[News] From 'Humanitarian Aid' to a Nationwide Blackout: What Next for Trump's Coup in Venezuela?
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Wed Mar 13 16:25:29 EDT 2019
https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14378
From 'Humanitarian Aid' to a Nationwide Blackout: What Next for
Trump's Coup in Venezuela?
By Jorge Martin – March 13, 2019
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The failure of the February 23 “humanitarian aid” provocation on the
Venezuelan border
<http://www.marxist.com/venezela-february-23-did-not-pass.htm> was a
serious blow for Trump’s ongoing coup attempt. There were mutual
recriminations between self-appointed Guaidó, Colombian President Duque
and US Vice-President Pence. The US could not get a consensus from its
own Lima Cartel allies in favour of military intervention.
The coup was losing momentum. Then, on March 7, just days after Guaidó’s
anti-climactic return to Caracas, the country was plunged into a
nationwide blackout from which it has not yet fully recovered. What
caused it? How is it related to the “regime change” attempt? And, most
importantly, what are imperialism’s plans and how can they be fought?
February 23 was supposed to be the coup’s D-Day. The idea was never to
actually deliver “humanitarian aid” into the country, but rather to
create a “people’s power” moment, where large crowds of opposition
supporters on both sides of the border defied the Venezuelan armed
forces, which, when faced with a large crowd of peaceful demonstrators,
would then switch sides and join Trump’s puppet, Juan Gauidó. On the
day, however, things did not go according to Washington’s plan. The
crowds of opposition supporters did not materialise in the expected
numbers. “Aid” trucks did not cross the border and by the end of the
day, Rubio, Abrams and Guaidó were left with egg all over their faces.
They made a big story about “Maduro burning the aid trucks” at the
Santander bridge on the Colombian border. US officials even insisted
this justified military intervention under the Geneva Convention. Never
mind the fact that the Convention only applies in cases of war, the fact
is that the aid truck that was burned was set on fire by a “peaceful”
opposition supporter throwing a molotov cocktail at the Venezuelan
border guards. Several media outlets (/teleSUR/, /RT/) explained that
this was the case right from the beginning and even produced video
footage to prove it. That did not stop US officials like Marco Rubio and
John Bolton from blaming Maduro and the chorus of the world’s bourgeois
mass media from parroting the lie:
Masked thugs, civilians killed by live rounds, and the burning of
trucks carrying badly-needed food and medicine. This has been
Maduro’s response to peaceful efforts to help Venezuelans. Countries
that still recognize Maduro should take note of what they are
endorsing. pic.twitter.com/KlSebd2M5a <https://t.co/KlSebd2M5a>
— John Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) February 23, 2019
<https://twitter.com/AmbJohnBolton/status/1099407653439266818?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
Now, two weeks too late, even the /New York Times/ has been forced to
admit that “one [Venezuelan government] claim that appears to be backed
up by video footage is that the protesters started the fire.”
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/world/americas/venezuela-aid-fire-video.html>The
same /NY Times/ investigation also concludes that the Venezuelan
government was right in saying the US and the opposition were lying
about the trucks containing medicine: “the claim about a shipment of
medicine, too, appears to be unsubstantiated, according to videos and
interviews.”
The admission by the /NY Times/, though it is unlikely to be covered as
widely as the initial false reports, is very significant. We knew the US
was lying, right from the beginning, as there was proof. Now it has been
forced to admit it. This should provide a salutary lesson for the next
time the US or its Venezuelan opposition make any outrageous claims
about the “Maduro regime." The lesson is: “question everything
Washington and the mass media tell you about a government they want to
overthrow.”
That evening, as if on cue, the Venezuelan opposition social media
operation started to explode with the hashtag #IntervencionMilitarYA
(#MilitaryInterventionNOW), aimed at putting pressure on the US and its
allies to launch a military intervention in the country. The campaign is
very revealing as to the character of the opposition (pro-imperialist
and traitors to their own country), but also as to the morale of their
ranks (they do not think they are the agents of “change” but rather
invest all their hopes in Trump).
Having been defeated on February 23, the meeting of the Lima Group of
countries in Bogotá the following morning was a further setback. Let us
remember that the Lima Group (more accurately known as the “Lima
Cartel”) is an ad-hoc group of countries created with the explicit aim
of overthrowing the Venezuelan government when the US could not get
enough votes at the Organisation of American States for its bellicose
resolutions. Before the meeting even started, there were public
statements by Chile, Brazil and Paraguay explicitly ruling out military
intervention.
The case of Brazil is noteworthy because there is a major split within
Bolsonaro’s cabinet, and between him and the Armed Forces. Under
pressure from the generals and his own vice-president, General Hamilton
Mourão, the far-right president has been forced to retreat from several
of his public statements, specifically, support for the transfer of the
Brazilian embassy to Jerusalem and granting the US army access to a
military base in Brazil. When the Lima Group decided in January to cut
off all contact with the Venezuelan armed forces, the Brazilians kept
communication lines open. The Brazilian army went as far as vetoing the
presence of US soldiers in the border with Venezuela
<https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mundo/2019/02/eua-pressionam-brasil-a-usar-forca-militar-em-operacao-na-venezuela.shtml>
as part of the so-called “humanitarian aid” operation on 23 February.
Contrary to the attitude of the Colombian state, which turned a blind
eye and even helped the opposition rioters on the border with Venezuela,
the Brazilians contained them and prevented clashes. The reason is not
that the Brazilian generals are in any way progressive, nor that they
stand by the principle of sovereignty, but rather they understand that
any major conflict in Venezuela, including the possibility of a civil
war, could have a major impact on Brazil, with which it shares a large
and inhospitable border. The last thing the Brazilian generals want is
accidentally getting sucked into a major armed conflict in Venezuela,
which they know would not be a simple affair.
Faced with such reluctance, the Bogotá meeting on 25 February ended with
a statement that used strong words of condemnation and issued
unspecified threats, but did not contain any serious commitment to the
next steps in the “regime change” operation. The US announced the
inclusion of a few more Venezuelan officials on their sanctions list,
including four regional governors. Hardly the “military intervention
/now/” that the opposition demanded.
Media reports
<https://www.lapoliticaonline.com/nota/117905-exclusivo-pence-cruzo-reproches-con-guaido-en-la-cumbre-de-bogota/>
have talked of recriminations from Mike Pence (who had cut off his trip
to South Korea to attend the meeting) to Guaidó. According to one
report, Pence told Guaidó that “everything was failing in the offensive
against the chavista regime, the biggest complaint was because of the
continued loyalty of the armed forces to Maduro." Apparently, Guaidó had
promised the US that if they were to get “the main world leaders to
recognise him… at least half of the high ranking officers would defect.
It didn’t happen." The other main criticism was regarding the Venezuelan
opposition’s appraisal that Maduro’s “social base had disintegrated. The
crisis revealed that support for the government has in fact diminished,
but is not inexistent”.
Of course, one should take such reports with a pinch of salt as sources
are not quoted. However, the general frustration of the US with the
Venezuelan coup is very real and makes this particular report plausible.
Another report
<https://www.wsj.com/articles/venezuela-opposition-leader-juan-guaido-plans-return-11551658343>
in the /Wall Street Journal/ talked of Chilean President Piñera and
Colombian President Duque also being angry at Guaidó at the meeting:
“The opposition had publicly sold the plan by promising that an
outpouring of Venezuelans on both sides of the border would link up,
Mr. Maduro’s security forces would back down and truckloads of aid
would enter for hungry Venezuelans. ‘I think they built up
expectations that weren’t carried out,’ said an opposition operative
who was familiar with the discussions. ‘They built up that there was
going to be more aid, that it would get in. And that the military
would rise up. And it didn’t happen that way.’”
The /WSJ /article is quite detailed:
“‘As time passed, [Piñera] kept asking Guaidó where are the people
who are coming from the other side?’ said the person. The responses
weren’t satisfactory, he added. ‘Everything failed: coordination,
information, organization,’ said a senior Latin American official.”
The picture painted here is of an angry exchange in which all blamed
Guaidó, when in reality Washington is responsible for the whole design
of the coup. The US officials in charge of the coup were so frustrated
that they started a completely ridiculous polemic against the media
(/CNN/ included), which had started to described Guaidó as
“self-proclaimed” or “leader of the opposition” as opposed to giving him
the title of “the interim president," a title that Washington had worked
so hard to create:
The hawks in Trump’s administration – Bolton, Pompeo and Abrams – made a
series of fatal miscalculations. First, they assumed Maduro had no
support whatsoever, underestimating the strength of anti-imperialist
feeling in the face of a brazen US coup attempt, and the fact that,
while support for Chavismo has diminished, it still managed to get over
30 percent of the census to vote for Maduro a year ago. Moreover, in the
last few weeks, there has been a series of impressive, anti-imperialist
mass rallies led by Diosdado Cabello in all states in the country.
Second, they thought that the opposition was able to mobilise large
numbers of people who are prepared to go all the way in an open clash
with the government. In fact, the opposition ranks, having been betrayed
by their own leaders in 2017 and defeated in their previous attempts in
2013 and 2014, are distrustful of the opposition leaders and sceptical
about their own ability to remove the government they hate. They have
put all their illusions and hopes in a US-led military intervention and
that is a state of mind which can produce a large rally (for instance on
January 23) but not a sustained mobilisation to overthrow Maduro.
The failure of February 23 furthermore left Guaidó abroad, in Colombia.
He thought he would come back victorious, at the head of a US convoy of
“humanitarian aid," but found himself having violated a court order not
to leave the country and stranded in Bogotá. He started a short tour of
Latin America, on board a Colombian plane, but soon the US called him to
order. He discarded a plan to continue his tour in Europe and was told
in no uncertain terms that he had to return to Venezuela as “he was
losing momentum."
Again, Abrams, Bolton and Rubio attempted to build up Guaidó’s return as
another D-Day, baiting Maduro to arrest him on arrival in order to build
a /casus belli/ for foreign intervention. It resulted in another flop.
Guaidó returned on March 4, the assembled EU ambassadors received him at
the airport and then he went to a rally in the east of Caracas… But to
his disappointment and that of his minders in the US, he was not
arrested (although he /should/ have been arrested, there were plenty of
reasons to do so).
Blackout
Then came the blackout. Starting on Thursday, March 7, just before 5pm,
a major power failure affected 18 out of the country’s 23 states and the
Capital District. In Caracas, the Metro stopped working and tens of
thousands had to walk their way home, in the dark. After a few hours it
became clear that this was a major incident and power would not be
restored quickly. The government decreed Friday a national holiday.
The country’s main electricity generator, the Simon Bolivar
Hydroelectric plant, known as El Guri Dam, had crashed. El Guri produces
about 80 percent of the country’s electricity and restoring it is a
delicate operation. It is now more than four days since the initial
incident and power is only slowly being restored in many parts of the
country. Over the weekend, on several occasions, electricity was
returned to different parts of the country, only to be switched off again.
The situation is serious. The government decreed another holiday for
March 11 and 12. Back-up electricity generators keep power supply to
essential installations, like hospitals, but there are serious problems
with public transport. Shops do not accept card payments and many have
increased prices and resorted to only accepting payment in dollars.
There are also problems with the water supply, telecommunications (phone
and internet) are very intermittent, and food stored in fridges and
freezers risks being lost, etc.
The government has blamed the blackout on sabotage at El Guri and of
course Washington and the opposition have been quick to reject such
idea, blaming the power cut on a wildfire affecting the 765Kv power line
between El Guri and the Malena substation. This would have brought down
the power line and then in turn triggered a security stoppage at the El
Gury Hydro plant. However, the opposition have produced no actual
evidence of such a fire and the /New York Times/ correspondent Anatoly
Kurmanaev has rejected this hypothesis:
The government’s claim is that there was a cyberattack against the
system that controls the El Guri turbines and regulates power generation
and supply down the 765KV line to Malena. The government has also
declared that, when power was restored on Saturday, March 9, there was
another such attack, and that these attacks have been carried out by US
imperialism.
For those tempted to dismiss these accusations as a “conspiracy theory,"
let us look at the following facts. First, the US and the mass media
blatantly lied about the burning of the “aid” truck just two weeks ago.
Furthermore, what credibility has Marco Rubio got? On March 10, he
tweeted there had been an explosion at a “German Dam," when in reality a
Venezuelan opposition journalist by the name of Germán Dam had reported
an explosion at a power substation.
In an even more callous twist, Rubio “reported” 80 babies having died at
a hospital in Maracaibo due to the blackout, only to be corrected by the
chief of the /Wall Street Journal South America Bureau/: the hospital
had recorded no neonatal deaths. None. Zero. Ninguna. Why should we
believe *anything *these people say?
Secondly, such an attack is possible and has been carried out before,
even on Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition systems that are not
online. For those interested, just look up the US-and-Israeli-made
Stuxnet virus, which was used to attack Iran’s nuclear power programme
in 2010
<https://www.csoonline.com/article/3218104/what-is-stuxnet-who-created-it-and-how-does-it-work.html>.
That virus specifically attacked Siemens control systems, like many of
those that run the El Guri turbines. An article in /Forbes/
<https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2019/03/09/could-venezuelas-power-outage-really-be-a-cyber-attack>
by a specialist admits:
“/In the case of Venezuela, the idea of a government like the United
States remotely interfering with its power grid is actually quite
realistic/... Given the U.S. government's longstanding concern with
Venezuela’s government, it is likely that the U.S. already maintains
a deep presence within the country's national infrastructure grid,
making it relatively straightforward to interfere with grid
operations. The country’s outdated internet and power infrastructure
present few formidable challenges to such operations and make it
relatively easy to remove any traces of foreign intervention.
/Widespread power and connectivity outages like the one Venezuela
experienced last week are also straight from the modern cyber
playbook/” [my emphasis].
While the article in the end says a different scenario is highly likely,
it nevertheless highlights “the inability to definitively discount U.S.
or other foreign intervention."
Third, there is the matter of timing. The coup was stalling. Guaidó had
returned to the country but was clearly losing momentum. What better
time to implement a major attack on the electricity grid, to demonstrate
that the government is not in control, turn the population against the
government and further intensify the propaganda about “humanitarian
crisis” and “chaos”? Minutes after the outage was reported, Rubio,
Bolton and Guaidó were already furiously and callously tweeting blame
for the government and almost gloating at peoples’ suffering. The
blackout has also taken place just days before the arrival of the EU
International Contact Group mission which is to investigate/in situ/
whether there is a “humanitarian crisis” or not. How convenient!
Of course, to any explanation of the blackout, its severity and its
prolonged nature, we must add several other factors.
One is the fact that the Venezuelan grid has been starved of investment
and maintenance for several years, something the left wing of the
Bolivarian movement has discussed openly
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14143>. The US is quick to point
out this as the main cause, forgetting that sanctions have prevented the
country from re-negotiating its foreign debt, which has sucked in an
increasing amount of the country’s foreign reserves. We must add that
the Maduro government has chosen to pay the foreign debt and hand over
preferential dollars to the capitalists rather than use these reserves
differently. This means that sabotage is taking place in a system that
has already been weakened and therefore can be more easily damaged.
Another is the fact that thousands of workers have left their jobs in
the industry as a result of the economic crisis which has destroyed
completely the purchasing power of wages. The first to leave were the
more experienced and highly skilled, precisely those who will be needed
most now when it comes to bringing back a very delicate and finely tuned
system. This process of abandonment was aggravated after the last
currency conversion in August 2018, when the government destroyed
collective bargaining and wage differentials in the public sector.
A third is that some of these problems would have been alleviated, or
perhaps prevented, had the workers in the industry maintained the levels
of workers’ control introduced during the Chavez government. Let us not
forget that electricity workers at one point were at the forefront of
the struggle for workers’ control, which was undone by the bureaucracy
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6554>.
Finally, the more recent US sanctions on PDVSA have prevented Venezuela
from importing and producing the fuel needed for the thermoelectric
plants that should have provided a back up when El Guri Hydro went down.
What next for imperialism?
The situation in Venezuela depends greatly on factors that are
developing behind the scenes. It is impossible to say what is actually
happening in the military barracks and in the officers’ quarters. The
whole policy of US imperialism is designed to put pressure on them, by
making the situation in the country unbearable, so that the generals
perhaps draw the conclusion that their interests might be best served by
removing Maduro from power. This is achieved by sanctions designed to
hurt the economy. The latest development on this front are the threats
issued by Bolton and Abrams to punish, not only US companies trading
with PDVSA or the Venezuelan government, but also financial institutions
in third countries. The aim is clear: to completely strangle the
Venezuelan economy until it chokes the government into giving up. This
is a criminal policy that is hurting the poor and workers of Venezuela
first and foremost, completely discrediting the idea that Washington is
at all concerned about an alleged “humanitarian crisis."
8be0798f172e970215b93a662d49f3a8_w720_h720.jpg
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/files/8be0798f172e970215b93a662d49f3a8w720h720jpg>
As we have argued before, this ongoing imperialist coup attempt can only
be fought back with revolutionary measures, striking blows against the
coup plotters at home and their puppet masters abroad. (Flickr/The White
House)
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/files/images/%5Bsite-date-yyyy%5D/%5Bsite-date-mm%5D/8be0798f172e970215b93a662d49f3a8_w720_h720.jpg>
As we have argued before, this ongoing imperialist coup attempt can only
be fought back with revolutionary measures, striking blows against the
coup plotters at home and their puppet masters abroad. (Flickr/The White
House)
As for the possibility of military intervention, it is clear that the US
would like Latin American countries to front it, but there is no
appetite in the Lima Group for military adventures, which can prove
costly and damaging. That leaves the US with very few options, the main
one being to increase the pressure, through sanctions, sabotage,
provocations, etc. This much was admitted by Elliot Abrams in a
conversation with two Russian pranksters
<https://player.vgtrk.com/iframe/video/id/1877830/sid/test/start_zoom/true/showZoomBtn/false/isPlay/false/>
when he thought he was talking to the Swiss president. He said: "We
think it is a mistake tactically to give them endless reassurances that
there will never be American military action. But I can tell you this is
not what we are doing. What we are doing is exactly what you see,
financial pressure, economic pressure, diplomatic pressure."
To this we have to add the ideas likely harboured by some in the US
administration about the creation of a “Free Venezuelan Army” and their
“president” getting control of some territory (preferably close to the
border, perhaps in Tachira), in a repeat of operations used in Syria and
Libya. An article in /Bloomberg /has revealed that renegade Venezuelan
former general Cliver Alcalá had a group of 200 armed men in Colombia
ready to cross the border on 23 February, but he was stopped by the
Colombians. Rubio has also played up the issue of military defectors and
Guaidó met with a group of them in Cúcuta, praising them for “defecting”
and warning that “we will have to cross back”.
There is also a sense of urgency for the likes of Bolton, Pompeo, Abrams
and Rubio. They hoped for a quick resolution in this push for “regime
change” back in January, but they failed. They probably calculate that
they need a resolution well before the 2020 election in the US.
Frustration and impatience only make them more dangerous and ready to
deploy tricks they have not yet used.
As we have argued before, this ongoing imperialist coup attempt can only
be fought back with revolutionary measures, striking blows against the
coup plotters at home and their puppet masters abroad. That means
arresting them and putting them on trial. Expropriating the
coup-plotting oligarchy as well as the multinationals. Above all, the
revolutionary organisation of the people from below needs to be
strengthened by arming and developing the militias in every
working-class neighbourhood, introducing workers control in all
factories and workplaces and generally unleashing the revolutionary
initiative of the masses.
Internationally, we need to continue and strengthen the campaign against
our own imperialist governments in the US, the EU and the Lima Group
countries, all of whom are, to one degree or another involved in this
reactionary plot.
/Edited by Venezuelanalysis.com. /
--
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415
863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20190313/eca7e925/attachment.htm>
More information about the News
mailing list