A Day for Love

THE ABSURD TIMES

illustration: THE GREAT LATUFF!

[Speaking of AIPAC, once we game special plaudits to him for coming in third in a list of anti-Semites compiled by some wannabe APAIC moron.  We can not remember who came in first and second, but he did beat of number four, which was "European Football Fans".  Now this in an amazing accomplishment.  Do you have and idea of how many European football fans there are?  Well, we've never counted, but there are millions, yes, there are millions.  This is am accomplishment anyone should be proud of.  It is overwhelming.  Our hats are off to the Great Latuff, loved by millions!]  

Has anything really changed? 

Well, about 40 new Democrats were elected and replaced 40 Republicans.  When you realize that this represents not only 40 more Democrat votes, but 40 less (pardon the expression) Republican votes, that amounts to an 80 vote difference.  In almost every case, this was facilitated by disgust at Donald Trump.  The recent income tax returns will add to the realization, finally, that he is not on their side.  Maybe more will wake up.

I understand big Don shut down the government.  He wants his wall.  He's gonna hold his breath until you give him his wall!  It is remarkably like a 3 year old, maybe a four year old?  I'm not all that sure anymore, but he really is acting like a spoiled child who had his lollipop taken away.  Anyway, doing that helped all those Democrats get elected, so that's fine.

This is a time to celebrate Valentine's Day, the anniversary of the Parkland mass shootings staunchly defended by the NRA.  We can also commemorate the Valentine's Day massacre in Chicago.  Also, now the 201^st anniversary of the birth of Frederick Douglass of whom big don said "He is doing some great things."  We can remember Abraham Lincoln having to escort him into the slave-built White House because he was black.  Yes, we do know how to remember Black History Month. 

Ilam Omar recently apologized for using anti-Semitic "Tropes."  [There were tropes and schemes, all terminology from Renaissance
Rhetoric, collectively called "figures", numbering between two and three hundred.  Beware of those evil Tropes.]  So, everybody thought that would shut her up, the young representative from Minnesota, but she was immediately introduced to Eliot Abrams, Trump's nominee to oversee Venezuela. 

Now I don't know if he is allowed to vote, this ex-con, as he was sent to prison for his role in Iran Contra, and then pardoned by George Bush the first, ex-CIA Director.  Ollie North, also of that scandal, is now spokesman for the NRA, which we all assume is celebrating Valentine's Day.  Eliot was behind the attempt to stage a coup of Chavez, but failed.  Now he has a head start, still to subvert Venezuela.  She said there is no reason to believe anything he says and Abrams attempted to B.S. her.  She said, "That was not a question."  So, she is still going.  

There is no point in arguing with (pardon the expression) Republicans or other such idiots.  Let us take, for example, the issue of climate change, or global warming which is causing climate change.  The issue is settled so far as fact, data, science, and reason is concerned.  There is no way around it.  However, it is refuted by a Senator, a (pardon the expression) Republican, bringing in a snowball to the Senate chamber.  See?  Or how about this: on February 2019, a remote from the island of Maui showed the streets covered with snow.  See?  No climate change.  There is really no point in discussing anything with this type of person. 

The problem we have had recently with this stupidity and lying is that nobody who is that sort of person (a Trump Supporter) reads this, and those who do have a brain and are reading it, already know it.  So what is the point?  It is much like discussing the second amendment with these idiots.  No, I'm not going to bother. 

 So now one of the new representatives (discussed above) pointed out that AIPAC spends a great deal of money on lobbying.  Of course, that was "anti-Semitic."  The same was said of Norm Finklestein whose mother had been in a concentration camp.  Alan Derschowitz went after him.  Alan now spends time on FOX News.  Really, this is tiring.

Well, recently, Trump said that El Paso was one of the most dangerous cities in the United States.  Actually, it never was.  Furthermore, its crime rate steadily decreased over the years until some border fence or something like that was build.  Then, the rate remained the same with no further declines.  There we go again, talking about facts. 

North Korea is not reducing its nuclear capabilities even though they said they were in favor of "de-nuclearizing" [what a disgusting trope] the Korean Peninsula.  One thing that has been overlooked – they meant the ENTIRE area, which would include all United States nukes as well.  Big Don wants just the North part taken care of.  You know, the Libyan model as the psychopath Bolton proclaimed. 

Sarah Huckabee, the press secretary, announced that "God wants Trump to be President."  If this is really that case, God has a great deal to answer for, especially since the Southern Baptist Church has now been revealed to have dealt in sexual child abuse on a grand scale and forcing abortions in some cases (who says the Catholic Church has the most fun?).  Maybe if we built a wall around the Baptist churches things would be better?  

Let us not forget Venezuela.  It turns out that a group that used to work with the CIA during the Bush administrations, also Reagan, has been flying arms to Venezuela.  It is a bit tiring to repeat the whole Iran Contra episode that eventually led to Ollie North being spokesman from the NRA and it's not worth it here.  Suffice to say that the same shit is going on now.  You may have heard all the major networks weeping over the "humanitarian" aid we sent to aid our puppet, but little about how the United Nations has condemned that action.  People are not hungry in Venezuela because of "Socialism," but because of our blockade of trade and appropriation of funds from the country.  You might as well know that.  It seems that the ex-CEO of Starbucks is also afraid of Socialism.  Too many voters now never lived though all the "socialism" scares our governments used as the USSR no longer exists. 

Anyway, I was going to simply publish this as it is, above, but it turns out by happy coincidence that Amy Goodman has an interview that should redeem the CIA in the minds of many.  Here it follows.

Bye

A North Carolina-based air freight company has halted flights to Venezuela following a report by McClatchy linking it to possible arms smuggling. Last week, Venezuelan authorities claimed they had uncovered 19 assault weapons, 118 ammunition cartridges and 90 military-grade radio antennas on board a U.S.-owned plane that had flown from Miami into Valencia, Venezuela's third-largest city. The Boeing 767 is owned by a company called 21 Air based in Greensboro, North Carolina. The plane had made nearly 40 round-trip flights between Miami and spots in Venezuela and Colombia since January 11, the day after Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was sworn in to a second term. The flights ended after McClatchy first reported on them. Venezuela accused the U.S. government of sending the arms as part of its attempt to topple the Maduro government. While no definitive links between 21 Air and the U.S. government have been established, McClatchy reports the chairman of 21 Air, Adolfo Moreno, as well as another employee at the company have ties to Gemini Air Cargo, which was involved in the CIA's rendition program during the administration of George W. Bush. We speak to McClatchy reporter Tim Johnson, who broke the story. Johnson was part of a team that shared a 2017 Pulitzer Prize for its investigation of the Panama Papers.

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Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to Venezuela. A North Carolina-based air freight company has halted flights to that country following a report by McClatchy linking it to possible arms smuggling. Last week, Venezuelan authorities claimed they uncovered 19 assault weapons, 118 ammunition cartridges and 90 military-grade radio antennas on board a U.S.-owned plane that had flown from Miami into Valencia, Venezuela's third-largest city. The Boeing 767 is owned by a company called 21 Air based in Greensboro, North Carolina. The plane had made nearly 40 round-trip flights between Miami and spots in Venezuela and Colombia since January 11th, which is the day after Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was sworn in to a second term. The flights ended after McClatchy first reported on them. Venezuela accused the U.S. government of sending the arms as part of its attempt to topple the Maduro government. Bolivarian National Guard General Endes Palencia Ortiz said, "This materiel was destined for criminal groups and terrorist actions in the country, financed by the fascist extreme right and the government of the United States."

AMY GOODMAN: 21 Air has denied knowledge of the arms shipment, saying the flight had been chartered by another company called GPS-Air, which also denied sending arms. While no definitive links between 21 Air and the U.S. government have been established, McClatchy reports the chairman of 21 Air, Adolfo Moreno, as well as another employee at the company have ties to Gemini Air Cargo, which was involved in the CIA's rendition program during the administration of George W. Bush. In 2006, Amnesty International identified Gemini as a front company that had authorization to land on U.S. military bases worldwide.

The CIA has a long history of running front companies for covert actions. Most famously, the CIA ran a front airline called Air America, which operated from 1950 to 1976. In the '80s, a CIA front company called Southern Air Transport was used to send arms to the U.S.-backed Contras in Nicaragua.

We're joined now by Tim Johnson, who has been reporting on the storyfor McClatchy, joining us from Pennsylvania.

Welcome to Democracy Now! Tim, would you lay out what you found?

TIM JOHNSON: Well, as you mentioned, this air charter company, 21 Air, went repeatedly to places in Venezuela and Colombia starting January 11th. Prior to that, it had largely operated domestically, and suddenly it began to change its patterns. And often there would be even two flights a day between Miami and places in Colombia or Venezuela.

I actually learned about this from somebody who tweeted about it. A gentleman in Canada who follows ship and plane movements noticed this, and we started looking into the history of the chairman of 21 Air and saw that he has a number of businesses. And two of those businesses used an address in northwest Miami that were previously used by a subsidiary of Gemini Air Cargo, which, as you mentioned, was listed in that Amnesty International report as having participated in renditions.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, Tim Johnson, a Boeing 767 is a pretty big plane, and the cache of weapons that the Venezuelan government claims they found, while they're clearly lethal weapons, is not a huge shipment. I'm wondering: Do you have any way of being able to tell what the manifest of this flight, as well as the other 39 or so flights that this airline engaged in—what they were claiming to hold?

TIM JOHNSON: I actually don't know. We've tried to get that, and we haven't been able to get the manifests yet. So, you know, what was aboard the other flights going to South America, we don't know. This is a very puzzling case. If you look on social media and dig into the backgrounds of employees of 21 Air and associated companies, you see that there are many accounts of employees who follow the Venezuelan opposition, and opposition accounts that follow them, as well. So, there's certainly some sympathy from employees within the company to the opposition to Maduro in Venezuela.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk more about the leadership of the company that you investigated, based in North Carolina. And explain what you mean when you talk about the links to rendition under President George W. Bush.

TIM JOHNSON: Well, Adolfo Moreno is a 75 percent owner of 21 Air, and he's got many other companies, but he's been involved out of Miami. I don't know—while the company is registered in North Carolina, the operations really are out of Miami, as far as I can tell. That's where many of the flights have been operated. They have a huge operation center at Miami International Airport.

A curious secondary aspect of this story is that the company that consigned the cargo also has tangential links to, you know, this historical—the Iran-Contra affair. The head of GPS Air is a man named José Manuel Calvo, and he, like Moreno, has many companies. And one of those companies, with the partner that he used to create this company, is a company called Heavylift Air. And that company has a subsidiary out of the UAE that is controlled by in Iranian American named Farhad Azima, who also had a role in Iran-Contra. So there's all these circumstantial things, but there's really no smoking gun, that I could tell. You know, this may be just circumstantial.

AMY GOODMAN: Are you reporting this new now on Iran-Contra, what you're saying? And explain, for people who aren't familiar with the Iran-Contra scandal, this happening under the Reagan-Bush years, the selling of weapons to Iran to take that money to support the Contras in Nicaragua, which violated U.S. law, the Boland Amendment.

TIM JOHNSON: Yes. So, that scandal involved Southern Air Transport, which also was a CIA front company. That really exploded into the news back in 1986 because the Sandinista army shot down a twin-engine plane that was run by Southern Air Transport, that was taking armaments to the Contra rebels fighting in Nicaragua. So, Southern Air Transport was actually heavily involved in all the arms shipments to Iran and from the Middle East to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I want to ask you about Eugene Hasenfus, who you mention in your article. In 1986, he was aboard a U.S. plane that was shot down in Nicaragua while on a secret mission to bring arms to the Nicaraguan Contras. He the only passenger to survive. I want to turn to a documentary made by Wisconsin Public Television called the The Eugene Hasenfus Story from 1991. It featured an excerpt from the station's initial coverage of what happened to him in 1986.

REPORTER: A Wisconsin man has been the focus of international news this week. Forty-five-year-old Eugene Hasenfus of Marinette was captured in Nicaragua after his cargo plane was shot down. At a press conference Thursday, Hasenfus said his mission was directed by the CIA. But U.S. officials say the flights were privately directed. Mrs. Sally Hasenfus joined her husband in Nicaragua this week. Hasenfus has been jailed and may stand trial.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The documentary also featured an interview with Eugene Hasenfus's wife, Sally.

SALLY HASENFUS: The next morning, I tried to call President Reagan. I thought, "Well, it's the only place I'm going to get answers." He's—you know, I should be able to trust him. He's the president. And I knew he knew. He put me in touch with a man named Elliott Abrams. He said, "I don't know who you are, and I don't know what you're talking about." I got angry. And before I hung up, he did admit that he knew what I was talking about. And he kept warning me that—you know, "Be careful of the press, and be careful what you say. Be careful what you do."

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And interestingly or coincidentally, Elliott Abrams is now the special envoy of the White House to Venezuela. I'm wondering your assessment of this affair back then, the impact it had on what was going on at the time, in terms of the war on the Contras?

TIM JOHNSON: I'm not sure I can really speak to the historical impact. But, of course, it—you know, I think it helped lead to a negotiated settlement, leading to the elections in Nicaragua in 1990, because it was, you know, clearly a major impact on that. But I really couldn't speak further to that.

AMY GOODMAN: But this whole issue of Eugene Hasenfus, this former marine, a mercenary, shot down over Nicaragua, then held by Nicaragua, eventually released, and his contact with the U.S. government at the time, and now you raising this issue in your current piece around the arms shipment that was found going into Venezuela—not clear exactly if there's a connection to the U.S. government, but clearly the U.S. government is very overtly supporting the attempted overthrow of Maduro, explicitly, and these flights starting a day after Maduro's inauguration on January 10th.

TIM JOHNSON: Well, yes, there's a lot of these coincidental links, and it's worth paying quite close attention to. Again, I use "coincidental" only because we don't really know. You know, other people point out to me that there are many people that could have a vested interest in this, whether the arms were really aboard that plane. Or, is it possible that this was something that was ginned up by the Venezuelan government to rally support for Maduro? I don't know. I just—we haven't been able to determine for a fact that those weapons were loaded aboard that 767 in Miami, that somehow they passed through the normally rigorous screening by TSA for air cargo. These are things that are just yet to be investigated.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And has the company answered in terms of—as you mentioned, they normally were not traveling to Venezuela and Colombia—the 40 flights, what they were actually carrying, or are they saying they just didn't know?

TIM JOHNSON: Both have been very limited in what they've said, other than denying that they knew what the cargo was. Generally, an air charter company would trust the consignee of the freight to handle any declarations, I believe. And for its part, GPS-Air said, well, it was—you know, it doesn't know what was in the cargo.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, back to that issue of rendition, though you don't know exactly who this company was working for, what you do have a record of is the company being involved with the U.S. government during the President George W. Bush years, being involved with rendition and having clearance to land on any military base in the world. Can you explain what those renditions, so-called, what some called kidnappings, were about?

TIM JOHNSON: Well, basically, the renditions were to take terrorist suspects, following 9/11, for interrogation in black site jails scattered around the world. There were a number of them in Eastern Europe. I know there was one outside of Chiang Mai, Thailand, elsewhere. And these were used to, you know, forcefully interrogate, waterboard even, suspects in the war against terror. So these rendition flights were commonly used in the period after 9/11.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you so much for joining us, Tim Johnson, McClatchy reporter who's been covering national security and technology issues since 2016, his recent article headlined "Venezuela says plane from Miami delivered weapons for use by enemies of Maduro." Tim Johnson was part of a team that shared a 2017 Pulitzer Prize for its investigation of the Panama Papers. Earlier in his career, he spent two decades as a foreign correspondent in Asia and Latin America. We'll link to your piece at democracynow.org.

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Regime Change

THE ABSURD TIMES

Well, we managed regime change in Brazil and are working on it in Venezuala.

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This is without a doubt the most ridiculous time of all.

However, as the spokesperson says, "He is the one God wants to be President."  I have yet to discuss this with God as his phone is always busy, so let's leave it at that.  I did see a comment from him just now and he said "She must mean Putin, not me".  Of course, I would never presume to correct him.

First of all, we have more belief in our CIA, NSA, and FBI.  FBI?  This is the house that Hoover built.  CIA?  That is the home of the Dulles brothers, especially Allan, the one that imposed the Shah on Iran in the first place, started the bay of pigs, and set up the Cuban missile crisis.  After that, JFK fired Allan Dulles and then he was assassinated, with Dulles really the one in charge of the so-called "Warren Report".  But now, yes, they make more sense than our current, the Bozo in chief, President.   When the Shah fled, who remembers who took over?  Shapoor Baktiar [sp.?], that's who.  Of course we all remember him.  He lasted 39 days, it seems.  That gave us you-know-who, but at least he wasn't communist, eh?  Now the country is about to outlaw dogs. 

Anybody remember the Iran-Contra scandal?  That's the one where George Bush the First pardoned Elliot Abrams.  We also gave immunity to Ollie North who is spooksman [sic] for the NRA.  Well, Eliot is in charge now.  Have we no shame?

Too much insanity has gone on than one can keep up with. 

Perhaps that is his idea.  Keep people unbalanced. 

So far, Harris has sounded the most sensible alternative in the next election.  So, the billionaires are are kind of running in to save insurance companies and the coffee business.  It would be best for Biden to run with Kamala as Vice President.  I'd rather have her as President, but Biden would win easily.  Also, not much attention has been given to Sherod Brown.  Any Democrat who can win statewide in Ohio three times, is worth running against Trump.

Now, we are just passing out of a cold spell.  Temps as low as -50 wind chill in Chicago, but actual temp of -27.  Now, the coldest I remember was -15 as I walked my Malamute outside.   Our Bozo in chief remarked that we coud use a spell of global "waming" [sic) and, I suppose, that would be a "smocking" gun.  Actually, there was the appearance of smock coming from Lake Michigan as it was only frozen and the air above was much colder, 80 degrees colder. 

So far, we are the only advanced or semi-advanced country in the world without health care as a right.  I guess that makes us special.  As the coffee man says, we don't want a Socialist, left leaning Progressive around here.  We think we do, and it's about time. 

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Of course, we learned nothing from all this "regime change".  Here is some very valuable information about what the Bozo in chief is doing in Venezuela.

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The United States is continuing to ratchet up pressure on the Venezuelan government in an attempt to topple President Nicolás Maduro. On Tuesday, the State Department announced it is giving control of Venezuela's U.S. bank accounts to opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who declared himself to be president last week. Meanwhile, the U.S. has also refused to rule out a military invasion of Venezuela. We spend the hour with prize-winning investigative journalist Allan Nairn.

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Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: The United States is continuing to ratchet up pressure on the Venezuelan government in an attempt to topple President Nicolás Maduro. On Tuesday, the State Department announced it's giving control of Venezuela's U.S. bank accounts to opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who declared himself president of Venezuela last week.

This came a day after the U.S. imposed a de facto embargo on oil from Venezuela's state-run oil company, PDVSA. The new sanctions include exemptions for several U.S. firms, including Chevron and Halliburton, to allow them to continue working in Venezuela.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has also refused to rule out a military invasion of Venezuela. On Monday, national security adviser John Bolton was photographed holding a notepad on which he had written the words "5,000 troops to Colombia."

Earlier today, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro tweeted, quote, "People of the U.S., I ask for your support to reject the interference of Donald Trump's government in making My Homeland a Vietnam in Latin America. Don't Allow It!" he tweeted. President Maduro told a Russian news network Wednesday he was open to negotiating with the opposition.

Major opposition protests are planned for today. On Tuesday, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights criticized the Venezuelan government for cracking down on earlier protests. According to the U.N., at least 40 people have been killed and 850 detained since the recent round of anti-government protests began.

On Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence met with members of the Venezuelan opposition at the White House. Trump's new special envoy to Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, also took part in the meetings. Elliott Abrams is a right-wing hawk who was convicted in 1991 for lying to Congress during the Iran-Contra scandal, but he was later pardoned by President George H.W. Bush. Abrams defended Guatemalan dictator General Efraín Ríos Montt as he oversaw a campaign of mass murder and torture of indigenous people in Guatemala in the 1980s. Ríos Montt was later convicted of genocide. Abrams was also linked to the 2002 coup in Venezuela that attempted to topple Hugo Chávez.

Well, today we spend the hour looking at the crisis in Venezuela and the appointment of Elliott Abrams as special envoy. We're joined by the award-winning investigative journalist Allan Nairn, who has closely tracked Elliott Abrams' record for over three decades. Allan Nairn is two-time winner of the George Polk Award, a recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Award for International Reporting. Allan spoke with us earlier this week from Jakarta, Indonesia. He began by talking about the significance of the appointment of Elliott Abrams.

ALLAN NAIRN: What his appointment emphasizes, re-emphasizes—it was already obvious—was that the U.S. is trying to overthrow the government of Venezuela and that it will be willing to use violence, to use military force, if necessary. That's what Abrams, and indeed U.S. policy, has been all about.

I think their first preference would be to have a successful covert operation. Mike Pompeo, when he was in charge of the CIA, all but stated it publicly. At one point when he was speaking in Aspen at one of those gatherings of the elite, he gave the rough outlines of an operation, in coordination with U.S. allies like Colombia, to topple the Maduro government in Venezuela. And now, just recently, the night before Guaidó declared himself as the new president of Venezuela, he was on the phone with Mike Pence directly. Pence was—The Wall Street Journal broke the story. Pence was directly talking to him, and the next day he comes out and declares himself as the president of Venezuela. And now they're asking—they're offering incentives to Venezuelan Army officers to come over to their side and hoping that the U.S. can re-establish control of Venezuela in that manner.

But if that fails, I think there is a chance that the U.S. would consider an invasion of Venezuela. This would not be the first or even the second or third preference of the Pentagon or the CIA or the State Department. But it might be very attractive to Donald Trump, for several reasons.

In 2016, during the campaign, speaking of Iraq, Trump said, "To the victor belong the spoils. You have to go in and take the oil." You could call this a Trump doctrine. And Venezuela has the world's largest oil reserves. Now, very often oil is used as the explanation for the motive for U.S. invasions and foreign policy, and I think its role is usually way overblown. People give it too much weight in the analysis. But in this case, it might turn out to be very relevant, given that Trump has that doctrine and is now personally in power.

Secondly, politically, Trump needs a new war. Trump has been stuck with, for him, being in the embarrassing position of just being able to continue the old W. Bush and Obama wars. There's a consensus among U.S. mainstream historians that no president can be great unless he has a war. They say this all the time. And Trump now, of course, is in some political difficulty.

So, for him, an action where the U.S. went into Venezuela in spectacular fashion, did it quick, in the style of the U.S. invasions of Grenada or Panama, didn't get bogged down, but just went in, say, for a few weeks, killed without restraint, which is the doctrine Trump is now applying to U.S. forces worldwide—I mean, he's basically told the CIA and the Pentagon, "Don't worry about any constraints on civilian casualties that may have existed before. Do what you will." In fact, in Afghanistan, he celebrated the dropping of what was called the mother of all bombs, this massive explosive which is the closest conventional explosive that you can get to a nuclear weapon. This was dropped in a mountainous region of Afghanistan, and Trump was crowing about it afterwards. So, a quick invasion with massive force that succeeds in toppling the Maduro government, and then where the U.S. gets out quickly, is the kind of thing that could, in theory, be attractive to Trump. And it's also the kind of thing that, I guarantee you, would be praised to the heavens on CNN and on MSNBC. And this would be a sweet political victory for Trump.

Now, whether it's actually possible to pull off a quick successful military invasion of Venezuela is entirely a different question, because it would face major resistance even if, you know, some of the Army had already switched sides to the U.S. side. There would be a lot of people who would want to resist it.

But it is the case that the reality in Venezuela today is very different than it has been during earlier years of the Bolivarian movement in Venezuela. The U.S. has always—and this is an important point for understanding U.S. context—the U.S. doesn't care at all about elections. They don't care at all about the poor. Completely fake elections are fine with them. The U.S. just, you know, not long ago, finished ratifying a fraudulent election in Honduras, where Hernández imposed himself for re-election, and he did that with the assistance of Mike Pence and others. They don't care about the poor. They targeted Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian movement from the beginning. In 2002, even though Chávez had, not long before, been re-elected in a clean vote, a completely clean vote—for years, the Carter Center, and other international monitors who went to Venezuela, was reporting that their electoral system was, in that era—they did a clean count. They were not rigged elections. Despite that, despite the fact that the Chávez administration was making great strides in raising living standards for the poor, starting to lower the levels of malnutrition, starting to raise the levels of general health—or maybe because of that—the U.S., in 2002, backed a coup against Chávez, that briefly removed him but was ultimately unsuccessful, because the population and much of the security forces rallied to Chávez's side and they thwarted the U.S. effort to oust him.

Today it's a different situation. The U.S. has been trying to undermine the Venezuelan government ever since the Chávez years, as has the Venezuelan oligarchy. In fact, not long after the brief failed coup, which was backed by the U.S., the rich of Venezuela, the business owners, went on a capital strike. They purposely shut down their businesses, and it had huge impact. They succeeded in shaving something like 27 percent off the gross domestic product of Venezuela, which is just astonishing, catastrophic, in a short time. But even that failed to topple Chávez.

But in the conditions we have today, where Maduro does not have near the popular support that Chávez did, where he's really been running the country into the ground and has been using the fact that the U.S. is trying to undermine the government as a universal excuse for everything, for his own incompetence and corruption and brutality against protesters in the streets, this government, the Maduro government, is in a rather weak position. And it appears that the population is now becoming rather divided. For years, the opposition in Venezuela was kind of a classical rightist Latin American force, with the rich, the very rich, the oligarchs, the top businesspeople aligned with many sectors of the middle class. But now it seems that opposition has spread, and there are many poor people who are part of it. So, this means this Maduro government is rather weak and is vulnerable to being toppled. It is possible. It's not impossible, as it was in previous years under Chávez.

But—and this is important to note—even though much of the U.S. news coverage and many of the U.S. analysts note the fact that a lot of poor people are now joining and going into the streets protesting against Maduro, there is absolutely no way that the U.S. will allow a poor people's movement—let's say, a new—imagine if such a thing came into being, a poor people's movement in Venezuela that did want to oust Maduro but replace it with a new policy that was also pro-poor and sought to gain justice. There's no way the U.S. would tolerate that. The U.S. will insist that a new opposition that comes to power be controlled by the far-right elements who represent the very rich and are willing to take instructions from Washington, as was clearly illustrated in the case of Pence and the newly proclaimed president of—self-proclaimed president of Venezuela. So, it's a very dangerous situation right now.

And I think what the proper role for the U.S. at this moment is, one, to lift the sanctions, lift the stranglehold that is currently increasing the level of hunger. There's a level of misery in Venezuela that was already caused by the incompetence of this government, but the U.S. has done everything it can to increase it. Just in the past few days, for example, the U.S. has been moving legally to block the Venezuelan government from using $1.2 billion worth of gold, which it has stored in London. And in doing this, they're being backed by the opposition, by Guaidó. And this will mean less money available in Venezuela to buy basic provisions, basic supplies, food, medicine, etc. So, first, lift the stranglehold.

And secondly, disavow the invasion option, and then step back. You know, some people in the Democratic Party, for example, in the United States float the idea of the U.S. trying to facilitate, be the mediator, in finding a political solution for Venezuela. But that's not appropriate. The U.S. has no standing to be a mediator, a disinterested third party. The U.S. is on one side. They're on the side of the right and the rich in Venezuela who are trying to topple this government, and the U.S. is trying to overthrow the government. They can't be a mediator. It's somewhat comparable to Israel-Palestine, where, for years, the U.S. has claimed to be an honest broker between Israel and the Palestinians, when in fact, everyone knows—it's self-proclaimed—the U.S. is on the side of the Israelis and against the aspirations of the Palestinians to have their legal rights under international law enforced and to regain their political sovereignty. And yet they claim to be a mediator. So the U.S. should not try to insert itself and claim to be a political mediator in Venezuela, either.

For that, you would need an outside party that has some credibility, maybe, you know, a figure like the pope or some outside countries who could play that role. A couple of years ago the pope was involved in such an effort, but he received no backing from the U.S. at the time, because they don't really want a political solution that leads to a truly open political field where all options are available, where perhaps, you know, maybe a different government, but one that is pro-poor and anti-U.S., could gain power. You know, if you had a genuinely open political process in Venezuela, a political outcome like that is certainly not inconceivable. But the U.S. would never tolerate that.

So they're now trying to engineer a way for the U.S. to regain control. And to do that, they'll be willing to use violence as necessary, if necessary. And for that, Abrams is the perfect man for the job.

AMY GOODMAN: Investigative journalist Allan Nairn. We'll be back with him after break.

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In an ongoing effort to topple Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Vice President Mike Pence met with members of the Venezuelan opposition at the White House Tuesday alongside Trump's new special envoy to Venezuela, Elliott Abrams. Elliott Abrams is a right-wing hawk who was convicted in 1991 for lying to Congress during the Iran-Contra scandal, but he was later pardoned by President George H.W. Bush. Abrams defended Guatemalan dictator General Efraín Ríos Montt as he oversaw a campaign of mass murder and torture of indigenous people in Guatemala in the 1980s. Ríos Montt was later convicted of genocide. Abrams was also linked to the 2002 coup in Venezuela that attempted to topple Hugo Chávez. We look at Abrams's track record with prize-winning investigative journalist Allan Nairn, who has closely tracked Abrams for over three decades. Nairn is two-time winner of the George Polk Award and a recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Award.

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Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I'm Amy Goodman. As we continue to look at the crisis in Venezuela, we return to my conversation with award-winning investigative journalist Allan Nairn. I asked him to talk more about Elliott Abrams, the new U.S. special envoy to Venezuela.

ALLAN NAIRN: Abrams was the key man in Reagan administration policy toward Central America, when that administration was abetting what a court recently ruled was a genocide in Guatemala, when the U.S. was backing the army of El Salvador in a series of death squad assassinations and massacres, and when the U.S. was invading Nicaragua with a Contra force that went after what one U.S. general described as "soft targets," meaning civilians, things like cooperatives.

Abrams later came back during the George W. Bush administration, joined the National Security Council and was a key man in implementing the U.S. policy of backing Israeli attacks against Gaza, when the U.S. refused to accept the results of the Gaza elections, where Hamas defeated Fatah in a vote, and instead Abrams and company backed a war operation to overturn the results of the election, backing the forces of Mohammed Dahlan.

Some commentators have said, "Well, Abrams is not a Trump guy. He represents traditional, established U.S. foreign policy." And that's true. The problem is that that U.S. policy has been to abet genocide when the U.S. feels it's necessary.

In the case of Guatemala, Abrams and the Reagan administration were approving the shipment of weapons, money, intelligence and the provision of political cover to the army of Guatemala as they were sweeping through the northwest Mayan highlands, wiping out 662 rural villages, by the army's own count, decapitating children, crucifying people, using the tactics that in this era we associate with ISIS. In one particular case, in 1985, an activist for the relatives of the disappeared, named Rosario Godoy, was abducted by the army. She was raped. Her mutilated body was found alongside that of her baby. The baby's fingernails had been torn out. The Guatemalan army, when asked about this atrocity, said, "Oh, they died in a traffic accident." When Elliott Abrams was asked about this accident, he affirmed also that they died in a traffic accident. This activist raped and mutilated, the baby with his fingernails pulled out, Abrams says it's a traffic accident.

It's very parallel to the stance Abrams took on Panama. When Noriega, the CIA-backed dictator of Panama, who was involved in the drug traffic, who the U.S. later decided to overthrow—when the forces of Noriega abducted the Panamanian dissident Hugo Spadafora and cut off his head with a kitchen knife, Jesse Helms, of all people, tried to investigate in the U.S. Congress, and Elliott Abrams stopped him, saying, "No, we need Noriega. He's doing a very good job. He's working with us."

In the case of El Salvador, after the massacre in El Mozote, where a U.S.-trained battalion massacred more than 500 civilians, slitting the throats of children along the way, Abrams took the lead in denying that such a thing had ever happened. And he later described the results of the Reagan administration policy, his policy, in El Salvador as a fabulous achievement. He said this even after the El Salvador Truth Commission had issued a report saying that more than 85 percent of the atrocities had been committed by the armed forces and its death squads, death squads which had a particular practice of cutting off the genitals of their victims, stuffing them in their mouths and putting them on open display on the roadsides of El Salvador.

When I appeared on the Charlie Rose TV show with Elliott Abrams, I suggested that he be put on trial, that he be brought before a Nuremberg-style tribunal and tried for his role in facilitating war crimes and crimes against humanity. He dismissed the idea of him being put on trial as "ludicrous," but he did not actually deny any of the facts of what he has done—what he had done. He said it was all necessary in the context of the Cold War. So, this is Elliott Abrams, who has now been put in charge of key aspects of the U.S. policy toward Venezuela.

AMY GOODMAN: Allan, let's go to that clip. This was in March of 1995, when you and Elliott Abrams were on PBS on the Charlie Roseshow. It begins with you.

ALLAN NAIRN: I mean, I think you have to be—you have to apply uniform standards. President Bush once talked about putting Saddam Hussein on trial for crimes against humanity, Nuremberg-style tribunal. I think that's a good idea. But if you're serious, you have to be even-handed. If we look at a case like this, I think we have to talk—start talking about putting Guatemalan and U.S. officials on trial. I think someone like Mr. Abrams would be a fit—a subject for such a Nuremberg-style inquiry. But I agree with Mr. Abrams that Democrats would have to be in the dock with him. The Congress has been in on this. The Congress approved the sale of 16,000 M-16s to Guatemala. In '87 and '88—

CHARLIE ROSE: All right, but hold on one second. I just—before—because the—

ALLAN NAIRN: They voted more military aid than the Republicans asked for.

CHARLIE ROSE: Again, I invite you and Elliott Abrams back to discuss what he did. But right now, you—

ELLIOTT ABRAMS: No, thanks, Charlie, but I won't accept—

CHARLIE ROSE: Hold on one second. Go ahead. You want to repeat the question, of you want to be in the dock?

ELLIOTT ABRAMS: It is ludicrous. It is ludicrous to respond to that kind of stupidity. This guy thinks we were on the wrong side in the Cold War. Maybe he personally was on the wrong side. I am one of the many millions of Americans who thinks we were happy to win.

CHARLIE ROSE: All right, I don't—

ALLAN NAIRN: Mr. Abrams, you were on the wrong side in supporting the massacre of peasants and organizers, anyone who dared to speak, absolutely.

CHARLIE ROSE: What I want to do is I want to ask the following question.

ALLAN NAIRN: And that's a crime. That's a crime, Mr. Abrams, for which people should be tried. U.S. laws—

ELLIOTT ABRAMS: Why don't you—yes, right, we'll put all the American officials who won the Cold War in the dock.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Allan, that was Elliott Abrams responding to you on PBS, on the Charlie Rose show. Your response?

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, I think what he said in our exchange speaks for itself. But I should note that just last September, last September 26, a genocide trial—at a genocide trial in Guatemala, a trial in which I testified and gave evidence, the court ruled that what the Guatemalan army did in Guatemala—in the case of that particular trial, what they did to the Mayan Ixil people, but they also did it to others of the Mayan population in Guatemala—the court formally ruled that that constituted genocide. And in their ruling—and this is quite important—they said that this genocide was carried out by the Guatemalan army in accord with, and essentially at the behest of, U.S. policy, U.S. interests. So, as strong as the case was back in the
90s, when I argued on the Charlie Rose show that Abrams should be put on trial, now it's even stronger, because you have the predicate of this genocide finding by the Guatemalan court saying that that genocide derived from U.S. policy. And that's not even getting into what he did with El Salvador and Panama and Nicaragua and Palestine and other places.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me play for you what Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said when he announced that Elliott Abrams would be the point person on Venezuela.

SECRETARY OF STATE MIKE POMPEO: Elliott's passion for the rights and liberties of all peoples makes him a perfect fit and a valuable and timely addition. … Elliott will be a true asset to our mission to help the Venezuelan people fully restore democracy and prosperity to their country.

AMY GOODMAN: Allan Nairn, your response?

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, Abrams indeed had passion. He had a lot of passion. And he is also very intelligent. So, when the U.S. was backing the Guatemalan army in what has now been ruled was genocide, when it was helping to back, train, even in some cases do joint interrogations with the death squads that the U.S. originally created, Abrams was very passionate in seeing that the weapons and the money got through, and in persistently going on American television, on shows like Nightline, and really crushing the weak-kneed Democrats who would be brought in to debate against him, because Abrams would always make a principled case for what was, in effect, this U.S. support for mass murder and genocide in Central America.

At that time, for example, in El Salvador, one of the immediate political issues was the government of President Duarte, and the army behind Duarte was being essentially facilitated, all but run by the United States, and rebels were challenging Duarte, trying to overthrow him. And Abrams would say to the Democrats, "Oh, so are you saying that we should let President Duarte fall? Is that what you're saying? And let El Salvador go communist?" And the Democrats would crumble in the face of his argument and say, "Oh, no, no, we're not saying that. We're saying you have to—we have to keep President Duarte in power." And then Abrams would say, "Well, how can you keep Duarte in power if we don't back the Salvadoran army?"

So, he was always very passionate and committed. Committed to what? Committed to mass killing in the service of what could be defined as U.S. interests or even U.S. whim, because, in fact, although it was being portrayed by Abrams and others at the time as a battle to prevent El Salvador and Guatemala and Nicaragua from becoming wings of the Soviet Union, anyone familiar with the facts on the ground knew that that was ridiculous. That was not at all what was at stake. What was at stake was a battle between local oligarchies, who were driving the poor peasant and small working-class majorities in those countries to the brink of hunger, and in some cases over the brink. Half of children in the poorest areas were dying before the age of 5. People who dared to speak up against the oligarchs who were imposing these economic conditions, or against the army, were snatched, abducted by U.S.-backed death squads. The guy who was the creator of the Salvadoran death squads, General Chele Medrano, described this to me in great detail, in 13 hours of interviews. He actually showed me a silver medal which was presented to him in the Oval Office for what was called exceptionally meritorious service, originally starting in the administration of President Lyndon Johnson, and this continued all the way up into the time of Abrams. That's what the U.S. was doing. And that's what he was passionately defending. And it had nothing to do with defending the liberties of people. It's more like defending the liberties of generals and corporations and dictators.

AMY GOODMAN: We'll be back with investigative journalist Allan Nairn after break.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. As we continue to look at the crisis in Venezuela and the new U.S. special envoy to Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, we return to my conversation with award-winning investigative journalist Allan Nairn.

AMY GOODMAN: Let's go to what happened in Iran-Contra in the 1980s. Ultimately, Elliott Abrams was found guilty of lying to Congress, I think twice. Ultimately, though, President George H.W. Bush pardoned him. But why was he lying to Congress?

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, he was lying to cover up the fact that the Reagan administration had an operation, which he was part of, an operation led by Oliver North, to supply arms to the U.S.-created Nicaraguan Contras to commit aggression against Nicaragua, to invade Nicaragua and go after those soft targets, what the U.S. General Galvin described as "soft targets." But they were doing that illegally at the time, because Congress had prohibited the U.S. from doing that, but the Reagan administration and Abrams and his colleagues just decided to ignore the legal mandate of Congress and go underground. And in order to go underground, they decided to get much of their money from, of all places, Iran, which was a harsh declared U.S. enemy at the time. And they traded—they did a complex deal where they got arms from—they got money from Iran, from providing—letting arms flow. They used that to ship to the Contras, and the Contras were able to continue their atrocities. And they eventually succeeded. The Contras eventually succeeded in temporarily bringing down the Sandinista government of Nicaragua.

But—and this is a very interesting point, I think very relevant today with the Mueller investigation—what Abrams was charged with and pled guilty to was the most trivial aspect of both the Contra operation and the whole U.S. policy in Central America, which he was the brains behind, essentially. The most trivial aspect, just the fact that he lied to Congress, trying to cover up some money transactions. He was never charged by the U.S. prosecutors with providing weapons to terrorists, which is what the Salvadoran army and the Guatemalan army and the CIA-backed, U.S.-created Contras were behaving as, at the time, terrorists—i.e. those who kill and torture civilians for political purposes. He was not charged with that. He was not charged with abetting crimes against humanity or genocide. Just with the most trivial aspect, because that's the way systems work, particularly the U.S. system. The crimes that are too big, too enormous, too much of a threat to the survival of the system itself, like the support of genocides overseas, cannot be charged. But if you commit a more petty offense, God help you, you could be in real trouble.

And that seems to be the fix that some of the Trump people are in right now, getting charged with lying to the Mueller investigation, usually on rather small points compared to the bigger things that Trump is currently doing, like snatching children from their parents at the Mexican border, increasing the pace of bombing, and thereby civilian killings, in Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan, and a whole host of other things.

And Abrams, by the way, also perhaps relevant to what's going on today, was later pardoned by Bush. And the person who was pushing that was Barr, at that time the attorney general and now Trump's incoming attorney general. But again, Abrams, although he pled guilty to the technicality of lying, he has yet to face real justice, just as the U.S. generals and presidents, like President—in this case, we're talking about Central America, especially President Reagan. Reagan never faced justice, and Abrams has yet to face it, but they should.

Why can't the U.S. become as civilized as Guatemala? Guatemala succeeded in mounting a genocide trial against General Ríos Montt, their former dictator, the general who was the key figure in the massacres. They convicted him the first time. They sentenced him to 80 years. The oligarchy demanded that the verdict be rolled back. It was rolled back. Then the trial was restarted from the halfway point. Ríos Montt, by that time, had died. But the renewed trial still brought back a verdict saying that the army had committed genocide in accord with U.S. interests.

And this is done in the context of a deeply corrupt Guatemalan government that is, at that moment, trying to amend the laws of Guatemala so that all the convicted war criminals can be freed from jail. With the support of President Trump at this moment and with key outside support from President Netanyahu of Israel, who is lobbying the Trump administration on their behalf, and with Mike Pence acting as the point man, the current Guatemalan government is trying not only to free the war criminals from jail, but also to shut down all of the prosecutors within Guatemala, some of them U.N.-backed prosecutors with an institution called CICIG, who have been prosecuting President Morales of Guatemala himself and other oligarchs and military people for corruption. They're trying to throw the—in some cases, throw the prosecutors out of the country; in other cases, fire them; and in all cases, strip away their police protection so they are standing there defenseless in the face of the mafias and drug dealers and corrupt politicians and oligarchs they're trying to prosecute—all of this now being backed by Trump.

And it's in that kind of political context that the brave survivors of the Abrams-backed atrocities in Guatemala, the handful of honest attorneys and prosecutors and judges in Guatemala, were able to achieve the political miracle of mounting these genocide and crimes against humanity trials and actually convicting a number of and jailing a number of high-level officials. So, if they can do that in Guatemala, why can't we do that here in the United States? Why can't we at least aspire to that level of courage and political consciousness and civilization?

I remember, as the verdict against General Ríos Montt was being read—I was in the courtroom—I was thinking, "My god, imagine if this were done in the United States. Imagine a trial in Texas of Bush Jr. for Iraq, or of Obama for the drone killings, or for a figure like Elliott Abrams for Guatemala and El Salvador, and other cases." And it really was inconceivable in the current political moment in the United States. But I think we'll get there. And we should take the example of the courageous survivors and lawyers of Guatemala.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.