JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: A NIGHTMARE ORWELL NEVER ANTICIPATED - WASHINGTON'S POLITBURO NOW TELLS COUNTRIES A COUPLE OF THOUSAND MILES AWAY WHO SHOULD BE ELECTED - POLITBURO CHIEF POMPEO PUTS ON A STAGE SHOW WHERE SOMEONE WHO DIDN'T EVEN RUN FOR OFFICE SWEARS HIMSELF IN AND THEN ALL THE POLITBURO'S LOYAL DEPENDENCIES DEMAND HIS RECOGNITION ON CUE - VENEZUELA IS THE BUSINESS OF VENEZUELANS

John Chuckman


EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT



“Venezuela crisis: UK, France, Germany and Spain demand Maduro calls election within eight days

“The UK has already thrown its weight behind opposition leader Juan Guaido”



Leaders demanding that another country hold an election within eight days? It does sound a bit like an ultimatum to a small European state hurled from the Reich Chancellery in 1939.

Leaders of traditional supposedly democratic countries giving ultimatums concerning another country’s internal affairs? A country thousands of miles away, no less?

And note that they all said the same thing at virtually the same time, as though all reading from a script, which is, undoubtedly, what they were doing.

Where does such arrogance come from?

Such complete ignoring of all diplomatic norms and courtesies?

And contempt for the rule of law, both national and international law?

From America. The country which runs its own affairs so very well it feels qualified to tell others how to run theirs.

These sad leaders in Europe, of course, are doing what they have been told to do. Just as Canada’s leader has already done.

So, we have a new kind of international theatrical production, a kind of elaborate international farce, which starts with an American Secretary of State suddenly announcing to the world who should and who should not be president of another country.

And he does so not long after that country’s own elections? A man elected two times is told by someone a couple of thousand miles away that he can’t be president again? A man elected under an election system that Jimmy Carter, whose Carter Institute often was called upon to scrutinize elections abroad and whose integrity in such matters cannot be questioned, declared back in 1998, when this man’s late predecessor was first elected, to be one of the world’s best?

A man still popular with a lot of ordinary people, despite all the economic hardship imposed by American threats, sanctions, sabotage, and black operations and by an opposition minority encouraged to do almost anything? We’ve all seen in recent years what America can do to a country when it wants to. In Syria, in Libya, in Yemen, in Honduras, and in still other places, it has created hell on earth. Much like Israel’s efforts in Gaza, a horror America watches with unblinking acceptance.

Then we have the staging of an absurd Monty Pythonesque skit with an opposition leader in this targeted country, a man who never even ran for the office of president, “swearing himself in” to be just that, president.

It has been reported that he was reluctant at first, but just like the leaders of other states now making inappropriate demands here, he accepted his assigned role, ridiculous as it may have seemed. You aren’t allowed to laugh at the Empire or its demands. It’s a form of lèse-majesté.

Now a set of countries, all long demonstrated doggedly loyal to American wishes and whims, either each recognize this self-declared president as the new president or demand new elections from the just-elected legitimate president within eight days. I guess the American Secretary of State offered them two options, just so there would be some appearance of everyone’s not being orchestrated.

In any event, none of it is any of their business, clearly. Venezuela is the business of Venezuelans, although you might think you wouldn’t need to remind the people in Washington of that, the very people who now go around preaching that “countries mean something” as they busy themselves dismantling many international organizations.

We have here, on a grand scale, the most heavy-handed interference in the internal affairs of others, immense arrogance, and the manners of the barnyard creature Pompeo most resembles, one so obvious I don't think I even need to name it.

This all from an America which has undergone two solid years of twitches and spasms and outbursts of lunatic righteous indignation over the very suggestion that Russia might have tried, feebly, to influence their own last election. Oh, if only Washington’s Politburo only stuck to a few feeble Facebook ads and computer hacks in other countries.

Is this really the kind of world we want for our future? Orchestrated international extortion and threats, all carried on from behind a threadbare veil of hypocrisy, whenever someone Washington doesn’t like wins an election somewhere?

It’s quite a nightmare really. One George Orwell never anticipated.



NOTE:

Just four months ago President Trump said at the UN: “I honor the right of every nation in this room to pursue its own customs, beliefs, and traditions. The United States will not tell you how to live or work or worship. We only ask that you honor our sovereignty in return.”