I wrote this photo essay from here in Venezuela, where hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Caracas to condemn the suffocating US embargo of their country, using the slogans #NoMoreTrump and #TrumpUnblockVenezuela
These photos are just from the rally at the end, after 5 hours of marching
@GrayzoneProject These Venezuelans are entirely ignored by the corporate media, which has repeatedly helped to sell the right-wing US coup attempts
The Trump administration is collectively suffocating the entire Venezuelan population with a criminal embargo that is devastating the economy and trying to starve them. And people know who their enemy is
"Trump sanciona a tu madre" = Trump sanction your mom!
Ex-CIA agent explains US regime-change strategy:
"The point is to put pressure on the targeted gov by ripping apart the social and economic fabric of the country… That means making the people suffer as much as you can until the country plunges into chaos" thegrayzone.com/2019/08/12/tru…
At the huge march against the US embargo here in Venezuela, protesters handed out this flyer:
“How terrorist attacks by Guaidó and US imperialism affect you:
1. They try to paralyze the strategic economic-productive apparatus of the country.
The neo-feudal corporate landlords at Apple are charging creators on Patreon a 30% fee for all new memberships registered using the iOS app.
It's the perfect symbol of the future of the economy -- neo-feudal rent extraction by corporate monopolies.
🧵This is how the scam works:
It all started with Big Tech corporations first offering supposedly "free" services (which were paid for by selling users' information).
Those "free" platforms soon became monopolies, and were so deeply embedded into the economy that they are now (privatized) digital utilities.
A 20th-century economy needed utilities like an electrical grid, water plants, sewage system, highways, etc.
These natural monopolies should be publicly owned, provided as public goods to prevent rent-seeking by corporate landlords (although neoliberals want them privatized too)
Russia was banned from the Olympics in 2019 due to doping. Now we know that the US has allowed athletes to use steroids (ie cheat) since at least 2011, with no punishment
Also, Russia was banned this year due to the war in Ukraine, but the US invaded Iraq and faced no punishment
What the US government calls the "Rules-Based International Order" is a global imperialist dictatorship, in which the US makes up "rules", and violates them whenever it's in its interests.
But then the US invades or sanctions foreign countries it accuses of breaking the "rules".
Before WWII even ended, the US government recruited genocidal Nazi monsters to launch its cold war on the Soviet Union.
Later, the CIA recruited Nazi spies like infamous criminal Reinhard Gehlen, Third Reich's spy chief on the Eastern Front, to continue Hitler's war on the USSR.
Many US corporations profited from investments in Nazi Germany, such as Chase Bank, Standard Oil, IBM, Ford, GM, Coca-Cola, and Kodak.
Hitler also got help from US Senator Prescott Bush, father of President George H W Bush, grandfather of George W Bush. theguardian.com/world/2004/sep…
Crucial point by prominent Palestinian scholar Joseph Massad:
"The claim that the Israel lobby controls US policy in the Middle East amounts to absolving the US of responsibility for its imperialist policies".
The US empire has always violently opposed anti-colonial struggles.
The US gov't has been an "implacable enemy of all national liberation groups".
"Why the US would then support Palestinian national liberation absent the Israel lobby is something this argument fails to address"
Blaming the Israel lobby for the Iraq War is absurd
The invasion of Iraq follows a consistent US imperial policy since WWII of overthrowing Third World states that control their national resources, land, oil, minerals
See: Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Venezuela & Iran today
Far-right billionaire oligarch Peter Thiel, a CIA-linked FBI informant who has funded Donald Trump and his "MAGA" allies, also funded a spy company that hacked WhatsApp. forbes.com/sites/thomasbr…
Libertarianism nearly always turns into fascism, because libertarians and fascists value private property and capital above human life.
Libertarians eventually realize that, to save capitalism, democracy must be destroyed. Pinochet is the textbook example
All US presidents for decades (both Republicans & Democrats) have waged nonstop war, in Korea, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, etc.
The US has killed MILLIONS. But I guess foreign lives don't matter.
"There is absolutely no place for political violence in oUr deMoCrAcy"
Every single US president is an imperialist sociopath with zero concern for lives outside of the US (and little for people in the US too). They are all guilty of war crimes, and have killed MILLIONS of people in recent decades.
Seeing them condemn "political violence" is surreal