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Lima Group Meeting in Ottawa February 4 No to Foreign-Inspired
"Regime Change"
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On Monday, February 4, Canada is hosting the 10th ministerial meeting of the group of countries said to number "more than a dozen" known as the Lima Group who since August 2017 have been operating as a private clique in cahoots with U.S. imperialism as it attempts to force regime change on Venezuela.
In a statement on its website announcing the meeting which will take place in Ottawa, Global Affairs Canada notes that foreign ministers from the Lima Group will be joined by participants "from the broader international community." It says they will discuss how to support Juan Guaidó, the hand-picked U.S. puppet who has proclaimed himself the "interim president" of Venezuela and "explore ways in which the international community can further support the people of Venezuela."
In trying to suggest that its gross interference in Venezuela's affairs is somehow a project of "the international community" the Trudeau government is being disingenuous. There are not only many countries but many more people, including people living in the U.S. and Canada, Chile, Colombia, Brazil and other countries whose governments have lined up behind the U.S. project for regime change, who oppose the dirty work their governments are engaging in against the Venezuelan people.
What the U.S., Canada, Britain, Australia and certain others reveal with their pretence of representing "the international community" is that they adhere to the post-World War II racist conception of the Anglo-American imperialists that the English-speaking peoples should decide and rule over the destiny of the world. For them the "international community" includes whoever they deem to be part of it.
Under this racist world view the fact that the
U.S.
could not get a resolution recognizing its puppet Guaidó
passed
at either the Organization of American States or the UN Security
Council because the majority refused to go along with violating
Venezuela's sovereignty and right to self-determination, is
dismissed
as irrelevant. So is the fact that Russia, China, Turkey, South
Africa,
India, Iran, Syria, and other UN member states have refused to go
along
with the U.S. replacing Venezuela's president with a puppet of
its own,
with many expressing full support for Nicolás Maduro as
the duly
elected president. No importance is given either to the
expression of
solidarity with the Venezuelan people and President Maduro by a
ranking
authority of the 55-member African Union, or the fact that many
countries from different parts of Asia have not weighed in thus
far.
Military Intervention vs. "Diplomacy"
The scenario operating in the background is similar to the one NATO employed against Libya and before that, Yugoslavia -- just as the twentieth anniversary of NATO's precedent-setting "humanitarian" bombing of that country in March 1999 approaches: engineer the creation of a crisis and use it as the pretext for an invasion. In the case of Venezuela there has been much talk by the U.S. and those it works with of the need to "open up a humanitarian corridor" allegedly to deliver food, medicine and other necessities its economic warfare has deliberately targeted in the country. This aid would be delivered to its puppet "president" in defiance of the authority of the Bolivarian government, requiring the use of force to "open up" and maintain such a swath of territory off-bounds to the sovereign authority of the country.
Talk of this serves another purpose as well -- to
encourage speculation about the prospects of a U.S. military
intervention and how and when that might take place. While
preparations
for an invasion are clearly being put in place, with threats of
all
kinds issued left and right by the U.S. bully about the military
option
being "on the table." (Trump just repeated on television
that it
was still "an option.") It was also the main issue raised in a
CBC
interview with Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan on CBC's Power and
Politics on February 1. Asked specifically if Canada was prepared
to
take part in a military intervention against Venezuela should it
come
to that, Sajjan refused to give a direct answer, making
references
instead to Canada's wish for a "peaceful" coup d'état,
using
imperialism's euphemism for it: "transition." After being pressed
three
times by the interviewer about what Canada was prepared to do,
all he
would say was, "I think it's far too premature to have any
discussion
regarding any type of military actions. We need to allow the
diplomatic
space and the experts to be able to move forward." All this
speculation
about whether or not foreign military action is planned diverts
attention from the central fact which is that regardless of the
means
-- whether military or coercion and threats of other types, that
Canada
cynically refers to as "diplomacy" -- foreign-inspired regime
change by
any name and violation of a people's sovereignty and right to
self-determination are crimes that deserve universal condemnation
and
must be unequivocally rejected. Period.
Hands off Venezuela!
This article was published in
Volume 49 Number 3 - February 2, 2019
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca