Stephen Lendman

On Monday evening in New York, Trump threatened Venezuela at a dinner he hosted for hardline right-wing Latin American officials.

Ones invited included Brazil’s coup d’etat president Michel Temer, Colombian narco-terrorist president Juan Manuel Santos, corporatist Panamanian president Juan Carlos Varela, and fascist Argentine president Mauricio Macri’s vice president Gabriela Michetti, along with their foreign ministers and other officials.

The situation in Venezuela is “totally unacceptable,” Trump roared, adding: “We call for the full restoration of democracy and political freedoms in Venezuela, and we want it to happen very, very soon.”

He threatened unspecified actions he intends, earlier threatening “a possible military option.” He disgracefully accused President Nicolas Maduro of “def(ing) his own people,” calling his leadership “disastrous,” suggesting further hostile US actions coming.

Fact: Venezuela is the hemisphere’s model democracy, polar opposite America’s fantasy version.

Fact: Washington is waging economic and political war on the country, wanting Bolivarian social democracy destroyed, Venezuela returned to its bad old days, America gaining control over its vast oil reserves, the world’s largest, the unmentioned imperial prize coveted, along with transforming the country into another US vassal state.

Narco-terrorist, fascist Colombian leader, US favorite Juan Manuel Santos ludicrously said “(w)hat we all want is for Venezuela to become a democracy again and we are exerting all the pressure we can for that to happen.”

Under his oppressive rule and his predecessors, democracy is banned in Colombia. America’s hostile agenda toward Venezuela aims to make its economy scream, inflicting hardships on its people, causing shortages of vital commodities, exacerbating the country’s balance of payments crisis, feeding its spiraling inflation - violating international and US laws.

During Senate testimony last week, former US ambassador to Venezuela, now Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, William Brownfield, falsely accused the Maduro government of fostering drugs trafficking.

Its policy is polar opposite, addressing the problem responsibly, unlike America’s phony war, supporting what it claims to oppose.

In February, Trump lawlessly sanctioned Venezuelan Vice President Tareck El Aissami – on fabricated narco-trafficking charges.

He denounced the hostile US attack on his integrity, saying “when I headed the public security corps of my country, in 2008-2012, our fight against drug cartels achieved the greatest progress in our history and in the western hemisphere, both in terms of the transnational drug trafficking business and their logistics structures.”

“During those years, the Venezuelan anti-drug enforcement authorities under my leadership captured, arrested and brought 102 heads of criminal drug trafficking organizations not only to the Venezuelan justice but also to the justice of other countries where they were wanted.”

Venezuela combats illicit drugs trafficking effectively. America has a long sordid history of working with drug cartels, notably through the CIA, major US banks profiting from laundering dirty money.

US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) operations in Venezuela are “connect(ed) to criminal drug organizations,” Aissami explained, calling trafficking in illicit drugs a “cross-border crime against humanity.”

America’s war on Venezuelan social democracy is unrelenting. Trump pursues it more viciously than Obama. What new tactics he intends using ahead remain to unfold.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

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