The protests seen in France and the
interference in the domestic politics of Venezuela highlight Western
double standards, which stand in contrast to the respect for
international law maintained by China, India and Russia.
In France on November 17, 2018, hundreds of
thousands of citizens, angered by the diminishing quality of their
lives, the social iniquity in the country, and the widening gap between
rich and poor, took to the streets in protest. The protests can easily
be encapsulated in the following slogan: “We the people against you the
elite.”
This slogan has been a recurring theme throughout
the West over the last three years, shaking up the British establishment
with the pro-Brexit vote, discombobulating the United States with
Trump’s victory, overturning Italy with the Lega/Five-Star government,
and bringing Merkel’s star crashing down in Germany. Now it is the turn
of Macron and France, one of the least popular leaders in the world,
leading his country into chaos, with peaceful protests drawing a bloody
response from the authorities following ten weeks of unceasing
demonstrations.
In Venezuela, Western elites would like us to
believe that the situation is worse than in France in terms of public
order, but that is simply a lie. It is a media creation based on
misinformation and censorship. In Europe, the mainstream media has
stopped showing images of the protests in France, as if to smother
information about it, preferring to portray an image of France that
belies the chaos in which it has been immersed for every weekend over
the last few months.
In Caracas, the right-wing, pro-American and
anti-Communist opposition continues the same campaign based on lies and
violence as it has customarily conducted following its electoral defeats
at the hands of the Bolivarian revolution. The Western mainstream media
beams images and videos of massive pro-government Bolivarian rallies
and falsely portrays them as anti-Maduro protests. We are dealing here
with acts of journalistic terrorism, and the journalists who push this
narrative, instigating clashes, should be prosecuted by a criminal court
of the Bolivarian people in Caracas. Instead, the West continues to
tell us that Assange is a criminal for doing his job, that Wikileaks is a
terrorist organization for publishing true information, and that Russia
interfered in the US elections. All of these deceptions are carried out
by the same Western journalists, media publications and US government
that are currently plying their mendacious trade in Venezuela. What
double standards!
In Venezuela, the people are with Maduro, and
before him they were with Chavez. The reason is simple and easy to
understand, having everything to do with the economic policies adopted
by the government of Caracas, which during just over a decade in power,
reduced the level of poverty, illiteracy and corruption in the country,
lengthening life expectancy and increasing access to education. The
leftist model followed by dozens of South American countries during the
2000s favored the poorest layer of society by redistributing the wealth
of the top 1%.
The contrast between events in France and Venezuela
perfectly encapsulate the state of the world today. In France, the
people are fighting against Macron, austerity policies and globalist
superstructure. In Venezuela, the the opposition (synonymous with the
rich population) is leveraging external interference from the
governments of Colombia, Brazil and the United States to try and
overthrow a government that enjoys the full support of the people thanks
to its domestic policies. Even as many in France are not conscious of
it, they are actually protesting against an unjust, ultra-capitalist
system imposed by the globalist elite of which Macron is a major
cheerleader. In Venezuela, the ultra-capitalist class, backed by the
transnational globalists, seek to overthrow a socialist system that
places the interests of the 99% before those of the 1%.
Maduro has an approval rating of around 65%, higher
than any European or American leader. In France, Macron’s approval
ratings hover around the single digits, with only Ukraine’s Poroshenko
scoring lower. Poroshenko, quite naturally, dutifully joined the chorus
of those egging on a coup against the Bolivarian government of Maduro,
even as he leads a country besieged by out-of-control neo-Nazis.
The protests in France are driven by two decades of
impoverishment as a result of European diktats that prescribe austerity
and the need to strip the middle class of its wealth to favor the
influx of cheap labor. This strategy of reducing labor costs has already
been employed in other countries, the aim being to increase profits for
multinational companies without the need to relocate production to
low-wage countries. The large-scale importation of exploited people from
Africa has continued unabated for years, and now the average French
citizen not only finds himself in an increasingly multi-ethnic society
(with the government giving little incentive for newcomers to integrate)
but also sees his lifestyle suffering due to a combination of lower
wages and increasing taxes, making it increasingly difficult for him to
make ends meet every month.
In Venezuela, the crisis stems entirely from
external interference coming from the United States, which has
economically strangled Venezuela for over a decade. The methodology is
that of sanctions and economic destabilization, the same as has been
applied against Cuba over more than 50 years, albeit in that case
unsuccessfully. Chavez and Maduro have drawn the ire of the global
elites by blocking their international oil corporations from access to
Venezuela’s oil reserves, the largest in the world. It must be noted
that Venezuela is one of the most important members of OPEC, with Riyadh
and Moscow advancing the creation of an oil conglomerate known as OPEC
+, with Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela as influential members. The
West is of course deploying the “democracy promotion” canard to justify
its shenanigans in Venezuela, one of its go-to tactics drawn from its
well-used PSYOP toolkit.
The French and Venezuelan situations also serve as a
barometer for the general state of international relations in a
multipolar context. While the US has little trouble interfering in
Venezuela’s internal affairs, Russia, China and India employ a
completely different approach, maintaining a uniform foreign-policy line
on Paris and Caracas. They express total support for their Bolivarian
ally, which is an important source of trade for New Delhi, a strategic
military-oil partner for Moscow, and a major seller of crude oil for
Beijing. Each of the three Eurasian powers has every interest in
actively opposing Washington’s attempts to subvert the Maduro
government, given that Venezuela performs important regional-stability
functions, as well as, above all, offering these Eurasian powers an
opportunity to respond asymmetrically to Washington’s destabilization
efforts in Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. There has been talk
of creating particular synergies between Venezuela and other countries
similarly struggling to free themselves from under Washington’s boot.
China and Russia’s sending of naval ships and military aircraft to the
Americas, violating the Monroe doctrine, represents a riposte to the
continued pressure placed on the borders of Russia and China by the US
and NATO as part of their containment strategy.
*
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Federico Pieraccini is
an independent freelance writer specialized in international affairs,
conflicts, politics and strategies. He is a frequent contributor to
Global Research.
Featured image is from SCF
The original source of this article is Strategic Culture Foundation
Copyright © Federico Pieraccini, Strategic Culture Foundation, 2019
