What’s Going On?
UPDATE FROM THE EDITORIAL BOARD: On 26 March 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted Nicolas Maduro on charges of drug trafficking and narco-terrorism, and the Department of State offered a $15 million reward for information that helps ”bring him to justice”.
It’s an album title – prophetic in its way — by Marvin Gaye, who was shot and killed by his own father on April Fools Day, 1984. Marvin would have celebrated his 45th birthday the next day, April 2.
Spring was on its way; no one saw winter coming.
It seemed at first that a fight between his parents went terribly wrong. Relatives tell different versions. In the end, it went down like this: Marvin’s father, a Pentecostal Minister and Healer, shot Marvin in his heart with a .38 caliber pistol Marvin gave him for Christmas.
Left behind were an adopted son, two bio-children, two brothers, two sisters, a half-brother, and his parents.
What’s Going On?
His father, it turned out, suffered from an undiagnosed brain tumor located on his pituitary gland. It made him violent; it drove him crazy. He felt scared. He feared his son. He shot the boy-man that he told everyone who would listen he truly loved.
What’s Going On?
Marvin Gaye propelled the Motown sound into the stratosphere of American popular music during the 1960s. Like most gifted black men in those years, he was a traumatized human being. He made the best of it.
Albums like What’s Going On and songs like Sexual Healing brought reassurance and comfort to millions of folks who suffered the emotional stress of living inside but apart in apartheid and militarized America.
In those days, like today, America itched for a fight. It found a good fight in Vietnam; it would soon find many others – all pointless and needlessly wasteful of both national treasure and human life. Like Marvin’s dad, America shot its sons in their hearts. America wasted a generation, which it forced to choose between fighting war and fighting against war.
Father, father
We don’t need to escalate
You see, war is not the answer
For only love can conquer hate
You know we’ve got to find a way
To bring some lovin’ here today, oh oh oh
Picket lines and picket signs
Don’t punish me with brutality
Talk to me, so you can see
Oh, what’s going on…
A few souls managed to tightrope between the chasms of violence on both sides, but not many. Today, the United States is a couple of countries short of conquering the entire world.
Venezuela is one country among a dozen or so that sit at the top of a hit-list.
What will come next?
What’s Going On?
I’ve answered a lot of questions about Venezuela on Quora. I’ve never visited the country. I know almost nothing about it except what I’ve read in books and on Twitter by people who live there. Still, I have opinions. I’m not afraid to pontificate about the situation, because I’ve seen these coup-scenarios playout my entire life – seven decades and counting.
It’s like listening to a scratched record that constantly skips to play the same musical phrase; it’s like watching reruns of familiar shows like Leave it to Beaver and even the Twilight Zone. I can tell anyone how a show will end, because in their way all the old shows have the same predictable endings.
What’s happening in Venezuela and how it will end is both predictable and depressing. My standard of living and yours depend on what happens next. The security and safety of our Union depend on it.
The Russians and Cubans must lose. America must win.
Why?
We take the spoils, because if we miss our chance to seize the oil of Venezuela, over time the United States will slide into economic decline. Prosperity and the power of USA billionaires depend not only on free-trade and favorable trade agreements, but also on the resources they sequester; how much of the bounty of others they can steal.
It’s true.
What’s Going On?
TheBillyLeePontificator.com is now open for questions. What follows are answers. The most recent questions are first; the oldest are last.
1 – What’s happening in Venezuela right now?
Over the past several years the United States has been reestablishing its control over the countries of the western hemisphere, right? Dilma Rousseff of Brazil is a prominent example. Anyone who doesn’t know who she is — or her story — isn’t paying attention.
It won’t help to name others. People who know Ms. Rousseff need no explanation. For those who don’t, no explanation will suffice.
It’s easy for Americans to claim ignorance about what their country does to maintain its control over the resources and people of South and Central America. It’s not pretty. People are imprisoned and shot (murdered) to assert USA sovereignty.
Does anyone want to watch the processes by which the sausage they eat is manufactured? Of course not. No one wants to even think about it. The process is brutal and inhumane. It’s better not to know. All anyone really wants is for the sausage to taste good and not make them sick. No one prays for the safety of the pigs who give their lives so that people can enjoy their breakfasts.
It’s the same in Venezuela. The country has massive oil reserves. The leadership is allied with countries who exert their powers on the other side of the world. These countries are always making moves to gain a foothold on American turf. The result is turf wars, which is what Venezuela is.
The United States will kill and imprison as few Venezuelans as possible, hopefully, but it will prevail; it will secure Venezuela’s natural resources, including its oil, for the USA to use and buy from the billionaires who shape its vision.
2 – Considering that every superpower had its rise and fall, do you think that the US will ever drastically fall, and how far into the future do you think that will be?
Since World War II the USA has militarily attacked one-fourth of the world’s nation-states. Of the 195 countries in the world, the USA controls or “unduly influences” all but twenty-five, give or take — through treaties, alliances, trade agreements, and so on. The United Nations is located inside the United States for a reason.
The USA controls the entire western hemisphere and exercises its military dominance without much interference anytime it decides. The Pentagon is a big place. People underestimate its power, because the majority of its structure is not viewable — most of it is below-ground. The vast scale of US power is necessary to operate 800 military bases, which are located in every region of the world.
The financial system of the USA is a force-multiplier that enables the USA to quarantine with knee-bending sanctions both individuals and countries who oppose its goals. American financial leverage is legendary.
The United States is on a trajectory toward world domination that would make the Third Reich stand up and take notice. It is remarkable how US power has grown during my lifetime. The USA is always at war with somebody.
Except for the four years of the Carter administration, the killing and dying doesn’t stop. The numbers of murders has reached into the tens of millions since the end of the last world war.
I believe that the American empire will collapse when the Yellowstone Supervolcano erupts. It might be 500 years from now or next Tuesday. There is no way to know for sure.
3 – Are the recurring power outages in Venezuela due to US interference in their country?
The United States could easily send in technical experts to stand up Venezuela’s power grid. It chooses not to. Not only that, it refuses to provide any kind of aid at all by refusing to work with the elected representatives of that oil-rich country.
Worse, the United States is plotting to isolate and embargo Venezuela. The US president wants their oil; USA oligarchs are at war with socialism; the State Department is at war with Russia who is providing aid to the beleaguered President Maduro.
It doesn’t take a genius to understand that the United States cares nothing for the ordinary people of Venezuela; it instead is destabilizing the country to secure its resources.
Securing resources in the western hemisphere is something the United States has done repeatedly since the end of World War II. Ask any bona-fide historian if I’m right. Its success is one reason why the United States has the highest standard of living of all other countries in its half of the world.
4 – Russia sends troops to Venezuela to give the United States a ”red line”. Should the United States be worried, and do you think this could start a war between the United States and Russia?
My answer is a guess based on no knowledge or evidence; here it is: the USA will not challenge Russia militarily as long as Trump is president. It’s not collusion; Mueller proved that our president is the most patriotic president that the USA has ever had (and will ever have since he is likely to be the last).
Every red-blooded gun-toting Christian in America knows that Russian oligarchs with the help of almighty God put Trump into power to kill us all for allowing gays to marry. It’s not hard to understand.
5 – What is Venezuela’s national anthem?
Glory to the Brave People
6 – Is it technically possible to sabotage a country’s electricity infrastructure using an electromagnetic attack, as Venezuelan president Maduro has claimed, as the cause of his country’s power failure?
Where were you during the Iraq War? Taking down Saddam Hussein’s electrical grid was a point of pride during that war. Our leaders bragged about it on the evening news.
USA’s ability to attack infra-structure is vastly improved today. Venezuela is the perfect place to conduct diabolical tests of new war-fighting techniques and coup protocols.
Why?
It’s the oil, stupid. (I’m using a popular expression for emphasis. It’s not meant to insult anyone’s point of view.)
Anyone who is knowledgeable about the post-world-war history of the western hemisphere knows that the USA has been or now is at war with every country. The United States runs things or makes those who oppose it miserable with sanctions, sabotage, and subversion.
It’s not something a reasonable person can argue against.
Said another way, only an ideologue or an apologist will deny the culpability of the USA for waging war against Venezuela. If the United States cared about Venezuela, it would help Maduro, not undercut him.
7 – Why do you think there is a nationwide power outage in Venezuela going on right now?
During the Iraq war, the USA took down Baghdad’s power grid. It’s something our country is good at. That this power outage occurred during destabilization efforts to install a new president doesn’t look good for the prime suspects.
8 – Where in the world is the next international war likely to break out?
First, it’s important for everyone to understand that major international conflicts are potential species-extinction events. Enough nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons are available to enough countries to threaten the survival of humankind — should humankind fall into the abyss of a conflagration like it did during the two previous world wars.
It’s true that the last world war ended almost 75 years ago, but insufficient time has passed to be convincing that another world war won’t occur, perhaps sooner than anyone imagines.
One important reason why world-war has not occurred is because the United States has spent the post-world-war years consolidating its grip on empire. The USA knows the names, phone numbers, and addresses of every world leader and their relatives. It has cruise missiles and bunker-busters with each leader and family member’s name on at least one of them.
It’s personal. The number of individuals we don’t like and have removed from power is large and growing yearly. Maduro of Venezuela is the latest name on the USA Naughty List, but so, recently, was Dilma Rousseff of Brazil as well as countless others around the world — especially in the Middle East.
According to who counts, 195 countries exist in the world. The USA has conducted military operations against one-fourth of them since the end of World War II. Many conflicts are state secrets not shared with the public.
Expect major changes in Africa soon, anyone who doesn’t believe it.
To my way of reasoning, the best way to determine where the next lit-match will ignite is to look to past conflagrations. Countries with a history of warlike behavior are more likely than countries that lack such a history to start the next major international conflict.
What countries might these be? I’m not going to name them, because why make enemies unnecessarily who might have reformed their ways? But anyone with a knowledge of history and current events can create their own list. It’s not hard to do.
9 – How much worse can it look for Maduro? Denying hungry and sick Venezuelans from free food and medicine with guns. Isn’t Maduro’s time up?
Anyone with any sense knows that the USA engineered this debacle, because it is at war with socialism.
We invaded Cuba after they threw out the mafia, for crying out loud. We preferred organized crime to socialism.
10 – What should everyone know about the current political crisis in Venezuela?
Venezuela lives and dies on the price of oil. Low oil prices brought Venezuela to the brink of collapse in the late 1990s and made Hugo Chavez’s rise possible. Maduro, his successor, is falling on the sword of collapsing oil prices.
What confuses people is why.
Is the USA manipulating the oil markets to take down Maduro? The US has a consistent record of overthrow attempts against leftist governments. With a billionaire oligarch leading the USA, it seems possible.
Why doesn’t the United States help Maduro stabilize his country, which would be the humanitarian path? No one is sure. Common sense seems to suggest that our leaders are looking for a way to make a socialist system fail. Why else back a 35-year-old nobody to run the country? Wouldn’t aid to the elected government be an easier way to bring relief?
The Russians are involved, which further complicates. It’s possible that DT works for their side — so this coup that’s been in the making by our side during the past five years or so is sure to fail now that DT is aware and getting involved.
Time will tell.
It’s a sad state of affairs, what’s going on right now.
11 – Will a civil war happen in Venezuela?
The US has been at war with Venezuela for a long time now. Hundreds of America’s brightest have been working in their Pentagon offices for years to make sure socialism doesn’t succeed in South America.
Our wealthy oligarchs don’t want anyone to believe that a system might work where they aren’t allowed to steal as much as they possibly can and still call it “free enterprise.”
It simple, really. They are looking for allies inside Venezuela who are willing to blame Maduro for what America is doing to undercut them behind the scenes.
This crap started in Guatemala in 1954; it never ends.
12 – Why is Venezuela’s military backing Maduro recently? Is it worth it?
Maduro is the elected president of Venezuela in the same way that Trump is the elected president of the United States. Was the US election fair? Ask Reality Winner who is serving a five-year prison term incommunicado, because she disclosed NSA info on voting fraud. You will find that you can’t interview her.
So good luck figuring out what the truth is.
The billionaires who milk America don’t like socialism, because it is a system where people cooperate to create wealth, which they then share. Sharing wealth is anathema to oligarchs and mob bosses.
So, the USA is pulling out a well-worn playbook to guide itself through the process of replacing the experienced and elected leaders of Venezuela with a 35-year-old kid who knows just enough to do what he’s told. The USA promises to make him president. He promises to serve. It’s a kind of tit-for-tat.
To increase urgency and hysteria the USA manipulates currency and oil prices while it builds a right-wing cartel of nations to do its bidding. All the leaders will get rich under the plan. No one seriously gives a hoot about what happens to the poor.
The biggest danger is civil war, which happens to be exactly the same danger facing the United States. What goes around comes around.
The USA would be doing the world a big favor by helping Maduro get his country on its feet. Low oil prices have been catastrophic for Venezuela. Why don’t we help instead of using a bad situation as an opportunity to set up a bunch of oligarchs who will march to our drumbeat instead of their own?
Why is economic diversity such a bad thing? Ted Kennedy said in his last book that tycoons like his legendary dad were afraid that if socialism succeeds anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, it might become a prairie fire that takes down their edifice of privileges.
No tycoon wants a prairie fire. Every wealthy person believes they are self-made and entitled to all the advantages that their money can buy.
Ordinary people have about the same power to control the circumstances of their lives as farm animals.
It’s pathetic, really.
13 – With a regime change impending, within the next 30-50 years, will Venezuela consider socialistic influences for governmental structure again?
The pending regime change that is coming will take place in the United States. Americans are sick of boorish elites who — under a GOP led by pig Trump — won’t be electable in 2020.
One-party-rule by progressive democrats will bring relief to average people — something they haven’t experienced since the early 1970s. Many young people have no idea what it’s like to live in country that limits what the wealthy can steal and works overtime to bring equity to working people.
14 – Do you agree that reducing imports from Venezuela by the United States is an adequate short-term answer for helping that country and its citizens?
The best thing the USA can do to help Venezuela is to end sanctions, embargos, destabilization by our intelligence forces, and the policy of strategic strangulation, which is killing people — especially the weak.
The next best thing is to organize an international effort to airdrop food aid into the country. Flood the country with rice, powdered milk, clean water, potatoes, corn, etc. Inexpensive food is easy to collect and distribute and will help to strengthen the elderly, children, the pregnant, and the sick.
Flood the country with medical supplies and doctors to help the sick. Start talks with Maduro to offer him all the assistance he needs to get his country on its feet again.
15 – Is the newly accepted Venezuelan government by the United States backed by the majority of people in Venezuela? Or is it propaganda?
Citgo, the Venezuelan oil company, ships 500,000 barrels of heavy crude into Texas refineries every day. The crude is used to make diesel fuel for trucks. Without cheap diesel America’s goods and services get expensive real fast.
America’s oligarchs hate socialist countries. Most people can understand why. The foreign policy of the United States is to destabilize and overthrow all socialist countries whenever possible. Venezuela is an easy mark, because their leaders do not seem to be sophisticated.
Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and National Security Advisor, John R. Bolton, are leading a coalition of nations to inflict strategic strangulation on the Maduro administration. The government cannot access its gold reserves (held in British banks) and is fighting to maintain control of Citgo, which adds 10 billion dollars to the nation’s coffers each year.
The USA plans to divert as many assets as it can to the puppet government it is setting up under the auspices of a 35-year-old kid who no one ever heard of before about three days ago.
The process of destabilization has been accelerated under Trump, and the USA is now making its move.
The USA is hoping for military defections combined with public demonstrations to force a sham election in the next 30 days to oust the socialist government in Venezuela and legitimize a new government, which they will control behind the scenes. They hope to assassinate Maduro if they get the opportunity. The Russians are sending in a large security detail to protect the lives of the current group of leaders and help them hold onto power.
The country of Venezuela is polarized much like the USA. The elites want the USA to intervene; the poor want Madura and socialism. All sides want the USA led embargo, destabilization protocols, and strategic strangulation to stop ASAP.
16 – Will the Venezuelan military switch sides if they see the US military lining up for an invasion? Don’t they care mostly about how much they are paid? What good is an ousted Maduro?
Overthrowing elected socialist governments is a specialty of US foreign policy. The USA is good at it, but it doesn’t always work.
Even an intense strategic strangulation of Cuba (and an invasion to boot) was unable to break down the Cuban revolution.
The USA killed two million Vietnamese but failed miserably to prevent the unification of North and South.
Early successful overthrows such as those in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954) have convinced policy makers that the odds are in their favor when they decide to decimate a particular country. They have a better than even chance to prevail, so why not take it?
The problem is that everyone now knows — after 79 years of messing with governments — that the USA cares almost exclusively about itself and the protection of its tycoons. Democracy, equality, and basic fairness mean nothing to the United States in its conduct of foreign policy.
Many policy makers disagree with my point of view, but they are in the habit of giving in to self-deception to make it possible for them to live inside themselves.
17 – What is the likelihood that the US will at some time become entangled in a coup in South America?
The USA has a history of involvement in the politics of South and Central American countries. Coups are part of the history. Where have you been?
Seriously.
Destabilizing socialist countries in our hemisphere is an important component of the foreign policy of the United States. Everyone knows. It’s not a well-kept secret.
The USA keeps track of what’s going on through agricultural programs, aid, and assistance. When it desires change, the USA generally tries diplomacy first. If it doesn’t work, more violent methods have been used, including assassinations, disappearances, and coups.
Under certain circumstances, it can be illegal to talk about what exactly our intelligence services do to keep the Americas safe for exploitation by our companies. The most famous company that the USA went to war for was the United Fruit Company during the Eisenhower years. The president’s secretary held a lot of the company’s stock.
Some countries have raw materials that are considered strategic assets. The USA or its surrogates operate mines and other facilities to secure these assets and to keep other competitor countries from access. Right?
The instability in South and Central America that has arisen since President Obama stepped down is probably the result of activities encouraged by the newest president. He has lots of precedents to justify himself, correct?
18 – Are Russia and China’s recent provocative military maneuvers a prelude to war with the United States?
My belief — based on no evidence I can recite — is that our president is a pacifist. He enjoys pretend violence, like pro-wrestling, but is repulsed by real violence. He likes to threaten, yell, call people names, sue people in court, etc., but he is uninterested in physically hurting someone. For him fake violence is a kind of game. Often, he forgives and makes up later.
His mistresses have all said, as far as I know, that he treated them with kindness; something that many philanderers are not known to do.
When he bombed an airstrip to retaliate against a Syrian chemical attack, he set up the targeting so that no one on-site would get hurt. Yes, an attack on another target killed a hundred or so Russian soldiers, but it was an unintended screw-up he’d probably like to have back.
Our president likes to huff and puff and make deals; it’s a harmless game for him that has no meaning except for the fun he gets each day trying to outwit his opponents who he calls “rats” or “crooked” or “lyin” or whatever fits. Hillary Clinton, in real life, is one of his best friends, for crying out loud.
Trump is a liberal at heart, but he pretends to be a racist monster to hold onto his base, which is, let’s face facts, hold-overs from the Confederacy of the Old South. Southern racists are dangerous when angry; otherwise, they are the dumbest, easiest-to-manipulate voters in the country. They are like lemmings — if Trump says, “run off a cliff”, they’ll do it and praise Jesus for the opportunity.
Trump will not go to war against China or Russia as long as he can play monopoly with their oligarchs. He’ll bluster and threaten. He won’t pull any triggers.
One very interesting thing happened the day he became president. A prominent drug lord from Mexico was arrested and disappeared into the New York City penal system. Within a few days the man’s family was rounded up. They haven’t been heard from since.
So, the president has power. His problem is that a component of his power comes from sympathetic mob bosses, often with dual-citizenship — almost always from Russia and Israel. These “friends” aren’t shy about taking care of business, so the president won’t have to.
19 – The US could lose a future war against Russia or China, a new report to Congress has suggested. Do you agree?
The United States completed a two-trillion-dollar upgrade to our nuclear missile inventories during the Obama administration. The USA built a doomsday matrix.
I’ve heard rumors that a certain country has built a doomsday bomb capable of destroying Earth were it ever detonated. Folks should know that there is no upper limit to the destructive power of hydrogen bombs. Countries can build them as big as they want. They can blow up Earth itself.
The USA might not be able to win a hot war, but we won’t lose it to others, either. A war to the death against Russia or China is a war to the death of the planet. If recovery is possible, it will take thousands of years, but climate changes and the loss of resources will mean that Earth will never be what it once was; humans will never be what they once were.
War by major powers against each other (a world-war) is something that can never be allowed to happen again. The next world-war will kill billions of people and unleash a pandora’s box of suffering on the few unfortunates who survive. Rich and poor alike who live will be traumatized to the end of their natural lives.
Hot war is suicide. The leaders of every nation-state must give their last ounce of courage to preserve the one place in the universe where people have the hope to survive and thrive.
20 – Why is Russia’s military so powerful despite the fact that they spend less on defense than the USA?
1 – The Russians pay lower salaries and have fewer military bases. (The USA maintains 800 bases in 70 countries.)
2 – Russia is more than twice the size of the United States.
3 – Russia has the world’s largest reserves of oil.
4 – Russians are more literate in science and engineering than Americans.
5 – Russia has developed dangerous (to us) technological advantages in missile technology. They have air-to-surface missiles that are stealthy and reach velocities close to three miles per second. The USA has nothing in its arsenal that can track and shoot them down, which means that we risk losing our entire fleet of navy ships in a hot war.
6 – Russia has a fleet of drone subs deployed off our coasts.
7 – Russia does not seem to the have rampant corruption and cost overruns in its manufacturing sector that the United States is known for and which drive up the price of everything the Pentagon buys.
8 – Russians build their vehicles, artillery, and guns to perform in off-road bad weather conditions. They design their equipment to be simple, reliable, and easy to fix.
9 – The USA is paying unreliable private companies to administer a big part of its military space program. The temptations that lead to profiteering and unrealistic assessments of effectiveness might rot the foundations of military readiness. It is a risk the Russians don’t take.
Having said all this, the fact is that the militaries of both countries are nightmarishly lethal. The side that attacks first in the next war will accrue big initial advantages that could make a counter-punch ineffective. An immediate imbalance of power could easily become permanent and lead to catastrophe for the country that takes the first hit.
Technologies of modern warfare are making the world less safe for war-makers.
Hope is when the generals and civilian leaders don’t feel safe that they will avoid all-out war.
Terror-in-the-gut starts when military planners understand that the other side will strike first.
Billy Lee
