In a nauseating interview on Pod Save America,
Elizabeth Warren endorsed suffocating US sanctions
on Venezuela, backing Trump’s strategy to stop its
“ability to have an economy” while parroting neocon
regime-change myths. She then whitewashed the
far-right military coup in Bolivia.
By Ben NortonNovember 21, 2019 "Information
Clearing House" - For the millions of
Venezuelans suffering under a suffocating US
blockade, there is no functional difference
between Donald Trump and Elizabeth Warren. In fact,
the liberal Democratic presidential candidate has
enthusiastically endorsed the far-right president’s
strategy of
relentless warfare against Venezuela and its
nearly 30 million inhabitants.
After praising the
US government’s sanctions on Venezuela, which
violate international law and have led to the
preventable
deaths of tens of thousands of civilians, Warren
went on whitewash the far-right military coup in
Bolivia, where the Trump administration has helped
put
racist Christian extremists and
actual fascists in power.
Warren’s eagerness for economic war on Caracas
earned her the recognition of right-wing news
websites like
The Federalist, which gleefully emphasized that
“Elizabeth Warren Agrees With Trump’s Strategy In
Venezuela.”
The Massachusetts senator wanted to show off her
foreign policy bona fides in a softball interview
with a former Barack Obama administration
apparatchik on the podcast
Pod Save America, which is known for its
centrist politics and close links to Hillary
Clinton.
Warren praised Trump’s strategy of appointing the
deflated Venezuelan coup leader
Juan Guaidó as president and declared, “I
support economic sanctions.” She also described the
country’s democratically elected
President Nicolás Maduro as a “dictator.”
In the interview, the Democratic presidential
candidate agreed wholeheartedly with her host Tommy
Vietor, who previously served as a spokesperson for
President Obama and the US National Security
Council.
Both spread lie after lie about Venezuela, based
on hyperbolic corporate media myths.
Although the interview was conducted back in
February, video clips have recently resurfaced and
gone viral on social media.
Warren: “I support economic
sanctions” and coup leader Guaidó
Tommy Vietor, an implacable critic of Donald
Trump and a prominent symbol of the liberal
self-declared “Resistance,” kicked off the interview
segment singing the praises of the far-right
president’s strategy of economically and
diplomatically strangling Venezuela.
|
Are You Tired Of
The Lies And
Non-Stop Propaganda?
|
“The Trump administration has recognized the
National Assembly president Juan Guaidó as the
president, and encouraged a bunch of other countries
to follow suit, in frankly what was a pretty
impressive diplomatic play by them,” Vietor
applauded — failing to mention that more than
80 percent of Venezuelans had
never heard of Guaidó at the time Washington
anointed him as the unelected head of state.
“Mm hmm,” Warren uttered in agreement, echoing
Vietor’s endorsement of the Trump administration for
attempting to install Guaidó through a coup.
Trump “also sanctioned Venezuela’s oil industry,
which is a major step to cut off all their supply of
dollars and their ability to have an economy,”
Vietor continued.
Warren chimed in: “Start with the fact that
Maduro is obviously a dictator; he’s terrible; he’s
stolen this election; it’s a nightmare for the
people of Venezuela.”
The Democratic presidential candidate, who
portrays herself as a progressive, proceeded to
endorse all of the major planks of the Trump
administration’s hybrid war against Venezuela.
“This notion of using our diplomatic tools, I’m
all for it,” she continued. “I think recognition [of
Guaidó], I think getting our allies to do it; it’s a
way to bring diplomatic pressure.”
“Economic sanctions? Yeah, I support economic
sanctions,” Warren added. “But we have to offer
humanitarian help at the same time.”
“We should be leading the international community
to get help to those people,” she said of Venezuelan
migrants. “That puts more pressure on Maduro,”
Warren boasted.
The Democratic presidential candidate made it
clear that she would continue the hybrid war on
Venezuela, which has caused large numbers of
Venezuelans to leave the country, while also
incentivizing Venezuelans to leave the country with
promises of aid on the other side of the border. In
other words, Warren pledged to exacerbate
Venezuela’s migration crisis, which is already at
epidemic levels thanks to crushing US sanctions.
A study published in April by economists Jeffrey
Sachs and Mark Weisbrot at the
Center for Economic and Policy Research found
that US sanctions on Venezuela, which are illegal
under international law, caused at least 40,000
deaths from 2017 to 2018.
“The sanctions are depriving Venezuelans of
lifesaving medicines, medical equipment, food, and
other essential imports,” said Weisbrot.
Warren has promised to continue lethal sanctions,
fueling more migration from Venezuela, but
simultaneously boosting aid — just like liberal war
hawks who supported the
international proxy war on Syria, which created
millions of refugees, while pledging to help those
displaced people.
The only Trump tactic Warren disapproved of was
his “saber-rattling,” referencing his belligerent
tone. Instead of threatening direct military
intervention, Warren argued, the United States
should continue polices of hybrid and economic
warfare to destabilize Venezuela’s leftist
government.
And Washington should continue this hybrid
warfare while “working with our allies,” she
stressed, in a way “that increases the pressure on
Maduro.”
While demonizing Venezuelan President Maduro, who
was first elected in 2013 and then re-elected in
2018, host Tommy Vietor and Elizabeth Warren went on
to praise German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is
from a center-right religious party.
Critics pointed out that Merkel has been in power
since 2005, but is not demonized as a dictator.
Warren reiterates her
neoconservative policies against Venezuela
Elizabeth Warren repeated her support for regime
change in Venezuela in an interview in September
with the
Council on Foreign Relations, a central gear in
the machinery of the military-industrial complex.
“Maduro is a dictator and a crook who has wrecked
his country’s economy, dismantled its democratic
institutions, and profited while his people suffer,”
Warren declared.
She referred to Maduro’s elected government as a
“regime” and called for “supporting regional efforts
to negotiate a political transition.”
Echoing the rhetoric of neoconservatives in
Washington, Warren called for “contain[ing]” the
supposedly “damaging and destabilizing actions” of
China, Russia, and Cuba.
The only point where Warren diverged with Trump
was on her insistence that “there is no U.S.
military option in Venezuela.”
Elizabeth Warren soft-pedals the
far-right coup in Bolivia
While Warren endorsed Trump’s hybrid war on
Venezuela, she more recently whitewashed the
US-backed coup in Bolivia.
On November 10, the US government backed a
far-right
military coup against Bolivia’s democratically
elected President Evo Morales, a leftist from
the popular Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party
and the first Indigenous head of state in a country
where nearly two-thirds of the population is Native.
Warren refused to comment on the putsch for more
than a week, even as the far-right military junta
massacred dozens of protesters and systematically
purged and detained elected left-wing politicians
from MAS.
Finally, eight days after the coup, Warren broke
her silence. In a short tweet, the putative
progressive presidential candidate tepidly requested
“free and fair elections” and calling on the
“interim leadership” to prepare an “early,
legitimate election.”
What Warren did not mention is that this “interim
leadership” she helped legitimize is headed by an
extreme right-wing Christian fundamentalist, the
unelected “interim president”
Jeanine Añez.
Añez has referred to Bolivia’s
majority-Indigenous population as “satanic” and
immediately moved to try to overturn the country’s
progressive constitution, which had established an
inclusive, secular, plurinational state after
receiving an overwhelming democratic mandate in a
2009 referendum.
Añez’s ally in this coup regime’s interim
leadership is
Luis Fernando Camacho, a multi-millionaire who
emerged out of neo-fascist groups and courted
support from the United States and the far-right
governments of Brazil and Colombia.
By granting legitimacy to Bolilvia’s
ultra-conservative, unelected leadership, Warren
rubber-stamped the far-right coup and the military
junta’s attempt to stamp out Bolivia’s progressive
democracy.
In other words, as The Grayzone editor Max
Blumenthal put it, Liz’s
Big Structural Bailey compliantly rolled over
for
Big IMF
Structural Adjustment Program.
Ben Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker.
He is the assistant editor of The Grayzone, and the
producer of the
Moderate
Rebels podcast, which he co-hosts with editor
Max Blumenthal. His website is
BenNorton.com and
he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.
This article was originally published by "The
Grayzone" - -
Do you agree or disagree? Post
your comment here
==See Also==
Note To ICH Community
We ask that you assist us in
dissemination of the article published by
ICH to your social media accounts and post
links to the article from other websites.
Thank you for your support.
Peace and joy
