Israel’s role as a “strategic asset” and “mighty aircraft carrier“; U.S. Christian evangelicals’ obsession with Israel and the end-times prophecy; the impact of arms sales and the U.S. military-industrial complex; not to mention the long-standing cultural and social ties between American Jews and Israeli Jews. But to pretend money doesn’t play a role — or that AIPAC doesn’t have a big impact on members of Congress and their staffers — is deeply disingenuous.

And so we should thank Omar, the freshman lawmaker, for having the guts to raise this contentious issue and break a long-standing taboo in the process — even if she maybe did so in a clumsy and problematic fashion.  But you don’t have to take her word for it. “When people ask me how they can help Israel,” former Israeli prime minister and uber-hawk Ariel Sharon once told an audience in the United States, “I tell them: Help AIPAC.”

The American government was overthrown in December of 2000 when AIPAC’s presidential candidate George W. Bush was defeated by Al Gore.  Five corrupt members of the Supreme Court interceded and overturned the results of the 2000 presidential election and installed George W. Bush as president.  Since the coup of 2000 American foreign policy has been directed by an extreme right wing cabal of the New World Order doctrine which calls for anyone who criticizes their policy to be branded as anti-Semitic.  From Zero Hedge:

Excerpt:

A Short History: The Neocon "Clean Break" Grand Design & The "Regime Change" Disasters It Has Fostered

To understand today’s crises in Iraq, Syria, Iran, and elsewhere, one must grasp their shared Lebanese connection. This assertion may seem odd. After all, what is the big deal about Lebanon? That little country hasn’t had top headlines since Israel deigned to bomb and invade it in 2006. Yet, to a large extent, the roots of the bloody tangle now enmeshing the Middle East lie in Lebanon: or to be more precise, in the Lebanon policy of Israel.

Rewind to the era before the War on Terror. In 1995, Yitzhak Rabin, Israel’s “dovish” Prime Minister, was assassinated by a right-wing zealot. This precipitated an early election in which Rabin’s Labor Party was defeated by the ultra-hawkish Likud, lifting hardliner Benjamin Netanyahu to his first Premiership in 1996.

That year, an elite study group produced a policy document for the incipient administration titled, “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” The membership of the Clean Break study group is highly significant, as it included American neoconservatives who would later hold high offices in the Bush Administration and play driving roles in its Middle East policy…

Pursuit of comprehensive peace with all of Israel’s neighbors was to be abandoned for selective peace with some neighbors (namely Jordan and Turkey) and implacable antagonism toward others (namely Iraq, Syria, and Iran)…

Before setting Israel and the US on a warpath that would ultimately set the Middle East ablaze, the Clean Break authors were basically saying: Not through peace accords will the great questions of the day be decided?—?that was the great mistake of 1978 (at Camp David) and 1993 (at Oslo)?—?but by “divide and conquer” and regime change. By wars both aggressive (“preemptive”) and “dirty” (covert and proxy).

“A Clean Break” slated Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as first up for regime change. This is highly significant, especially since several members of the Clean Break study group played decisive roles in steering and deceiving the United States into invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam seven years later. 

Another Clean Breaker, Douglas Feith, was a Perle protege and a key player in that neocon coup. After 9/11, as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Feith created two secret Pentagon offices tasked with cherry-picking, distorting, and repackaging CIA and Pentagon intelligence to help make the case for war…

The foregone conclusions generated by these Clean Breaker-led projects faced angry but ineffectual resistance from the Intelligence Community, and are now widely considered scandalously discredited. But they succeeded in helping, perhaps decisively, to overcome both bureaucratic and public resistance to the march to war.

But why did the Netanyahu/Bush Clean Breakers want to regime change Iraq in the first place? While reference is often made to “A Clean Break” as a prologue to the Iraq War, it is often forgotten that the document proposed regime change in Iraq primarily as a “means” of “weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria.” Overthrowing Saddam in Iraq was merely a stepping stone to “foiling” and ultimately overthrowing Bashar al-Assad in neighboring Syria. As Pat Buchanan put it:

“In the Perle-Feith-Wurmser strategy, Israel’s enemy remains Syria, but the road to Damascus runs through Baghdad.”

Another target identified by “A Clean Break” was Iran. This is highly significant, since while the neocons were still riding high in the Bush administration’s saddle, they came within an inch of launching a US war on Iran over yet another manufactured and phony WMD crisis. While the Obama administration seems on the verge of finalizing a nuclear/peace deal with the Iranian government in Tehran, the neocons and Netanyahu himself (now Prime Minister once again) have pulled out all the stops to scupper it and put the US and Iran back on a collision course.

The neocons are also championing ongoing American support for Saudi Arabia’s brutal war in Yemen to restore that country’s US-backed former dictator. Simply because the “Houthi” rebels that overthrew him and took the capital city of Sanaa are Shiites, they are assumed to be a proxy of the Shiite Iranians, and so this is seen by neocons and Saudi theocons alike as a war against Iranian expansion…

All regime change roads lead to Lebanon, it would seem. So this brings us back to our original question. What is the big deal about Lebanon?

The answer to this question goes back to Israel’s very beginnings. Its Zionist founding fathers established the bulk of Israel’s territory by dispossessing and ethnically cleansing three-quarters of a million Palestinian Arabs in 1948. Hundreds of thousands of these were driven (sometimes literally in trucks, sometimes force marched with gunshots fired over their heads) into Lebanon, where they were gathered in miserable refugee camps.

In Lebanon the Palestinians who had fled suffered an apartheid state almost as rigid as the one Israel imposed on those who stayed behind, because the dominant Maronite Christians there were so protective of their political and economic privileges in Lebanon’s confessional system…

In 1982 Israel launched a full scale war in Lebanon, fighting both Syria and the PLO. Osama bin Laden later claimed that it was seeing the wreckage of tall buildings in Beirut toppled by Israel’s “total war” tactics that inspired him to destroy American buildings like the Twin Towers.

In this war, Israel tried to install a group of Christian Fascists called the Phalange in power over Lebanon. This failed when the new Phalangist ruler was assassinated. As a reprisal, the Phalange perpetrated, with Israeli connivance, the massacre of hundreds (perhaps thousands) of Palestinian refugees and Lebanese Shiites…

9/11 paved the way for realizing the Clean Break, using the United States as a gigantic proxy, thanks to the Israel Lobby’s massive influence in Congress and the neocons’ newly won dominance in the Bush Administration…

And so what if the Clean Break was rather messy and broke so many bodies and buildings along the way? Maybe it’s like what Lenin said about omelets and eggs: you just can’t make a Clean Break without breaking a few million Arabs and a few thousand Americans. And what about all those fanatics now running rampant throughout large swaths of the world thanks to the Clean Break wars, mass-executing Muslim “apostates” and Christian “infidels” and carrying out terrorist attacks on westerners? Again, the Clean Breakers must remind themselves, keep your eye on the omelet and forget the eggs.

Well, dear reader, you and I are the eggs. And if we don’t want to see our world broken any further by the imperial clique of murderers in Washington for the sake of the petty regional ambitions of a tiny clique of murderers in Tel Aviv, we must insist on American politics making a clean break from the neocons, and US foreign policy making a clean break from Israel.

Fat chance of there being any clean break for America with our current make up of congress, many of them are dual citizens of Israel and place Netanyahu’s agenda ahead of that of American interests.  Many states have passed laws demanding fealty to Israel as an employment condition.  AIPAC is the Deep State and the Federal Reserve Bank is their source of power in America.  From Russia Insider:

Excerpt:

The Israeli Lobby Is the Deep State

This week the Intercept reported on the firestorm created by Rep. Ilhan Omar when she audaciously cited the AIPAC lobby as being behind a political smear campaign against her. The Intercept reported,“…Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., responded sharply to reports that Republican leader Kevin McCarthy was targeting both Omar and fellow Muslim Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat from Michigan.

Omar quoted rap lyrics — “It’s all about the Benjamins baby” — to suggest McCarthy’s move was driven by the lobby’s prolific spending. Asked specifically who she was referring to, Omar responded, “AIPAC!” (The Intercept)

In this report they also linked to numerous undercover investigations that produced audio and video tapes of AIPAC political operatives funneling money to Israeli friendly politicians and government insiders as a means to sway national opinion. The report quotes a conversation on the tapes as follows,

“David Ochs, founder of HaLev, which helps send young people to American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual conference, described for the reporter how AIPAC and its donors organize fundraisers outside the official umbrella of the organization, so that the money doesn’t show up on disclosures as coming specifically from AIPAC. He describes one group that organizes fundraisers in both Washington and New York.

“This is the biggest ad hoc political group, definitely the wealthiest, in D.C.,” Ochs says, adding that it has no official name, but is clearly tied to AIPAC. “It’s the AIPAC group…

Without spending money, Ochs argues, the pro-Israel lobby isn’t able to enact its agenda. “Congressmen and senators don’t do anything unless you pressure them. They kick the can down the road, unless you pressure them, and the only way to do that is with money,” he explains.” (The Intercept)

Just so we are clear, an Israeli lobbyist and AIPAC organizer stated on video that AIPAC, through shadow funding has become the biggest, wealthiest, networking group in D.C.  The influence alluded to by AIPAC in these statements should be alarming. Politicians are being bribed to be political attack dogs for Israel.

Trump is Green Like the Swamp Thing

So, I am curious, what AIPAC’s going rate for a congressman is, relative to what the going rate for say…President Trump might be? It was Trump who went further than anyone saying that Rep. Omar should resign for her statements on AIPAC, he was quoted as saying,

“Critics -- both Democratic and Republican -- said Omar's tweets evoked anti-Semitic tropes. House Democratic leadership called on her to apologize, and the freshman congresswoman then released a statement where she "unequivocally" apologized.

Omar's statement reads, "Anti-Semitism is real and I am grateful for Jewish allies and colleagues who are educating me on the painful history of anti-Semitic tropes. My intention is never to offend my constituents or Jewish Americans as a whole. We have to always be willing to step back and think through criticism, just as I expect people to hear me when others attack me for my identity. This is why I unequivocally apologize."

"At the same time," Omar continued, "I reaffirm the problematic role of lobbyists in our politics, whether it be AIPAC, the NRA or the fossil fuel industry. It's gone on too long and we must be willing to address it…"

As I predicted last October in an article l wrote, Trump pledged himself to Netanyahu to destroy Israel’s enemies, in that article I quoted Trump as saying,  "The Jews have endured terrible persecution, and you know that, we've all read it: We've studied it. They've gone through a lot and those seeking their destruction…we will seek their destruction." (American Thinker)

So, Trump the Destroyer, making good on his promise to Netanyahu jumps right into the fray calling for the resignation of a politician over her complaints of foreign influence in American politics.  Trump, who campaigned on draining the swamp and ending foreign wars abroad, has quite literally done an about face on his promises and inextricably tied himself to Netanyahu and the Zionist war machine that controls American politics.

Everyone and I mean everyone wants to cozy up to the money in D.C., Trump included. As David Ochs, stated above AIPAC is the richest, most influential lobby in Washington.

It is Israeli interests that utilize their vast network of compromised political elite and the Israeli dual-citizen Neocons controlling the Pentagon to drag us into perpetual war on their behalf. It is this Israeli loyal contingent that is the Deep State swamp in U.S. politics who are running the show.

Conclusion

Rep. Omar statements should be applauded. Constitutionally speaking she is more in line with the founders than Trump, who has completely entangled himself with these Zionist foreign operatives.  Didn’t Founder and President George Washington tell us to be wary of foreign entanglements? He wanted us to stay clear of foreign alliances as a national policy, “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world." -Farewell Address to the People of the United States | Monday, September 19, 1796…

So, when we hear someone like David Ochs talk about the AIPAC funding network, in reality he is talking about the Rothschilds who literally own stakes in the biggest financial institutions on the planet. That is the funding network spoken about, that is why so many want AIPAC money, because it brings them that much closer to those who own the world.

When Baron Edmond De Rothschild set out to establish a Zionist state in Israel back in the late 1800’s that was not some pet project of the family, it was their entire End Game. Israel is the most important thing to this family and they will drag the world into the fires of hell to make sure their vision of a Greater Israel is made manifest…

AIPAC is the monied Deep State and Trump is one of their many swamp creatures that are playing his blinded Christian Zionist supporters better than Obama, the Bush’s, the Clintons could do combined. He is truly the perfect Zionist operative.

Bipartisanship.

All we get out of this Trump deal is war, cultural division, unyielding debt, more war, a police state, and to be called antisemitic when we point out who is really pulling the strings in the Deep State of Washington Politics… 

Paul when calling out the Jewish betrayers in his day asked this of the Galatians “So have I become your enemy by telling you the truth?” No doubt, Trump and his Zionist handlers will weaponize the antisemitism rhetoric and turn it against all of us that are telling the Truth about Zionist influence in our government, in our day. History repeats itself because the devil is always up to his old tricks. 

Look how far America has fallen since the 2000 Zionist coup in America.  Trump vowed to drain the swamp and end these senseless wars that have left America trillions in debt to the Rothschild’s Federal Reserve Bank.  Now that the New World Order swamp monsters are firmly ensconced in the Trump Administration they are plotting more wars, because they must keep Americans in poverty.  But the world is getting sick of these neocons and ditched their “Iran hatefest” in Warsaw.  From Tom Luongo at Gold Goats and Guns:

Excerpt:

While Pompeo Pouts in Poland, Putin Pushes Peace in Syria

If there was ever a Valentine’s Day which highlight the stark differences to diplomacy between the U.S. and Russia it is this one.  In Warsaw, the U.S. cajoled some sixty countries, many of them Arab, to send representatives only to be scolded like schoolchildren by Vice President Mike Pence for undermining the drive for war with Iran.

Mike Pompeo, for his part, showed no signs of shame or remorse after his public rebuke by Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto.  Szijjarto retorted to Pompeo’s lecturing that “the world is not going to be a better place if some countries spend their time intervening in the internal political affairs of other countries.” He insisted that Budapest can have transparent relations with Moscow and Beijing and the West, and said it was an “enormous hypocrisy” that Hungary is singled out for its ties with Moscow.

He then went to Poland with the intention of whipping up support for a war with Iran. But not to actually call it that. Until Benjamin Netanyahu arrived with fever dreams on his lips.  As Moon of Alabama pointed out, this was a huge slap for Pompeo, whose staff kept trying to downplay the anti-Iran nature of the Poland fiasco to make it more palatable for media consumption.

By claiming that the conference is about waging war on Iran Netanyahoo (sic) is not only embarrassing the State Department and Secretary Mike Pompeo. He also makes it extremely difficult for other attendees to justify their presence. The Arabs will be especially furious that they are shown in such an open alliance with Israel and its hostility against Iran. Scheming with Israel in the dark is fine. But being publicly associated with a war mongering Israel is difficult to sell to their people. It would be unsurprising to see some of them leave.

The entire Warsaw meeting was designed to impress upon everyone how seriously they should take U.S. and Israeli desires for regime change in Iran. And how committed they are to keeping everyone in the fold on all matters pertaining to the Trump administration’s hostility towards Iran, Russia, and China.  This is part of a wider set of actions, taken broadly, designed to hit the headlines all at the same time:  U.S. is openly pushing for regime change in Venezuela and drumming up international support for it.

It is also urging EU Parliamentarians to push through new pipeline rules as part of changes to the EU’s Third Energy Package to try and stop the Nordstream 2 pipeline from being completed.

New sanctions were placed on Russia a few days after Moody’s had to accede to reality and upgrade Russian government debt to investment grade, which will only accelerate foreign capital inflows into Russia.

Pompeo and Netanyahu were putting the world on notice that they are not only 1) insane but 2) committed to their path to braying for war While, as Elijah Magnier points out, the entire dog and pony show in Warsaw was for Netanyahu’s re-election bid amidst cabinet resignations and corruption scandals.

At the same time, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with his Iranian and Turkish counterparts in Sochi to discuss the next phase of bringing peace to Syria.  These three countries continue moving the ball forward pragmatically and diplomatically to resolve the issues left by the U.S.’s insistence on staying in Syria. 

Putin, with the iron fist firmly in his velvet glove, said two things that are important in his post-meeting remarks.  The first will give the frothing red-baiting, Trump-hating buffoons in the U.S. media and foreign policy establishments a fit of the vapors.

“President Trump is quite actively working on fulfilling his election campaign promises, which in practice rarely happens in the US political life. The withdrawal of the American troops from Syria was one of those promises,” Putin said…  Putin is right to encourage Trump to fulfill that campaign promise because that is the quickest path to peace in Syria, a U.S. troop withdrawal.

Putin continued, “If that happens the only right decision in terms of security would be handing over those territories under the control of the Syrian armed forces.”  And that is his way of saying that he has control of Turkish President Erdogan and will not let the Syrian Kurds be attacked. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will not make reconciliation between his government and the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Council easy. But it will be better than anything Erdogan would offer them.

But, then again, they lost their gambit for independence the day Barzani’s Peshmerga forces were destroyed in Erbil, Iraq last year by the Iraqi militia known as the Popular Mobilization Unit.  Erdogan’s biggest worry is the U.S. leaving the Kurds weapons after leaving to be a constant annoyance on Turkey’s border. That’s the Bolton way of doing things.

Putin also stressed that Erdogan’s pet terrorists in Idlib province are to be wiped out as part of the plan to stabilize Syria. These are all wins for Syria diplomatically, establishing Turkey as Russia’s subordinate in the power structure to reshape the Middle East.

The fact that Erdogan was not in Warsaw with his NATO allies but rather at a high level summit with the Russian and Iranian presidents tells you all you need to know about where he feels his future lies.  Then again, I’ve taken for granted that Erdogan is still a NATO member in name only for a couple of years now, so I wasn’t surprised by this…

In the end, the Neocons in D.C. and Tel Aviv are showing real desperation in summoning everyone to Poland while having almost no support for the intended policy, war with Iran.

You can only hold onto people for so long through fear of retribution. Eventually, they realize you can’t attack everyone at once all the time, though Trump and company are certainly willing to give it the old college try.

As each instance of disobedience occurs and punishment is ineffective — Erdogan is still in power despite a coup attempt and a currency attack, for example — the bolder allies will become in their own defiance. 

Gawd, what a bunch of clowns, demanding foreign nations obey the dictates of the neocon Zionist cabal that is running America’s foreign policy.  Meanwhile back at home, my new “favorite representative” from Minnesota, unfazed by the attacks of AIPAC’s toadies publically smacked down war criminal Elliot Abrams.  From Lew Rockwell:

Excerpt:

Ilhan Omar Smacks Down Elliott Abrams In Front Of Everybody

Days after being smashed with a vicious establishment smear campaign to paint her as an antisemite for accurately criticizing AIPAC, Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is already back on the horse aggressively disrupting the establishment narrative matrix that our rulers have worked so hard to construct for us.

Elliott Abrams is a monster. The atrocities that he has facilitated, covered up and whitewashed in Panama, El Salvador, Gaza, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Iraq are utterly unforgivable, and the fact that he has been appointed as special envoy to Venezuela by the Trump administration completely invalidates the US government’s Venezuela narrative all by itself.

Even without the blatant lies, the known oil agendas, the CIA ops, the mounting evidence of US arms smuggling to right-wing militias, and America’s extensive history of utterly disastrous regime change interventionism, the fact that this administration would appoint such a ghoulish individual to spearhead its Venezuela interventionism alone is enough to show you that the US government has nothing but malevolent intentions for that nation.

So it was nice to see someone in that government calling him what he is right to his face in front of everybody.

At a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on US Venezuela policy, Abrams was presented with the only line of questioning that is appropriate for such a beast by the very congresswoman the Democrats threw to the wolves just two days ago. Someone had to do it, and they left it to Ilhan Omar.

“In 1991, you pleaded guilty to two counts of withholding information from Congress regarding your involvement in the Iran-Contra affair, for which you were later pardoned by President George H.W. Bush,” Omar accurately stated. “I fail to understand why members of this committee, or the American people should find any testimony that you give today to be truthful.”

“If I could respond to that-” Abrams began.

“That wasn’t a question,” Omar responded, cutting him off.

“It was an attack! It was an attack!” Abrams exclaimed, visibly upset.

“I reserve the right to my time,” said Omar.

“It is not right that members of this Committee can attack a witness who is not permitted to reply,” Abrams said, talking over Omar.

“That was not a question; thank you for your participation,” Omar continued. “On February 8th, 1982, you testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about US foreign policy in El Salvador. In that hearing, you dismissed as communist propaganda a report about the massacre of El Mozote of which more than 800 civilians, including children as young as two years old, were brutally murdered by U.S.-trained troops. During that massacre, some of those troops bragged about raping 12 year-old girls before they killed them. You later said that the U.S. policy in El Salvador was a ‘fabulous achievement.’ Yes or no, do you still think so?”

“From the day that President Duarte was elected in a free election, to this day, El Salvador has been a democracy,” Abrams said angrily. “That’s a fabulous achievement.”

“Yes or no, do you think that massacre was a fabulous achievement that happened under our watch?” Omar asked.

“That is a ridiculous question and I will not respond to it, no,” Abrams replied. “I’m sorry Mr. Chairman, I am not going to respond to that kind of personal attack which is not a question.”

“I will take that as a yes,” Omar said. “Yes or no, would you support an armed faction within Venezuela that engages in war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide if you believe they were serving US interests as you did in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua?”

“I’m not going to respond to that question,” Abrams again answered. “I’m sorry, I don’t think this entire line of questioning is meant to be real questions, and so I will not reply.”

“Whether under your watch a genocide will take place, and you will look the other way because American interests were being upheld is a fair question,” Omar said. “Because the American people want to know that any time we engage a country that we think about what our actions could be and how we believe our values are being furthered. That is my question: Will you make sure that human rights are not violated and that we uphold international and human rights?”

“I suppose there is a question in there, and the answer is that the entire thrust of American policy in Venezuela is to support the Venezuelan people’s effort to restore democracy to their country,” Abrams responded. “That’s our policy.”

“I don’t think anybody disputes that,” Omar said. “The question I had for you is that does the interests of the United States include protecting human rights and include protecting people against genocide?”

“That is always the position of the United States,” Abrams lied.

“Thank you,” concluded Omar. “I yield back the rest of my time.”

There is no legitimate reason for Elliott Abrams to ever find himself before a group of people who are ostensibly concerned with accountability and responsibility without being asked such questions. But that didn’t stop all the world’s worst people from crawling out of the woodwork to his defense.

“Disgraceful ad hominem attacks by @IlhanMN on my @CFR_org colleague Elliott Abrams,” tweetedIraq-raping neocon Max Boot. “She doesn’t seem to realize he is a leading advocate of human rights and democracy–not a promoter of genocide! More evidence of the loony left I caution Democrats about.”

“I worked for Elliott Abrams as a civil servant,” tweeted Kelly Magsamen, Vice President of National Security for the plutocrat-backed liberal think tank Center for American Progress. “He is a fierce advocate for human rights and democracy. Yes, he made serious professional mistakes and was held accountable. I’m a liberal but I’m also fair. We all have a lot of work to do together in Venezuela. We share goals.”

“I am not greatly sympathetic to Rep. Omar (surprise surprise),” tweeted National Review senior editor and former George W Bush speech writer Jay Nordlinger. “But really, someone ought to have given her a clue who Elliott Abrams is. The guy has been championing freedom and human rights his entire life (and taking unholy sh** for it from the illiberal Left and Right)...”

This is the bipartisan establishment orthodoxy that is guiding your foreign policy, America. One which claims Elliott Abrams is a saint, which claims criticism of US warmongering is antisemitic, and which throws a bold Somali-American woman under the bus for speaking the truth after years of paying lip service to the need to get more women of color elected to the leadership of the Democratic Party.

This whole Abrams incident happened, by the way, at the same time Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deleted a tweet in which he accidentally acknowledged the agenda to start a war with Iran, but you probably won’t see Omar commenting on this because she knows she’ll be smeared as an antisemite for it.

US warmongering is the most aggressively protected part of the establishment narrative matrix, because US warmongering is the glue that holds the unipolar empire together. Without it, our rulers cannot rule, so you’ll see imperial lackeys fiercely attacking anyone who draws attention to America’s bloodbaths around the world, even if they are good servants of the empire in other areas.

The difficulty for our rulers, though, is that warmongering is a very difficult thing to paint a pretty picture of, especially with our newfound ability to quickly share ideas and information around the globe. I mean, look at Elliott Abrams. Seriously, just watch him talk. That demonic grimace is the prettiest face they could find to put on their Venezuela agenda. I find that very encouraging.

The reason they work so hard to manufacture our consent for warmongering agendas is because they need that consent. They wouldn’t propagandize us so aggressively if they didn’t need us all trusting them and believing their stories, so the best way to fight establishment warmongering is to circulate disbelief in their stories. Whenever you see someone like Ilhan Omar drawing attention to the gaping plot holes in agendas like regime change interventionism in Venezuela, go ahead and help draw attention to it.

Things are only shitty because a few extremely powerful people do very shitty things. The only reason powerful people get away with doing very shitty things is because the majority allows them to. The majority only allows them to because they’ve been propagandized to. The weakest link in this chain is the propaganda. Attack there.

What an absolutely brave young woman Miss Omar is.  She is a real force to be reckoned with.  So war criminal Elliot Abrams wants to restore Democracy to Venezuela, after all he has such a glowing history as a “humanitarian” who has “made a few mistakes.”   Now he can bring his “fabulous achievement” in El Salvador to Venezuela.  Even though Venezuelan elections are far more democratic than those in the U.S., UK and Canada.  From Moon of Alabama:

Excerpt:

Venezuela - 57% Say Maduro Is Their Legitimate President

The legitimacy of a ruler can best be determined by asking the ruled people.  The independent Venezuelan polling firm Hinterlaces asked (in Spanish) 1,580 Venezuelans in direct interviews who they consider to be the legitimate president of Venezuela.  57% said that the Nicolás Maduro is the legitimated president. 32% said Juan Guaidó. 11% did not know or did not respond.

The well-respected scientific research service of the German Bundestag advised (in German) that foreign recognition of someone as a president does not confer legitimacy. Legitimacy of a president requires that he has actual enforcing capabilities within the country. As long as that is not established a recognition must be seen as interference in the internal affairs of the foreign country. Such an interference, which the German and other governments committed, is inconsistent with international law.

Alfred-Maurice de-Zayas, a professor for international law and a longtime senior lawyer at the United Nations, confirms that opinion. He writes:  Members of the United Nations are bound by the Charter, articles one and two of which affirm the right of all peoples to determine themselves, the sovereign equality of states, the prohibition of the use of force and of economic or political interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states. Yet these fundamental principles of international order are being grossly violated in the case of Venezuela.

Ignoring the will of the people of Venezuela and the rule of law U.S. media continue to manufacture consent for regime change in Venezuela.

“It’s all about the Benjamins baby”, that is the rallying call for 2019.  America has come full circle and it’s time for regime change in the American congress.  The American people need to take their country back from these neocon ghouls.  From OpEd News:

Excerpt:

Ilhan Omar speaks Truth to Empire

The American people are very much like the children of a mafia boss, who don't want to know what their father does for a living, but then wonder why the firebombs of injustice are being thrown through the window of their living-room. What a primitive underbelly we have in this supposed patriotic rational society. Americans have been living behind the mask of their countries "good intentions" for so long, that their faces have grown into the mask.

The domestic political fantasy life of the last eighteen years, finds us in an unnerving time loop of our own making in this country. History has seemed to be running in reverse, and knowledge is not seen as a public good, but as something suspect, dubious or even ungodly, as it was for example in Italy in 1633, when the church put Galileo on trial for his heretical view that the earth was in orbit around the sun.

These past years have produced a prison house of the mind, insidiously endeavoring to promote a fleeting fraudulent terrorist phantom and the darkness of ego. It has produced a degradation of the thinking mind, all of it in fear of what it knows. Our society has mentally transported the rank and file back into the darkness of tribal war and shrieking, far from the tolerance that came with American religious freedom and the liberty of our conscience. 

Ilhan Omar's comments about Israel and AIPAC and her criticism of Elliot Abrams stand in poignant isolation. They stand as oasis islands of truth, in an ocean full of lies and disinformation. They stand in sharp contrast to the neoconservative, the project for a new American Century (PNAC) influence in Washington that pretends to unite U. S. and Israeli ideals around the grandiose project of bringing democracy to the world by getting rid of "dictators" who just happen to be supporters of the Palestinian cause.

Veteran neocon Richard Perle's 1996 report for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, entitled "A Clean Break," which had the eager support of Elliot Abrams, called for getting rid of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, as the first in a series of regime changes that would eliminate Israel's perceived main enemies in the Middle East.

Ilhan herself, is a refuge from Somalia, a country subjected to decolonization since 1960 by the British and the United States. The multiple forces and pressures causing a country the size of Somalia to implode and atrophy was the veritable explosion of small arms in the region brokered by the U.S. through Israel, which produced militias and brought about militarized lawlessness. The situation might have been different if the UK and US had shown any concern for the plight of ordinary Somalis and made any effort to stop the continuous flow of weapons into the country.

The rich Israeli lobby, AIPAC, and individual donors like billionaires Haim Saban and Sheldon Adelson have managed to buy virtually the entire Congress, thanks in part to all-expenses paid trips to Israel and campaign contributions, especially the tacit threat to provide generous financing to the campaign of your opponent, if you get out of line. Israel receives between 4-5 billion dollars per year to buy US made weapons.

Most recently, the immoral activities of AIPAC and the Israeli lobby has been exposed in their craven effort to silence college students who are demanding the rights for Palestinians by organizing and protesting in the BDS Movement, Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanction campaign.

Ilhan Omar is the personification of the gradual osmosis of truth that is beginning to seep through the cracks of the propaganda system. A country at the end of empire that misuses its military power can only destroy. It cannot build.

The truth that Ilhan puts before us is the problem of the corruption of human intelligence that has enabled our supposed leaders to create plausible reasons for monstrous acts, to exhort citizens to accept those reasons and to train soldiers to follow orders.

We all must realize that the fabrication of the war on terror has become the war against the liberties of Americans. We must thank Ilhan Omar for standing up and making a difference and not sitting down in order to fit in.

As Gandhi said, "even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth."

Amen, “we must thank Ilhan Omar for standing up and making a difference, now it’s time for the American people to enact regime change in America.  It is time to purge our government of these traitorous dual citizenship members of congress and clean out our intelligence agencies of the graft and corruption at the top.  This is America, we are Americans, and we have one language the English language.  We have one flag, the American flag and our loyalty is only to the American people.  Thank you Ilhan Omar you are a breath of fresh air in a putrid, fetid government body.

The Devil goes down to the Caribbean, as the Mideast smolders in ruins the blood drenched neocons set sights on oil and resource rich Venezuela

Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and the other countries south of the border could learn a lesson from Venezuela where the people are fighting to keep their sovereignty in defiance of the American neocon war criminals who are trying to oust their elected leader.  The U.S. government, acting in the interests of the international banks and corporations that would exploit and ravage the substantial natural resources of Venezuela that currently pay for their social programs, has declared some guy who didn’t even run for president, President. 

Having lost the CIA-instigated civil war in Syria, the neocons refuse to admit defeat and have doubled down on failure in defiance of the will of the American people.  The “representatives of the people” in America don’t give a flying rip about what the American people want, a peaceful just society in the world.  No they want endless killing and destruction which enriches them financially and politically while destroying America.  That is what our “elected” officials care about.  From Marjorie Cohn at Truthout:

Excerpt:

The US Is Orchestrating a Coup in Venezuela

Human Rights and Global Wrongs

As Venezuela’s second president, Simon Bolivar, noted in the 19th century, the US government continues to “plague Latin America with misery in the name of liberty.”

From engineering coups in Chile and Guatemala, to choreographing a troop landing at the Bay of Pigs intended to establish an exile government in Cuba, to training Latin American strongmen at the School of the Americas in torture techniques to control their people, the United States has meddled, interfered, intervened and undermined the democracies it claims to protect.

Now, Vice President Mike Pence, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, National Security Adviser John Bolton, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) and the infamous Elliott Abrams are working with opposition groups in Venezuela to carry out a coup d’état.

In 2002, the George W. Bush administration, through the CIA, aided and abetted an attempted coup, according to attorney Eva Golinger, an award-winning author and journalist. Golinger, a close confidante of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, obtained evidence of US intervention from multiple Freedom of Information Act requests, which she discusses in her new book, Confidante of ‘Tyrants’: The Inside Story of the American Woman Trusted By the US’s Biggest Enemies.

There is a major difference, however, between the 2002 coup attempt and the Trump administration’s current effort to change the regime in Venezuela, Golinger says. She told Truthout that unlike the situation in 2002, “when the Bush administration worked behind the scenes to back a coup d’état against Chávez with multimillion-dollar funding and political support to the opposition, the Trump administration is now pursuing regime change in Venezuela in plain sight.”

Golinger came to Chávez’s attention after her investigation revealed proof of US involvement in the 2002 attempted coup. Since Chávez was elected president of Venezuela in 1998, the United States tried overtly and covertly to overthrow his “Bolivarian Revolution” by furnishing opposition groups working for regime change with millions of dollars, Golinger writes. Chávez used Venezuela’s vast oil wealth to eradicate illiteracy and poverty, and to provide education and universal health care.

After Chávez’s death in 2013, Nicolás Maduro was elected president after promising to carry on the Bolivarian Revolution. But the punishing sanctions President Obama imposed in 2015, combined with corruption, mismanagement and autocratic leadership, caused economic hardship. Falling oil prices in 2016 led to hyperinflation two years later, and Venezuela’s economy collapsed.

Nevertheless, Maduro was re-elected in 2018. The opposition’s boycott of the election and the US government’s support of that boycott resulted in Maduro’s victory over Henri Falcón.

Team Trump Is Engineering Regime Change in Venezuela

Elliott Abrams is a disturbing, but not surprising, choice to serve as US special envoy to Venezuela. Abrams was convicted of lying to Congress about the Iran-Contra scandal and later pardoned by George H.W. Bush. The new envoy supported General Efraín Ríos Montt, the Guatemalan dictator who directed the torture and mass murder of Indigenous people in the 1980s, and was later convicted of genocide. Moreover, Abrams was linked to the 2002 attempted US coup in Venezuela.

The Trump administration is now pursuing regime change in Venezuela in plain sight.

“The naming of notorious ‘dirty war’ expert Elliott Abrams to oversee the Venezuela operation, the public threats against Venezuela of ‘consequences’ should they defy the US made by Trump’s hawkish John Bolton, and Trump’s own multiple statements that a military option is ‘on the table’ for Venezuela, clearly show that the table is set,” Golinger told Truthout.

The “US is not just ‘behind’ this coup,” Ben Norton wrote in a series of tweets. “The US is openly leading the coup.”

Indeed, The Wall Street Journal reported that on January 22, Pence called Juan Guaidó and “pledged” US support “if he seized the reins of government from Nicolás Maduro.” Guaidó was a little-known player whom the United States had long cultivated to undermine the Bolivarian Revolution. Guaidó swore himself in as “interim president” of Venezuela the following day.

“That late-night call set in motion a plan that had been developed in secret over the preceding several weeks, accompanied by talks between U.S. officials, allies, lawmakers, and key Venezuelan opposition figures, including Mr. Guaidó himself,” according to the Wall Street Journal. “Almost instantly, just as Mr. Pence had promised, President Trump issued a statement recognizing Mr. Guaidó as the country’s rightful leader.”

“Opposition leaders have already met in the White House with Pence, and Trump himself telephoned Guaidó to express US support for his de facto regime. If this is what they are doing overtly, we can only imagine the depth of their covert ops in Venezuela,” Golinger told Truthout…

Sanctions Hurt the Venezuelan People

On January 28, the Trump administration imposed sanctions against Venezuela that amount to an oil embargo. They forbid Venezuela’s state-owned oil company from doing business with most US companies (except Chevron and Halliburton).  These penalties are projected to deprive Venezuela of $7 billion in assets, resulting in $11 billion in export losses during the next year. That’s on top of the $6 billion that Trump’s August 2017 financial sanctions cost Venezuela in one year.

The new sanctions against Venezuela “could turbocharge what is already the world’s worst inflation, worsening fuel shortages and compromise the state’s ability to buy and distribute food,” the New York Times reported.

“[A] problematic idea driving current US policy is the belief that financial sanctions can hurt the Venezuelan government without causing serious harm to ordinary Venezuelans,” Francisco Rodríguez, a Venezuelan economist, wrote in Foreign Policy. “That’s impossible when 95 percent of Venezuela’s export revenue comes from oil sold by the state-owned oil company. Cutting off the government’s access to dollars will leave the economy without the hard currency needed to pay for imports of food and medicine.”

As a result, Rodríguez, added, “Starving the Venezuelan economy of its foreign currency earnings risks turning the country’s current humanitarian crisis into a full-blown humanitarian catastrophe…”

In addition to the oil sanctions, the US State Department turned over control of Venezuela’s property and bank accounts in the United States to Guaidó, in what The New York Times called “one of Washington’s most overt attempts in decades to carry out regime change in Latin America.”

Regime Change and Sanctions Are Illegal and Unwanted

Forcible regime change in Venezuela is illegal under international law.

“The shocking aggression and illegal interference against a sovereign nation by the Trump administration is a blatant violation of the charters of the United Nations and Organization of American States, which recognize the principles of national sovereignty, peaceful settlement of disputes, and a prohibition on threatening or using force against the territory of another state,” the National Lawyers Guild said in a statement.

Moreover, the organization states, “directly fomenting a coup in a sovereign nation is not only illegal and outright shunned by the international community, it fundamentally undermines any pretextual concern about interference by other nations in U.S. elections.”

Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves, and the United States is its biggest customer…

US imposition of economic sanctions against Venezuela is also illegal. The OAS Charter proscribes the use of coercive economic or political measures to force the sovereign will of another country and obtain any advantages from it.

“Coercion, whether military or economic, must never be used to seek a change in government in a sovereign state,” said Idriss Jazairy, a UN special rapporteur concerned with the negative impact of sanctions. “The use of sanctions by outside powers to overthrow an elected government is in violation of all norms of international law.” Jazairy also noted that, “Precipitating an economic and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela is not a foundation for the peaceful settlement of disputes.”

Former UN Special Rapporteur Alfred-Maurice de Zayas says the United States is waging “economic warfare” against Venezuela. In his report to the Human Rights Council, de Zayas recommends that the International Criminal Court investigate whether “economic war, embargoes, financial blockades and sanctions regimes amount to geopolitical crimes and crimes against humanity under Article 7 of the Rome Statute.”

Moreover, in order to impose sanctions under US law, the president must declare a national emergency and state that Venezuela constitutes an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the national security of the United States. That claim is patently false.

De Zayas is a signatory to an open letter released last week, signed by 70 experts and academics who condemned the US-backed coup attempt against the Maduro government.  Although ostensibly aimed at helping the Venezuelan people, Team Trump’s sanctions and threats of military invasion are overwhelmingly unpopular in Venezuela. Eighty-six percent of Venezuelans oppose US military intervention and 81 percent are against sanctions.

It’s the Oil, Stupid

Why is the United States so intent on regime change? Because Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves, and the United States is its biggest customer.  Within two days of his self-inauguration as “interim president,” Guaidó began a process to RESTRUCTURE AND PRIVATIZE VENEZUELA’S OIL INDUSTRY for the benefit of multinational corporations.

Drawing a parallel with George W. Bush’s Iraq war, Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) tweeted, “It’s about the oil … again.” Indeed, Halliburton, exempted from the new sanctions against Venezuela, is once again benefitting from regime change, like it did in Iraq.

Bolton didn’t pull any punches when he stated at a press conference that, “We’re in conversation with major American companies now. … It would make a difference if we could have American companies produce the oil in Venezuela. We both have a lot of stake here.”

The Trump administration appears intent on privatizing Venezuela’s oil in order to maximize the profits of US oil companies at the expense of the Venezuelan people and the rule of law.

After almost 20 years of nonstop wars, America has been laid to waste.  Trillions in debt to the Federal Reserve Bank and a collapsing infrastructure the same architects of the Iraq War now want to attack the people of Venezuela and steal their resources to hand them out like party favors to their multinational corporation paymasters.

The CIA-controlled media is already firing up the War Wurlitzer propaganda machines to justify their outright, illegal overthrow of the elected government in Venezuela.  Trump has now surrounded himself with war criminals who should be in The Hague not running America’s foreign policy.

 The Trump Administration has brought in one of the worst war criminals in American history, Elliot Abrams the architect of the New World Order, and proponent of South American death squads to “restore democracy” in Venezuela.  Much like the neocons “restored democracy” in Ukraine after the people elected the wrong person as their president.  Elliot Abrams is part of the shadow government that is the CIA and the entire “intelligence” apparatus.  From Edward Curtain at Lew Rockwell:

Excerpt:

The CIA Then and Now: Old Wine in New Bottles

“And as the flames climbed high into the night

To light the sacrificial rite

I saw Satan laughing with delight

The day the music died”

– Don McLean, “American Pie”

The Nazis had a name for their propaganda and mind-control operations: weltanschauungskrieg – “world view warfare.”  As good students, they had learned many tricks of the trade from their American teachers, including Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, who had honed his propagandistic skills for the United States during World War I and had subsequently started the public relations industry in New York City, an industry whose raison d’ȇtre from the start was to serve the interests of the elites in manipulating the public mind.

In 1941, U.S. Intelligence translated weltanschauungskrieg as “psychological warfare,” a phrase that fails to grasp the full dimensions of the growing power and penetration of U.S. propaganda, then and now.  Of course, the American propaganda apparatus was just then getting started on an enterprise that has become the epitome of successful world view warfare programs, a colossal beast whose tentacles have spread to every corner of the globe and whose fabrications have nestled deep within the psyches of many hundreds of millions of Americans and people around the world. 

And true to form in this circle game of friends helping friends, this propaganda program was ably assisted after WW II by all the Nazis secreted into the U.S. (“Operation Paperclip”) by Allen Dulles and his henchmen in the OSS and then the CIA to make sure the U.S. had operatives to carry on the Nazi legacy (see David Talbot’s The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, The CIA, and The Rise of America’s Secret Government, an extraordinary book that will make your skin crawl with disgust).

This went along quite smoothly until some people started to question the Warren Commission’s JFK assassination story.  The CIA then went on the offensive in 1967 and put out the word to all its people in the agency and throughout the media and academia to use the phrase “conspiracy theory” to ridicule these skeptics, which they have done up until the present day…

The CIA Exposed – Partially

But back in the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, some covert propaganda programs run by the CIA were “exposed.”  First, the Agency’s sponsorship of the Congress of Cultural Freedom, through which it used magazines, prominent writers, academics, et al. to spread propaganda during the Cold War, was uncovered. 

Then in 1975 the Church Committee hearings resulted in the exposure of abuses by the CIA, NSA, FBI, etc.  In 1977 Carl Bernstein wrote a long piece for Esquire – “The CIA and the Media” – naming names of journalists and publications (The New York Times, CBS, etc.) that worked with and for the CIA in propagandizing the American people and the rest of the world…

By the late 1970s, it seemed as if the CIA had been caught in flagrante delicto and disgraced, had confessed its sins, done penance, and resolved to go and sin no more.  Seeming, however, is the nature of the CIA’s game.  Organized criminals learn to adapt to the changing times, and that is exactly what the intelligence operatives did.  Since the major revelations of the late sixties and seventies – MKUltra, engineered coups all around the world, assassinations of foreign leaders, spying on Americans, etc. – no major program of propaganda has been exposed in the mainstream media… 

Revealing books about certain CIA programs have been written – e.g. Douglas Valentine’s important The Phoenix Program being one – and dissenting writers, journalists, researchers, and whistleblowers (Robert Parry, Gary Webb, Julian Assange, James W. Douglass, David Ray Griffin, Edward Snowden, et al.) have connected the U.S. intelligence services to dirty deeds and specific actions, such as the American engineered coup d’état in Ukraine in 2013-14, electronic spying, and the attacks of September 11, 2001. 

But the propaganda has for the most part continued unabated at a powerful and esoteric cultural level, while illegal and criminal actions are carried out throughout the world in the most blatant manner imaginable, as if to say fuck you openly while insidiously infecting the general population through the mass electronic screen culture that has relegated intellectual and literary culture to a tiny minority.

Organizations like the CIA are obviously fallible and have made many mistakes and failed to anticipate world events.  But they are also very powerful, having great financial backing, and do the bidding of their masters in banking, Wall St., finance, etc.  They are the action arm of these financial elites, and are, as Douglass Valentine has written, organized criminals. 

They have their own military, are joined to all the armed forces, and are deeply involved in the drug trade. They control the politicians. They operate their own propaganda network in conjunction with the private mercenaries they hire for their operations. 

The corporate mass media take their orders, orders that need not be direct, but sometimes are, because these media are structured to do the bidding of the same elites that formed the CIA and own the media.  And while their ostensible raison d’ȇtre is to provide intelligence to the nation’s civilian leaders, this is essentially a cover story for their real work that is propaganda, killing, and conducting coups d’états at home and abroad.

Because they have deep pockets, they can afford to buy all sorts of people, people who pimp for the elites…  They come from different fields: history, anthropology, psychology, sociology, political science, cultural studies, linguistics, etc. They populate the think tanks and universities.  They are often intelligent but live in bad faith, knowing they are working for those who are doing the devil’s work. But they collect their pay and go their way straight to the bank, the devil’s bank.  They often belong to the Council of Foreign Relations or the Heritage Foundation. They are esteemed and esteem themselves.  But they are pimps.

El Diablo

Ah, the devil!  He’s their man. A man of many names, but always an impostor.  These pimps know his story and how he works his magic, and this is what their paymasters want from them: ways to use the old bastard’s bag of tricks to conjure confusion, and sow fear and paranoia.  And to do this slow and easy in ways no one will recognize until it is too late…

Tell people endless tales of the good guys and the bad, of how the bad are out to get you and the good to save you…  Stories are told to accompany the symbols; stories, narratives, or myths tell of how the good guys are fighting to hold the group together and the bad guys are trying to rip the community apart.  

The symbolic and its opposite – the diabolic (to throw apart) – the angels against the devils – el diablo.  Very simple, very old.  The aliens are out to get us.  And el diablo is always the ultimate other, the man in red, the reds, the commies, the Russians, the others, immigrants, the blacks who want to move next door, Muslims, gays  – take your pick.  Satanic rituals.  Black magic.  Witchcraft…

The purpose of the long-term propaganda is to create certain predispositions and weaknesses that can be exploited when needed.  Certain events can be the triggers to induce the victims to react to suggestions.  When the time is ripe, all that is needed is a slight suggestion, like a touch on the shoulder, and the hypnotized one acts in a trance.  The gun goes off, and the entranced one can’t remember why (see: Sirhan Sirhan).  This is the goal of mass hypnotization through long-term propaganda: confusion, memory loss, and automatic reaction to suggestion.

The CIA, satanic cults, and UFOs, the mythology of the late twentieth century is surprisingly coherent even though the masks change from case to case, from victim to alleged victim.  The CIA, of course, does exist; their mind control programs from BLUEBIRD to ARTICHOKE to MK-ULTRA are a matter of public record. 

Their history of political assassinations and the overthrow of various foreign governments is also a matter of record… 

But many are catching on and realizing that what seems strange but innocent is part of a much larger effort to hypnotize the public to agree to their own destruction through the ingestion of what can only be called black magic.

That is what the gist of the New World Order is about, getting Americans to agree to their own destruction through trillion dollar wars that are unwinnable therefore must maintained with trillions of dollars a year to infinity.  The Federal Reserve Bank continues to print trillions of their worthless notes and charge the American taxpayer’s interest.  The American people have been told by the CIA-run-media that Venezuela is a dictatorship run by a tyrant. 

When Hugo Chavez was elected President he nationalized the oil reserves and the CIA has been trying to overthrow the elected government since.  After Chavez was assassinated Maduro was elected vowing to maintain the Bolivarian style of socialism.  Maduro also has defied the US “sanctions of mass destruction” against them and recently signed an energy deal with Russia.  Much like Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine made an energy and loan deal with Russia instead of the crappy World Bank steal-your-assets deal and was ousted by the neocons in the CIA. 

Armed with the RAND Corporation’s blueprint for “restoring democracy” the neocons removed the elected president of Ukraine and installed a president approved by the Zionist neocons.  From Global Research:

Excerpt:

President Poroshenko Uses RAND Corporation “Action Plan” for Eastern Ukraine including Ground Assaults and Air Strikes

Confidential document on Ukraine by the RAND Corporation leaked. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko follows the action plan proposed by RAND analysts.  This Memorandum on the “advisable course of action” automatically means that the peace plan confirmed by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is slated to fail.

The document provides three stages for the conduct of a military operation in eastern Ukraine.  The first stage implies total isolation of the region considering that all local citizens are terrorists or sympathizers.

The Region should be encircled with troops and sealed off entirely from any flow of goods and persons. Broadcasting services, Internet connection, telephone and mobile communications in the region shall be shut down.

The second stage is named Mop-up.

Ground assaults shall be preceded by air strikes against the strategic facilities. The use of non-conventional arms is allowed.  The document also provides for internment   camps outside the cleared settlements. People featuring traces of combat engagement shall be tried in court for terrorism.

During the third stage Back to Normal power supplies and communications shall be restored. The borders shall be strengthened to avoid possible provocations. All the refugees should be checked for possible support for separatists in internment camps.

So how does Ukraine look today after the neocon Zionist cabal restored “democracy” after ousting their elected leader?  From Stephen Lendman:

Excerpt:

Rampant Torture and Abuse in Ukraine

Ukraine is a fascist police state – run by US-installed, Nazi-infested putschists, a cancer in Europe’s heartland. 

Washington and EU nations support its naked aggression on Donbass, ignoring cold-blooded murder, rampant torture and other abuses by illegitimate junta officials running things – according to the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT).

According to its report, “a considerable number of credible allegations from detained persons (including juveniles, revealed severe) physical ill- treatment by police officers, consisting mainly of slaps, punches, kicks or blows with a truncheon or a plastic bottle filled with water.”

“In (some) cases, ill-treatment was of such severity that it could be considered as amounting to torture. Most of the allegations concerned ill-treatment during initial questioning by operational police officers in an attempt to obtain confessions or other information…”

The frequency of torture and ill-treatment “remains at a worrying level.” Unrecorded detentions continue, including individuals held without charge handcuffed to fixed objects without food or water at times for days.  Treatment ignores rule of law safeguards, prohibiting brutal treatment for any reason at all times, with no allowed exceptions…

Iron discipline enforced is “grossly excessive,” punishment meted out for minor rules violations or indiscriminately. Conditions in many prisons are “appalling…inhuman and degrading,” in some cases with little or no heat in winter.  Police states aren’t known for kind and gentle treatment within or free from confinement.

Ukraine is Europe’s worst. Its Kiev Obolonsky district kangaroo court intends trying coup d’etat toppled former President Viktor Yanukovich in absentia – on fabricated treason charges.  In Russia for his safety, his request to take part in the automatic guilt by accusation trial by video link-up was denied.

Kiev putschists fear damning evidence of their February 2014 coup might come out in trial proceedings – including neocon assistant State Department secretary Victoria Nuland’s involvement in orchestrating what happened.

That is what evil does, in Iraq we were told the Iraqi people wanted America to kill their leader and replace him with a Washington puppet.  For years it was drilled into our heads that Saddam was a monster, making his people live in poverty while he stole all their oil money.  A half million Iraqi’s have been killed and that’s not counting the ones who died from contaminated water or the horrific birth defects from the illegal use of depleted uranium.  Iraq is now a failed state.  Elliot Abrams was one of the architects of the Iraq “restoration of Democracy” experiment.

Libya was the richest African nation, whose people had free healthcare and a great standard of living until the neocon Zionists told us we needed to free the Libyan people from “a brutal dictator” now look at Libya, it’s a failed nation with their natural resources being stolen.  That is what we are planning on bringing to Venezuela.  From Global Research:

Excerpt:

– we think the price is worth it.”

Clearly, U.S. sanctions policies are nothing short of state-sanctioned genocide.

Over the last five years, sanctions have caused Venezuelan per capita incomes to drop by 40 percent, which is a decline similar to that of war torn Iraq and Syria at the height of their armed conflicts. Millions of Venezuelans have had to flee the country.

If America is so concerned about refugees, Trump should stop furthering disastrous foreign policies that actually create them. Under Chavez, Venezuela had a policy of welcoming refugees. President Chavez turned Venezuela into the wealthiest society in Latin America with the best income equality.

Another much vilified leader who used oil wealth to enrich his people, only to be put under severe sanctions, is Muammar Gaddafi. In 1967 Colonel Gaddafi inherited one of the poorest nations in Africa; however, by the time he was assassinated, Gaddafi had turned Libya into Africa’s wealthiest nation.

Perhaps, Gaddafi’s greatest crime, in the eyes of NATO, was his quest to quit selling Libyan oil in U.S. Dollars and denominate crude sales in a new gold backed common African currency.

In fact, in August 2011, President Obama confiscated $30 billion from Libya’s Central Bank, which Gaddafi had earmarked for the establishment of an African Central Bank and the African gold-backed Dinar currency.

Africa has the fastest growing oil industry in the world and oil sales in a common African currency would have been especially devastating for the American dollar, the U.S. economy, and particularly the elite in charge of the petrodollar system… 

Not so long ago, Iraq and Libya were the two most modern and secular states in the Middle East and North Africa, with the highest regional standards of living. Nowadays, U.S. Military intervention and economic sanctions have turned Libya and Iraq into two of the world’s most failed nations.

“They want to seize Libya’s oil and they care nothing about the lives of the Libyan people,” remarked Chavez during the Western intervention in Libya in 2011. In September 2017, President Maduro made good on Chavez’s promise to list oil sales in Yuan rather than the US dollar. Weeks later Trump signed a round of crippling sanctions on the people of Venezuela.

On Monday, U.S. National Security adviser John Bolton announced new sanctions that essentially steal $7 billion from Venezuela’s state owned oil company. At that press conference Bolton brazenly flashed a note pad that ominously said “5,000 troops to Colombia”. When confronted about it by the media, Bolton simply said, “President Trump stated that all options are on the table”.

America’s media is unquestionably the most corrupt institution in America. The nation’s media may quibble about Trump’s domestic policies but when it comes to starting wars for oil abroad they sing in remarkable unison. Fox News, CNN and the New York Times all cheered the nation into war in Iraq over fictitious weapons of mass destruction, whilst America was actually using sanctions of mass destruction on the Iraqi people.

They did it in Libya and now they are doing it again in Venezuela. Democracy and freedom have always been the smoke screen in front of capitalist expansion for oil, and the Western Media owns the smoke machine. Economic warfare has long since been under way against Venezuela but military warfare is now imminent.

Trump just hired Elliot Abrams as U.S. Special Envoy for Venezuela, who has a long and torrid history in Latin America. Abrams pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the Iran Contra affair, which involved America funding deadly communist rebels, and was the worst scandal in the Reagan Era. Abrams was later pardoned by George Bush Senior. America’s new point man on Venezuela also lied about the largest mass killing in recent Latin American history by U.S. trained forces in El Salvador.

There is nothing more undemocratic than a coup d’état. A UN Human Rights Council Rapporteur, Alfred de Zayas, pointed out that America’s aim in Venezuela is to “crush this government and bring in a neoliberal government that is going to privatise everything and is going to sell out, a lot of transitional corporations stand to gain enormous profits and the United States is driven by the transnational corporations.”

Ever since 1980, the United States has steadily devolved from the status of the world’s top creditor country to the world’s most indebted country. But thanks to the petrodollar system’s huge global artificial demand for U.S. dollars, America can continue exponential military expansion, record breaking deficits and unrestrained spending.

America’s largest export used to be manufactured goods made proudly in America. Today, America’s largest export is the U.S. dollar. Any nation like Venezuela that threatens that export is met with America’s second largest export: weapons, chief amongst which are SANCTIONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION.

So now a truly, brutal, inhumane admitted war criminal has been put in charge of “restoring democracy” to Venezuela by bringing in death squads to neutralize those who refuse to allow the US to kill their leader and steal their natural resources.  From Russia Insider:

Excerpt:

Donald Trump Is Making America Great Again With Elliot 'Death Squads' Abrams

Neocon warmonger, backer of Central American death squads, Iraq war engineer and Never Trumper -- you gotta be kidding

President Donald Trump’s handling of personnel has been a constant Achilles heel for achieving his agenda. He has allowed many globalists into his administration, the latest being disgraced neocon warmonger Elliot Abrams who will handle relations with Venezuela as their socialist regime teeters on the brink of collapse.

Russia Today reports on the horrifyingly bad record of Abrams going back to the Reagan administration and the Iran/Contra affair:

“As the Reagan administration’s assistant secretary of state for human rights in the 1980s, Abrams supported the US-backed dictators in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras in their campaigns of repression, including death squads. He was also involved in working with Iran to arming the US-backed rebels in Nicaragua, the infamous Iran-Contra scandal.

Abrams was eventually convicted of lying to Congress about Iran-Contra, but was pardoned right away by President George H.W. Bush. In the 1990s, Abrams became a founding member of the Project for a New American Century, a hawkish neoconservative think-tank.

He returned to the corridors of power in 2001, as a director on the National Security Council for President George W. Bush. He played a key role in the 2002 attempted coup in Venezuela against President Hugo Chavez, and was one of the architects of the 2003 Iraq war.”

Making matters even worse, Abrams is an avowed Never Trumper. He bashed the President throughout his 2016 campaign and even pined for Hillary Clinton to be in the White House!  Specialists in the 'dirty wars' of the Eighties encouraged the plotters who tried to topple President Chavez.

Neoconservatives who support costly nation-building efforts overseas to enrich defense contractors at the expense of the taxpayer are certainly very happy about this appointment while everyone else groans in disgust at the hire.

The naming of Elliot Abrams as Special Envoy on Venezuela is great news. He is an tough & experienced foreign policy expert with a long history of supporting democracy, liberty & the national interest of the United States.

Yet again, Trump has been played by the swamp. If there is anyone who could mess things up in Venezuela, it is Abrams who quite literally represents everything that Trump was elected to destroy. If Trump loses in 2020 to his Democratic challenger, it will be because of boneheaded mistakes like continuously hiring disgraced GOP establishment hacks like Abrams!

If the goal in Venezuela is a failed state quagmire costing Americans trillions of dollars, Abrams is your guy!  These neocons can’t even clean up one of their messes before starting another.  But then there’s tons of money to be made in the midst of a quagmire.  From Eric Margolis at Lew Rockwell:

Excerpt:

Mr President. End This Shameful War Now!

An ancient Hindu prayer says, ‘Lord Shiva, save us from the claw of the tiger, the fang of the cobra, and the vengeance of the Afghan.’

The United States, champion of freedom and self-determination, is now in its 18th year of colonial war in Afghanistan.  This miserable, stalemated conflict is America’s longest and most shameful war.  So far it has cost over $1 trillion and killed no one knows how many Afghans.

This conflict began in 2001 on a lie: namely that Afghanistan was somehow responsible for the 9/11 attacks on the US.  These attacks were planned in Europe and the US, not Afghanistan, and apparently conducted (official version) by anti-American Saudi extremists.  This writer remains unconvinced by the official versions.

We still don’t know if Osama bin Laden instigated the attacks.  He was murdered rather than brought to trial.  Dead men tell no tales.  However, Mullah Omar, leader of Afghanistan’s Taliban movement, told my late friend journalist Arnaud de Borchgrave that bin Laden was not involved in 9/11.  Who benefited?  Certainly not the Afghans.  They have been at war for the past 40 years.

As I wrote in my first book, ‘War at the Top of the World,’ Afghanistan’s Pashtun tribal majority were fierce fighters and were incredibly brave.  Their Taliban movement was a tribal-nationalist-Islamist force devoted to fighting communism, drug dealing and foreign influence.  Taliban stamped out the Afghan opium trade and had just about crushed the drug-dealing Russian-backed Tajik northern alliance – until the US invaded in 2001.  The Afghan drug lords quickly became US allies and remain so today.

Taliban was not a ‘terrorist movement,’ as western war propaganda falsely claimed.  Twenty years earlier their fathers were hailed ‘freedom fighters’ by President Ronald Reagan when they were fighting Soviet occupation.  Taliban’s Pashtun warriors wanted all foreigners out of their nation and the right to run their own affairs according to Islamic principles.

The US has savaged Afghanistan, one of the world’s poorest countries.  US B-52 and B-1 heavy bombers are razing tribal villages, predator killer drones attack most road movement, US-paid Afghan puppet forces, many former Communists, routinely torture and murder.  All this while the US-installed yes-man regime in Kabul does nothing to halt massive drug dealing and human rights abuses.

In fact, dealing in opium and morphine is the primary business of Afghanistan.  This cash crop could not be exported to Pakistan, India, Iran and Russia without the connivance of the Kabul regime and its US military protectors.  When the full truth about the war is finally written, the US will be in the deepest shame over involvement in the drug trade.

Washington, which has done as much as the former Soviet invaders to ravage Afghanistan, has no clear idea what to do next.  President Trump announced withdrawal of some of the 14,000 US troops (and large numbers of mercenaries) from Afghanistan.

But then the pro-war neocons at State and the Pentagon sought to veto the president’s statement.  Meanwhile, desultory talks are droning on in Doha, Qatar, between the US and Taliban, led by the US ‘special envoy’ (read proconsul) Zalmay Khalilzad, a neocon who played an important role in promoting the invasion of Iraq.

Why is the US still at war in Afghanistan after 18 years?  First, because the politicians and generals involved won’t accept responsibility for a defeat and its huge cost.  There is nothing more wasteful than a lost war.  Second, because imperial-minded circles want to keep bases in Afghanistan to menace China, Iran and Pakistan. 

There are huge profits to be made from this endless war with its $400 per gallon gasoline trucked in from Karachi and 24-hour on call air support.  Plus the bases and fleet that support the war and promotion for the senior officers involved.

To keep this useless war against lightly armed Pashtun tribesmen going, the US must massively bribe Pakistan to maintain the military’s supply routes into that isolated nation.   The absurd waste of US money in Afghanistan and Pakistan has been fully documented by the US government’s audit agencies.

President Trump is right to talk about ending this ignoble conflict.  But the neocon fifth column he has foolishly helped install keeps thwarting his aspirations.

Trump should order the fighting ended and all US troops out of Afghanistan within 90 days.  End US involvement in the drug trade.  Tell India to butt out of Afghanistan. That would be statesmanship.  Afghanistan must be allowed to return to its former obscurity.

Yep, Elliot Abrams is your guy.  He has a long record of failure and crimes to ensure the plunder of Venezuela will go on for years.  It’s all part of the New World Order plan to destroy America as a world power.  Abrams should be tried for treason instead of “restoring democracy” to Venezuela.  It’s amazing that according to Abrams and his ilk, the only way to restore democracy is to view the citizenry as “terrorists” and kill anyone not on board with the U.S. installed government.

The problem with the neocon plan for Venezuela is that it is just like the plan that they carried out in Ukraine, they are a one trick pony.  They used the same blueprint for Iraq, and tried and failed in Syria with the same plan.  As usual these horrific plans to destroy Venezuela are heartily supported by the right-wing governments in the UK and Canada.  From Op Ed News:

Excerpt:

Venezuela, and Canada's Duplicitous Criminality

Socialism isn't the problem. The problem in Venezuela is the cancer of Western-supported deep state agencies that are subverting its political economy for the perceived benefit of a tiny transnational oligarch class.

The same agencies which helped to renovate the post 9/11 Canadian government, by ushering in the Harper Regime[1]- arguably a soft coup - and the on-going coup beneath the progressive veneer of the Trudeau regime, are hard at work in Venezuela.[2]

The Canadian government's support for Juan Guaido in the name of democracy and freedom is beyond absurd because he has almost no support in Venezuela, and he was not elected to lead the country.

#Maduro got a higher competitive vote and a greater proportion of all possible votes than any of his key detractors: #Trump #Macri #Santos or #Piñera . The plain truth about #Venezuela- Prof. Tim Anderson

The Canadian government's actions demonstrate clearly that it denies and negates democracy and freedom as policy. Nation-state sovereignty, ideological pluralism, and international law are all proven enemies to the Canadian government.

This is amply demonstrated, not only in its support for the imperial puppet opposition in Venezuela, but also in the Canadian government's support for ISIS, al Qaeda and assorted terrorists in Syria[3], as well as the government's support for a neo-Nazi infested coup government[4] in Kiev.

Nation-state self-determination, ideological pluralism, democracy, and the rule of international law should be values that Western countries support rather than destroy.

Syria: The White Helmets Are Terrorist Auxiliaries

Venezuela and its allies are fighting for us all when they oppose the deep state anti-democratic cancer of lawless imperialism.

America’s coup in Venezuela is being conducted by persons who are not answerable to anyone.  America’s values were murdered along with the Twin Towers when Elliot Abrams and his cohorts infested our intelligence agencies and used them against the American people.  The Venezuelan Supreme Court is fighting back.  From Geopolitics:

Excerpt:

Venezuelan Supreme Court Fights Back Deep State Regime Change

The Maduro government is imperfect. The Venezuelans are just like the Americans, and the rest of the global population. They can easily be manipulated through economic pressures, and black propaganda. Fortunately for the Venezuelans, their Supreme Court is standing up to the developing Deep State incursions into their domestic affairs.

According to media reports, the Venezuelan Supreme Court has blocked all of the self-proclaimed interim president’s bank accounts and financial transactions within its jurisdiction after the Venezuelan authorities have launched the preliminary investigation into the activities of the country’s opposition leader Juan Guaido,

Reuters reported Tuesday, citing a statement of the Venezuelan Supreme Court’s president. In particular, the court’s ruling imposes a travel ban on Juan Guaido until the completion of the investigation.

The country is further tethering into a full blown economic recession as the Bank of England refused to release its gold deposit amounting to US$1.2 billion. The Deep State is hoping that by squeezing the Venezuelan government from accessing the much needed funds that the military will have no other choice but to side with the foreign interventionists.

The weaponization of the banking system by the Western robber barons is what triggered in part the establishment of various development banks to finance the One Belt One Road global economic initiative of China under its president Xi Jinping, to help its neighboring countries achieve their own economic development with relative independence from the financial oligarchs whose exercise of absolute power is without any sense of wisdom and accountability…

Russia, for its part, is also unloading its US dollar denominated assets in response to a decade of economic sanctions against its citizens and companies… 

The capitalist monetary based economic systematic has just reached its new shameful milestone when Oxfam reported that only 26 billionaires own more than half of the world’s population.

President Trump ran on a platform of ending nation building abroad and beginning nation building at home.  It is difficult to understand what has changed that Trump would bring in the criminals from Bush I and II Administrations.  This will not end well for America.  From Strategic Culture:

Excerpt:

Venezuela: Let’s Cut to the Chase

Cold War 2.0 has hit South America with a bang – pitting the US and expected minions against the four key pillars of in-progress Eurasia integration: Russia, China, Iran and Turkey.  It’s the oil, stupid. But there’s way more than meets the (oily) eye. 

Caracas has committed the ultimate cardinal sin in the eyes of Exceptionalistan; oil trading bypassing the US dollar or US-controlled exchanges.  Remember Iraq. Remember Libya. Yet Iran is also doing it. Turkey is doing it. Russia is – partially – on the way. And China will eventually trade all its energy in petroyuan. 

With Venezuela adopting the petro crypto-currency and the sovereign bolivar, already last year the Trump administration had sanctioned Caracas off the international financial system.  No wonder Caracas is supported by China, Russia and Iran.

They are the real hardcore troika – not psycho-killer John Bolton’s cartoonish “troika of tyranny” – fighting against the Trump administration’s energy dominance strategy, which consists essentially in aiming at the total lock down of oil trading in petrodollars, forever.

Venezuela is a key cog in the machine. Psycho killer Bolton admitted it on the record; “It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.” It’s not a matter of just letting ExxonMobil take over Venezuela’s massive oil reserves – the largest on the planet. The key is to monopolize their exploitation in US dollars, benefitting a few Big Oil billionaires.

Once again, the curse of natural resources is in play. Venezuela must not be allowed to profit from its wealth on its own terms; thus, Exceptionalistan has ruled that the Venezuelan state must be shattered.  In the end, this is all about economic war. Cue to the US Treasury Department imposing new sanctions on PDVSA that amount to a de facto oil embargo against Venezuela.

Economic war redux

By now it’s firmly established what happened in Caracas was not a color revolution but an old-school US-promoted regime change coup using local comprador elites, installing as “interim president” an unknown quantity, Juan Guaido, with his Obama choirboy looks masking extreme right-wing credentials.

Everyone remembers “Assad must go”. The first stage in the Syrian color revolution was the instigation of civil war, followed by a war by proxy via multinational jihadi mercenaries.

As Thierry Meyssan has noted, the role of the Arab League then is performed by the OAS now. And the role of Friends of Syria – now lying in the dustbin of history – is now performed by the Lima group, the club of Washington’s vassals. Instead of al-Nusra “moderate rebels”, we may have Colombian – or assorted Emirati-trained – “moderate rebel” mercenaries.

Contrary to Western corporate media fake news, the latest elections in Venezuela were absolutely legitimate. There was no way to tamper with the made in Taiwan electronic voting machines. The ruling Socialist Party got 70 percent of the votes; the opposition, with many parties boycotting it, got 30 percent. A serious delegation of the Latin American Council of Electoral Experts (CEELA) was adamant; the election reflected “peacefully and without problems, the will of Venezuelan citizens”.

The American embargo may be vicious. In parallel, Maduro’s government may have been supremely incompetent in not diversifying the economy and investing in food self-sufficiency. Major food importers, speculating like there’s no tomorrow, are making a killing. Still, reliable sources in Caracas tell that the barrios – the popular neighborhoods – remain largely peaceful.

In a country where a full tank of gas still costs less than a can of Coke, there’s no question the chronic shortages of food and medicines in local clinics have forced at least two million people to leave Venezuela. But the key enforcing factor is the US embargo.

The UN rapporteur to Venezuela, expert on international law, and former secretary of the UN Human Rights Council, Alfred de Zayas, goes straight to the point; much more than engaging in the proverbial demonization of Maduro, Washington is waging “economic war” against a whole nation.

It’s enlightening to see how the “Venezuelan people” see the charade. In a poll conducted by Hinterlaces even before the Trump administration coup/regime change wet dream, 86% of Venezuelans said they were against any sort of US intervention, military or not, and 81% of Venezuelans said they were against US sanctions. So much for “benign” foreign interference on behalf of “democracy” and “human rights”.

The Russia-China factor

Analyses by informed observers such as Eva Golinger and most of all, the Mision Verdad collective are extremely helpful. What’s certain, in true Empire of Chaos mode, is that the American playbook, beyond the embargo and sabotage, is to foment civil war.

Dodgy “armed groups” have been active in the Caracas barrios, acting in the dead of night and amplifying “social unrest” on social media. Still, Guaido holds absolutely no power inside the country. His only chance of success is if he manages to install a parallel government – cashing in on the oil revenue and having Washington arrest government members on trumped-up charges.

Irrespective of neocon wet dreams, adults at the Pentagon should know that an invasion of Venezuela may indeed metastasize into a tropical Vietnam quagmire. The Brazilian strongman in waiting, vice-president and retired general Hamilton Mourao, already said there will be no military intervention.

Psycho killer Bolton’s by now infamous notepad stunt about “5,000 troops to Colombia”, is a joke; these would have no chance against the arguably 15,000 Cubans who are in charge of security for the Maduro government; Cubans have demonstrated historically they are not in the business of handing over power.

It all comes back to what China and Russia may do. China is Venezuela’s largest creditor. Maduro was received by Xi Jinping last year in Beijing, getting an extra $5 billion in loans and signing at least 20 bilateral agreements.  President Putin offered his full support to Maduro over the phone, diplomatically stressing that “destructive interference from abroad blatantly violates basic norms of international law.”

By January 2016, oil was as low as $35 a barrel; a disaster to Venezuela’s coffers. Maduro then decided to transfer 49.9% of the state ownership in PDVSA’s US subsidiary, Citgo, to Russian Rosneft for a mere $1.5 billion loan. This had to send a wave of red lights across the Beltway; those “evil” Russians were now part owners of Venezuela’s prime asset.

Late last year, still in need of more funds, Maduro opened gold mining in Venezuela to Russian mining companies. And there’s more; nickel, diamonds, iron ore, aluminum, bauxite, all coveted by Russia, China – and the US. As for $1.3 billion of Venezuela’s own gold, forget about repatriating it from the Bank of England.  And then, last December, came the straw that broke the Deep State’s back; the friendship flight of two Russian nuclear-capable Tu-160 bombers. How dare they? In our own backyard?

The Trump administration’s energy masterplan may be indeed to annex Venezuela to a parallel “North American-South American Petroleum Exporting Countries” (NASAPEC) cartel, capable of rivaling the OPEC+ love story between Russia and the House of Saud.  But even if that came to fruition, and adding a possible, joint US-Qatar LNG alliance, there’s no guarantee that would be enough to assure petrodollar – and petrogas – preeminence in the long run.

Eurasia energy integration will mostly bypass the petrodollar; this is at the very heart of both the BRICS and SCO strategy. From Nord Stream 2 to Turk Stream, Russia is locking down a long-term energy partnership with Europe. And petroyuan dominance is just a matter of time. Moscow knows it. Tehran knows it. Ankara knows it. Riyadh knows it.

So what about plan B, neocons? Ready for your tropical Vietnam?

It’s hard to fathom why President Trump has brought all those losers into his cabinet.   One thing is for certain, the people of Venezuela have much to fear from that cabal but the people of America have even more to fear.  This debacle has the potential to crush the American economy and destroy the dollar.  From Russia Insider:

Excerpt:

How Would Bolton's '5,000 Troops to Colombia' Fare in Invasion of Venezuela?

It's impossible for the US to truly take over Venezuela but it could easily destroy it, and, unlike in Syria, Russia could do nothing about it

The Neocons never cease to amaze me and their latest stunt with Venezuela falls into this bizarre category of events which are both absolutely unthinkable and simultaneously absolutely predictable. This apparent logical contradiction is the direct result of a worldview and mindset which is, I believe, unique to the Neocons: a mix of imperial hubris and infinite arrogance, a complete lack of decency, a total contempt for the rest of mankind, crass ignorance, a narcissist/sociopath’s inability to have any kind of empathy or imagine another guy’s reaction and, finally, last but most certainly not least, crass stupidity…

“In your face” stupidity or bootcamp-like deliberate public humiliation?

Remember the almost universal reaction of horror when Bolton was appointed as National Security Advisor? Well, apparently, either the Neocons completely missed that, which I doubt, or they did what they always do and decided to double-down by retrieving Elliott Abrams from storage and appointing him US Special Envoy to Venezuela.

I mean, yes, of course, the Neocons are stupid and sociopathic enough not to ever care about others, but in this case I think that we are dealing with a “Skripal tactic”: do something so ridiculously stupid and offensive that it places all your vassals before a stark choice: either submit and pretend like you did not notice or, alternatively, dare to say something and face with wrath of Uncle Shmuel (the Neocon’s version of Uncle Sam).

And it worked, in the name of “solidarity” or whatever else, the most faithful lackeys of the Empire immediate fell in line behind the latest US aggression against a sovereign nation in spite of the self-evident fact that this aggression violates every letter of the most sacred principles of international law. This is exactly the same tactic as when they make you clean toilets with a toothbrush or do push-ups in the mud during basic training: not only to condition you to total obedience, but to make you publicly give up any semblance of dignity.

MAGA really?

This is not just a case of history repeating itself like a farce, however. It is hard to overstate how totally offensive a character like Elliott Abrams is for every Latin American who remembers the bloody US debacle in Nicaragua. US vassals now have to give up any type of pretend-dignity in front of their own people and act as if Abrams was a respectable and sane human being.

I believe that this kind of “obedience conditioning by means of humiliation” is not just a case of the Neocons being idiots, but a deliberate tactic which will, of course, backfire and end up hurting US puppets worldwide (just like the pro-US Russian “liberal” opposition was eviscerated as a result of being associated by the Russian public opinion with the US policies against Russia, especially in the Ukraine).

Finally, these appointments also show that the senior-Neocons are frightened and paranoid as there are still plenty of very sharp junior-Neocon folks to choose from in the US, yet they felt the need to get Abrams from conservation and place him in a key position in spite of the strong smell of naphthalene emanating from him. This reminds me of the gerontocrats of the Soviet Politburo in the worst stagnation years who had to appoint the likes of Chernenko to top positions.

The one thing the Mr MAGA’s administration has in common with the late Brezhevian Politburo is its total inability to get anything done. My wife refers to the folks in the White House (since Dubya came to power) as the “gang that couldn’t shoot straight” and she is right (she always is!): they just can’t really get anything done anymore – all their half-assed pseudo-successes are inevitably followed by embarrassing failures.

As I wrote in my article “The good news about the Trump Presidency: stupid can be good!” these folks will only precipitate the collapse of the AngloZionist Empire, which is a very good thing. The bad thing is, of course, that the Neocons are negating any chance for a gradual, phased, collapse and are, instead, creating a dynamic in which a sudden, catastrophic, collapse becomes much more likely.

Now we have all seen the latest antic from Bolton: showing up with a yellow pad with “5,000 troops to Colombia” written on it. Again, this might be a case of Bolton being senile or not giving a damn, but I doubt it. I think that this is just another oh-so-subtle way to threaten Venezuela with a US-led invasion. And, really, why not?  If the Empire thinks it has the authority and power to decide who the President of Venezuela should be, it has to logically back up this stance with a threat, especially since there is no US authority, moral or otherwise, left…

The state of the Venezuelan military

A military, any military, is always the product of the society which produces it and this is also true of Venezuela. It would be silly to admit that the Venezuelan economy is a total mess while expecting the Venezuelan armed forces to be a shining example of professionalism, honesty and patriotism. The sad reality is very different.

For one thing, much of the Venezuelan military is hopelessly corrupt, as is the rest of society. In a country whose economy is imploding, this is hardly surprising. Furthermore, for years both Chavez and Maduro have fought an uphill battle to remove as many potential traitors and class enemies (in a Marxist sense of the word) from the Venezuelan military and replace them with “socially close” (a Bolshevik concept) elements from the poorer sections of society.

Truth be told, this was a partially successful strategy as seen by the fact that during this latest coup attempt the Venezuelan military overwhelmingly supported the Venezuelan Constitution and the legitimacy of Maduro. And yet that kind of loyalty often comes at the costs of professionalism and at the risk of corruption as seen by the case of the Venezuelan military attache to the US who clearly was a US agent.

I am afraid that the current situation in Venezuela might be similar to what it was in Syria in the very early stages of the AngloZionist war against this country when scores of top officials of the Syrian government proved to be traitors and/or US agents. In Syria the government eventually re-took control of the situation, but only with a great deal of help from Iran and Russia and after almost being toppled by the US-run Takfiri forces.

The good news here, according to my friend, is that the Venezuelan special forces (army special forces, jungle infantry troops, “Caribe” counter insurgency units, airborne units, etc) are in a much better shape and that they could form the core of a resistance force to the invasion, not unlike what the Republican Guard eventually did in Iraq. But the biggest difference with Iraq is that in Venezuela the majority of the people are still backing Maduro and that any invasion force should expect to meet a lot of resistance of the type which the US encountered in Iraq after the invasion of the country.

Also, there was a fragile truce of sorts between Hugo Chavez and various Left-wing guerillas who agreed to stop their military operations, but who also kept all their weapons “just in case”. This “case” has now happened and we can expect that any US invasion will trigger an immediate re-emergence of a Left-wing guerilla force which, combined with popular support and the key role of a core of patriotic Venezuelan special forces could form a very dangerous combination, especially in the mid to long term…

Comparisons are necessarily tricky and crude, but with this caveat in mind, don’t think “Syria” but rather think “Iraq” when considering the possible outcomes of a US invasion…

This is really crucial. Hugo Chavez’ reforms alienated a lot of Venezuelans, especially those who made their fortunes by servicing US interests and who became your typical Latin American version of a comprador class. Much of the middle-class also got hurt and are angry. However, these same reforms also empowered huge numbers of destitute and poor Venezuelans who, for the first time, felt that the government stood for their interests and who remember what it was like to live in abject poverty under a US-backed regime.

These folks probably have no illusion about what the toppling of this government would mean for them and they are likely to fight hard, if not necessarily competently, to keep the little rights and means they acquired during the Chavez years…

Whatever may be the case, Hugo Chavez’ pro-popular policies left a very profound mark on the country and you can expect that a lot of Venezuelans will take up arms and resist any US/Colombian invasion.

Here I think we can all express our heartfelt gratitude to Mr MAGA whose appointment of Elliott “Iran-Contra” Abrams has done more than any government sponsored propaganda to clearly and bluntly explain to the Venezuelan people who is doing what to them and why.

Seriously, Ron Paul or Tulsi Gabbard speaking of democracy is one thing, but having gangsters and psychopathic thugs like Pompeo, Bolton or Abrams in charge really sends a message AND THAT MESSAGE IS THAT WE ARE DEALING WITH A BANAL CASE OF HIGHWAY ROBBERY TRIGGERED BY TWO VERY CRUDE CONSIDERATIONS:

First, to re-take control of Venezuela’s immense natural resources.

Second, to prove to the world that Uncle Shmuel can still, quote, “pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business“, unquote.

The obvious problem is that 1) nobody takes the US seriously because 2) the US has not been capable of defeating any country capable of resistance since many decades already. The various US special forces, which would typically spearhead any invasion, have an especially appalling record of abject failures every time they stop posing for cameras and have to engage in real combat…

President Macrobama?

Last but not least, there are a lot of weapons in circulation in Venezuela and which the various popular militias and National Guard would be more than happy to further distribute to the local population if any invasion appears to be successful…

Does this bizarre mix of Neocons, gerontocrats and deepstaters really, sincerely, believe that this time around they will “win” (however you define that)?!

More relevantly – has this recipe ever worked in the past? I would say that if we accept, for argument’s sake, that the goal is to “restore democracy” then obviously “no”. But if the goal is to wreck a country, then it has worked, quite a few times indeed…

So we should have no Pollyannish notions about all the reports about the economic and social collapse in Venezuela as only “US propaganda”. Sadly, much of it is true even if often exaggerated, lopsided and missing all the very real successes of the Chavez reforms, hence the continuous popular support, in spite of it all, the Maduro government continues to enjoy. Still, the overall picture is very bleak and it will take Venezuela consistent and correct action to recover from the current plight.

So is there still hope? Yes, absolutely!

I recently replied the following to a friend asking me about a possible Russian intervention in Venezuela “I place my own hopes not in the Venezuelan military, or in Chinese or Russian help, but on the amazing ability of the Americans to f*** up. At the end of the day, that is our biggest ally: the US stupidity, ignorance, arrogance and cowardice“.

Think of what currently passes as a “policy” of the US in Venezuela as a diagnostic tool.

Not just to diagnose the moral degeneracy and mental pathology of the leaders of the AngloZionist Empire, but also to diagnose the very real state of despair and chaos of the Empire itself. Under Obama, for all his faults and weaknesses, the US succeeded in subverting a list of crucial Latin American countries (like Brazil or Argentina) but now, with Mr MAGA, it can’t even do that.

The kind of antics we see from the Pompeo, Bolton & Abrams gang is amazing in its crudeness and, frankly, makes a supposed “indispensable nation” look absolutely ridiculous. These losers already had to fold several times, in spite of equally hyperbolic threats delivered with maximal gravitas (think DPRK here), and yet they still think that crude bullying methods can yield success. They can’t. Immense firepower is not a substitute for brains.

In its short and blood-soaked history, the US has pretty much always acted like some criminal enterprise run by brutal gangsters, but in the past some of these gangsters could be extremely well educated and intelligent (think James Baker here). Today, their guns are still lying around (albeit in various states of disrepair), but they are wielded by ignorant retards. Yes, ignorant retards with guns can be very dangerous, but they can never be effective!

Conclusion

Right now the US, backed by its various colonies and vassal states, appears to be ready to deliver a death blow to Venezuela and, truth be told, they might be able to do just that. But, for whatever it is worth, my gut feeling is that they will fail again, even against the weakest countries of the Axis of Resistance.

That is not to say that Venezuela is not in a heap of critical problems. But I believe that in spite of being in a critical condition, Venezuela will be able to bounce back, just like Syria did. After all, the Syrian example proves that it *is* possible to resist a superior invading force while at the same time successfully engaging in critically needed reforms.

Yes, today’s Caracas is in very bad shape, but the city of Aleppo was in a much worse shape until it was liberated, and now quasi-normal life has returned to it (in sharp contrast to the US liberated devastated city of Raqqa which still lies in ruins). Yankees (to use the usual Latin-American expression) are just like their Israeli overlords: they are capable of devastating violence but they have no staying power: if things don’t go their way fast, really fast, they run and barricade themselves somewhere faraway from danger…

In our case, they might even do what they did in Iraq and Afghanistan: build obscenely huge embassies, create a special zone around them, and sit tight while the country is engulfed in a bloody civil war. This way, they can provide CNN & Co. with footage of a “peaceful neighborhood” while still claiming that the Stars and Strips are still proudly flying high over the enemy’s capital and that “these colors don’t run”. This would be a disastrous outcome for the Venezuelan nation and this is why we all have to try to prevent this, by speaking out before the US further wrecks yet another country.

Hopefully the memory of past completely failed, humiliating and bloody invasions will convince the right people at the Pentagon to do whatever it takes to prevent the US from launching yet another stupid and immoral war of choice on behalf of the Neocons.

The real danger these lunatic pose is to the American people.  Since they seized power in 2000 they have destroyed our nation.  All of these military adventures have destroyed America and the overuse of sanctions to destroy any nation who refuses to knuckle under to America’s demands and led to the destruction of the dollar. 

If the Trump Administration attacks the Venezuelan people it will be the end of the American Imperialism foisted upon us in 2000 when a consortium of Republicans and Democrats stole the election for George W. Bush.  This misadventure will be the nail in America’s coffin.  From OpEd News:

Excerpt:

Goodbye to the Dollar

The inept and corrupt presidency of Donald Trump has unwittingly triggered the fatal blow to the American empire-the abandonment of the dollar as the world's principal reserve currency. Nations around the globe, especially in Europe, have lost confidence in the United States to act rationally, much less lead, in issues of international finance, trade, diplomacy and war.

These nations are quietly dismantling the seven-decade-old alliance with the United States and building alternative systems of bilateral trade. This reconfiguring of the world's financial system will be fatal to the American empire, as the historian Alfred McCoy and the economist Michael Hudson have long pointed out. It will trigger an economic death spiral, including high inflation, which will necessitate a massive military contraction overseas and plunge the United States into a prolonged depression. Trump, rather than make America great again, has turned out, unwittingly, to be the empire's most aggressive gravedigger…

When George W. Bush unilaterally invaded Iraq, defying with his doctrine of preemptive war international law and dismissing protests from traditional allies, he began the rupture. But Trump has deepened the fissures. The Trump administration's withdrawal from the 2015 Iranian nuclear agreement, although Iran had abided by the agreement, and demand that European nations also withdraw or endure U.S. sanctions saw European nations defect and establish an alternative monetary exchange system that excludes the United States.

Iran no longer accepts the dollar for oil on international markets and has replaced it with the euro, not a small factor in Washington's deep animus to Teheran. Turkey is also abandoning the dollar. The U.S. demand that Germany and other European states halt the importation of Russian gas likewise saw the Europeans ignore Washington. China and Russia, traditionally antagonistic, are now working in tandem to free themselves from the dollar.

Moscow has transferred $100 billion of its reserves into Chinese yuan, Japanese yen and euros. And, as ominously, foreign governments since 2014 are no longer storing their gold reserves in the United States or, as with Germany, removing them from the Federal Reserve. Germany has repatriated its 300 tons of gold ingots. The Netherlands repatriated its 100 tons.

The U.S. intervention in Venezuela, the potential trade war with China, the withdrawal from international climate accords, leaving the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, the paralysis in Washington and disruptive government shutdown and increased hostilities with Iran bode ill for America. American foreign and financial policy is hostage to the bizarre whims of stunted ideologues such as Mike Pompeo, John Bolton and Elliott Abrams.

This ensures more global chaos as well as increased efforts by nations around the globe to free themselves from the economic stranglehold the United States effectively set in place following World War II. It is only a question of when not if the dollar will be sidelined.

That it was Trump, along with his fellow ideologues of the extreme right, who destroyed the international structures put in place by global capitalists, rather than socialists these capitalists invested tremendous resources to crush, is grimly ironic…

The dollar, because of astronomical government debt now at $21 trillion, a debt that will be augmented by Trump's tax cuts costing the U.S. Treasury $1.5 trillion over the next decade, is becoming less and less trustworthy. The debt-to-GDP ratio is now more than 100 percent, a flashing red light for economists.

Our massive trade deficit depends on selling treasury bonds abroad. Once those bonds decline in value and are no longer considered a stable investment, the dollar will suffer a huge devaluation. There are signs this process is underway. Central-bank reserves hold fewer dollars than they did in 2004. There are fewer SWIFT payments-the exchange for interbank fund transfers-in dollars than in 2015. Half of international trade is invoiced in dollars, although the U.S. share of international trade is only 10 percent.

"Ultimately, we will have reserve currencies other than the U.S. dollar," the Bank of England Gov. Mark Carney announced last month.

Sixty-one percent of foreign currency reserves are in dollars. As these dollar currency reserves are replaced by other currencies, the retreat from the dollar will accelerate. The recklessness of America's financial policies will only exacerbate the crisis.

"If unlimited borrowing, financed by printing money, were a path to prosperity," Irwin M. Stelzer of the Hudson Institute said recently, "then Venezuela and Zimbabwe would be top of the growth tables."  McCoy explains what a world financial order untethered from the dollar would look like:

For the majority of Americans, the 2020s will likely be remembered as a demoralizing decade of rising prices, stagnant wages, and fading international competitiveness. After years of swelling deficits fed by incessant warfare in distant lands, in 2030 the U.S. dollar eventually loses its special status as the world's dominant reserve currency…

Unable to pay for swelling deficits by selling now-devalued Treasury notes abroad, Washington is finally forced to slash its bloated military budget. Under pressure at home and abroad, its forces begin to pull back from hundreds of overseas bases to a continental perimeter. Such a desperate move, however, comes too late.

Faced with a fading superpower incapable of paying its bills, China, India, Iran, Russia, and other powers provocatively challenge U.S. dominion over the oceans, space, and cyberspace.  The collapse of the dollar will mean, McCoy writes, "soaring prices, ever-rising unemployment, and a continuing decline in real wages throughout the 2020s, domestic divisions widen into violent clashes and divisive debates, often over symbolic, insubstantial issues…"

The deep disillusionment and widespread rage will give an opening to Trump, or a Trump-like demagogue, to lash out, perhaps by inciting violence, against scapegoats at home and abroad. But by then the U.S. empire will be so diminished its threats will be, at least to those outside its borders, largely meaningless…

Yep, its already starting, the end of the Federal Reserve Notes backed by nothing but a wish and a prayer.  The corrupt Federal Reserve Bank will be sitting on trillions of tons of worthless paper that no one is willing to accept.  All thanks to the George W. Bush Administration and the Barack Obama Administration’s reckless war mongering. 

Now America is insisting that the European Union follow their lead and recognize Guiado as Venezuela’s president.  No one gives a shit what America wants, they are a morally and financially bankrupt shell of a nation thanks to the neocons.  From RT:

Excerpt:

Italy vetoed EU recognition of Venezuelan opposition leader Guaido – M5S source to RT

Rome has effectively derailed an EU statement meant to recognize Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s interim leader if President Nicolas Maduro fails to set up snap elections, a Five Star Movement source confirmed to RT.

Italy announced the veto at an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers that started on January 31 in Romania, the source said. The statement, which was supposed to be delivered by EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini recognized Guaido as interim president if snap elections were not held.

We must avoid mistake of Libya: Italian deputy FM speaks out against Venezuela regime change…

The parliament urged the EU to follow suit but the effort stalled due to internal discord. A range of European nations have separately recognized the opposition chief as Venezuela’s acting president, including the UK, France, Sweden, Spain, and Austria. The coordinated move came after an eight-day deadline for Maduro to call presidential elections expired on Monday.

The US announced that it is backing the new interim leader and pledged their full support immediately after what has been labeled “a coup” by officials in Caracas. However Russia, China, Turkey and Iran said they see Maduro as the only legitimate leader, warning against meddling in Venezuela’s domestic affairs.

Maduro himself rejected the EU ultimatum but promised to push for political reform. He suggested that parliamentary elections be held earlier than 2020, arguing that the National Assembly – a legislative body dominated by the opposition and headed by Guaido – needs to be “re-legitimized.”

Following the announcement, Venezuela witnessed massive rallies, both for and against Maduro. Some of the country’s high-ranking officials, including a defense attaché in the US, voiced their support for Guaido, but the majority remained loyal to Maduro, including the army.

So that’s where America stands, broke and desperate to steal the resources of Venezuela to cover their war debts.   It’s time for the Devil to go down to the Caribbean now that their failed wars across the Middle East have bankrupted the Empire.  The neocon cockroaches care not for America or Americans, their plan was always to bankrupt America, and that is the only thing they have succeeded in doing.