Hospital burned, election observers attacked and widespread outbreaks of violence as far right supported by US and UK shows its real nature – and not for the first time
As Skwawkbox showed yesterday, politicians and media in the US and UK have been smearing Nicolas Maduro’s win in Venezuela’s presidential election, ignoring a multitude of ‘inconvenient’ facts.
This is not a new phenomenon: violent far-right groups in the pocket of the US have long been presented as ‘pro-democracy activists’ despite their beatings and murders of police and left-wing politicial opponents and destruction of buildings – while Venezuela’s world-class electoral system, which has been praised by neutral international election observers and even by business magazine Forbes and far outstrips UK and US electoral integrity – has been described as if it takes place by rigged lottery
But now the Venezuelan right is (again) showing its true colours, with reports and video of widespread anti-democratic violence and arson, and even attacks on international election observers. Since Sunday, far-right mobs have been building barricades to block roads, setting fire to buildings, attacking police and supporters of Maduro’s left-wing government.
And an election observer, whose identity was not shown to protect her, told British interviewer Calvin Tucker about the terrifying experiences she and her team endured at the hands of the mobs – and her fear of retribution in her US home, whose government supports the agitators:
In the early afternoon, a group of protesters attempted to advance to Miraflores Presidential Palace through the central Urdaneta Avenue before being stopped by a police cordon.
Mintpress News journalist Alan MacLeod published a number of videos showing the violence of the pro-US Venezuelan right, targeting healthcare, buildings belonging to Maduro’s socialist party, and law enforcement:
And MacLeod warned that the burgeoning violence amounts to an anti-democratic attempt to seize power against the will of Venezuelan voters:
None of the violence and mob behaviour of the Venezuelan right are new. For years, US-sponsored mobs have attacked and even set fire to supporters of the government and planted bombs targeting police and left-wing rallies. The BBC and other UK media are reporting the violence, but claiming the so-called ‘pro-democracy’ groups are the victims of ‘provocation’, rather than perpetrators.
But this latest renewal of the US-led war of propaganda, blockade and violence aimed at overturning democracy and forcing regime change is a symptom of how desperately the US is flailing to try to maintain its hegemony against the rising of national autonomy in South America and the influence of the BRICS alliance of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (with Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia and UAE also now joined), which was formed specifically to contest western imperialism and economic dominance.
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This US-backed anti-democratic violence, arson and insurrection causes me to hope that last August’s formal application by the government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to join BRICS is successful.
Happily, the Orinoco Tribune reported last month that “Venezuela Is Accelerating Conditions for BRICS+ Membership”.
https://orinocotribune.com/venezuela-is-accelerating-conditions-for-brics-membership/
Thank you Skwawkbox, Mintpress News journalist Alan MacLeod and others for your reporting here.
If violence doesn’t work, why is it that the far right is willing to use violence?
Perhaps it is time for Maduro to take a leaf of the French revolutionaries in late 18thC? The monarchies in Europe at the time after the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, tried to restore the French monarchy. However, so many French aristocrats had lose their heads, that it proved impossible.
Maybe Maria, the C21’s equivalent of the French Revolution’s guillotine is simply the curtailment of Breton Woods international system of dollar-centred financial management and the eco-political bodies and global financial institutions that milk it?
Worth a read: https://stratheia.com/the-connection-between-bretton-woods-and-us-hegemony/
I wish someone would format the page of that article properly, qwerty. Two words per line in one huuuge narrow column does my head in!
timfrom – both articles work fine on everything I try to load ’em on. Maybe you need to do basic housekeeping on your web browser/s, clean caches and data, etc..
FWIW, I get the same 2 words per line thing. massive arrows and no graphics (only) on amazon. com/uk – and data /cache cleaning ALWAYS fixes it….