As the controlled corporate media and US imperial political stooges have been relentlessly screaming and hollering for regime change in Venezuela in the name of 'humanitarianism' over the past few weeks, it should be painfully obvious that this is simply history repeating and Venezuela is but the latest country to be targeted by the US empire for reasons that are anything but humanitarian. And one need not even know the real reasons behind this latest effort to know this, but simply needs to know and understand the history of US foreign intervention and past regime change efforts. Regime change in the name of humanitarianism is the name of the game for the US empire, but the reality of these efforts instead leave a massive wake of death and destruction every time; whether they are successful as with Iraq and Libya, or whether they are unsuccessful as with Syria and Iran currently.
We did it to Libya; toppling their government, murdering their leader, ruining their infrastructure, leaving behind a nation in shambles with a decimated economy, which also hosts the world's largest open slave trade hub; and now the US is attempting to do the same to Venezuela, complete with calls for widespread civil unrest and the country's democratically elected president to be overthrown, not to mention all the crippling economic sanctions which are one of the direct causes of the 'widespread' hunger now occurring there. Even without keeping up with all the recent news about Venezuela or having an in-depth knowledge of the Venezuelan situation, it's so easy to see what's going on right now: It's the same US imperial lies and shenanigans, just a new target on a different continent.
Which brings us to this Tweet posted by Senator Marco Rubio on February 24, which is an open death threat to Venezuelan president Maduro. The Tweet features a photo of former-Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi while in office on the left, with a photo of the captured and blood-covered Gaddafi on the right just minutes before his brutal public murder by US-backed armed extremists in 2011. At that time, Gaddafi was led through the streets, beaten and mutilated by the US-backed 'rebel' (terrorist) militia which had captured him, video footage being captured of the horrific scene, before one of the terrorists sodomized him to death with a bayonet (or some other knife). Photos taken after Gaddafi's death also show bullet wounds in both his head and chest.
And this is what Marco Rubio is threatening and insinuating will be carried out against Venezuelan president Maduro if he does not step down. What kind of a sick and twisted psychopath would possibly wish this fate on anyone, even his own worst enemy? The answer to that is the murderous and demented psychopath Marco Rubio, and very sadly also thousands of Americans who liked and retweeted this: a whopping 22,423 retweets and 35,325 likes at the time of the making of this post! Now that is disturbing.
But what may possibly be even more disturbing is that Rubio claims, on his home Twitter page and as the #1 description of himself, to be a "Follower of Christ".
The absolute hypocrisy of this statement is ridiculously insane and cannot be missed! Did Rubio forget about Jesus Christ's command to "Love your enemies" found in the well known, so-called Sermon on the Mount? If Rubio truly is a "follower of Christ", he should certainly also be aware of Christ's teaching that: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." Rubio is obviously neither a peacemaker nor does this tweet show love of his 'enemy', president Maduro. It shows the opposite, an intense hatred coming from a demented state of mind which justifies such cruelty in the name of 'humanitarianism' and achieving 'democracy'.
This goes to demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that this particular politician, like most, is a lying, hypocritical snake; as a true "follower of Christ" would never threaten or wish upon even his worst enemy to be publicly tortured or viciously sodomized, or in any other way brutally murdered. Marco Rubio is clearly not a "follower of Christ" according to the very teachings attributed to Christ in the western Bible, but rather a follower of the evil US empire fueled by greed and the love of power, which is seeking absolute world dominance and control at any and all costs, even if that means the starvation and/or slaughter of entire populations.
As @CaitlinJohnstone pointed out in her great article on this disturbing Tweet:
Senator Rubio has been Capitol Hill’s single most virulent advocate of US interventionism in Venezuela, and has been tweeting about it constantly. Since Washington’s bogus “humanitarian aid” delivery sparked violence on the borders of Colombia and Brazil, as it was intended to, Rubio has cranked his interventionist cheerleading up to eleven.
That was then, and now just this Thursday on March 7, Rubio has cranked his warmongering interventionist cheerleading up to a twelve or even higher, calling for the US to promote “widespread unrest” as a means of encouraging regime change, and predicting that: "Venezuela is going to enter a period of suffering no nation in our hemisphere has confronted in modern history."
Journalist Max Blumenthal reported via Twitter:
At Senate hearing on Venezuela just now, Marco Rubio called for the US to promote “widespread unrest” as a means of encouraging regime change. His proposal was met with approval.
Not all that shocking that this proposal was met with approval, but certainly a sad reminder of the state of politics in America, and we will soon see that Rubio is far from alone in his hawkish warmongering. Rubio had even told Fox News earlier in the day that, "Trump won't give up until Maduro is gone in Venezuela," signaling the US empire's absolute and total commitment to affect regime change in Venezuela by ousting Maduro and replacing him with the US-appointed western puppet leader Juan Guaido. John Bolton is also among the major players cheerleading this effort, also featured on this same Fox program. Democrats Bill and Hillary Clinton as well as the popular so-called 'independent' Bernie Sanders are also pushing the same twisted MSM/US government narratives (which will be disproved below) on behalf of the US imperial foreign policy of regime change in Venezuela; proving once again that there are no fundamental differences between the political Right and the Left, and Bernie Sanders is another completely fake 'anti-establishment' political snake.
And if anything can be learned from the lessons of US intervention efforts in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Yemen and Iran; it is that there is nothing the US empire and its lackeys are not willing to do to affect regime change in the name of 'spreading democracy' or any other guise.
Make up lies about nonexistent WMDS in the hands of a totalitarian dictator? We did that as a false pretext for the US invasion of Iraq. Fund and arm radical head-chopping ISIS and al-Qaeda terrorists? We did that, particularly in Syria but also in Libya and now in Yemen. Use sanctions to starve entire populations into submission, in the desperate ruse to 'punish' the 'dictator' leader and attempt to force regime change from within by angering the people? We did that to Iraq and are now doing so to Syria and Iran, along with North Korea, Yemen and Venezuela to name a few. Support the genocide of an entire nation on behalf of an oil-rich 'ally' in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia) by starvation, disease and relentless bombing of civilian infrastructure? Yep, after three years we're still doing that to Yemen with the innocent Yemeni children feeling the brunt of these senseless US policies.
So it is no surprise that Rubio is far from alone in his calls for regime change in Venezuela. Max Blumenthal further reports that:
Cynthia Arnson of the US-funded Wilson Center agreed with Rubio that "widespread unrest" is useful, but worried that deepening sanctions could hurt the cause because "starving people don't get out in the streets." Thus she implied that US sanctions will starve average people.
US army veteran and former head of the CIA, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also chimed in on the Venezuelan regime change rhetoric in a Tweet on Thursday, saying that "next" there will be "no Maduro".
"No food. No medicine. Now, no power. Next, no Maduro," Pompeo wrote in obvious anticipation that US policy would eventually prevail at ousting president Maduro and toppling the current democratically elected Venezuelan government. The sheer amount of 'popular' support behind this tweet is again impressive and disturbing, garnering 11,306 retweets and 22,547 likes! Interestingly enough, this is coming from a champion of US foreign policy in Yemen which is currently starving thousands of Yemeni children at a rate of about 144 children a day, who previously endorsed the US-backed Saudi genocide of Yemen in the name of protecting a $2 billion weapons contract. In the more recent past, Pompeo had warned that Maduro's days were "numbered."
And on top of all that, Pompeo's statement - "No food."- is an absolute lie, just as CNN's claim that there was no toothpaste in the country was a blatant lie; both lies debunked in the following video which takes us into a state-subsidized Venezuelan market in Caracas:
Surprisingly, there is currently both toothpaste and plenty of food in Venezuelan markets, so Mike Pompeo and CNN are both exposed as bold-faced liars for the US empire.
"Maduro's policies bring nothing but darkness," Pompeo said earlier in the day on Thursday, rather hypocritical coming from one so entrenched in the US imperial policies now causing so much darkness across so much of the earth, and so much suffering all around the world with all its bombs, starvation sanctions, and support of the very same radical terrorists it claims to be fighting against.
Independent journalist Ben Norton responded to this nonsense on Friday, accurately pointing out that "Neocon Pompeo is now publicly bragging about how the US economic and political war on Venezuela is causing civilians to suffer."
There is food in Venezuela, but crippling US sanctions have made it very difficult to import medicine.
Just as with Syria and Iran, this is how US sanctions work, punishing the populations and then blaming the 'regime' for the US-caused negative outcomes, and so Norton accurately concludes: "This is pure sadism."
One could go on and on debunking the numerous false corporate media narratives, imperial political statements, and debating all the possible reasons the US is attempting to initiate a coup in Venezuela to topple Maduro and affect regime change; but all of this misses the bigger picture of things. And the bigger picture is that this has all happened before, very many times, history is simply repeating once again in a new country, and regardless of any of the specifics it is easy to see who the real thugs in the equation are: the greedy and bloodthirsty US empire complete with its many various puppets, cheerleaders, and spokespeople.
So instead of writing further on Venezuela, I'd like to focus on Libya for just a quick moment, because as many US political leaders have insinuated, Venezuela is the current Libya and Maduro is the next Gaddafi. So whatever the hot talking point of the day regarding Venezuela is, we should always remember Libya - what Gaddafi gave his country and what we violently took away in the name of democracy. Global Research put together a great post on this, detailing 10 good things Gaddafi did for Libya while in office that the western media doesn't want you to know.
Possibly the largest accomplishment by Gaddafi for his people was the building of the world's largest irrigation project designed to make water readily available to all Libyan’s across the entire country. Under Gaddafi, Libya also had its own state bank which would lend money to its citizens at zero percent interest by law, and held no debt to any outside countries or banks. At the time of the toppling of Tripoli and public execution of the Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi was attempting to introduce a single African currency based on gold - the gold Dinar - and Libya was also rich in gold and so a capable nation to lead the charge in the attempt to carry out such a feat.
These two things alone surely made Libya a target of the international bankers, for had this plan been successful, it would have set all of Africa free from the manipulation by the bankers and all the profit made by them from money loaned at interest at the expense of the common people. It appears that Gaddafi was in the process of setting Libya free from western exploitation, and was attempting to help do the same for all of Africa. Further, in Libya under Gaddafi, electricity was entirely free and everyone wanting to start a farm was given a house, farming land, livestock and seeds, all free of charge!
Now I didn't live in Libya under Gaddafi nor have I been in post-Gaddafi Libya; and he, like most political leaders, certainly may have been involved in various forms of corruption and engaged in less than ideal practices; but he nonetheless certainly appears to have done far more good for his country and fellow countrymen than the US did by toppling his government and 'taking him out'. Libya as it once was now lays in ruins, terrorists flourished there following the US intervention, and it is now the largest open slave trade hub in the world, which even CNN has reported on - that slaves are bought and sold, being auctioned off in public squares; a reprehensible scene entirely foreign to the previous Libya under Gaddafi. Whatever evil Gaddafi may have done, the US leaders who were behind his murder and are now currently behind regime change in Venezuela are clearly far more evil and cause much more suffering around the world, with all their wars for profit and for geopolitical control of the entire planet.
“I was just in Venezuela where I heard many people voice fears that the US wants to turn their country into another Libya,” journalist Aaron Maté reported in response to Rubio’s disturbing tweet posted on February 24th. “I’d say their concerns are well-founded.”
Those concerns do indeed look to be well-founded, with time only further exposing this to in fact be the true US goal for Venezuela. Let's just hope that their devious plans are somehow thwarted and that the turning of Venezuela into the next Libya can somehow be averted.