{"id":253622,"date":"2024-02-05T12:00:04","date_gmt":"2024-02-05T12:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=253622"},"modified":"2024-02-01T06:48:59","modified_gmt":"2024-02-01T06:48:59","slug":"corporate-coup-venezuela-and-the-end-of-us-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/02\/corporate-coup-venezuela-and-the-end-of-us-empire\/","title":{"rendered":"Corporate Coup: Venezuela and the End of US Empire"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Anya Parampil\u2019s book tells the story of US hybrid warfare on Venezuela and of the tectonic social and economic shifts reshaping the world today.<\/p><\/div>\n

31 Jan 2024<\/em> – \u201cSanctions,\u201d as imposed by the US, is a\u00a0sanctimonious word for economic warfare and outright theft, and Venezuela is a textbook case. As Anya Parampil demonstrates in Corporate Coup: Venezuela and the End of US Empire<\/em> <\/a>, sanctions were part of a multi-pronged regime change war that included diplomatic aggression, economic terrorism, covert operations, and information warfare.<\/p>\n

It also included the bizarre US recognition of an obscure Venezuelan legislator, Juan Guaid\u00f3, as the president of Venezuela from January 2019 to January 2023, even as the elected president, Nicolas Maduro, remained in power.<\/p>\n

Ridiculous as that was, it worked. By transferring Venezuela\u2019s foreign assets to Guaid\u00f3 and his \u201cadministration,\u201d and by its relentless economic sanctions campaign, the US enabled US and Canadian corporations to suck Venezuelan wealth into their own coffers, where much of it remains to this day. It was a corporate coup but, as Parampil argues in her conclusion, successful only in the near term.<\/p>\n

Anya Parampil\u2019s book tells the story of US hybrid warfare on Venezuela and of the tectonic social and economic shifts reshaping the world today.<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Parampil skillfully weaves the personal story of her frontline reporting through the history of this war, beginning in 2019, when she first walked through the front doors of Venezuela\u2019s Foreign Ministry and saw a \u201cpeculiar art installation.\u201d Gradually she realized that it was a sculptural rendering of former Chilean President Salvador Allende\u2019s fractured glasses \u201cleft shattered on the floor of his office on September 11, 1973, after US-backed military forces stormed the Presidential Palace in Santiago and overthrew his government.\u201d What could better symbolize the Bolivarian Revolution and the fearsome imperial force it faces still?<\/p>\n

Days before she walked through those doors, Juan Guaid\u00f3 had declared himself the president of Venezuela, \u201csparking an international political crisis that continues to this day,\u201d even though a Venezuelan pollster demonstrated that \u201ca whopping 81% of Venezuelans did not even know who Guaid\u00f3 was at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Venezuelan socialism, US and Canadian corporate vultures<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Venezuela embraces the term \u201csocialism,\u201d as Parampil explains, even though the private sector still operates the vast majority of its economy. Its core belief is that the country\u2019s vast natural resource wealth\u2014 arguably including the world\u2019s largest oil and gold reserves\u2014belongs to the Venezuelan people. This of course sparks the ire of Western oil and mining companies and the governments that represent them, most of all the US.<\/p>\n

Venezuela has a national oil company that owns and manages its oil resources, as did several nations who\u2019ve been toppled by US coups. The government has also claimed its own gold resources, including the Las Cristinas gold mine, arguably the largest unexploited gold mine in the world.<\/p>\n

Crystallex, a Canadian mining company, signed an exclusive contract with the government to develop Las Cristinas in 2002, but Venezuela canceled the contract in 2011. Crystallex then asserted that Venezuela owed it $3.16 billion plus interest for expropriating the mine even though it had never been operational.<\/p>\n

With the help of Guaid\u00f3\u2019s shadow government, Crystallex became the first major player in seizing Venezuela\u2019s most valuable international asset, US-based Citgo Petroleum. Parampil describes a fire sale that ultimately benefited both Crystallex and American oil companies:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen a court rules that one corporation, such as Crystallex, can seize shares belonging to another, such as Citgo, as a debt payment, the shares are not directly transferred from company to company. Rather, the court sells off a portion of the indebted company\u2019s assets and uses funds raised from the sale to pay the claimant.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018They\u2019re auctioned,\u2019 [Venezuelan economist Francisco] Rodr\u00edguez\u00a0explained, referring to the indebted company\u2019s assets.<\/p>\n

In Citgo\u2019s case, this meant the court would oversee the fire sale of roughly $1.2 billion worth of its assets\u2014including gas stations, oil pipelines, oil terminals, and refineries throughout the United States\u2014in order to satisfy Venezuela\u2019s debt to Crystallex. Through that process, oil industry rivals including Shell, British Petroleum, and ExxonMobil would gain a chance to expand their share of the US oil market by swallowing up Citgo\u2019s infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Voil\u00e0. Coup complete. Or rather, started. As Parampil recounts, a US court\u2019s decision in favor of Crystallex made way for a host of other corporate vultures to move in on Venezuela\u2019s Citgo assets in the US.<\/p>\n

This is, of course, a gross oversimplification of a complex process that I couldn\u2019t have begun to understand without Parampil\u2019s masterful guidance through a byzantine legal and business maze.<\/p>\n

Surviving a medieval siege<\/strong><\/h4>\n

UN Rapporteur Alfredo de Zayas described the UN sanctions regime on Venezuela as \u201ccomparable with medieval sieges of towns with the intention of forcing them to surrender.\u201d Parampil describes how it greatly restricted imports and thereby starved the private sector that the US might have been expected to defend.<\/p>\n

The government responded by instituting CLAP, the Comit\u00e9s Locales de Abastecimiento y Producci\u00f3n (Local Committees for Supply and Production), \u00a0which became \u201cMaduro\u2019s single most effective intervention against US financial war.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the sanctions regime had reduced Venezuela\u2019s GDP by 75 percent, its living standards by 72 percent, and increased its mortality rate by 31 percent, the CLAP program delivered regular shipments of government subsidized pantry staples and household products to millions of families nationwide. Its success made it an obsession of the US government, which made repeated attempts to undermine the alternative supply chains it depended on, most notably by arresting and imprisoning Alex Saab <\/a>, the<\/p>\n

Colombian-Venezuelan businessman and diplomat who had undertaken the job of creating them. God forbid that a nation should not only claim its own natural resource wealth but also dare to feed its people.<\/p>\n

Failed \u201chumanitarian\u201d invasion<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Another story line in Corporate Coup<\/em>\u00a0is almost as bizarre as the Western recognition of Juan Guaid\u00f3. In February 2019, one month after Guaid\u00f3 inaugurated himself, the US announced that it would force a convoy of \u201chumanitarian aid\u201d into Venezuela from Colombia and began assembling a military presence on the border to oversee its delivery. The narrative it fed the media was that Venezuela was starving its people and even refusing to allow an aid convoy in.<\/p>\n

At the time this occurred it was only on the edge of my consciousness because I was focused largely on understanding US aggression in Africa. I did of course note that the US was trying to force \u201caid\u201d in, and that billionaire Richard Branson was prancing around on the Colombia-Venezuela border making an ass of himself with his 2019 Venezuela Aid Live <\/a>\u00a0concert.<\/p>\n

Since Branson\u2019s billions aren\u2019t derived from oil, gold, or other natural resources, he seemed to be there simply to assert his right to be a billionaire and challenge an economic model that he imagined might deny him that right.<\/p>\n

What I didn\u2019t realize before reading Corporate Coup <\/em>was that the delirious organizers of this stunt were trying to inspire the Venezuelan troops who amassed on the Venezuelan side of the border to defect and trigger a military uprising that would bring down the Maduro government. Parampil writes:<\/p>\n

\u201cRather than ignite chaos in Venezuela\u2019s streets, the February 23 plot was designed to test the loyalty of the country\u2019s armed forces. By forcing Venezuelan troops to prepare for an invasion, Washington waged a psychological war against the military\u2019s rank and file with the aim of intimidating them into defection. Trump and his advisors did not hide this objective.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018To the Venezuelan military high command, now is the time to stand on the side of the Venezuelan people,\u2019 White House National Security Advisor John Bolton tweeted on February 2. \u2018It is your right and responsibility to defend the constitution and democracy for Venezuela!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Some few defected, but the vast majority of the Venezuelan soldiers stood their ground, and the US operation was a dismal failure. Parampil\u2019s blow-by-blow account of how this all transpired is well worth reading. There\u2019s a sad irony to it now as miles of aid trucks line up on the Egyptian side of the Rafah Crossing, waiting to get into Gaza, and the US continues to oppose a ceasefire that would open the way to letting them in.<\/p>\n

Who remembers Juan Guaid\u00f3?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

The US-backed pretender Juan Guaid\u00f3 will no doubt be discussed in future academic discourse on the first three decades of 20th century Venezuelan history. If remembered beyond that, he\u2019s likely to be shorthand for a feckless lackey. A \u201cguaid\u00f3\u201d could become similar to a \u201cquisling,\u201d shorthand for \u201ctraitor\u201d based on the career of Vidkun Quisling, the collaborator who nominally headed Norway\u2019s government during Nazi occupation. Or he may, as Parampil writes, just be a bad, forgettable joke.<\/p>\n

In any case, US and Canadian corporate coupsters are still laughing all the way to the bank.<\/p>\n

Short term coup, long term loss<\/strong><\/h4>\n

As Parampil\u2019s subtitle\u2014Venezuela and the End of Empire\u2014implies, the hybrid warfare against Venezuela worked to enrich Western corporations, but only in the short term. In the long term, they proved the US and its Western allies to be dishonest international partners and inspired nations like Venezuela to establish new trade relationships\u2014including trade not transacted in US dollars\u2014with more trustworthy partners in the new multipolar world.<\/p>\n

Parampil\u2019s narrative makes for a fascinating read, not only about Venezuela, but also about the tectonic social and economic shifts reshaping the world as we know it today.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She attended Stanford University and is a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/em><\/a>. In 2014 she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize<\/em> for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region. She can be reached at @AnnGarrison<\/em>, ann@anngarrison.com.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 blackagendareport.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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