[News] As the World Tackles the COVID-19 Pandemic, the U.S. Raises the Pressure on Venezuela

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/03/30/as-the-world-tackles-the-covid-19-pandemic-the-u-s-raises-the-pressure-on-venezuela/ 



  As the World Tackles the COVID-19 Pandemic, the U.S. Raises the
  Pressure on Venezuela

by Vijay Prashad, Paola Estrada, Ana Maldonado, and Zoe PC 
<https://www.counterpunch.org/author/vjprplnm48881/> - March 30, 2020
------------------------------------------------------------------------

In a press conference 
<https://www.justice.gov/opa/video/attorney-general-barr-and-doj-officials-announce-significant-law-enforcement-actions> 
on March 26, it was almost comical how little evidence the U.S. 
Department of Justice provided when it accused Venezuela’s President 
Nicolás Maduro and several of the leaders of his government of 
narco-trafficking. The U.S. offered $15 million for the arrest of Maduro 
and $10 million for the others. Maduro, U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman 
said dramatically, “very deliberately deployed cocaine as a weapon.” 
Evidence for this? Not presented at all.

*Sanctions*

It is surreal that the United States—during the COVID-19 global 
pandemic—chooses to put its efforts into this ridiculous, evidence-free 
indictment against Maduro and other members of the government. There is 
better use for the money put up as a reward in the overstretched 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/nyregion/nyc-coronavirus-hospitals.html> 
hospital in Elmhurst in New York City. Already, there is pressure on the 
United States to cut the sanctions not only against Venezuela but also 
against Iran (even the /New York Times/ 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/opinion/iran-sanctions-covid.html> 
came out on March 25 to call for an end to sanctions on Iran). The World 
Health Organization has made it clear that this is just not the time to 
hamper the ability of countries to get precious supplies in to tackle 
the pandemic. UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called 
<https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/03/1059972> for a ceasefire in 
conflicts; it is only a matter of days before he was expected to make a 
statement about sanctions. Now, out of desperation, the U.S. has tried 
to change the conversation—no longer about COVID-19 and sanctions but 
about narco-terrorism.

When asked about these indictments during the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. 
Attorney General William Barr tried to say that the fault lay not in 
Washington but in Caracas. He said, absent any evidence, that Venezuela 
is blocking aid from coming into the country. Nothing could be further 
from the truth, since Venezuela has welcomed medical supplies and 
medical personnel from China, Cuba, and Russia, as well as from the 
World Health Organization. In fact, the World Health Organization has 
pressed the U.S. to allow it more free rein to bring goods into the 
country—a request that the U.S. has not allowed (the U.S. also has made 
it difficult 
<https://peoplesdispatch.org/2020/03/15/sanctions-against-iran-and-venezuela-during-a-pandemic-are-cruel/> 
for the World Health Organization to get medical supplies into Iran). 
When Venezuela went to the International Monetary Fund with a request 
for $5 billion for COVID-19 related purchases, it was the United States 
government that put pressure on the Fund to deny 
<https://peoplesdispatch.org/2020/03/19/imf-refuses-aid-to-venezuela-in-the-midst-of-the-coronavirus-crisis/> 
the request. Barr can so easily say the very opposite of truth because 
none of the media outlets at the press conference would challenge him 
based on matters that are clearly in the public record.

*Regime Change*

In 1989, the U.S. used the accusation of narco-trafficking, specifically 
cocaine trafficking, to taint the reputation of its former asset, the 
president of Panama Manuel Noriega. It was based on this accusation 
<https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-panama-deception/> and an 
indictment in Florida, that the U.S. eventually invaded the country, 
seized Noriega, planted Washington’s puppet in Panama City, and threw 
Noriega into a Florida prison. The shadow of how the U.S. dealt with 
Noriega hangs over Caracas: will the U.S. launch an expeditionary raid 
based on this new indictment? This is not a theoretical question. The 
U.S. has tried since at least January 2019 to destabilize and overthrow 
the government of Nicolás Maduro. What this indictment does is to merely 
try to tighten the screw.

The bounty on the heads of Maduro and his leadership suggests that the 
U.S. government has essentially put a mafia-type hit out on these 
Venezuelans. This is a very dangerous move by the United States. It 
essentially gives gangsters a green light to attempt assassination 
inside Venezuela. The refusal to allow Maduro to travel outside 
Venezuela is a violation of a series of international conventions that 
promote diplomacy over belligerence. But, given the lawless way that the 
U.S. has formulated its regime change strategy against Venezuela, it is 
unlikely that anyone is going to criticize this move.

A few hours before the announcement in Washington, word 
<https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/26/politics/venezuela-trump-administration-terrorism/index.html> 
began to spread that the United States was going to place Venezuela’s 
government on the “state sponsor of terrorism” list—the very highest 
condemnation of a government. But they had to pause. And the pause 
itself came for absurd reasons. If the U.S. government accused the 
government of Maduro of being a “state sponsor of terrorism,” then it 
would be tacitly acknowledging that the Maduro government was indeed the 
government of Venezuela. Since last year, one of the attempts at 
destabilization had been to deny that Maduro’s government was the 
legitimate government of Venezuela, indeed, to deny that it was any kind 
of government. It would be impossible to say that the Maduro government 
was a “state sponsor of terrorism” without acknowledging that it is the 
government of Venezuela. So, the U.S. had to stay its hand, caught out 
by its own logic.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government does not dare take action against its 
allies in the key drug-producing and trafficking countries of Colombia 
and Honduras. Former Colombian president and current Senate member 
Álvaro Uribe Vélez is currently implicated 
<https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/colombia/2018-05-25/narcopols-medellin-cartel-financed-senate-campaign-former> 
in more than 270 legal cases in Colombia with charges including illegal 
wiretapping, organized crime, selective assassinations, and forced 
disappearances. Uribe and members of his family have proven links with 
the paramilitary group Metro Block of Antioquia, which was responsible 
for thousands of assassinations of Colombian civilians and was deeply 
involved in the narco-trafficking. Uribe and his protégé Iván Duque have 
a close relationship with the U.S. government and have been the 
cornerstone and ally of diverse plans to attack Venezuela.

Current Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández was implicated 
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/03/honduran-president-juan-orlando-hernandez-drug-money> 
in the case brought by a New York federal court against his brother 
Antonio Hernández, and prosecutors alleged that the president had 
received $25,000 <https://apnews.com/e85a0f7b43264a5eb6b879701356e1f3> 
in bribes from drug traffickers that were used for his 2013 presidential 
campaign.

The statement 
<https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/nicol-s-maduro-moros-and-14-current-and-former-venezuelan-officials-charged-narco-terrorism> 
released by the U.S. Department of Justice reads like a thriller, and 
the lack of evidence lends it to comparison with fiction. It lists names 
and accusations, makes constant references to “narco-terrorism,” and 
claims that the Venezuelan government wants to “flood” the United States 
with cocaine. It would take a superhuman effort of blindness to believe 
this baseless ranting and raving. But the problem is that the people of 
Venezuela must take this seriously, since it is a deepening of the 
belligerence of the United States government. The people of Venezuela 
are aware of a Panama-type situation. It’s hard to blame them. This is 
the track record of the United States government.

The UN secretary-general’s comment that ceasefires are the call of the 
hour given the global pandemic should apply to the United States’ hybrid 
war against Venezuela. It needs to stop now. This is the time of healing 
and compassion, not the time of toxic masculinity and warfare.

/This article was produced by Globetrotter 
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/globetrotter-/ds2pjl/586149539?h=tN6SBtfu_0ZA9BFGfKHfh0h0xMsK6bIrjI-YhI4N5FE>, 
a project of the Independent Media Institute./

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