Venezuela Presents Anti-Blockade Policies To Burkina Faso Delegation

https://popularresistance.org/venezuela-presents-anti-blockade-policies-to-burkina-faso-delegation/







By Ariadna Eljuri, Orinoco Tribune. February 9, 2024



This Wednesday, Venezuelan vice minister for anti-blockade policy, William Castillo, made a presentation to the visiting delegation from Burkina Faso. Castillo’s presentation covered the impact on Venezuela’s economy of the illegal coercive measures—euphemistically referred to as “sanctions”—imposed by the US and its vassals and spoke about how Venezuela has overcome them.

In a statement, Castillo wrote that both parties agreed that “the sanctions are part of an illegal and criminal foreign policy and of a model of neocolonialism that uses attacks on the economy as a spearhead for the geopolitical control of free nations.”

Burkina Faso also faces sanctions imposed by the European Union.





The vice minister affirmed that the unity of the people of Africa is necessary in order to confront the constant attacks from the West and its allies.

“The people of the south must unite to reject this threat to the peace and freedom of the worthy people of Thomas Sankara,” Castillo added.

The two countries signed 20 agreements in various sectors during the Burkinabé delegation’s visit to Venezuela.

In September, 2022, President Ibrahim Traoré took power in Burkina Faso. Since then, he has adopted Sankarist positions, donning the traditional red beret frequently worn by famed Marxist Burkinabé revolutionary Thomas Sankara and earning praise for his courageous speeches in world forums.

Democrats And The Mediocre Black Misleaders

https://popularresistance.org/democrats-and-the-mediocre-black-misleaders/







By Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. February 9, 2024


The Democrats offer nothing but fake opposition and the duopoly is splitting.

The chosen Black spokespeople are predictably hacks who get paid to spout meaningless drivel.


“There are people who say, ‘We would like choice.’ To those people I say yes but now is not the time. Like I would like to be a size 6. Ok but that means I got to go to the gym. That means I can’t eat them oreos at night. That means I probably need to not put no sugar in my coffee.” – Symone Sanders Townsend , MSNBC

“Those folks who were in bondage, the progeny of the folks who picked cotton, now those folks won’t be picking cotton, but will be picking presidents.” – Jaime Harrison , Democratic National Committee Chair

The Democratic Party shows its contempt for the Black voters they depend upon in a myriad of ways. They talk a good game and pretend to do what Black people want while also engaging in duopoly treachery, falsely pointing to republicans as the obstacle to doing what the people want. “But Trump!”, will be their most popular expression in 2024. This year will present numerous occasions for patronizing treachery against the people whose support they need the most.

One would think that as Joe Biden struggles to reach an approval rating that would ensure re-election success that he and the rest of the party establishment would choose better people to represent them in the group most likely to vote for democrats. They don’t because they are on the horns of a dilemma. They don’t really want to be too closely identified with Black people, the group they need most. They also can’t be in conflict with the oligarchs who make all of the political decisions in the country. The end result is a parade of foolishness meant to keep Black people in support of a party that actively works against their interests.

In 2024 democrats put the South Carolina primary first, pushing it past New Hampshire, where they didn’t even bother with a primary campaign. As in the rest of the south, registered democrats in South Carolina are usually Black. The decision to have an early contest in a southern state is politically sound but nothing comes out of it for Black people except photo ops with the likes of Congressman James Clyburn, a leader of the congressional establishment who has been falsely portrayed as an independent actor, a kingmaker.

It is true that Biden recently won in South Carolina overwhelmingly with 96% of the vote, but with only a 4% turnout of registered voters. One can hardly blame those who chose to stay home. He had no credible competition and the fix, as they say, was in. But that doesn’t excuse the likes of Jaime Harrison from using one of the most trite and offensive stump speech lines about picking cotton and picking presidents.

Not to be outdone, Symone Sanders, once a press secretary for the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016, and an adviser to Biden’s 2020 campaign, who then moved on to work for Vice President Kamala Harris, added to the tomfoolery by telling viewers that wanting to have a choice other than Biden is akin to going on a diet.

The quadrennial election process is a grifter’s dream come true. The democrats throw money around to anyone who is willing to repeat the party line, and if the grifters in question are Black, they lower the standard even further. The electoral propagandists don’t need to be smart or offer anything new. In fact, that is the last thing their patrons want. Any skills or intelligence go out the window and we are left with sad analogies about picking cotton. Doing otherwise would rock the political boat and expose the fakery that is rife in American politics.

Of course, this is a difficult moment as the ruling classes are openly splitting on key issues. The Democratic Party is saddled with an unpopular president and a discredited former president who is still managing to lead in the polls. Democrats gave away the store as the saying goes in coming up with an immigration bill that republicans demanded. The border wall, which liberals were supposed to revile, was back yet again, along with other measures intended to stem the flow of asylum seekers at the southern border. Republicans were on board until Donald Trump told them to scuttle the bill, and scuttle it they did.

Republicans held military spending for Ukraine and for Israel hostage, claiming they would give billions of dollars more if they got the border bill they wanted. But Trump spoke and the wheeling and dealing fell apart. Enter Symone Sanders Townsend . “In a world where the U.S. doesn’t fund Ukraine, Taiwan & Israel as well as provide $$ needed for border security…more people will die, Putin will win, the Chinese government will follow Putin’s lead and America is no longer a reliable partner.” This sort of word salad is all that is left of what passes for Black leadership. The misleaders are even worse than they used to be.

Hoping for a better class of party hacks is a loser’s game but they must be exposed nonetheless. It is vital for Black people to see what kind of games are being played against them. Democrats offer nothing but quieter Trumpism and that is why a Black media personality like Sanders Townsend will make silly statements about Russia and China. It is what she is being paid to do after all and the people doing the paying are scoundrels and hacks themselves.

Cop City: Federal And State Police Raid Three Homes In Atlanta

https://popularresistance.org/cop-city-federal-and-state-police-raid-three-homes-in-atlanta/







By Sean Summers, Unicorn Riot. February 9, 2024


One Arrested Amid ‘Cop City’ Investigation.

Atlanta, GA — A multi-agency task force raided three homes in Atlanta early Thursday morning as part of an ongoing investigation surrounding resistance to ‘Cop City.’





At around 6:00 a.m., law enforcement agents with the Atlanta Police Department, Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Georgia State Patrol, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and FBI carried out search warrants at three separate homes across the city seeking evidence related to a July 2023 arson targeting police motorcycles at an Atlanta police precinct.

One 30-year-old Atlanta local, John Mazurek, was arrested and charged with first-degree arson in connection with the 2023 sabotage. Another unidentified person has been in police custody since the raids, though they have not been charged or booked, sources told Unicorn Riot.

Police detained residents of the homes and searched the people and property at the locations, sources in one of the homes raided told Unicorn Riot.

Unicorn Riot spoke to two residents from one of the houses. One resident described being woken up by a housemate who alerted him to the raid. After getting partially dressed, he could hear police entering the home while he was in his room.

“I told them I was coming out before I opened the door,” the resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Unicorn Riot.

He opened his bedroom door and was met with lasers from police guns on his body and the sounds of a barking police dog. Officers told him to lie down and crawl toward them before grabbing him by the hair and dragging him outside, he said.

Once on the back porch of the home, officers continued to shake the resident by the hair until he lost his glasses. He was then detained for nearly three hours while agents searched the home.

Another resident described a similar experience. After hearing sirens and an announcement over a loudspeaker, the resident saw police from Georgia State Patrol approaching the structure she lives in, behind the house.

After watching police break open the home’s back door and throw a concussion grenade inside, the resident was met with flashlights and lasers from police guns shining through her window, she said.

She was searched and detained for about three hours while police searched her home and car. Despite asking several times, police never showed her a copy of the warrant they said they were executing, she told Unicorn Riot.

Once released and back inside the house, residents found their home tossed and disheveled. Police seized computers from the home. One resident said police had removed a revealing Polaroid picture of herself, which she had kept in storage under her bed, and put it “on display” in her room.

A copy of a warrant served at a separate raided home, shared by Atlanta Community Press Collective, shows that police took computers, cell phones, and data storage devices among other things.  

A copy of a warrant served at one of the three homes raided early Thursday shows police seized computers, electronic equipment, and stickers and fliers against ‘Cop City’ as evidence.

At a press conference Thursday morning, Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum did not comment on what, if any, evidence related to the July 2023 arson was found during the raids.

While police from multiple agencies participated in the raid, the two residents told Unicorn Riot that it seemed clear that the ATF was leading the operation.

Once the raid itself was done, state and local agents left, but ATF agents remained to continue searching the home, the residents said. The federal agency is often tasked with arson investigations that span state lines.

The raids come on the heels of an escalation in Atlanta and beyond to find people who have carried out a string of clandestine attacks against those involved in the creation of ‘Cop City’ — including the Atlanta Police Department, contractors hired to construct the facility, and financial backers of the project.

In January, the Atlanta Police Department announced a national billboard campaign, funded by the Atlanta Police Foundation, seeking information on arson attacks against the facility. The billboards offer rewards of up to $200,000 for information leading to arrests and convictions related to attacks against the facility.

Six days before the raids at the three Atlanta homes, flight data obtained by Unicorn Riot shows an Atlanta Police Department helicopter circled the residences targeted with search warrants.

Those in the movement against ‘Cop City’ began coordinating responses to the early morning raids in the hours afterward.

Supporters have called for a rally outside the Atlanta Police Foundation’s headquarters Thursday afternoon to support Mazurek and denounce the raids, while others have called for further attacks in response to the raids.

A message circulating among movement-adjacent chat loops reads:


“[I]f you have been working on a plan with your comrades, now is the time to execute it. If you have not, without hesitation or impediment, now is the time to make a plan with your comrades that you can put into action immediately. The contractors, politicians, and their support networks must have consequences for what they’ve done this morning. If you are unable to mobilize in that way; organize fundraisers, make propaganda, mobilize media contacts, and do research than can undermine the police and contractor’s initiatives.”

Schierbaum told reporters at a press conference Thursday that there will likely be more arrests in coming weeks as the investigation continues.

Arab World Calls US Top Security Threat, No Peace With Israel

https://popularresistance.org/arab-world-calls-us-top-security-threat-no-prospect-of-peace-with-israel/







By News Desk, The Cradle. February 9, 2024


A staggering 94 percent of people living in West Asia and North Africa called Washington’s Gaza policies ‘bad.’

More than half agree the US is the top threat to peace in the region.

A new opinion poll conducted in 16 Arab countries shows that Washington’s continued support for Israel’s campaign of genocide in the Gaza Strip has dramatically hurt its image across West Asia and North Africa, as 94 percent of respondents describe the US position as “bad.” At the same time, more than half say the US poses the biggest threat to regional security.

Other western states fared almost as poorly, with more than three-quarters of those polled saying the position of the UK, France, and Germany in relation to Gaza is “bad” or “very bad.”

In contrast, Iran received a surge in recognition, with 48 percent of respondents expressing a positive view of the Iranian position, while 37 percent held a negative view. Despite Ankara’s increasing trade ties with Tel Aviv, Turkiye got a similar response – 47 percent perceived the country’s position positively, and 40 percent perceived it negatively.



To make matters worse for Washington, 51 percent of respondents agree that the US is currently the biggest threat to peace and stability in the region – marking a 12-point jump from 2022. Israel trails behind with 26 percent, a 15-point drop from 2022.



The survey, conducted by the Arab Center Washington DC (ACW) in cooperation with The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS), also asked respondents their opinions on prospects for peace with Israel in the wake of the war in Gaza.

Fifty-nine percent answered with certainty that there can be no possibility for peace with Israel, while 14 percent reported having serious doubts, and nine percent said they did not believe in the possibility of peace with Israel in the first place.



Furthermore, 89 percent of Arab citizens say they oppose official recognition of Israel, with only four percent favoring it. This marks the lowest level of recognition since the question was first asked in 2011.

When asked what actions regional leaders must take to stop the mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza, 36 percent said governments should suspend relations or normalization agreements with Israel, 14 percent said aid must be delivered to Gaza regardless of Israeli approval, and 11 percent said oil exports should be used to put pressure on Israel and its western backers.

A large majority of respondents also agreed that the US is not serious about working to establish an independent Palestinian state under the 1967 borders with occupied Jerusalem as its capital.



“This is a historic moment in some very important ways,” Shibley Telhami, a professor at the University of Maryland, said at an event presenting the survey findings on Thursday. “The scale of what we have seen and the role the US has played in this deeply painful crisis has been so large and been perceived to be so large that it’s going to leave an imprint on the consciousness of a generation in the region that is going to outlast this administration and outlast this crisis.”

Questions about Washington’s alleged commitment to democracy and regional stability have been growing steadily in the Arab world for several years. According to a Gallup poll conducted in April 2023, a great majority of citizens in 13 countries across West Asia and North Africa said they did not trust US claims about “encouraging the development of democracy” or about “improving the economic lot of people.”

A few months earlier, the ACRPS revealed the results of the largest opinion survey conducted in the Arab world, showing that 84 percent of Arabs reject recognizing Israel for political and cultural reasons.

US Anti-War Activists Confront Senators Over Support For Israel

https://popularresistance.org/us-anti-war-activists-confront-senators-over-support-for-israel/







By People's Dispatch. February 9, 2024


The US government pushes for further escalation while the Palestine solidarity movement organizes for peace.

On February 7, activists with feminist anti-war group CODEPINK confronted several US Senators who have been doubling down on their support for Israel throughout the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip.

“Killing Hamas makes Israel safe,” said Florida Senator Ted Cruz to an activist who told him that “the war does not make Jews safer.” Cruz has received over one million dollars from the pro-Israel lobby since 1990, receiving USD 489,419 from 2019 to 2024. Cruz’s top pro-Israel Political Action Committee (PAC) donors are the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Republican Jewish Coalition. “Killing 30,000 civilians doesn’t make anyone safe,” the activist responds.

An activist implored Marco Rubio, who has also received over one million dollars from the pro-Israel lobby, that she has a baby dying in Gaza. Since 2019 along, Rubio has received USD 321,728 from the lobby, with top PAC contributors being the Pro-Israel America PAC and the Republican Jewish Coalition, which have given him USD 104,800 and USD 72,736 respectively since 2019. Rubio responded, “Yeah, Hamas is responsible for killing all of those children.”

“I wanna help Israel destroy Hamas,” he continues.





Both Rubio and Cruz are some of the most conservative lawmakers in the Senate, but unconditional support for the Zionist state extends throughout both major parties. Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, who ran as a “progressive” candidate, has displayed some of the most dramatic support for Israel, waving the Israeli flag at protests from the roof of his home, even breaking with his progressive image over his support for Israel. CODEPINK also confronted Fetterman, who filmed the activists on his phone and pumped his fist at them.

These lawmakers’ unconditional support for Israel are compatible with the White House’s outright rejection of a ceasefire, as well as Western nations and Israel’s escalation of the conflict. The United States is now bombing three separate countries in West Asia: Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, in direct retaliation against the people of those nations acting against Zionism and imperialism. Israel rejected Hamas’ latest ceasefire proposal, following a meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and bombed Syria on February 7. “The ‘day after’ is the day after Hamas. All of Hamas,” Netanyahu said after rejecting the proposal. He added, “There is no alternative for the military collapse [of Hamas]. There will not be a civilian collapse of [Hamas rule] without a military one,” according to Times of Israel.

Let Them Eat Dirt

https://popularresistance.org/let-them-eat-dirt/





By Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. February 9, 2024


The final stage of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, an orchestrated mass starvation, has begun.

The international community does not intend to stop it.

There was never any possibility that the Israeli government would agree to a pause in the fighting proposed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, much less a ceasefire. Israel is on the verge of delivering the coup de grâce in its war on Palestinians in Gaza – mass starvation. When Israeli leaders use the term “absolute victory,” they mean total decimation, total elimination. The Nazis in 1942 systematically starved the 500,000 men, women and children in the Warsaw Ghetto. This is a number Israel intends to exceed.

Israel, and its chief patron the United States, by attempting to shut down the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which provides food and aid to Gaza, is not only committing a war crime, but is in flagrant defiance of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The court found the charges of genocide brought by South Africa, which included statements and facts gathered by UNWRA, plausible. It ordered Israel to abide by six provisional measures to prevent genocide and alleviate the humanitarian catastrophe. The fourth provisional measure calls on Israel to secure immediate and effective steps to provide humanitarian assistance and essential services in Gaza.

UNRWA’s reports on conditions in Gaza, which I covered as a reporter for seven years, and its documentation of indiscriminate Israeli attacks illustrate that, as UNRWA said, “unilaterally declared ‘safe zones’ are not safe at all. Nowhere in Gaza is safe.”

UNRWA’s role in documenting the genocide, as well as providing food and aid to the Palestinians, infuriates the Israeli government. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused UNRWA after the ruling of providing false information to the ICJ. Already an Israeli target for decades, Israel decided that UNRWA, which supports 5.9 million Palestinian refugees across the Middle East with clinics, schools and food, had to be eliminated. Israel’s destruction of UNRWA serves a political as well as material objective.

The evidence-free Israeli accusations against UNRWA that a dozen of the 13,000 employees had links to those who carried out the attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, which saw some 1,200 Israelis killed, did the trick. It led 16 major donors, including the United States, the U.K., Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Finland, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Estonia and Japan, to suspend financial support for the relief agency on which nearly every Palestinian in Gaza depends for food. Israel has killed 152 UNRWA workers and damaged 147 UNRWA installations since Oct. 7. Israel has also bombed UNRWA relief trucks.

More than 27,708 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, some 67,000 have been wounded and at least 7,000 are missing, most likely dead and buried under the rubble.

More than half a million Palestinians – one in four – are starving in Gaza, according to the U.N. Starvation will soon be ubiquitous. Palestinians in Gaza, at least 1.9 million of whom have been internally displaced, lack not only sufficient food, but clean water, shelter and medicine. There are few fruits or vegetables. There is little flour to make bread. Pasta, along with meat, cheese and eggs, have disappeared. Black market prices for dry goods such as lentils and beans have increased 25 times from pre-war prices. A bag of flour on the black market has risen from $8.00 to $200 dollars. The healthcare system in Gaza, with only three of Gaza’s 36 hospitals left partially functioning, has largely collapsed. Some 1.3 million displaced Palestinians live on the streets of the southern city of Rafah, which Israel designated a “safe zone,” but has begun to bomb. Families shiver in the winter rains under flimsy tarps amid pools of raw sewage. An estimated 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes.

“There is no instance since the Second World War in which an entire population has been reduced to extreme hunger and destitution with such speed,” writes Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University and the author of “Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine,” in the Guardian. “And there’s no case in which the international obligation to stop it has been so clear.”

The United States, formerly UNRWA’s largest contributor, provided $422 million to the agency in 2023. The severance of funds ensures that UNRWA food deliveries, already in very short supply because of blockages by Israel, will largely come to a halt by the end of February or the beginning of March.

Israel has given the Palestinians in Gaza two choices. Leave or die.

I covered the famine in Sudan in 1988 that took 250,000 lives. There are streaks in my lungs, scars from standing amid hundreds of Sudanese who were dying of tuberculosis. I was strong and healthy and fought off the contagion. They were weak and emaciated and did not. The international community, as is in Gaza, did little to intervene.

The precursor to starvation – undernourishment – already affects most Palestinians in Gaza. Those who starve lack enough calories to sustain themselves. In desperation people begin to eat animal fodder, grass, leaves, insects, rodents, even dirt. They suffer from diarrhea and respiratory infections. They rip up tiny bits of food, often spoiled, and ration it.

Soon, lacking enough iron to produce hemoglobin, a protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen from the lungs to the body, and myoglobin, a protein that provides oxygen to muscles, coupled with a lack of vitamin B1, they become anemic. The body feeds on itself. Tissue and muscle waste away. It is impossible to regulate body temperature. Kidneys shut down. Immune systems crash. Vital organs – brain, heart, lungs, ovaries and testes — atrophy. Blood circulation slows. The volume of blood decreases. Infectious diseases such as typhoid, tuberculosis and cholera become an epidemic, killing people by the thousands.

It is impossible to concentrate. Emaciated victims succumb to mental and emotional withdrawal and apathy. They do not want to be touched or moved. The heart muscle is weakened. Victims, even at rest, are in a state of virtual heart failure. Wounds do not heal. Vision is impaired with cataracts, even among the young. Finally, wracked by convulsions and hallucinations, the heart stops. This process can last up to 40 days for an adult. Children, the elderly and the sick expire at faster rates.

I saw hundreds of skeletal figures, specters of human beings, moving forlornly at a glacial pace across the barren Sudanese landscape. Hyenas, accustomed to eating human flesh, routinely picked off small children. I stood over clusters of bleached human bones on the outskirts of villages where dozens of people, too weak to walk, had laid down in a group and never gotten up. Many were the remains of entire families.

In the abandoned town of Maya Abun bats dangled from the rafters of the gutted Italian mission church. The streets were overgrown with tussocks of grass. The dirt airstrip was flanked by hundreds of human bones, skulls and the remnants of iron bracelets, colored beads, baskets and tattering strips of clothing. The palm trees had been cut in half. People had eaten the leaves and the pulp inside. There had been a rumor that food would be delivered by plane. People had walked for days to the airstrip. They waited and waited and waited. No plane arrived. No one buried the dead.

Now, from a distance, I watch this happen in another land in another time. I know the indifference that doomed the Sudanese, mostly Dinkas, and today dooms the Palestinians. The poor, especially when they are of color, do not count. They can be killed like flies. The starvation in Gaza is not a natural disaster. It is Israel’s masterplan.

There will be scholars and historians who will write of this genocide, falsely believing that we can learn from the past, that we are different, that history can prevent us from being, once again, barbarians. They will hold academic conferences. They will say “Never again!” They will praise themselves for being more humane and civilized. But when it comes time to speak out with each new genocide, fearful of losing their status or academic positions, they will scurry like rats into their holes. Human history is one long atrocity for the world’s poor and vulnerable. Gaza is another chapter.

Dawn Is Breaking Out All Over, And The World Is Waking Up

https://popularresistance.org/dawn-is-breaking-out-all-over-and-the-world-is-waking-up/





By Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. February 9, 2024



On 2 February 2024, the people of Venezuela celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Bolivarian Revolution. On that day in 1999, Hugo Chávez took office as the president of Venezuela and began a process of Latin American integration that – because of US intransigence – accelerated into an anti-imperialist process. Chávez’s government, understanding that it would not be able to govern on behalf of the people and address their needs if it remained tied to the 1961 Constitution, pushed for deeper and deeper democratisation. In April 1999, a referendum was held to set up a Constituent Assembly, tasked with drafting a new constitution; in July 1999, 131 deputies were elected to the assembly; in December 1999, another referendum was held to ratify the draft constitution; and, finally, in July 2000, a general election was held based on the rules set out in the newly adopted constitution. As I remember, it rained hard on the day that the new constitution was put before the people. Nonetheless, 44% of the electorate turned out to vote in the referendum, with an overwhelming 72% choosing a new start for their country.

Under the new constitution, Venezuela’s old Supreme Court – which the country’s oligarchy had used as a mechanism to prevent any major social changes from taking place – was replaced by the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (Tribunal Supremo de Justicia) or TSJ. Over the course of the past quarter century, the TSJ has been disturbed by several controversies, largely stemming from interventions of the old oligarchy, which refused to accept the major changes that Chávez pushed through in his early years. Indeed, in 2002, the judges on the TSJ acquitted the military leaders who attempted a coup d’état against Chávez, an act which outraged the majority of Venezuelans. This ongoing interference eventually led to the expansion of the bench (as US President Franklin D. Roosevelt had done in 1937 for similar reasons) as well as more legislative control over the judiciary, as exists in most modern societies (such as in the United States, where Congressional oversight of the courts is institutionalised through instruments such as the ‘exceptions clause’). Nonetheless, this conflict over the TSJ provided an early weapon for Washington and the Venezuelan oligarchy as they attempted to delegitimise the Chávez government.

More people will go to the polls across the world in 2024 than in any previous year. About seventy countries, collectively making up almost half of the world’s adult population, have either already held elections or will hold elections this year. Amongst them are India, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa, the United States, and Venezuela, which is slated for presidential elections in the second half of this year. Well before the Venezuelan government was expected to declare the date for the elections, the country’s far-right opposition and the US government had already begun to intervene, attempting to delegitimise the elections and destabilise the country with the return of financial and trade sanctions. At the heart of the current dispute is the TSJ, which, on 26 January 2024, refused to overturn a June 2023 decision to disqualify far-right political figure María Corina Machado – who has called for sanctions against her own country and for the United States to intervene militarily against Venezuela – from holding elected office in Venezuela until at least 2029 if not 2036. In the proceedings, the TSJ looked at the case of eight individuals who had been barred from holding public office for a variety of reasons. Six of them have been reinstated, and two of them, including Machado, have had their disqualifications upheld.

The TSJ’s decision evoked fire and brimstone from Washington. Four days after the court decision, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller released a press statement that said that the US disapproved of the ‘barring of candidates’ from the presidential elections and would therefore punish Venezuela. The US immediately revoked General Licence 43, a treasury licence that had permitted the Venezuelan public sector gold mining company Minerven to conduct normal commercial transactions with US persons and entities. In addition, US State Department warned that if the Venezuelan government does not allow Machado to run in this year’s election, it will not renew General Licence 44, which allows Venezuela’s oil and gas sector to conduct normal business and is set to expire on 18 April. Later that day, Miller told the press that ‘absent a change in course from the government, we will allow that general licence to expire, and our sanctions will snap back into place’.

The United Nations Charter (1945) permits the Security Council to authorise sanctions under chapter VII, article 41. However, it emphasises that these sanctions can only be implemented by way of a UN Security Council resolution. That is why US sanctions on Venezuela, which were first imposed in 2005 and have deepened since 2015, are illegal. As UN special rapporteur on unilateral coercive measures Alena F. Douhan wrote in her 2022 report, these unilateral measures are prone to overcompliance and secondary sanctions as a result of countries’ and firms’ fear of being punished by the US. The illegal measures imposed by the US have resulted in tens of billions of dollars of losses since 2015 and have served as collective punishment against the Venezuelan population (forcing over six million of them to leave the country). In 2021, the Venezuelan government formed the Group of Friends in Defence of the UN Charter to bring countries together to defend the integrity of the charter and stand against the use of these kinds of violent, unilateral, and illegal measures. Trade amongst members of this group has been increasing, and many of them (particularly Russia and China) have provided Venezuela with options other than the financial and trade system dominated by the United States and its allies.

Last month, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research published a landmark study, Hyper-Imperialism, and dossier, The Churning of the Global Order, in which we analysed the Global North’s decline in legitimacy, the new mood in the Global South, and the violent mechanisms used by the Global North to desperately hold onto its power. Last year, the governments of the United States and Venezuela met in Bridgetown, Barbados, under the sponsorship of Mexico and Norway to sign the Barbados Agreement. Under the terms of this agreement, Venezuela would allow the disqualification of some opposition candidates to be challenged in the TSJ and the US would begin to lift its embargo against Venezuela. This was an agreement that the US signed not from a position of strength, but due to the isolation that it faces from the newly buoyant OPEC+ (made up of Global South nations that, in 2022, accounted for 59% of global oil production) and due to its failure to fully assert authority over Saudi Arabia. In an effort to hedge these challenges, the US has sought to bring Venezuelan oil back into the world market. After refusing to participate in the terms set by the Barbados Agreement, Machado challenged her disqualification at the TSJ, whose authority she claimed to honour. But when the verdict went against her, Machado and the United States went into their toolbox and found that all that remained was force: a return to sanctions and a return to the threat of military intervention. Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Yvan Gil called the US reaction ‘neo-colonial interventionism’.

Washington’s return to sanctions comes just as the Associated Press published a report based on a secret 2018 US government memorandum that provides evidence that the US sent spies to Venezuela to target President Nicolás Maduro, his family, and his close allies. ‘We don’t like to say it publicly, but we are, in fact, the police of the world’, former US Drug Enforcement Agency official Wes Tabor told the Associated Press in clear disregard of the operation’s violation of international law. This is the attitude of the United States. That kind of thinking, which calls to mind the clichés of Hollywood Westerns, governs the rhetoric of US high officials. It is in this tone that US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin threatens militias in Iraq and Syria, saying that while they might ‘have a lot of capability, I have a lot more’. Meanwhile, Austin declares that the US will respond to the strikes on its military base in Jordan ‘when we choose, where we choose, and how we choose’. We will do what we want. That arrogance is the essence of US foreign policy, which calls upon Armageddon when it feels like it. ‘Target Tehran’, says US Senator John Cornyn, unconcerned about the implications of a US bombardment in Iran or anywhere else.

Of course, there is a fine line between persecuting political opponents and disqualifying those who want their country invaded by a foreign power, in this case ‘the police of the world’. It is true that governments often disparage their opponents by alleging that they are agents of a foreign power (as US Senator Nancy Pelosi did recently to those in the United States who are protesting Israel’s genocide against Palestinians, calling them agents of Russia and asking the Federal Bureau of Investigations to monitor them). Machado, however, has openly made statements calling for the United States to invade Venezuela, which in any country would be considered out of bounds.

In December 2020, I met with a range of opposition leaders in Venezuela who had turned against the regime change positions of people like Machado. Timoteo Zambrano, a leader of Cambiemos Movimiento Ciudadano, told me that it was no longer possible to go before the Venezuelan people and call for an end to Chavismo, the socialist programme set in place by Hugo Chávez. This meant that large sections of the right, including Zambrano’s social democratic formation, have had to acknowledge that this standpoint could not easily win popular support. The far right, comprised of people like Juan Guaidó and María Corina Machado, do not have the stomach for actual democratic processes, preferring instead to ride into Caracas on the backs of an F-35 Lightning II.

Not even a few months after promising sanctions relief to Venezuela, the US has returned to its hyper-imperialist ways. But the world has changed. In 2006, Chávez went to the United Nations and asked the world’s peoples to read Noam Chomsky’s Hegemony or Survival and then mused, ‘Dawn is breaking all over… It is that the world is waking up. It is waking up all over. And people are standing up’. On 31 January 2024, Maduro went to the TSJ headquarters, where he said, ‘We do not depend on gringos or anyone in this world for investment, prosperity, progress, advancement, [or] growth’. Channelling Chávez from eighteen years ago, Maduro said, ‘Another world has already been born’.