[News] Trump’s Imaginary World, Maduro’s Real World

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/02/06/trumps-imaginary-world-maduros-real-world/ 



  Trump’s Imaginary World, Maduro’s Real World

by Maria Paez Victor <https://www.counterpunch.org/author/pu3tatre/> - 
February 6, 2020
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trump gave his State of the Union to his Congress this week. He is the 
president behind the curtain. But he is not the benevolent, comical, 
trickster, wanna-be Wizard of the famous story, but a malevolent and 
armed ogre that threatens his country and the world.

He spreads lies like magic dust into his people’s eyes conjuring up for 
them an imaginary USA where all who are sick are sheltered; an America 
First policy that needs no allies; an imaginary planet that does not 
need climate accords or anti-nuclear accords; imaginary enemy aliens 
with the face of Muslims and Latin American migrants; an imaginary 
Venezuela where a vicious, corrupt gangster of his choosing is 
supposedly president.

How low has the USA State fallen! Republicans clapped like tamed seals a 
mendacious president who conjures up false and/or misleading facts about 
the state of their people and the world.

Trump never mentioned:

    + 50 million US citizens with no medical coverage

    + 46% of bankruptcies are due to medical costs

    + 40 million in poverty and 18 million in extreme poverty

    + 25% of Indigenous people live in poverty

    + Average income of white families is 7 times higher than that of
    the average black family

    + 987 people in the USA were killed by police in 2017 and 23% were black

    + 69,550 migrant children were separated from parents –perhaps
    forever- and held in cages (2019) constituting a crime against humanity

    + The unprecedented decline over the past 3 years in life expectancy
    in the USA.

While Republicans gave Trump one standing ovation after another, 
Democrats sat silently keeping their hands to themselves. But when Trump 
had the effrontery to recognise in the audience the self-proclaimed Juan 
Guaidó, the fake president of Venezuela and threated the real government 
of Venezuela, Democrats rose to their feet to join the Republicans in 
applauding a known thief and scoundrel.

Trump admitted publicly there and then that the US wants to overthrow 
the legitimate government of Venezuela. He ridiculously lauded a known 
thief, buddy of a notorious criminal narco-traffic gang, and a political 
failure, Guaidó, pretending that he is the president of Venezuela.

The USA – supposedly defender of capitalism, and corporate property – 
robbed Venezuela of its oil corporation CITGO and robbed all Venezuelan 
assets in USA banks. This is the biggest looting of a country outside of 
active war that has ever occurred. Trump allowed the Venezuelan embassy 
in Washington to be raided and taken over by hoodlums against the Geneva 
Convention. He imposed illegal economic sanctions, against the UN 
Charter, that have prevented Venezuela from selling oil and buying 
medicines and food in the international market. The losses to Venezuela 
exceed $130 billion. These are all instruments of war. These are all 
violations of international law, the foundation of world peace.

Meanwhile, in Venezuela, on the same day, President Nicolás Maduro was 
presiding over a march of many thousands of Venezuelans commemorating 
the day in 1992 when Hugo Chávez rebelled against the neoliberal 
government of the day that had long looted and oppressed his nation. 
Nicolás Maduro is the duly elected president of Venezuela, according to 
the Constitution, in orderly elections, witnessed by international 
observers, and he is fully recognized as the legitimate president by the 
United Nations and over 100 diplomatic missions in the country. But most 
importantly, he is recognized, supported by, indeed endeared to 
Venezuelans who see him as their hero, as the man who is defending the 
country against the vicious sanctions that have killed at least 40,000 
people (2017-18) and have caused them such economic harm and hardship.

Guaidó is, quite rightly, reviled as the one who has petitioned powerful 
governments for these sanctions. Unbelievable but true, Guaidó has asked 
for military intervention with no care of what such violence means for 
his own countrymen. The Venezuelan people will never forget such 
treason. Guaidó has absolutely no political future in Venezuela, except 
in jail.

Despite what Trump may imagine, Guaidó is scorned in Venezuela not just 
by government supporters, but by his once followers. He has lost all 
support from the opposition itself and is hounded by them with cries of 
“Thief! Thief!” wherever he shows his face. Do the US Congressmen and 
women not have aides who would tell them what the Latin American press, 
newsreels and videos are showing, what the situation really is? Their 
wilfulness to go along with the Liar-in-Chief is astounding and disturbing.

Meanwhile, in Nicolás Maduro’s real world, Venezuela has resisted the 
onslaught of illegal economic sanctions, five coup attempts, and a drone 
assassination attempt on his life. In Venezuela:

    + 48,090 community councils, 3,173 communes and 15,000 cooperatives
    are producing, harvesting, feeding, clothing Venezuelans

    + A 3.3 million strong civilian militia stands in defense of the
    nation alongside the armed forces

    + Food distribution reaches more than 6 million families each month

    + The Government has signed 500 bilateral trade agreements with China

    + Russia has provided military and economic support

    + Iran has provided medicine, food, energy and health care support

    + More than 3 million housing units have been built for more than 10
    million people

    + Economists note that the economy is expanding and that the country
    is a “paradox of stability”

There is social peace in Venezuela, interrupted only by the incursions 
of the Colombian paramilitary gangs sent by that lackey government to 
harass the frontier. There is scarcity of many goods that cannot be 
imported and the private sector shows no scruples in elevating prices to 
suit their capitalistic appetites. But the public sphere, the communal 
sphere, the bonds of solidarity and nationalistic pride in withstanding 
the most powerful nation in the world, is very strong. There is a 
feeling of unity, of no exclusions for Black, Indigenous, the 
handicapped, poor, youth, women, rural workers, urban workers.

And even those who may be critics of the government’s policies stand 
united with Nicolás Maduro in defending the country from the madman in 
Washington.

Trump does not decide who is the president of Venezuela. Only the 
Venezuelan people decide.

*Sources*

http://lapupilainsomne.wordpress.com/2018/10/17/derechos-humanos-y-democracia-en-estados-unidos-por-ministerio-de-relaciones-exteriores-de-cuba/

K. Zeese, M Flowers, Popular 
Resistance,https://popularresistance.org/guaidos-failed-foreign-tour-ends/

National Health Institute

US Census Bureau, 2014

OECD

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/11/held-record-69550-migrant-children-custody-2019-report-191112132803440.html

Resumen Latinoamericano, 21 May 2019

Orinocotribune.com, 22 Oct. 2019

Mision Verdad, http://misionverdad.com <http://misionverdad.com/>, 26 
April 2019

CEPR, Washington DC, 25 April 2019

/*María Páez Victor*, Ph.D. is a Venezuelan born sociologist living in 
Canada. /

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
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