Listen to a reading of this article:
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“Let there be no mistake – Sunday’s regional and municipal elections in Venezuela are nothing more than a sham,” reads a recent statement authored by Republican US Senators Jim Risch and Michael McCaul. “The illegitimate Maduro regime has taken drastic measures to dismantle or control every independent institution in the country, including hijacking political parties and the National Electoral Council to ensure state-sponsored electoral fraud.”
“Today’s elections in Venezuela are as illegitimate as Maduro’s tyrannical regime,” reads a tweet by Republican Senator Rick Scott. “The Venezuelan people deserve free and democratic elections NOW. The U.S. and all freedom-loving nations must stand up, condemn these sham elections and support the people in their fight for freedom.”
The imperial media are lining up behind the official US government line on Venezuela’s gubernatorial and mayoral elections, with The New York Times assuring us that conditions “are far from freely democratic” and The Washington Post reporting that opposition parties “say the elections have been stacked against them by the socialist government of President Nicolás Maduro,” who sees the elections as “a chance to reassert strength while projecting a veneer of legitimacy.”
Make no mistake: Sunday’s elections in #Venezuela are a sham. The illegitimate #Maduro regime dismantled every independent institution in the country. @RepMcCaul & I condemn efforts to legitimize these elections & cont. to support the rights of Venezuelans.https://t.co/AgbEKHTY9W
— Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member (@SenateForeign) November 18, 2021
This level of intrusiveness into Venezuela’s heavily internationally monitored democratic process is typical of what we’ve been seeing from the US political/media class with regard to electoral contests in empire-targeted Latin American nations like Bolivia and Nicaragua. Which is really silly, because the US has no more moral authority over the legitimacy of democratic processes than a totalitarian monarchy like Saudi Arabia.
US elections are of course corrupt and fraudulent, entirely dominated at the federal level by legalized oligarchic bribery in the form of campaign contributions, manipulated primaries, gerrymandering, voter suppression, shutting out third parties, and the worst voting system in the western world.
More than this, though, the United States is also the world’s single most egregious offender when it comes to interfering in foreign elections. As Claire Bernish has observed in The Free Thought Project, the US government’s own data shows that it interfered in no fewer than 81 foreign elections just between the years 1946 and 2000. You’d never know it from the shrieking of the political/media class post-2016, but this would also include brazenly interfering in Russia’s elections in the nineties to ensure the presidency of Washington lackey Boris Yeltsin.
And that’s just election interferences. It doesn’t include more brazen interferences in who governs foreign nations like direct military invasions, staged coups, color revolutions and proxy wars.
https://twitter.com/GramsciFag/status/1462542388094590981?s=20
As a completely undemocratic country whose government is also far and away the world’s single most aggressive saboteur of democracy, it is fair to say that US institutions are the absolute least qualified to comment on the validity of any nation’s elections on the entire planet.
Everyone would laugh if Saudi Arabia’s psychopathic crown prince Mohammed bin Salman began opining on the quality of various nations’ democratic processes, especially if those criticisms were directed at the so-called liberal democracies of the west. But this same scrutiny of a power structure who has no business commenting on electoral integrity never gets directed at the United States, whose institutions issue such criticisms on a daily basis despite being no more morally qualified to do so than the House of Saud.
If you think about it, Saudi Arabia is nothing other than a more honest version of the United States. Its oligarchs and its official government are the same people, it doesn’t pretend that its warmongering is humanitarian, when it wants to kill a journalist it just dismembers him with a bone saw rather than trying to squeeze him to death with lawfare in a maximum security prison, and it makes no pretense about being a democracy.
The more I observe its behavior on the world stage the more hilarious it gets to see US political and media figures criticizing the democratic processes of foreign nations. It’s like McDonald’s evaluating whether mom and pop restaurants are sufficiently eco-friendly and vegan.
Very silly stuff, mate.
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22 responses to “The US Has As Much Moral Authority As Saudi Arabia On The Legitimacy Of Elections”
Venezuela today has the largest known oil reserves in the world and the fourth largest deposits of gas. The shipment of Venezuelan oil across the Caribbean to the refineries in Texas takes only four to five days, compared to up to six weeks of long and costly ocean travel from the Middle East, subject to many risk factors, including passage through Iranian waters in the Gulf of Hormuz.
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The imperialists are not going to abandon this prize. The US military is the single largest consumer of oil in the world. Access to strategic oil reserves was a significant cause of World War II. This is all you need to know to understand US policy toward that unfortunate land and its people. That and the fact that for Washington it is totally intolerable to have a sovereign socialist republic in its backyard.
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Heaven forbid if a socialist nation should be left unmolested to demonstrate the superiority of a system that fairly shares the national wealth among all its citizens – damn, the next thing you know Americans would want that too, and our one-tenth of one percenters might have to go out and actually do honest work to earn their daily bread.
Let’s face it, at least a true monarchy and even a Politburo doesn’t have to pretend to always be at odds with itself while maintaining two or more carefully guided, fully controlled opposing parties/ideologies from which its “free” citizens are forced to choose. Besides, “moral” is properly regarded as that which is taught subjectively and locally. Is it moral to impose one’s own morality upon others? Apparently so, people who regard themselves moral do this all the time. Let’s not confuse morality with the law. Morality is a matter of trained opinion while the law consists of rules which are fully enforced (or not) by the prevailing power structure/status quo. This is performed by those in power in full support of preserving same while often fully discounting any quaint concepts such as morality.
Yeah,
No shit.
Just exactly WHAT do people do after they’re all woke up — pick up a gun; guillotine some VIPs; march hand in hand down Penn. Ave. forever and demand, demand, demand that the Elite behave better, or else?
Here’s what you are eventually going to HAVE TO DO because
there. is. no. other. way.
If you do not want More Of The Same that you’ve gotten after every election in the past, do not vote for another R or D, ever, no matter what an R or D promises! Jimmy Dore explains EXACTLY why.
If you wish to more thoroughly cognate the “rigged” part of the phrase “rigged political machine,” mount your donkey and tilt at the “two-party” system.
As you crawl maimed away from your confrontation, know that many have watched with regret the waste of your political energy, time, money, dreams, hope, and health.
Politics is coercive violence. You, and I, and all the billions who would prefer to craft an equitable and benevolent society, really, really, Really suck at coercive violence, possibly because it reifies and expresses everything we would prefer not to be.
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If you want to live differently, start living differently.
You may not be able to quit your job, but you can put your ideals in charge of your consumption habits. You want to change the world? Get out of debt and help two more to do the same. Buy used, buy local, stop feeding our predators.
The end of all hoarding and greed is Gollum, alone and filthy in the dark. Stop being an island and start making sure your neighbors are okay. Share your extra. It’s scary until you learn to trust it, then it sets you free.
None of us are rich until we know we have enough. Lazarus lies dying at our gates as we charge past on our way to the rally with our signs and banners.
I’m not saying we need to grow up. I’m saying we need to grow roots.
Charges of election fraud in Venezuela are an evidence-free copy-paste version of those recently levelled against Nicaragua along with the usual inhumanitarian sanctions and regime-change ops. As Venezuela did two years ago, Nicaragua too is now leaving the OAS, a US-run colonial organization. After earlier monitoring Nicaragua’s elections, Ben Norton of The Grayzone discusses this renouncing of the OAS with Nicaraguan diplomat Michael Campbell Hooker.
https://thegrayzone.com/2021/11/21/nicaragua-leaving-oas-elections/
Right On!
Only thing is, from this commenter’s perspective, there is no room, even for an attitude of hilarity, about the US’s, and its henchmen’s deadly serious behavior.
The only legitimate democracy is direct democracy – one person one vote, from the bottom up.
The US specifically – in the forefront, and most, if not all other self-proclaimed democracies, are all a sham of the genuine ideal.
Any organization which operates from the top down, in whatever oligarchic form, is nothing more than a class structure arrangement for power distribution. This epitomizes the US led, neo-liberal corporate state structures, globally.
From this plutocratic neo-liberal US perspective, therefore, any other form of organization is anathema, and must be dismantled, in whatever way makes it harmless to US interests. A tall order, leading only to total global population annihilation.
Surprise, surprise, to all those looking the other way for all these years!
This is, and has been operant US foreign policy strategy – at least since it became the singular dominant global power, at the close of WW II, .
Problem:
Americans themselves haven’t yet figured out the actual definition of the words the United States stands for, in lived reality!
Bigotry and duplicity are deeply entrenched in, and are by-products of this delusional, exceptionalist mindset; to put it in self-deprecating comedic commodities terms.
But trust them with the Magic Juice, right Caitlin…
I’m afraid you don’t get it. The Americans KNOW! What? Everything. Why? Because God tells them. It’s all part and parcel of manifest destiny and exceptionalism. They trust in God to the point of declaring it flat out on their banknotes and God, who uses these banknotes as the currency of His kingdom to help the Fed stay out of troubles, is exposed every day to this touching trustworthiness. So He talks to them – the top dogs that is, of course! It’s the least He can do… When Boris Nemtsov is shot on a bridge across the Moskva near the Kremlin walls, the New York Times immediately claims: “Putin dunnit!” Even before an investigation has started. Why? Because God told them! Can’t go wrong with that! The guy was killed on a bridge near the Kremlin. Putin lives in the Kremlin. So Putin dunnit. Obvious! With a sniper rifle. Don’t forget he’s been in the KGB! He spends all day waiting at his office window with his sniper rifle for a political opponent to get by. If you want to kill a political opponent, it’s obvious that you’re gonna kill him on your doormat so that everybody exclaims: “He wouldn’t kill a political opponent on his doormat!” and exonerates you. Elementary my dear Watson… I think it’s even in Clausewitz or Sun Tzu, so you see… In Venezuela, same stuff. They even knew before the election that it would be fraudulent. If that’s not absolute proof of God’s intervention! Of course they’re in a bit of a pickle there (in proper English deep shit) because just about everybody, including the Bank of England, has realized by now that even if Guaido ran without any opponent, he still wouldn’t be elected. People just don’t see him, that’s the problem. They’ll stay home… He’s got a future in Hollywood for the next remake of Invisible Man but in Venezuela… Even God, when asked by the New York Times editor said: “Who? Nah…” So we’ve got an issue here and the New York Times is not very well inspired on this one. If it still supports Guaido, it will go against the will of God. And that’s never been a good idea. Ask Adam… Plus Guaido was Trump’s candidate. Even dragged him to Congress for the State of the Union to show him off like it was Barnum! What business has the New York Times in supporting a Trump candidate? I’m asking you… But then if it does not support Guaido, what replacement has it got? Navalny? That’s an idea! Let’s pray God for that! When you’ve created the universe in six days, surely getting a Venezuelan passport for Alexei Navalny (complete with the Covid “green” pass and twelve advance boosters) and squeezing him out of his Russian jail is child’s play…
Words, alone, can be WMDs: The coordinated statements by Republican US Senators Jim Risch, Michael McCaul, and Rick Scott. The coordinate statements by the NYT and WaPo. The coordinated stenography, overall – so absolutely pre-written as word-for-word guides. All “intelligence and facts [are still] being fixed around the polic[ies].” And, every day, there are new signs (if not exclamations) of “Mission Accomplished!” https://seaclearly.com/2020/11/29/what-is-left-to-be-trusted
“US elections are of course corrupt and fraudulent, entirely dominated at the federal level by legalized oligarchic bribery in the form of campaign contributions, manipulated primaries, gerrymandering, voter suppression, shutting out third parties, and the worst voting system in the western world.”
Very useful ridicule. It is also shocking to see the totality of it. How brazen are so many of our corrupt politicians is infuriating. They could not do this, or at least have to hide it better, if it weren’t for a mainstream media so mired in lies. I no longer even trust their weather reports even though they are finally reporting on climate change. They are as nauseating as independent journalists can be a breath of fresh air.
So a bunch of American politicians are again charging that the presidents of Venezuela and Nicaragua are illegitimate because they were not handpicked by the CIA. Of course, they must be overthrown in a nice American-sponsored and entirely “democratic” coup d’etat, and replaced by some bozo like Juan Guaido who will be sure to kowtow to all the right Western transnational corporations and direct the entire GDP of his country into only American bank accounts. Only then can God be secure in his heaven and Americans have that transcendent peace of mind we all seek. Thing is, they are going about this restructuring of the universe in an illogical sequence. If half the American voting public seems to believe that the last presidential election in the USA was nothing but a big fraud placing an imposter in the White House, shouldn’t the appropriate site of the next spectacular putsch be in held in those fancy limestone buildings in Washington DC?
Nice
November 22, 1963 – the day American democracy died.
http://edwardcurtin.com/president-john-f-kennedy-his-life-and-public-assassination/
58 years ago today.
Yup. I was in my first or second year of H.S. when my German teacher told the class with tears in her eyes. Some things are forever etched in memory.
Sixteen year old junior in HS myself. They put the network feed on the PA system just before lunch period. Nobody thought it would be serious and make jokes about “who the heck is Lyndon Johnson?” Then his death was announced, we were sent home and everything in the country (except the Sunday NFL games) was shut down till the funeral following the week end. Yet more attempts later on Reagan’s and Ford’s lives. The endless demonization of the political opposition leads fools to think they can “save” America with bullets. Surprised there’s been a lull in such attempts for over a generation now. Or maybe the CIA has just come to prefer impeachments for its domestic coups.
God what we’ve lived through, the utter ruin of a terribly imperfect country you could still find reasons to love.
I love how the elections in Venezuela were declared illegitimate before they even happened. America is exceptional, but not in a good way.
But trust them with the Magic Juice, right John
Well I trust Venezuela to vaccinate their people as soon as they can, because they believe the word of scientists over internet trolls.
“Make no mistake: Sunday’s elections in #Venezuela are a sham.”
Oh put a sock it you corrupt old fool.