Saturday, March 5, 2016

nsnbc — Obama Renews Assessment of Venezuela as Unusual and Extraordinary Threat

U.S. President Barack Obama renewed his executive order issued in March 2015, that assesses Venezuela as an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.…
Hope you feel safer now.
Venezuela’s PSUV government, for its part, repeatedly denounced the United States for its human rights abuses including those at the prison at Guantanamo, Cuba, and its support of death squads and ultra-right wing extremists throughout Latin America. 
nsnbc
Obama Renews Assessment of Venezuela as Unusual and Extraordinary Threat

14 comments:

Matt Franko said...

This probably due to the domestic situation in Venezuela being very tenuous with oil down at 30

John said...

The Reagan administration warned that Nicaragua was only two days marching time from Texas. That puts Venezuela at about three days. Ooh Rah, motherfu**ers! Uncle Sam will lock, load and tear you a new a**hole by Wednesday!

The threat is either real or manufactured. Either join the National Guard and protect your country, or accept that your politicians are yet again lying through their teeth. You really have to wonder who believes anything coming out of Washington. You'd think that after all the lies that have come out over the years that no one would believe a fu**ing thing. But as soon as some politician asks people to rally around the flag, they do! It'd be patriotic to tell Washington to go f**k itself.

It seems that the lessons of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iran, Iraq, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Libya, Syria, Congo, Afghanistan, etc, etc, are instantly forgettable. This time it's different! Venezuela is a threat to the greatest military power the world has ever seen! Every government has contempt for its people, but Washington's contempt for the American people is a thing to behold.

MRW said...

I love the way the US waits until a country is defanged to declare it a threat. Venezuelans have food ration lines right now, which would be made much worse if what food there is must be relegated to military supply lines.

MRW said...

but Washington's contempt for the American people is a thing to behold.

A recent article in the Daily Beast was about a NH guy back in 1987 who promoted Trump for president. The reporter, talking to him in 2016, thinks he got a handle on Trump’s appeal and it goes to your statement, John.

Dunbar offers, “I think the attitude of the average guy is, ‘I like Trump because he’s not one of you, meaning the pols. Anything you have to say about him, I’m not going to take seriously because it comes from you. If I vote for one of you, I know what I’m going to get; I’m going to get betrayed again. I’m going to put my money on the guy who’s not going to screw me.”

Dunbar adds, “I got nothing to lose by voting for Trump because I’m going to get screwed by voting for mainstream politics.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/01/trump-used-anti-obama-riffs-against-reagan-first.html

John said...

MRW,

Perfect replies both times. I couldn't agree more.

Washington's obsession with Cuba has made way for paranoia over Venezuela.

Trump's appeal has almost nothing to do with his policies. None of his fans can name a policy. This is evident because "conservatives" are voting for him, and many of Trump's policies are distinctly not conservative!

Matt Franko said...

" Venezuelans have food ration lines right now,"

THAT is why they are being deemed a threat.... HEEELLLLLLLOOOOOOO

30m people down there and a govt that can't arrange for proper food distribution... That is called "A THREAT to US security"...

Or do you all think that 30m people could just head for the US and we could take them all in no problem?

Are you people insane?

John said...

30 million Venezuelans are not going to make their way over thousands of miles and into the US! At best, a few thousand poor Venezuelans, who were going to leave anyway, are going to arrive. That's it. No risk to national security, unless fruit and vegetable picking is a threat. This is fear mongering by an anti-Venezuela Washington. National security risks should be restricted to things like terrorism, not food rationing queues thousands of miles away. Presumably, any time anything bad happens in South and Central America this should be automatically flagged a threat to national security.

Matt Franko said...

See page 10 here:

http://www.southcom.mil/newsroom/Documents/SOUTHCOM_POSTURE_STATEMENT_FINAL_2015.pdf

Only got WORSE since 2015....

Tom Hickey said...

Who made the US the world's policeman?

And most of what the General says is the US "official position" that little to do with facts on the ground.

More BS to justify US meddling and aggression, and more munnie to the military-CIA boondogglers that are ruining the world.

This has zero to do with defending US national security and everything to do with maintaining US global hegemony.

In the name of "freedom" (that would be "liberalism").

Tom Hickey said...

BTW, I say this a Vietnam vet who was radicalized while serving on active duty in the US Naval Reserve 1964-1967. I knew people in on scene in the Gulf of Tonkin incident that provided the propaganda for ramping up the war. I learned then what was probably really up when I asked what happened as was told that the whole thing was top secret and they could not even say whether then had bee there. WTF? After that I learned many other things that turned me from a gung ho Republican (grew up in a GOP family) into an anti-war activist when I got off active duty.

Anyone who has seen the result of US "policing" and "democracy spreading" should know what that actually means.

As General Smedley Butler said, "War is a racket."

As always, ask Cui bono? and follow the money and power.

Joe said...

The only reason Venezuela is a "threat" is because they dared to act as an independent nation and not follow the US's orders. And we've been butt hurt about it ever since. Same crime Cuba committed.

Tom Hickey said...

Right with Cuba. Repressive dictatorship in Cuba under Batista.

Back in power, Batista suspended the 1940 Constitution and revoked most political liberties, including the right to strike. He then aligned with the wealthiest landowners who owned the largest sugar plantations, and presided over a stagnating economy that widened the gap between rich and poor Cubans.[5] Batista's increasingly corrupt and repressive government then began to systematically profit from the exploitation of Cuba's commercial interests, by negotiating lucrative relationships with the American mafia, who controlled the drug, gambling, and prostitution businesses in Havana, and with large US-based multinationals who were awarded lucrative contracts.[5][6] To quell the growing discontent amongst the populace—which was subsequently displayed through frequent student riots and demonstrations—Batista established tighter censorship of the media, while also utilizing his Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities to carry out wide-scale violence, torture and public executions; ultimately killing anywhere from 1,000 to 20,000 people.[7][8][9] For several years until 1959, the Batista government received financial, military, and logistical support from the United States.[10]

continued

Tom Hickey said...

continuation

Or the failed coup organized against Castro by Dominican Republic strongman Trujillo.

Fabian Escalante. The Secret War: CIA covert operations against Cuba 1959-62. (Ocean Press, 1995)
CHAPTER 2 — The Trujillo Conspiracy


On January 1, 1959, Fidel Castro and his Rebel Army victoriously entered Santiago de Cuba, the island's second largest city, after defeating the best units of Batista's army. The public gave them a glorious welcome. A coup was attempted in Havana to stop them from consolidating their victory. However, Fidel Castro's call for a general strike and the massive response of the whole nation foiled the maneuver.

The following day, during a meeting in the general headquarters of the armed forces of the Dominican Republic, Trujillo again spoke about creating a "foreign legion," and the fírst plans against Cuba began to take shape. Between January and March of that year, several hundred mercenaries were recruited and secretly transferred to the Dominican Republic at a cost of millions of dollars. Two hundred former Batista soldiers were incorporated into the force.

The CIA knew about the plans and reported them to the highest levels of the U.S. government. Richard Nixon, then Vice-President of the United States, was interested in the details and gave the Agency the green light to send a senior official to meet with Trujillo and evaluate the seriousness of the anti-Cuba project. This man was known as Gerry Droller (with the aliases Frank Bender or Don Federico), a German who had served as a U.S. agent during the Second World War.

In Florida, the former soldiers of Batista's army began organizing, and they were quickly joined by old politicians and new capitalist and pseudorevolutionary immigrants who had wanted the revolution to reestablish "democracy." These were the backbone of the first counterrevolutionary organization founded in the United States for the purpose of overthrowing the Cuban government. They hypocritically called themselves the White Rose, after Marti's poem, and claimed to represent the tradition of the national independence hero José Martí.

They planned to capitalize on the favors of the U.S. government to recover the power they had lost in Cuba. In short, those who never defended the country when they ran it wanted to get it back with the help of Uncle Sam. That is how they ended up in the arms of their only possible ally: the dictator Trujillo, who saw this as the instrument for organizing both a fifth column and external support which would facilitate the mercenary invasion by his new foreign legion.


But :it's different this time in Iran (Mossaddegh), Nicaragua (Ortega). Venezuela (Chavez and now Maduro), or Ukraine (Yankovich, or Syria (Assad), or ….…. There are many more and still counting.

Spare me the propaganda that the US is either "promoting democracy" or "protecting" national security."

This is straight-up neoliberalism, neo-imperialism and neocolonialism.

Tom Hickey said...

Correction: that should be Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine.