Extinction Rebellion

The other day Chris Hedges wrote about the UK-based Extinction Rebellion:

There is one desperate chance left to thwart the impending ecocide and extinction of the human species. We must, in wave after wave, carry out nonviolent acts of civil disobedience to shut down the capitals of the major industrial countries, crippling commerce and transportation, until the ruling elites are forced to publicly state the truth about climate catastrophe, implement radical measures to halt carbon emissions by 2025 and empower an independent citizens committee to oversee the termination of our 150-year binge on fossil fuels. If we do not do this, we will face mass death.

The British-based group Extinction Rebellion has called for nonviolent acts of civil disobedience on April 15 in capitals around the world to reverse our “one-way track to extinction.” I do not know if this effort will succeed. But I do know it is the only mechanism left to force action by the ruling elites, who, although global warming has been well documented for at least three decades, have refused to carry out the measures needed to protect the planet and the human race. These elites, for this reason alone, are illegitimate. They must be replaced.

“It is our sacred duty to rebel in order to protect our homes, our future, and the future of all life on Earth,” Extinction Rebellion writes. This is not hyperbolic. We have, as every major climate report states, very little time left. Indeed, it may already be too late.

In Britain, Extinction Rebellion has already demonstrated its clout, blocking roads, occupying government departments and amassing 6,000 people to shut down five of London’s bridges last Nov. 17. Scores of arrests were made. But it was just the warm-up act. In April, the group hopes, the final assault will begin.

I recently finished reading E.O. Wilson's Half-Earth. Things are bad. The die off of species is happening so rapidly we don't even have an adequate gauge of all we are losing. Wilson's solution is to take half of the planet and designate it as wilderness. The book's main shortcoming is that it doesn't map the politics of how such a change could come about. Wilson's assumption is that doomsday will soon be so obvious for all to see there will be some sort of impetus for collective  international action.

Trump Will Prioritize the Coup in Venezuela for Domestic Politics Alone

Judging from the main write-up in The New York Times, Katie Rogers' "Pence, in Colombia to Meet Guaidó, Announces New Venezuela Sanctions," the Trump administration's right-wing coup push is floundering.

Yes, U.S. special forces are being positioned in Puerto Rico and Colombia, but allies -- Brazil, Spain, Peru, to name several -- are getting cold feet when it comes to the military option.

Juan Guaidó, the self-appointed interim president of Venezuela and public face of the U.S.-backed coup, has abruptly tossed away his commitment to non-violence and requested a foreign military invasion of his homeland. As Rogers reports,

In their discussions, Mr. Pence said, Mr. Guaidó had reiterated a request for military support — a possibility that President Trump has called “an option” — but on Monday the vice president did not make any commitments. Instead, Mr. Pence told reporters that he had assured the opposition leader that “all options” remain, but that “we hope for a peaceful transition.”

Worse yet for the coup was Macro Rubio's incendiary tweet calling for Maduro to go the way of Gaddafi. A blood-curdling squeal of a war-pig, so plain, so obscene, it could not be ignored even in the pages of coup-friendly "newspaper of record":

Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, has been a vocal supporter of the effort to oust Mr. Maduro, and he drew criticism on Sunday when he appeared to compare the Venezuelan president to Muammar el-Qaddafi, the deposed Libyan ruler who was dragged through the streets and killed during a violent Arab Spring uprising.

Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democratic of Connecticut, accused the administration of using the delivery of humanitarian aid as a tool to bring about “regime change.”

“Venezuela didn’t just lurch into humanitarian crisis,” Mr. Murphy wrote on Twitter. “The aid is being sent there now as part of a regime change strategy. Many are hoping that it will be the match that lights a civil war against Maduro.”

It's good to see some opposition to the coup voiced in the U.S. Senate. Outside of Tulsi Gabbard and Ilhan Omar in the U.S. House of Representatives, I hadn't heard anything but war drums coming from congress.

Prominent democratic socialists Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been atrocious. (Look at Jacobin. There is nothing on the coup visible on its homepage.) They're trying to finesse their pro-coup stance by saying they are anti-authoritarian. The rationale is the same one used by Democrats who backed the invasion of Iraq. The excuse there was that Saddam Hussein was a butcher. But did Saddam Hussein butcher more Iraqis than lost their lives as a result of the U.S. invasion?

And what about Libya? Are Libyans better off today after Gaddafi's ouster? The country is going on nine years of civil war. Italy is on one side; France, the other. The goal? The largest oil reserves of any African nation.

In a sense Marco Rubio has done the people of Venezuela a great favor. He has reminded them what is in store if Maduro is ousted violently.

With Pence's ratcheting up sanctions -- "targeting assets of four Venezuelan governors allied with Mr. Maduro, . . . atop crippling American sanctions issued late last month against the state oil company, known as PDVSA" -- and granting an additional $56 million to the Venezuelan opposition, the U.S. is going to keep tightening the screws.

For domestic political reasons alone Trump will keep his foot on the pedal. It allows him to rail against socialism while spotlighting just how feckless and unwilling to rock the war machine AOC and Bernie are.

Full Speed Ahead to Another Lunatic Secret War

There is virtually no opposition within the US political establishment to the Trump administration’s reckless provocations. On the contrary, the corporate media was full of stories expressing shock that Maduro would use tear gas at the border and ban border crossings. There was no mention that the Venezuelan military’s tactics against right-wing thugs storming its borders resembled the methods used by the US border patrol against defenseless women and children seeking to exercise their right to apply for asylum.

Most telling is the response of the self-styled “left wing” of the Democratic Party, which has lent legitimacy to Trump’s threats. Senator Bernie Sanders, who announced his candidacy for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination last week, tweeted Saturday: “The people of Venezuela are enduring a serious humanitarian crisis. The Maduro government must put the needs of its people first, allow humanitarian aid into the country and refrain from violence against protesters.”

New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who told reporter Max Blumenthal in early February that she was “working on a response” to US war threats against Venezuela, has not issued a public statement since then.

Eric London, "US imperialism stages provocation on Venezuela’s borders"

*** 

Thwarted at the border, the opposition began rallying around the banner of foreign action to topple Mr. Maduro. Ahead of the meeting with Mr. Pence and other regional leaders in Bogotá on Monday, Mr. Guaidó wrote on Twitter that “we must keep all options open for the liberation of our homeland.” Julio Borges, another opposition leader, said he would ask for the use of force at that meeting.

President Trump has raised some hopes for such an intervention, saying that “the twilight hour of socialism” has arrived in the Western Hemisphere.

Nicholas Casey and Albinson Linares, "With Aid Blocked at Border, What’s Next Move for Venezuela’s Opposition?"

The coup plotters had a bad weekend. Their "Live Aid" invasion of Venezuela was a bust. What was supposed to be a pacific display of courage conjuring up the historic March from Selma to Montgomery turned into an opposition rock and bottle melee. Not even The New York Times could gussy it up:

At a pedestrian footbridge farther south, cheers erupted as aid trucks began to approach the border, with hundreds of young Venezuelans sitting atop the shipments.

But then Venezuelan national guard soldiers fired tear gas canisters toward the cars. Many of the protesters stepped off the trucks and rushed the soldiers, throwing stones. Soon, large crowds were tossing rocks up to the stone throwers on the bridge, as opposition activists and Colombian national police officers watched on.

Bernie Sanders had a bad weekend too. He tweeted his support of the Trump-led coup. Sanders will now lose the essential peace wing of party. It will cost him dearly.

There is only one path forward for the coup: a foreign military intervention. The Lima Group meets today. Additional sanctions will likely be announced, hurting the very people whose welfare purportedly is the prime motivation of the coup clown Guaidó. But as we have learned from a number of other examples -- Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Syria -- sanctions do nothing to actually change the leadership of a regime.

No, it is full speed ahead to another lunatic secret war.

Equating Dissent with Anti-Semitism: a Beacon at the Edge of the Abyss

There have been a barrage of stories about the spread of anti-Semitism among anti-establishment forces. A recent example is Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura's "For U.K.’s Labour, Anti-Semitism Is as Divisive and Damaging as Brexit." The New York Times reporter traveled to Liverpool to uncover evidence of Jew hatred among Labour Party members in the Wavertree constituency because

[I]ts member of Parliament, Luciana Berger, resigned this week after receiving anti-Semitic abuse, and with local Labour activists having called her a “disruptive Zionist” and a supporter of a “murdering” government.

Lucian Berger is one of the eight Labour MPs to abandon the party this week to form something called the "Independent Group." They were joined by three Tories.

Craig Murray took aim at Berger in his Tuesday post "Democracy and the Corrupt Seven (Eight)":

Luciana Berger is a one trick pony and it is worth noting that her complaints about anti-Semitism in the Labour Party date back to at least 2005, while Tony Blair was still Prime Minister. Berger had already by April 2005 spotted anti-Semitism in the National Union of Students, in the Labour Party and in her student union newspaper, those being merely the examples cited in this single Daily Telegraph article. I am extremely sorry and somewhat shocked to hear of the swamp of anti-semitism in which we were all already mired in 2005, but I do find it rather difficult to understand why the fault is therefore that of Jeremy Corbyn. And given that Tony Blair was at that time Prime Minister for eight years, I cannot understand why it is all Corbyn’s fault and responsibility now, but it was not Blair’s fault then.

On the contrary, the Telegraph puff piece states that Berger had met Blair several times and was Euan Blair’s girlfriend. This was of course before the privately educated Londoner was foisted on the unfortunate people of Liverpool Wavetree, doubtless completely unfacilitated by her relationship with Euan Blair.

The kind of abuse Berger has evidently been attracting since at least 2005 is of course a crime. Two people have quite rightly been convicted of it. Joshua Bonehill-Paine and John Nimmo sent a series of truly disgusting tweets and both were jailed. Both are committed long term neo-nazis. Yet I have repeatedly heard media references to the convictions squarely in the context of Labour Party anti-semitism. I have never heard on broadcast media it explained that neither had anything to do with the Labour Party. Like the left wing anti-semitism Berger has been reporting since at least 2005, this Nazi abuse too is all somehow Jeremy Corbyn’s fault.

It is further worth noting that in that 2005 article Berger claims a 47% increase in attacks on Jews, which is highly reminiscent of recent claims from community groups, such as the 44% increase claimed 2015 to 2017 or the 78% increase in violent crimes against Jews in the UK in 2017 alone claimed by the government of Israel.

One antisemitic attack is too many and all anti-semitism is to be deplored and rooted out. But if all these claims repeated again and again over decades of 30, 40, 50, 60 or 70% increases in attacks per year were true, then we would be now talking of at least 12,000 violent attacks on Jews per year, if we take Ms Berger’s 2005 claim as the baseline.

Yet we are not seeing that. The average number of convictions per year for violent, racially motivated attacks on Jewish people in the UK is less than one.

If we add in non-violent crimes, the number of people convicted per year for anti-semitic hate crime still remains under 20. And I am not aware of a single such conviction related in any way to the Labour Party.

Murray also took aim at Joan Ryan, another one of the eight defecting Labour MPs, by noting

If you want to understand that the UK truly is not a functioning democracy, consider this. Joan Ryan is all over the MSM this morning as being the eighth defector to the Independent Group. Yet astonishingly, while she is universally reported as citing anti-semitism as the reason she is leaving, it appears not one MSM journalist has asked her about her receipt of US$1 million from the Israeli Embassy for spreading Israeli influence. Not one. Nor has any mainstream media outlet cited the fact in its reporting today. Most, of course, never even mentioned it at the time.

Well, Freytas-Tamura does mention it in her NYT story; in fact, drawing attention to Israeli funding of the Independent Group is evidence of anti-Semitism:

And just hours before Ms. Ryan’s defection, another Labour member of Parliament came under fire for suggesting that the seven rebel lawmakers might have had financial backing from Israel, in what critics said invoked a well-known trope.

“Over the past three years, the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn has become infected with the scourge of anti-Jewish racism,” Ms. Ryan wrote in a statement posted on her Twitter account. The problem did not exist in the party before he was elected leader, she said, adding, “No previous Labour leader would have allowed this huge shame to befall the party.”

With French President Emmanuel Macron equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism in a widely publicized speech this week (see Will Morrow's "Macron threatens to criminalize opposition to Zionism in France") what we are witnessing is a prohibition of criticism of the Israeli state. Since the politicians who are fronting this effort are -- Macron is a perfect example -- staunch neoliberals who favor an endless number of foreign military interventions, what we have here is a bold move to declare dislike of the status quo as anti-Semitic.

This comes at a time when the Russian Internet bogeyman is starting to deflate while Internet censorship is locking in. New propaganda is required to keep people penned in on the neoliberal perpetual warfare reservation. Equating dissent with anti-Semitism is a desperate, last-ditch effort, a beacon at the edge of the abyss.

That abyss will be an attempt by Western leaders to construct a police state reminiscent of Thailand or Egypt.

Russophobia Remains Alive

I went out to lunch yesterday with a friend. This is a friend, now retired, who I have written of before. He considers himself a progressive, but he believes that Russia stole the election from Hillary, and people who fervently supported Bernie played a role in spreading Russian disinformation. He read and recommends Russian Roulette by Michael Isikoff and David Corn.

Usually I politely joust with him and ask how is that Russia can be blamed for doing something -- "dividing us" -- that is the very basis of our two-party political system. But yesterday I found myself unable to control my anger. I told him to read Ray McGovern, who in December noted that Michael Isikoff had to walk back Russian Roulette's credulous acceptance of the Steele Dossier. I told him the critical thing to factor in regarding the purported Russian hack of the DNC (which revealed that the DNC was conspiring against Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primaries) is that it was not a hack but a leak on a thumb drive.

Ray McGovern confronted former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper at a promotional event for Clapper's book:

JC: Well, I have talked with NSA a lot, and I also know what we briefed to then-President Elect Trump on the 6th of January. And in my mind, uh, I spent a lot of time in the SIGINT [signals intelligence] business, the forensic evidence was overwhelming about what the Russians had done. There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind whatsoever. The Intelligence Community Assessment that we rendered that day, that was asked, tasked to us by President Obama – and uh – in early December, made no call whatsoever on whether, to what extent the Russians influenced the outcome of the election. Uh, the administration, uh, the team then, the President-Elect’s team, wanted to say that – that we said that the Russian interference had no impact whatsoever on the election. And I attempted, we all did, to try to correct that misapprehension as they were writing a press release before we left the room.

However, as a private citizen, understanding the magnitude of what the Russians did and the number of citizens in our country they reached and the different mechanisms that, by which they reached them, to me it stretches credulity to think they didn’t have a profound impact on election on the outcome of the election.

RM: That’s what the New York Times says. But let me say this: we have two former Technical Directors from NSA in our movement here, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity; we also have forensics, okay?

Now the President himself, your President, President Obama said two days before he left town: The conclusions of the intelligence community – this is ten days after you briefed him – with respect to how WikiLeaks got the DNC emails are “inconclusive” end quote. Now why would he say that if you had said it was conclusive?

JC: I can’t explain what he said or why. But I can tell you we’re, we’re pretty sure we know, or knew at the time, how WikiLeaks got those emails. I’m not going to go into the technical details about why we believe that.

RM: We are too [pretty sure we know]; and it was a leak onto a thumb drive – gotten to Julian Assange – really simple. If you knew it, and the NSA has that information, you have a duty, you have a duty to confess to that, as well as to [Iraq].

JC: Confess to what?

RM: Confess to the fact that you’ve been distorting the evidence.

JC: I don’t confess to that.

RM: The Intelligence Community Assessment was without evidence.

JC: I do not confess to that. I simply do not agree with your conclusions.

There is little doubt that we'll see "Russians aiding Sanders" stories appear as we get closer to 2020. One thing that terrifies the neoliberals is the following from Sydney Ember's write-up of Bernie's announcement of his presidential candidacy:

Mr. Sanders will start with several advantages, including the foundation of a 50-state organization; a massive lead among low-dollar donors that is roughly equivalent to the donor base of all the other Democratic hopefuls combined; and a cache of fervent, unwavering supporters who spent the day exulting in his decision to run. A coveted speaker, he can still electrify crowds in a way few politicians can. He enjoys wide name recognition, and several early polls had him running second behind former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

The strength of that donor list was quickly apparent: In the 12 hours after Mr. Sanders formally joined the race, his campaign said it had pulled in more than $4 million.

The UK Independent Group: "An Emission of Puss"

Craig Murray is back from his sojourn in Pakistan and resumes his blog by weighing in on the defection of Labour Party MPs to something called the Independent Group (see "Democracy and the Corrupt Seven (Eight)") on the grounds that Jeremy Corbyn is a sort of left-wing Himmler. Today Stephen Castle reports (see "Three Lawmakers Quit Britain’s Conservative Party, Joining Labour Defectors") that the Independent Group has added three Tories to its ranks. Speculation is that the Independent Group will attract more lawmakers from the Conservative Party, the Labour Party, and even the Liberal Democrats, as May persists in her run-out-the-clock strategy and crash-out Brexit comes closer.

As a 21st Century Jeremiah I think Craig Murray has no equal:

That the Corrupt Seven are some of the most unpleasant people in British politics is not entirely relevant, nor is the question of which interest groups are funding them. They are just an emission of puss, a symptom of the rottenness of the British body politic. They have nothing interesting to say and are feeble tools of the wealthy, thrown out as protection for a crumbling political system. The end of the UK is not pretty, and this is one of its uglier moments. It really is beyond time to crack on with Scottish Independence and the reunification of Ireland.

Anti-Semitism, Socialism -- and What About Haiti?

We can tell from the post-holiday morning paper that the evolving strategy to maintain allegiance to a foundering status quo has for the time being settled on two epithets: "anti-Semite" and "socialist."

For the former, we have these three dispatches:

• Anti-Semitic Taunts by Yellow Vests Prompt French Soul-Searching
• 7 Labour Lawmakers Resign in U.K., in Rebuke of Jeremy Corbyn
• Anti-Semitic Attacks Fuel Continuing Rise in Hate Crimes in New York

For the latter, these three:

• Trump Delivers Blunt Warning to Venezuela Military Over Aid Impasse
• As Trump Attacks Maduro, Some See Bid for Florida Votes
• Kamala Harris Faces Questions About ‘Democratic Socialist’ Label and Jussie Smollett in N.H. Debut

Yes, it appears we have arrived at a point where to doubt the neoliberal status quo is to invite repudiation as an anti-Semite and a socialist, and this at a time when a prominent Jewish socialist has declared his intention to run for president.

One of the interesting takeaways from Trump's coup rally yesterday in Florida is Bolton's acknowledgement (first bullet in the second block) that the aid convoys being staged on the Venezuela's borders are a publicity stunt:

John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, told reporters in Miami before the speech that Venezuelan volunteers would bring in all the donated supplies, with no assist from the American forces that have stockpiled the aid on the Colombian side.

Regardless, the outcome would not be ideal for Mr. Maduro, Mr. Bolton said, because if the Venezuelan military blocked the aid, the world would see Mr. Maduro’s “true colors.”

“We hope that the press will be there to see the Maduro loyalists stopping humanitarian assistance from going to the poor people of Venezuela,” Mr. Bolton said. “People want to know why the Venezuelan people are rising up. That act by Maduro would be proof beyond words.”

But Venezuela is responding with PR of its own: delivering food aid to Colombia and staging a concert to rival the one staged by odious British billionaire Richard Branson.

And where's the news about the ongoing revolt in Haiti? Armed U.S. mercenaries were arrested there on Sunday. The mainstream press doesn't want to report on Haiti because it refutes the narrative concocted on Venezuela.

Amazon's Retreat from New York Augurs Ill for Neoliberals

Amazon's decision to abandon Queens as a site for its HQ2 is wonderful news. Goliath turned tail and skedaddled once it became apparent that politicians couldn't be cowed as they were in Seattle. The price tag, $3 billion in incentives from New York, once publicized was too unseemly to defend. It seems like we might have arrived at a tipping point for peak neoliberalism. As Bryce Covert says in her opinion piece "New York Doesn’t Need Amazon’s Sweetheart Deal":

These kinds of economic incentive deals are typically struck with little public oversight and get support from voters who seem satisfied that their leaders have at least tried to create jobs. But New York’s rage at Amazon’s sweetheart deal may finally signal a sea change in how the public reacts to these billion-dollar boondoggles.

In an age of rising rents and stagnating wages, after corporations just got a big handout from the Republican tax bill with much less relief for struggling families, as income inequality continues to ensure that the profit of our economic productivity is skimmed off by those at the top, the era of such incentive deals may be coming to an end.

Yves Smith has a substantial write-up this morning, "Amazon Drops New York City Headquarters Plan in a Snit," where she reminds us what a loathsome employer Amazon is and counsels us to enjoy this win. She also offers a reason why Amazon cut and run so quickly, unionization:

A more specific concern is that locating Amazon in Long Island City would have subjected Amazon to an ongoing unionization push, which given the shift in the zetigeist, the giant retailer was at risk of eventually losing. Better to stick to places where those fights aren’t so imminent.

Amazon is often compared to Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart will shut down a store rather than let that store go union. If Amazon's NYC HQ were to be unionized, unionization drives would spread to other locations in its vast corporate empire. Yves Smith speculated that Amazon hadn't even really begun to fight in New York City as it had in Seattle last year. So its abrupt departure had to have been influenced by other factors besides public opinion and the loss of the allegiance of some local elected officials.

Interpreting the Zeitgeist while stuck in the middle of it in real time is tricky business. Look at how many, myself included, oversold Occupy Wall Street. It was perceived to be a Second Coming of the social revolution of the 1960s. But as it turned out, it was easily contained. Obama was able to co-opt it and use it for his reelection.

I think part of the problem is you have to be able to conjure up an image of the other world you want to create. Most of us don't know what that is, can't see beyond the gadget-boosterism that peak neoliberalism offers consumers for their allegiance to the political system.

But I do think a shift is upon us. The other world becoming visible is one where we take the money being vacuumed up by the 1% and the corporations they control and use it instead to build affordable housing, pay for public health and education, construct a renewable energy architecture. More and more people understand this. The Republican tax cut helped. Why did the corporations enjoy a windfall and we never got the infrastructure build-out that Trump promised?

It is going to take a miracle of propaganda or a nighttime police raid of the entire nation to keep people penned in on the neoliberal reservation in 2020.

We Need to Elect More Ilhan Omars

There was some good news yesterday. The House of Representatives invoked the War Powers Act to end U.S. involvement in the Saudi-spawned genocide in Yemen. Why it took the Democrats more than a month to hold the vote is a good question. Now it's back to the Senate, where it was already passed in December but by the previous congress. Supposedly it will take another month before it is brought to a vote, and the Trump administration has, in so many words, already promised a veto. I doubt the resolution will garner as many votes, 56, as the first go-round. There will be an attempt to de-link the Khasshogi murder from U.S. facilitation of the war on Yemen. But that's going to be difficult.

The other goods news is that recently AIPAC-admonished Ilhan Omar, Representative for Minnesota's 5th CD, sprang off the ropes with her confrontation of notorious ghoul Elliott Abrams during the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing yesterday. As Bill Van Auken notes in "Washington escalates military threats as Venezuela regime change falters":

In testimony on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, the Trump administration’s special envoy on Venezuela, Elliot Abrams was asked whether the US had increased its troop deployments in South America in response to the Venezuelan crisis and responded, “I don’t believe so.” He added that direct US military intervention was not Washington’s “preferred route.”

Asked by a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee whether the US was funneling arms to Venezuela’s right-wing opposition, Abrams said that his answer was “a simple and unequivocal no.”

The committee’s Democratic chairman, Eliot Engel, introduced Abrams citing his posts in the Reagan and Bush administrations and his positions in various think tanks. Unmentioned was the fact that he pleaded guilty in 1991 to lying to Congress about the illegal funneling of money and guns to the CIA-backed “contras” in their terrorist war against Nicaragua and avoided jail only because of a pardon by Bush senior.

One member of the committee, Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar, challenged Abrams, citing his guilty plea in the contra affair, stated, “I don’t understand why members of this committee or the American people should find any testimony that you give today to be truthful.” She went on to detail his defense of the El Mozote massacre of some 800 civilians in El Salvador and similar genocidal acts by the dictatorship in Guatemala.

Abrams treated the questioning with contempt, interrupting Omar and declaring that her questions were an “attack” that did not merit an answer.

That the same kind of operations that Abrams defended in Central America are ongoing in Venezuela was indicated by the Venezuelan government’s interception of a shipment of 19 assault rifles, 118 explosive charges, 90 military-grade radio antennas and six latest generation smartphones on a Boeing 767 cargo flight by the 21Air company to the Valencia airport.

“This materiel was destined for criminal groups and terrorist actions in the country, financed by the fascist extreme right and the government of the United States,” a spokesman for the Venezuelan military charged.

The air cargo company, 21 Air, had previously run flights between US cities, but in recent months had shifted its operations to Venezuela, with stop-offs in Colombia.

For the little bit of good news there is no indication that the U.S. is going to halt its commitment to perpetual war. The U.S.-recognized coup leader, Juan Guaido, has proclaimed February 23 as the day that "volunteers" will deliver humanitarian aid from across the border in Colombia. It's a provocation. The U.S. has been powwowing with Brazil and Colombia on the next steps in the flagging coup. The New York Times, while sticking to the script that the coup is legitimate, nonetheless gives voice to skepticism regarding its implementation. According to "Humanitarian Aid Stalls, Testing Venezuela’s Opposition," by Nicholas Casey and Anatoly Kurmanaev:

“The opposition has created immense expectations, and it’s not at all clear they have a plan for actually fulfilling them,” said David Smilde, a Venezuela analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America. “Furthermore, the opposition and the U.S. have not been clear that this aid, even if allowed in, will make a significant dent in Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis.”

Some Venezuelans have even put off buying medication, expecting that the American donations will arrive across the border soon, Mr. Smilde said.

We need to elect more Ilhan Omars. 

Snow and Homelessness

The Emerald City has weathered more than a week of snow; the most February snow on record. Seattle doesn't do snow well because we don't get it that often, and when we do it's usually a modest one- or two-day event. Seattle is not like Chicago or Minneapolis. I emailed a guy I know in Chicago about Seattle's snow closures and he responded:

It literally took the -40 degree polar vortex for us to start shutting down! It usually takes really significant snow fall or cold temperatures for businesses to close up. Other than a couple weeks ago, the last time I remember there being a “snow day” for work was around 2009 or 2010.

The only truly decent politician I know is my city council representative Kshama Sawant. She is up for reelection this year, and a scrum of challengers have already declared. Sawant's campaign sent out a "What's at stake in this election" message last night:

As climate change makes previously “once-in-a-lifetime” extreme weather commonplace, Seattle’s 2019 snowstorms have battered working-class people with longer, more dangerous commutes, missed hours, and rising childcare costs from school closures. But no group is hit harder than Seattle’s homeless population, who face a literal life-or-death situation and are eight times more likely to die of hypothermia in King County. Tragically, an unsheltered man in Seattle, Derek Johnson, was found dead Thursday morning due to exposure — because without shelter, people die.

Inequality is stark in Seattle. Our city has been the national leader in the number of construction cranes three years running and nearly one in 10 apartments sit vacant, while at the same time, Seattle’s homeless population is one of the highest per capita in the nation. The crisis gets worse every year. Between 2012 and 2018, homeless deaths more than doubled, disproportionately people of color. Seattle now has more unsheltered people than New York City, a city 12 times our size.

The crisis of affordable housing in Seattle, along with weak tenant rights laws, has helped lead to an epidemic of evictions, which often lead to homelessness. On average, one District 3 resident is evicted from their home every other day, and our neighborhoods of First Hill, Capitol Hill, and the Central District see some of the highest rates of eviction in the city. This crisis is entirely preventable: three of four people evicted reported that they could pay all or some portion of the rent owed if a reasonable payment plan was offered. At the same time the total amount of back rent owed by everyone facing eviction in 2017 was a little under $1 million, less than Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos makes in a single day.

New York City -- Queens, in fact -- is going through the same convulsions Seattle did last year when it passed and then rescinded a tax on large corporate employers to pay for affordable housing and homeless services. Sawant and one other city councilor, Teresa Mosqueda, were the only legislators who originally backed the tax not to flip. To San Francisco's credit, city voters passed a ballot initiative in November similar to Seattle's city-council rescinded "head tax."

The baseline profound failure of neoliberalism is homelessness; nowhere is the misanthropy of market orthodoxy more visible. If a society cannot provide affordable housing it's not worth one's allegiance. Personal shelter, I would argue, is synonymous with personhood, individual identity.

Neoliberalism is producing more and more unpersons. Not a good sign for the stability of the paradigm.

Booker and Klobuchar: More Neoliberals Enter the Democratic Presidential Primary

UPDATE: Glen Ford, executive editor of Black Agenda Report, had an accurate assessment last week regarding the present state of the Democratic Party, in which he concludes:

Only three Democratic members of the House, California Rep. Ro Khanna, Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar and Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, have condemned the U.S. actions against Venezuela, and much of the phony left has found common cause with Trump in the crime.

It is possible that AOC will grow an internationalist consciousness, without which one is no socialist. But it’s way too late for 77 year-old Bernie Sanders. His historical mission is to run for president once again, on a platform opposed to endless austerity, and hopefully generate such momentum that Democratic leaders will be forced by their corporate masters to sabotage Sander’s campaign in the full light of day, provoking a significant exodus of lefties from the Party.

The corporate duopoly cannot buck the Lords of Capital, whose only vision for the planet is endless austerity and war, with themselves forever on top. The real resistance can only be nurtured outside the Party. Bernie Sanders' job, although certainly not his intention, is to explode the Democrats by running on a platform that supermajorities of people support – and to be publicly crucified for it.

Bernie will run, and Bernie will be blocked by the party once again.

For the party to bar the exits to the "exodus of lefties," of which Ford speaks, the oligarchs who fund the DNC are likely whispering to Kamala Harris to go as far to the left as she see fits, knowing full well it's merely pillow talk.

But Harris won't win the primary; plus, she would just be fodder for Trump in a general election. That leaves a co-opted Elizabeth Warren as the Democratic Party's best bet to maintain a semblance of cohesiveness and win the White House.

****

The Democratic presidential primary is cleanly divided into two rhetorical camps. In one camp, the neoliberals, preach unity and healing and "reaching across the aisle to get things done"; in the other, you have social democrats preaching confrontation with entrenched corporate interests that have corrupted the political process to the disadvantage of regular working people.

This dichotomy is explored in Alexander Burns' "Democrats’ 2020 Choice: Do They Want a Fighter or a Healer?," a look at the contrasting messages of Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren, both declared presidential candidates in the Democratic primary, both in Iowa over the weekend. I get the sense that Burns' true intention is to make up for the damning Booker campaign kickoff piece that The Times published Friday, February 1 (see "Cory Booker Announces Presidential Bid, Joining Most Diverse Field Ever," by Nick Corasaniti and Shane Goldmacher) by providing a stealth fluff piece for the New Jersey senator and notorious Wall Street lickspittle.

Neoliberal candidates like Booker are preaching unity because that's what the wealthy donors want to hear. The plutocrats definitely don't want to see Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax, which targets people worth at least $50 million, catch on. Unfortunately for the oligarchs, in the age of Indivisible and the Women's March, the unity message rings false -- it's Obama's message and Obama was an empty suit shortly after his reelection; so we're talking about something that is six-year's out-of-date -- and the Warren and AOC message of the rich paying their fair share rings true.

Another neoliberal (they're called "centrists" in the mainstream media) tossed her hat into the presidential ring yesterday. Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar (see "Amy Klobuchar Enters 2020 Presidential Race," by Mitch Smith and Lisa Lerer) is another corporate lawyer who hopes to capture lightning in a bottle in the age of #MeToo; in Klobuchar's case, it was her ballyhooed exchange regarding alcohol consumption with supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh during his senate confirmation hearing.

The Times includes this acidic passage in its coverage of the Klobuchar kickoff:

Despite Ms. Klobuchar’s friendly public persona, she’s said to be a difficult boss. A survey of senators by the website LegiStorm from 2001 to 2016 found that her office had the highest turnover in the Senate. “I have high expectations,” she told The New York Times last year. A recent HuffPost article portrayed her as a demanding manager who lost some potential 2020 campaign staff members because of her reputation.

Republicans latched onto that criticism on Sunday, dismissing her candidacy as one of limited appeal.

“She has virtually no grass-roots backing and even her own staff is complaining that she’s ‘intolerably cruel,’” Michael Ahrens, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said in a statement.

Let's face it. The honchos that run the Democratic National Committee must be shitting in their britches. An outsider is going to capture the party organization. At this point Kamala Harris is the best bet for the oligarchs to maintain control. But her record in California politics is a liability. So that means Biden will probably run, as will the feckless Beto O'Rourke.

Italy Beats France

The British press has been much more thorough in its coverage of the flourishing conflict between the governments of Italy and France. Last week, in what is being called an "unprecedented" move, France recalled its ambassador to Italy. Why? Because Italian deputy prime minister Luigi Di Maio traveled to France to meet with leaders of the Yellow Vest (gilets jaunes) insurgency (a suitable analogy would be if the Canadian prime minister had traveled to Zuccotti Park to meet with the Occupy Wall Street protesters). Reuters explains that

Di Maio's decision . . . to visit France and meet several representatives of the "yellow vest" movement, which for months has waged a sometimes violent campaign against Macron and his policies, was deemed a bridge too far.

"The idea that a (deputy) prime minister of an EU country would come to France without letting France know in advance ... It's not some harmless thing," said a French diplomatic source. "It's just not acceptable behavior within the EU ...

"One hopes (withdrawing the ambassador) will force some reflection among the political parties and Italian institutions. It cannot help but underline how serious the situation is."

Officials say the ambassador will probably be sent back soon, but tensions are likely to persist.

For the most part, the mainstream media rushed to defend French president Emmanuel Macron. Di Maio and his fellow deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini are routinely dismissed as anti-immigrant populists working to undermine European unity. Italy's torpedoing an EU statement endorsing the U.S.-led coup underway in Venezuela is more grist for the mainstream mill.

The principal bulwark erected around the enfeebled Macron is a demonization of the Yellow Vests as a violent mob. The Reuters headline for yesterday's protest has been the standard messaging for the last month-plus: "More violence in Paris as 'yellow vests' keep marching."

The Saturday gilets jaunes protests, ongoing since November, have maintained their robust size. But the mainstream media, originally balanced in its reporting, has pivoted to emphasizing the violent, destructive nature of the protests. Macron has been lauded, albeit backhandedly, for making concessions to the working class, as well as for launching his "Great National Debate" public relations campaign.

Now the spin, on display in The Guardian, is that Macron has turned things around. The frame here is EU parliamentary elections in May:

Opinion polls in France have suggested that the main impact of one or more gilets jaunes parties running in the European elections would be to reduce support for the far-right party of Marine Le Pen and the far left, led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

A survey last month by Elabé showed 13% of voters could vote for a gilets jaunes party, knocking three points off the score of Le Pen’s National Rally and 1.5 off that of Mélenchon’s France Unbowed, and extending the lead of Macron’s La République En Marche (LREM).

“A gilets jaunes party would likely mobilise people who do not usually vote, but also take votes from the National Rally and France Unbowed,” Emmanuel Rivière of he pollsters Kantar Public France told Le Monde. “Paradoxically, the principal beneficiary would be the party of the president.”

An Ifop opinion poll published on Wednesday showed Macron’s approval rating surging from 23% in December to 34% in February.

Macron is important to the neoliberal consensus because his victory in 2017 is the last great electoral achievement for the market orthodoxy camp. It took the Jiffy Popping of a brand new political party and a massive"Russian bogeyman" psyop, but a win is a win.

The crisis for the neoliberal elites who govern the globe is that TINA ("There Is No Alternative") no longer holds sway among voters. The Russia bogeyman only works on people already committed to TINA.

There is a very good think piece in The Independent by Kim Sengupta that looks at the diplomatic row between Italy and France through the lens of Libya:

There is a feeling in Italy, not just among the supporters of the current government, and not unjustified, that the country has borne a disproportionate number of refugees while other northern European states are not taking their fair share.

France is a particular target on this count, not just because it has sent refugees back to Italy but also because of its part in getting Nato to carry out the bombing campaign which led to the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, and the state of semi-anarchy in the country which made it a haven for people-smugglers. It is worth recalling that the European Union used to pay Col Gaddafi to ensure that his country was not a major conduit for the trade, and he had broadly kept his side of the bargain.

This is a rare mention of the role of perpetual war in creating the immigration crisis that has led to the growth of populism in Europe.

Salvini, painted as a anti-African racist in the prestige press, a Mussolini wannabe, has scored major points in the dust-up with Macron. Never before, at least to my recollection, has such a balanced synopsis of Italy's position on immigration vis-a-vis France appeared in The New York Times:

On Thursday, Mr. Salvini responded to the French ambassador’s recall with a series of complaints, including France’s closing of its border to stop illegal migrants passing through Italy.

‘‘Stop with pushbacks at the borders,’’ said Mr. Salvini, who leads the anti-immigrant League party, the Italian government’s coalition partner. ‘‘There have been about 60,000 since 2017, and those include children and women abandoned in the forest.’’

[snip] 

The dispute came to a boil last summer over the migrant issue. The Italians, having borne the brunt of the migrant wave since 2015, were outraged last year when Mr. Macron denounced the new Italian government for failing to take in hundreds of migrants aboard the Aquarius humanitarian rescue boat.

The Italian prime minister’s office reacted with fury, saying it could not “accept hypocritical lessons from a country that, on migration, has always preferred to turn its back on its partners.” And it was true that France has made a regular practice of blocking migrants crossing the Italian border.

“The Italians have been justified — a lot of Italians feel that France’s behavior, with its grand speeches but refusal to welcome migrants, is unacceptable,” Mr. Lazar said.

For this reason alone -- clarifying the dispute on immigration between Italy and France -- Salvini and Di Maio have come out ahead of Macron in this kerfuffle.

Khashoggi Returns to the Headlines

The U.S. is a warfare state, plain and simple. From 9/11 on, as the hegemon began its descent, it has been very hard to deny that militarism is America's raison d'être (i.e., singing "God Bless America" during the 7th inning stretch). But it's not a militarism of triumphant conquest; it's a militarism of repeated failure fought on an ever-expanding number of battlefields, a bloodthirsty zombie war with no end in view.

The murder of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi last fall in Istanbul was an important event because, like the snap of a hypnotist's fingers, it awoke even the sleepiest of heads to the reality of U.S. militarism. As Trump said, we can't demand justice for Jamal Khashoggi because Saudi Arabia buys a lot of U.S. weapons.

It was right out there in the open: Grisly murder silencing a mainstream journalist must be accepted as a cost of doing business.

After a fallow period of a couple of months the Khashoggi butchering is back in the news in a big way. First, the United Nations OHCHR report accused Saudi officials of murder:

The evidence presented to us during the mission to Turkey demonstrates a prime facie case that Mr. Khashoggi was the victim of a brutal and premeditated killing, planned and perpetrated by officials of the State of Saudi Arabia and others acting under the direction of these State agents.

Second, Amazon billionaire and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos went public with blackmail efforts by Trump crony David Pecker, the head of American Media, which owns The National Enquirer. Jim Rutenberg and Karen Weise conclude their write-up, "Jeff Bezos Accuses National Enquirer of ‘Extortion and Blackmail’":

In his post Mr. Bezos also appeared to imply that the tabloid company was doing the bidding of Saudi Arabia, quoting from a New York Times report last year: “After Mr. Trump became president, he rewarded Mr. Pecker’s loyalty with a White House dinner to which the media executive brought a guest with important ties to the royals in Saudi Arabia. At the time, Mr. Pecker was pursuing business there while also hunting for financing for acquisitions.”

The Post has been reporting determinedly on intelligence assessments that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, ordered the grisly murder of the Saudi dissident — and Post global opinion contributor — Jamal Khashoggi.

Third, The Times' Mark Mazzetti authored a story yesterday, "Year Before Killing, Saudi Prince Told Aide He Would Use ‘a Bullet’ on Jamal Khashoggi," about a newly leaked intercept of a conversation of crown prince Mohammed bin Salman plotting Khashoggi's murder a year prior to the actual event:

The conversation between Prince Mohammed and the aide, Turki Aldakhil, took place in September 2017, as officials in the kingdom were growing increasingly alarmed about Mr. Khashoggi’s criticisms of the Saudi government. That same month, Mr. Khashoggi began writing opinion columns for The Washington Post, and top Saudi officials discussed ways to lure him back to Saudi Arabia.

In the conversation, Prince Mohammed said that if Mr. Khashoggi could not be enticed back to Saudi Arabia, then he should be returned by force. If neither of those methods worked, the crown prince said, then he would go after Mr. Khashoggi “with a bullet,” according to the officials familiar with one of the intelligence reports, which was produced in early December.

Mazzetti story is likely timed to coincide with the renewed push in Congress to punish the House of Saud.

The Enemy Within

Apparently Trump's State of the Union address was slathered with redbaiting. POTUS vowed never to allow the United States to become another Venezuela. The political class and the oligarchs who write the checks applauded.

Interestingly the 2020 campaign is shaping up to be a battle about socialism. A Gallup poll in August found that more Democrats favored socialism over capitalism. The base of the party is definitely social democrat, whether or not it self-identifies as such. That's why Howard Schultz bolted early and promised to stage a quixotic quest for the White House as a independent -- the base of the Democratic Party is too far left to nominate a billionaire.

Why is it that more Democrats favor socialism to capitalism? It has to do with the basics of life: housing, jobs, health care, education. The costs of housing, health care and education exceed the wages one earns to pay for them. Capitalism has produced this situation in the United States. No longer can politicians in either of the two parties blame socialist policies within the United States for the precarious lot of working people.

Cue Venezuela. The country is starving and roiled by civil unrest, so the argument goes, because of socialism, so much so that a military intervention is not out of the question. Of all the declared presidential aspirants to date, Tulsi Gabbard has provided the best rebuttal:

The root cause of mass immigration on our southern border is our history of US military intervention in Latin America that left countries destroyed. Before we talk about a wall, we need to end our ongoing threats of intervention - this time in Venezuela.

Get ready. The presidential election campaign will pit two fracturing parties in a two-party system that dates back to the Civil War. The emerging volcanic core of one party is white supremacist; the other, social democrat. There should be lots of heat and hopefully light too.

A Truly Horrendous and Shocking Revelation that Bodes Ill for 2020

There is a helpful roundup today in RT (see "Huge Psy-op in UK? Not interested. British media silent on Integrity Initiative months on") regarding the lack of coverage in the British media on the Integrity Initiative.

The Integrity Initiative (II) is a project of the Institute for Statecraft, a Scottish charity, funded by, among others, the British Ministry of Defense, the British Foreign Office, the U.S. State Department, NATO and Facebook. The Institute for Statecraft's stated mission is to educate about governance and advance human rights; it's real mission is to shore up support for a fracturing neoliberal consensus by fabricating a hostile Russian bogeyman.

That's where the Integrity Initiative project comes in: It's supposed to combat Russian disinformation, but in fact the Integrity Initiative produces fake news about Russian disinformation. It disseminates this Russiaphobia through clusters of journalists, politicians and academics.

Since the Institute for Statecraft was hacked in November what has become clear to me -- and what explains the silence in the mainstream Western media (RT focused solely on the mainstream British media, but the same goes for the U.S.) -- is that the II is how the mainstream media operates in general: clusters of journalists, politicians, academics and think-tankers are managed by the government (even if the form happens to be a charity) to produce official enemies.

A peek behind the Great Oz's curtain can be found in Glenn Greenwald's story Sunday, "NBC News, to Claim Russia Supports Tulsi Gabbard, Relies on Firm Just Caught Fabricating Russia Data for the Democratic Party." In a nutshell, NBC News Russiabaited antiwar presidential aspirant Tulsi Gabbard by citing analysis from New Knowledge identifying "‘chatter’ related to Gabbard in anonymous online message boards, including those known for fomenting right-wing troll campaigns.”

As Greenwald points out:

What NBC — amazingly — concealed is a fact that reveals its article to be a journalistic fraud: That same firm, New Knowledge, was caught just six weeks ago engaging in a massive scam to create fictitious Russian troll accounts on Facebook and Twitter in order to claim that the Kremlin was working to defeat Democratic Senate nominee Doug Jones in Alabama. The New York Times, when exposing the scam, quoted a New Knowledge report that boasted of its fabrications: “We orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the [Roy] Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet.'”

It's not as if New Knowledge's information warfare went under the radar. The New York Times alone has published six stories since it was revealed in December that New Knowledge's Jonathon Morgan created a ersatz Russian botnet to support the GOP's Roy Moore in the special election for the U.S. Senate in Alabama:

• "Secret Experiment in Alabama Senate Race Imitated Russian Tactics," Dec 19
• "Doug Jones ‘Outraged’ by Russian-Style Tactics Used in His Senate Race," Dec 20
• "Facebook Closes 5 Accounts Tied to Russia-Like Tactics in Alabama Senate Race," Dec 22
• "LinkedIn Co-Founder Apologizes for Deception in Alabama Senate Race," Dec 26
• "Democrats Faked Online Push to Outlaw Alcohol in Alabama Race," Jan 7
• "Fake News as ‘Moral Imperative’? Democrats’ Alabama Move Hints at Ugly 2020," Jan 13

All of this is an enormous body blow to the McCarthyite anti-Russian hysteria that undergirds much of the official Democratic Party. As Jim Rutenberg points out in the last article in the above list of six:

New Knowledge helped build the website for the Alliance’s [Alliance for Securing Democracy] disinformation-tracking database, Hamilton68, which had monitored suspected Russian-linked accounts, tracking the falsehoods they spread and the discord they tried to sow. (New Knowledge also helped write a report on Russian troll activity released last month by the Senate Intelligence Committee.) The Alabama project, Mr. Schafer told me, “undercuts our collective ability to take other countries to task for their deceptive, online behavior.”

A more appropriate question to ask, the one implied, is how much of the putative deceptive online activity attributed to hostile foreign actors is actually homegrown?

What are we supposed to do with "Russians Meddling in the Midterms? Here’s the Data" and "After Florida School Shooting, Russian ‘Bot’ Army Pounced," both sourced to Jonathon Morgan? Have these storylines been debunked and publicly repudiated? When are the congressional hearings scheduled?

NBC News citing Morgan and New Knowledge to tar the antiwar Gabbard is evidence that the fakeness of mainstream media is exposure proof. A truly horrendous and shocking revelation that bodes ill for 2020.

Mainstream Apologias for the Venezuelan Coup

More exhausted, threadbare apologias for the coup are on display in today's New York Times. Both Max Fisher's "Who Is Venezuela’s Legitimate President? A Messy Dispute, Explained" and Ana Vanessa Herrero's "In Fight for Venezuela, Who Supports Maduro and Who Backs Guaidó?" boil down to this: "Maduro's May 2018 reelection was widely criticized."

That's it. That's the justification for multinational intervention in the domestic affairs of a sovereign nation. The same rationale could be provided as a justification for a multinational intervention in the United States.

And what is the substance of the criticism of Maduro's reelection last year? Herrero's story hyperlinks to an article she wrote last month, "Venezuela Is in Crisis. So How Did Maduro Secure a Second Term?":

Mr. Maduro’s re-election in May 2018 was widely criticized, with reports of coercion, fraud and electoral rigging.

He first came to power in a snap vote following Mr. Chávez’s death in 2013, after the former leader had anointed him as successor.

But by the 2018 election, Venezuela’s economy had plummeted to new lows as a result of mismanagement and corruption, and the country was in the midst of a crisis.

Despite that, election officials said Mr. Maduro won 68 percent of the vote. The chaotic state of the country and the desperation of poor voters may actually have contributed to Mr. Maduro’s ability to maintain control.

Representatives of Mr. Maduro’s party tracked those who voted by registering their “Fatherland Card” — or national benefits card — and promised aid and government subsidized food handouts if he was re-elected.

Independent international observers were not on hand, and a crackdown on critics left several of them unable to participate. Opposition leaders called for a boycott of the election, and that, combined with the disillusionment of many longtime government supporters, meant the turnout was exceptionally low. Less than half of the country’s voters cast ballots.

Mr. Maduro’s stifling of dissent and targeting of the opposition has been widely reported. Since 2014, Human Rights Watch says, it has documented hundreds of cases of mistreatment of government opponents, including at least 31 cases of torture.

Less than half the country's voters participated in the 1996 U.S. presidential election. Should this have allowed Saddam Hussein to call legitimately for the Joint Chiefs to oust Bill Clinton?

In any event, how many votes were cast for Guaidó? This is something that The Times assiduously avoids. Guaidó, based on his performance in the 2015 parliamentary elections, commands 26.01% of people casting ballots in the Venezuelan state of Vargas. Not really a mass popular base of support.

Here is the Alliance for Global Justice rebuttal of the whole "widely criticized" canard that, let us remember, is the principal mainstream justification for the Guaidó coup:

Was the Venezuela 2018 presidential election open to opposition candidates?

The Venezuelan government did not block opposition candidates from participating, but encouraged it, and even agreed to push up the election date to meet opposition demands (from December 2018 to May 20, 2018). Nicolas Maduro received the votes of 6.2 million people, about 31% of the eligible voters, slightly more than what recent U.S. presidents received (Obama received 31% in 2008 and 28% in 2012, while Trump received 26% in 2016). The opposition candidates were Henri Falcón (who received 21% of the vote) and Javier Bertucci (who received 11%). Venezuela has an electoral system that is impossible to tamper with. Jimmy Carter once called it “the best in the world.”

Was the Venezuela presidential election of 2018 in accord with international standards?

The International Electoral Accompaniment Mission of CEELA (Council of Electoral Experts of Latin America) issued a report on the May 20 Venezuelan presidential election. CEELA made these conclusions: 

The electoral process for the Presidential and State Legislative Council Elections 2018 complied with all international standards and national legislation, particularly in the fields of audit and electoral administration.

CEELA Mission is of the opinion that the process was successfully carried out and that the will of the citizens, freely expressed in ballot boxes, was respected. 

c. The results communicated yesterday night by the National Electoral Council reflect the will of the voters who decided to participate in the electoral process.Such results are duly certified through the citizen verification audit. 

e. The CEELA Electoral Accompaniment Mission upholds that the electoral process has consolidated and reaffirmed strengthening of the electoral institutionalism that supports the democratic system.

How do Venezuelans themselves feel about the US Sanctions and US military intervention?

The vast majority of Venezuelans oppose military intervention and US sanctions to try to remove President Nicolás Maduro from power, according to a very recent poll by the firm Hinterlaces. 

Do you agree or disagree with the US economic and financial sanctions that are currently applied against Venezuela to remove President Maduro from power?

81% disagree, 17% agree, 2% not sure

Would you agree or disagree if there were international intervention in Venezuela to remove President Maduro from power?

78% disagree, 20% agree, 2% not sure

Would you agree or disagree if there were international military intervention in Venezuela to remove President Maduro from power?

86% disagree, 12% agree, 2% not sure

In general do you agree or disagree with a dialogue being held between the national government and the opposition to resolve the current economic problems in the country?

84% agree, 15% disagree, 1% not sure

The United States and its puppet Guaidó are massively out of step with Venezuelan public opinion. Venezuelans don't want war and sanctions. They want negotiations. The mainstream media is complicit in fomenting a civil war.

Next Steps in the Venezuelan Coup

It's worthwhile to read Grayzone's "The Making of Juan Guaidó: How the US Regime Change Laboratory Created Venezuela's Coup Leader," by Dan Cohen and Max Blumenthal, as a palliative to the latest putrid bit of Guaidó puffery from The New York Times' Ernesto Londoño, "Guaidó Steers Venezuela to a Perilous Crossroads."

Both reports are at least in sync at the bottom line: The Guaidó coup is meant to crack the Venezuela state. Cohen and Blumenthal make plain that:

“‘These radical leaders [of the opposition] have no more than 20 percent in opinion polls,” wrote Luis Vicente León, Venezuela’s leading pollster. According to León, Guaidó’s party remains isolated because the majority of the population “does not want war. ‘What they want is a solution.’”

But this is precisely why Guaidó was selected by Washington: He is not expected to lead Venezuela toward democracy, but to collapse a country that for the past two decades has been a bulwark of resistance to US hegemony. His unlikely rise signals the culmination of a two decades-long project to destroy a robust socialist experiment.

Lorenzo outlines the coup's next steps:

Oil sanctions imposed by the United States last week will soon strangle the country’s already-devastated economy, which will most likely cause shortages of fuel and make food and medicine even more scarce.

Bracing for the destabilizing effects of the sanctions, Mr. Guaidó and his allies in the international community said they intended to start pumping humanitarian aid into the country this week. Doing so would undermine Mr. Maduro, who recently scoffed at the prospect by saying “we’re not a country of beggars.”

Mr. Guaidó and his allies see the coming week, and the arrival of aid, as a potential make-or-break moment for a movement that has stirred hope for millions of Venezuelans, but has yet to take steps that meaningfully improve their lives.

[snip]

“This is not the time for dialogue,” Mr. Guaidó said firmly.

Mr. Guaidó said a lot was riding on establishing pipelines of aid that would include food, medicine and hospital supplies. His team’s hope is to rely on the Catholic relief agency Caritas and other volunteers to get the first deliveries started this week.

The convergence of the effects of American oil sanctions, which are expected to cut off significant sources of revenue for Mr. Maduro, and the attempted delivery of humanitarian aid will escalate the standoff. Economists believe fuel and food shortages are likely to worsen in the short run.

Starvation followed by aid. One cannot be too cynical here. Expect the worst. Guaidó is frightened of the colectivos:

Even if the armed forces were to throw their weight behind Mr. Guaidó, which would almost certainly spell the end of Mr. Maduro’s reign, Mr. Guaidó said he worried about the actions of the paramilitary forces that would be likely to stay loyal to Mr. Maduro.

“We cannot allow that to proliferate,” he said, drawing a parallel with the struggle that neighboring Colombia has faced from guerrilla and paramilitary groups over the years. “It could portend very serious consequences, even in the short term.”

Does the United States have the ability to mobilize death squads targeting the colectivos? I don't think so.

Super Bowl LIII

Today is the profane holiday in the United States. Super Bowl Sunday. A winter festival of consumption, commercialism and choreographed violence. People who are not football fans are roped in by the many parties -- one woman I work with is going to the casino for the casino's Super Bowl event; another woman with whom I used to work who I happened to run into on Friday said that she is going to a viewing party with friends from her gym -- and the new ads. I, as always, watch by myself.

I've mostly tuned out this Super Bowl, number 53. Most of the reporting in The New York Times has been devoted to the Los Angeles Rams. The Patriots are perennial entrants, and, unless you live in New England, are widely loathed in the United States.

The one story that dominated the run up to Super Bowl Sunday was the blown interference call by the referees in the NFC Championship. New Orleans should be competing against New England. It's not even speculative. If the Rams had been flagged for an obvious pass interference or, alternately, for unsportsmanlike conduct, the Saints would've simply run the clock down on the goal line and kicked a short field goal. Game over. Onto the Super Bowl.

In fairness to Los Angeles, I thought the Rams outplayed the Saints much of the game, and, improbably, Jared Goff outperformed Drew Brees.

As for the AFC Championship, it closely resembled the Chiefs-Patriots shootout in Foxborough during the regular season. Kansas City started slowly and the Chiefs defense couldn't stop Tom Brady during crunch time.

Benjamin Hoffman of The Times was 1-1 in the championship round; I, true to my playoff record up to that point, 0-2.

Hoffman is going with the underdog Rams. I hope the Rams win. Jared Goff attended my alma mater. And one can foresee a scenario -- Donald and Suh collapse New England's offensive line and Brady turns the ball over -- where the Rams win. But Donald was a non-factor against the Saints, and Brady's release is just as quick as Brees's. Against New Orleans, the Rams had trouble covering Alvin Kamara coming out of the backfield. I think the Rams will have difficulty with the Patriots tandem of running backs, Michel and White. And who is going to cover Gronkowski and Edelman?

I'm surprised the betting line is only Patriots minus 2.5. When the Rams lost during the regular season -- Saints, Bears, Eagles -- they struggled from the opening whistle. So we should know quickly what kind of game is in store for us. I'm taking the Patriots.

The Venezuelan Military Will Not Flip

Based on the Wednesday turnout at opposition rallies in Caracas, it is becoming obvious that the only hope for the Guaidó coup is a foreign military intervention. Colonel Cassad writes about Wednesday's coup rallies:

Yesterday’s opposition rallies was quite sluggish and a lack of pictures which would demonstrate broad public support from [Washington]-appointed puppets. Main support for Guiado in Caracas is the rich areas in the South and South-West of the capital, where the positions of the opposition parties have been traditionally strong. But large-scale protests, which have gripped and paralyzed the whole capital would be to organize opposition until you can. Therefore promising a “soon to negotiate with the military” and expecting financial tranche from [United States] (we are talking about the sum of $20m), the opposition with the help of social networking (with massive support from the USA) is trying to shake more large-scale protests. Rallies in support of Chavez of course get ignored, as they do not fit into the imposed image of the “tyrant against the people.”

Moon of Alabama observed yesterday:

Videos from Venezuela showed a crowd of some hundred people in the better off quarters of Caracas. Meanwhile pictures of several pro-Maduro demonstrations in various cities showed much larger crowds. New demonstrations will be held on Saturday and are likely to show similar results.

The primary coup push is from the mainstream Western media with the canard that the opposition has support in the Venezuelan military (see "Juan Guaidó Says Venezuelan Opposition Had Secret Talks With Military" by Megan Specia and Nicholas Casey):

A member of the opposition said that the talks had been with midlevel military officers and had taken place in recent weeks. It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Guaidó was present.

The purpose was to explain the National Assembly’s amnesty guarantees, the opposition member said, adding that the officers expressed concern about the Trump administration’s past threats of military intervention in Venezuela and said that the armed forces would be outgunned in any fight.

This is the same story Casey peddled last week. South Front convincingly debunks the whole "mid-level Venezuelan officers in WhatsApp revolt" plotline:

On January 29, CNN released an interview with two “Venezuelan army defectors” who appealed to US President Donald Trump to arm them to defend “freedom” in Venezuela. They claimed to be in contact with hundreds of willing defectors via WhatsApp groups and called on Venezuelan soldiers to revolt against the government of President Nicolas Maduro.

“As Venezuelan soldiers, we are making a request to the US to support us, in logistical terms, with communication, with weapons, so we can realize Venezuelan freedom,” one of the alleged defectors, Guillen Martinez, told CNN. Another one, Hidalgo Azuaje, added: “We’re not saying that we need only US support, but also Brazil, Colombia, Peru, all brother countries, that are against this dictatorship.”

During the entire clip, these persons were presented in a manner alleging that they had just recently defected and are now calling on others to follow their step. However, therein lies the problem. The badges on their uniform say FAN – Fuerza Armada Nacionales. This is an outdated pattern, which has been dropped. Now, Venezuela’s service members have a different badge – FANB, which means Fuerza Armada Nacional Bolivariana. So, either the “Venezuelan army defectors” somehow lost the letter B from their uniform, or the entire interview is a staged show involving former Venezuelan service members, who have been living for a long time outside the country, or in the worst case – actors.

The military is not going to flip, and NYT coup propagandists Ana Vanessa Herrero and Nicholas Casey, in an act of self-sabotage, explain why in "Maduro Turns to Special Police Force to Crush Dissent":

The group came into existence in 2017 as Mr. Maduro struggled to wrest control of the country’s poor neighborhoods from criminal gangs.

The government had been organizing joint raids with the police and armed forces, called Operation Liberate the People, which became increasingly bloody. In a single two-year period, the government said the raids killed more than 500 people.

Facing mounting opposition to the raids, Mr. Maduro changed course, creating the special unit of his national police charged with a similar task.

The new police are taught to be loyal to the president, training at Venezuela’s National Experimental Security University, an institution founded under Mr. Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez.

Mr. Izquiel, the criminologist, said that officers leave after only six months training that is largely conducted by ideologically driven professors who preach allegiance to Mr. Maduro’s government.

Even before the protests, the police unit had been involved in several high-profile crackdowns.

Among them was the killing of Óscar Pérez, a rogue police pilot who commandeered a helicopter and captured the attention of many Venezuelans in 2017 when he fired blank ammunition on government buildings and unfurled a banner calling for Venezuelans to rebel against Mr. Maduro.

For months, he continued to attack military bases and taunt the government on social media.

In an interview with The New York Times shortly before his death, Mr. Pérez asserted that a pro-Maduro paramilitary group had penetrated the special police unit and exerted influence over it. It was an explosive assertion even then, because it meant that civilian vigilantes were acting as uniformed police officers.

The day of Mr. Pérez’s death, the leader of the paramilitary group, a man named Heiker Vásquez, was killed fighting alongside FAES officials who had surrounded Mr. Pérez.

Uniformed members of the special police unit were also photographed in Mr. Vásquez’s funeral procession along with members of his paramilitary group, known as the Three Roots. In Venezuela, these armed paramilitary groups are known as “colectivos,” and typically have their roots in fervently pro-Chávez circles.

“If it’s not FAES in these raids, it’s colectivos dressed in FAES uniforms,” said Ms. Solórzano, the legislator, saying that she believes the pro-government groups are being armed and asked to fight alongside regular officers.

Back in Hugo Chavez's day large shipments of  AK-47s were imported from Russia with the purpose of arming the colectivos. There is nothing that the opposition has that can match it.

That's why the next turn of the wheel in the U.S. coup will be fleshing out Bolton's "5,000 Troops to Columbia" legal pad message. There are already reports of U.S. Army South Commander Maj. Gen. Mark Stammer's Colombia junket.

Don't expect any congressional opposition. Max Blumenthal's interviews are truly depressing.