Roaming Charges: Preliminary Notes on a Kidnapping |
The dominant culture of the world teaches us that The Other is a threat, that our fellow human beings are a danger. We will all continue to be exiles in one form or another as long as we continue to accept the paradigm that the world is a racetrack or a battlefield.
– Eduardo Galeano
You’ve come a long way, MAGA babies…
There’s no plausible interpretation of the US Constitution or federal and international law that would legitimize Trump’s lethal attacks on Venezuela and the kidnapping of its president. Trump acted without a UN Resolution. He acted without Congressional authorization. Venezuela didn’t pose a military threat to the US or the US forces that had mobilized against Venezuela in the Caribbean. An indictment in a US court is not a legal basis for a military invasion. This was an unprovoked aggression that resulted in civilian deaths. Multiple murders, in other words.
Trump on Venezuela: “We’re there now, but we’re going to stay until such time as the pop — proper transition can take place. So we’re gonna stay until such time as — we’re gonna run it essentially.” Apparently, Marco Rubio will be the new Juan Guaidó of Venezuela, which must come as a shock to Nobel Prize winner, María Corina Machado, who thought she was in line to become the new Juan Gauidó of Venezuela. After all, she gave her rather dubious Nobel Prize to Trump, only to have him say she “didn’t have the respect” to govern. Ah, how sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless despot…
Fox News: “What do you think is next for the Venezuelan people now that you have removed Maduro?”
Trump:“We can’t take a chance of letting someone run it and just take over where he left off. So we’re making that decision now. We’ll be involved in it very much.”
The cocksure boast that the US will “run” Venezuela appears to be another Trumpian fantasy. It’s impossible to “run a country,” if you don’t have control of it, which the US doesn’t by any measure. The Maduro government remains in place and defiant, even with Maduro renditioned to New York City. Indeed, the attack appears to have only strengthened the resolve of the Venezuelan people, instead of inspiring the chimerical uprising Rubio led Trump to expect, much as Rumsfeld and Cheney deceived Bush into believing about Iraq.
Despite Trump’s claim that Delcy Rodríguez was “cooperative,” Venezuela’s vice-president, who was sworn in as the nation’s leader after Maduro was renditioned to the US, vigorously denied that she planned to help the U.S. government run the country. Instead, she asserted her own power as acting president and defiantly demonstrated the continuity of the Bolivaran Revolutionary government in the wake of the US attacks.
Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello: “Here, the unity of the revolutionary force is more than guaranteed, and here there is only one president, whose name is Nicolas Maduro Moros. Let no one fall for the enemy’s provocations. We are outraged because in the end everything was revealed — it was revealed that they only want our oil.”
Venezuela’s Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López forcefully rejected Trump and Rubio’s claim that Venezuela will be run by the US and demanded the return of Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. “Our sovereignty has been violated and breached. The [Venezuelan military] will guarantee the governability of the country … [and will] continue to employ all its available capabilities for military defense, the maintenance of internal order, and the preservation of peace.”
Trump responded to Rodríguez’s defiant stance with his usual boorish bombast when being confronted by a woman by threatening her with a fate worse than Maduro’s: “If she doesn’t do what’s right, she’s going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than........