Venezuela’s extremist opposition boycotted elections to sustain its gravy train of US $. Having handed victory to the governing PSUV, they made turnout the focus. They worked to suppress the vote, emphasizing “abstentions” as a measure of the govt’s illegitimacy. Turnout was 32%.
From my POV, the turnout rate disappointed the govt, which was hoping for 40% - above the Chavista baseline. But opposition pollsters had predicted 15%, and Guaido’s US-backed mafia did all it could to suppress the vote, even exploiting Covid to urge citizens to stay home.
The US-backed opposition consistently claimed Venezuela’s election authority (CNE) would fix the election. Then why didn’t it engineer a higher turnout rate to shatter their narrative? They have no answer, just as they’ve never produced evidence to back up past claims of fraud.
The State Dept worked to suppress Venezuela’s vote, sanctioning mainstream opposition candidates for participating in the election, including an ex-Guaido ally. These candidates campaigned on removing Maduro, privatization, etc - but also rejected Guaido & the US economic war.
The US economic war has deliberately created fuel shortages, which limited the ability of many to travel to polling places & increased despair, especially in rural areas. Then there’s the pandemic, which has lowered voter turnout in elections around the world (see Romania).
Turnout has dipped below 40% in several recent US midterm elections. They took place without prolonged economic sabotage by a foreign power, opposition boycotts, or the sanctioning of politicians. But low turnout was not framed as a referendum on the legitimacy of the president.
Based on the way the US and its apprentices worked to delegitimize Venezuela’s election and democratic institutions like the CNE, it’s clear to me Washington aims to push the country toward civil war, or at least into a spiraling social catastrophe. They have failed again.
The election results formally dispensed of Guaido as an opposition leader. A moderate opposition not attached to Washington is emerging. And the resurgence of the left on the continent has given Venezuela new maneuvering room. In the meantime, the US hybrid war continues.

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More from @MaxBlumenthal

27 Nov
On April 30 2018, well before Mossad assassinated Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Netanyahu singled out the Iranian scientist in his April 2018 “nuclear archive” slide show.

Weeks earlier, Netanyahu presented these documents to Trump to secure his withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal. ImageImage
As @GarethPorter reported for @TheGrayzoneNews, the docs Netanyahu presented were likely fabricated by the Mossad as part of a disinformation campaign aimed at sabotaging the JCPOA and influencing Trump to implement a regime change policy against Iran thegrayzone.com/2020/04/29/fab…
Iran experienced a wave of nuclear scientist assassinations in 2011-12, just as the Obama admin opened bilateral talks with Iran. Biden's incoming natsec advisor Jake Sullivan led those talks.

The pattern of Israeli political terror continues today. backchannel.al-monitor.com/index.php/tag/… ImageImage
Read 4 tweets
11 Nov
The Biden-Harris agency review teams are heavily represented by personnel from corporate board rooms, the professional managerial class & Beltway think tanks. It's a recipe for Obama 2.0

A quick thread on a few foreign policy apparatchiks who stood out. buildbackbetter.com/the-transition…
Paula Garcia Tufro is listed on the NSC team. As a member of Obama's NSC, Tufro presided over listing Venezuela as a "national security threat."

She's since been seen w/ Guaido's DC team.

When I challenged her on VZLA sanctions, she had no answer.
Dana Stroul of the neocon WINEP, is listed on Biden's State Dept team.

Stroul helped oversee a congressional panel on Syria that urged US military occupation, crushing sanctions, and preventing rebuilding.

She said the US military "owned" 1/3 of Syria
Read 5 tweets
25 Oct
Samantha Power's husband, Cass Sunstein, has argued for the government to conduct "cognitive infiltration" operations against the anti-establishment opinions he broadly defined as "conspiracy theories."
Cass Sunstein has called for US govt to groom seemingly independent agents to conduct "cognitive infiltration" against vaguely defined "conspiracy" networks:

"govt can supply these independent experts with information and perhaps prod them into action from behind the scenes..."
Sunstein: "Government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action."
Read 5 tweets
2 Oct
In an act of pure masochism, I watched Showtime’s The Comey Rule.

It was a piece of Resistance kitsch wrapped in trashy Cold War propaganda, adapted from an FBI agent’s script, and full of factual errors, lies and omissions designed to make liberals even dumber than they are. Image
Here’s a scene from The Comey Rule that never took place: Two accused Russian SVR agents become Internet Research Agency operatives and destroy Hillary’s campaign via Twitter and Facebook. It’s completely made-up, but presented as a factual re-enactment.
There was no evidence Internet Research Agency ads had any impact on the 2016 election anyway. According to Facebook, 56% of them appeared after the election and most did not relate to the candidates.
Read 11 tweets
2 Oct
This week, ex-staffers of UC Global testified in the London trial of Julian Assange that they spied on the @wikileaks founder on behalf of US intelligence, their boss proposed poisoning Assange and robbing his lawyer – whose office was invaded soon after. shadowproof.com/2020/09/30/uc-…
The witness statements in London track validate my report from May, which relied on UC Global testimony to a Madrid court and internal company communications to show how US intelligence oversaw a criminal campaign against Assange fronted by Sheldon Adelson thegrayzone.com/2020/05/14/ame…
The Assange trial featured revelations of murder, torture, assassination plots, robberies & spying on the defendant, his lawyers, friends & journalists.

Did Western media ignore all this because the US gov't seeking Assange's extradition was responsible? thegrayzone.com/2020/09/18/mai…
Read 4 tweets
13 Sep
I just read @RichardMNephew's "The Art of Sanctions."

Nephew, ex-Obama State Dept sanctions coordinator, clinically & chillingly details how pain is the essence of the US global sanctions regime.

Unfortunately, he hasn't been honest about the contents of his own book. Thread:
Nephew claimed he never wrote that sanctions are designed to hurt ordinary people.

Yet here he describes sanctions against Iran that he personally designed and which wrecked the country's economy & currency, caused mass unemployment and inflation, as a "tremendous success"
Nephew pats himself & the Obama admin on the back for tripling the price of chicken "during important Iranian holiday periods" and preventing Iranians from repairing their cars.

At the same time, the US expanded imports of communications tech to Iran to foment social unrest.
Read 10 tweets

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