Venezuela Accuses US Diplomat
HAVANA TIMES — The government of Venezuela presented a protest note to the US Embassy in Caracas on Friday over diplomat Samantha Power’s statements regarding her will to fight against repression in Venezuela and Cuba.
Power is the Obama administration’s candidate to be the next US ambassador to the United Nations.
Foreign Minister Elias Jaua said the note states President Nicolas Maduro’s repudiation of Power’s “meddling”, reported dpa news.
“We have sent a protest note, where we ask if there is any willingness by the US government to restore good relations with Venezuela, as expressed by Secretary of State John Kerry, in Guatemala,” said Jaua.
He said his government will not accept the aspiring UN ambassador’s plans for interference in a sovereign nation.
“The first thing she should do is think about how she will explain to the world the embarrassment of her country’s spying and control system, and how to explain that, after two US elections, the abhorrent Guantanamo prison camp remains open on Cuban territory, and also how she will describe what happens to American youth who dare to tell the truth about what their government does, “said Jaua.
Jaua stressed that Venezuela is a respected and admired country, adding that the “permanent aggressions and provocations” of US government spokespersons are part of a process of destabilization.
On Thursday, Maduro requested an immediate rectification from the US government on Power’s “infamous” statements.
“This lady says that there is repression in Venezuela. What’s the repression in Venezuela? Repression exists in the US, where they are chasing a young man like Edward Snowden for telling the truth,” he added.
Relations between Venezuela and the United States are at the level of charges d’affaires since 2008 after diplomatic friction.
Jaua and Kerry made an attempt at rapprochement but that changed after Maduro’s decision to give asylum to Snowden, a former US National Security Agency employee.
Samantha Power is an academic with no experience as a diplomat. As such, she’ll fit in nicely with the incompetent Obama administration where everybody from the POTUS on down lacks the basic experience their jobs should require.
It seems that every week President Maduro holds a press conference to express his indignation over some unsubstantiated and unproven charge against the US. Beginning with his allegations that the US had somehow caused the cancer which ultimately took Chavez life, to assassination attempts on his life to independent filmmakers working for the CIA, etc. All of which he alleges to be able to prove and then nothing comes of it. So yes, at this point, blah, blah, blah! Imagine if Obama held a press conference every time a Castro or Chavez or Ortega or Morales or their ambassadors made an anti-US comment? He would never leave the briefing room! These Latin American strongmen make their political careers in part out of tough talk against the US. My comment regarding oil sales is simply to reflect that if my President had such a harsh view of the policies of another country, I would want to see his words backed up by measurable action. It appears that Venezuelans, like Cubans are content to allow their leaders to just talk tough.
This ridiculous trolling, while utterly idiotic, still has something to tell us about the writer’s imperialist ideological perspective.
First off, Moses’s rendering of Maduro’s criticism as “Blah, blah, blah” is just a refusal to consider any ideas contrary to the dogmas of the US national-narcissistic cult. Those blahs proclaim the resolute closure of what passes for Moses’s mind. Criticism of his god is met with conscious inattention.
Note that Moses made no attempt whatever to engage with the substance of this dispute between the US and Venezuela over Ms Power’s diplomatic gaffe. All he did was blah a bit and then drivel on about an imaginary Venezuelan oil embargo.
The main substance of his foolishness is the ludicrous idea that the Venezuelan government’s indignation would, if it were real, somehow oblige that government to stop selling any oil to the US, i.e. to take an economic decision that would seriously harm Venezuelan national interests while having much less impact on the empire.
That is of course an imbecilic proposition from a rational perspective. Any sensible government expresses its indignation, no matter how genuine, in ways which cause maximum embarrassment to the wrongdoer (in this case the US) but minimum harm to itself and its own people. Why would the Venezuelan leaders act against Venezuelan interests merely because they were indignant about something? Because of a mindlessly stupid suggestion from a US internet troll?
More to the point, why would Moses think that he could get away with spouting such an obvious absurdity in public? He didn’t notice that he was making a fool of himself because in his chauvinistically-deranged mind (and in the chauvinistically-deranged US milieu from which he imbibes his fatuities) Maduro’s government doesn’t appear as a rational actor: it’s replaced by a caricature. Venezuela’s President features as a hate-crazed anti-American demon-figure within the US national-narcissist mythology rather than as an actual nationalist leader of another nation pursuing its own national interests in the real world.
Moses simplemindedly inverts his own religious veneration of the US empire to cast people like President Maduro and the Castros as the US-hating cartoon demons that stalk his one-dimensional world-view. He considers the actions of foreign leaders only from the perspective of US official mythology, rather than as expressing their own interests and outlooks which differ from US dogmatic orthodoxy more profoundly than by merely negating it.
In the twisted mind of an imperialist true believer there aren’t really any other nations. There is only the adored empire and then the rest of the world revolves around it and its ruling notions, or ought to. When (as here) reality threatens to intrude on that religious fantasy, the response is to block the ears and blather nonsense.
Great ambassadorial material–she’s already damaged relations with Venezuela and she hasn’t even been confirmed.
Blah, blah, blah. These guys love to pound the podium blabbering on about respect and sovereignty but they seem to never fail to cash the checks they love to receive from US oil compaies for the sale of their oil. If they were as indignant as they purport to be, they would tell their largest customer who buys up to 40% of their market-priced crude oil to look elsewhere. Of course that’s not gonna’ happen.