The move is seen by many as a test for Venezuela's military forces, who have so far continued to pledge their support for the embattled president despite calls from the opposition and the United States to back its man Guaido.
As the country plunges deeper into crisis, one must understand the armed forces, why their support is so important, and why the highest ranks continue to stand by Maduro.
The Venezuelan army has always been fundamental in understanding the country's political system.
In the latter part of the 20th century, the military was tasked with safeguarding public security and national territory. Members of the armed forces did not have the right to vote and they were isolated from participating in the civic sphere.
Venezuela as a modern state started with a military dictatorship, as a result, they were kept away from the civil forces. But under the presidency of Hugo Chavez(1999-2013), who had a military background, that role transformed and the military was tasked with the country's development.
The military became an essential part of Chavez's plan to change the country's social, economic and political structures to be in line with the government's political direction.
Chavez aimed to create a closer bond of trust and cooperation between the civilian population and the military through what the higher ranks labelled a civil-military alliance. For many, the military became a source of pride and patriotism.
Maduro, Chavez's hand-picked successor who had no previous military links, continued his predecessor's vision. Many officers currently hold important positions within the government itself.
The military is commanded by General Vladimir Padrino, the defence minister, and by General Remigio Ceballos, commander of operational strategy.
The military doctrine is based on policies laid out by the late Chavez, and it is based on members being patriotic, popular and anti-imperialist. "Our army by tradition is anti-imperialist, Latin Americanist and Bolivarian," says Ricardo Leon, editor of El Silbon Information Agency. "Nowhere in its history have you seen them having the intention of invading any other country."
According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, there are about 365,000 troops in the Venezuelan military.
In 2006, after the US prohibited the sale or transfer of military arms or technology, Russia became one of Venezuela's largest weapons supplier, having sold the country more than $10bn in hardware since the mid-2000s, including assault rifles, advanced jet fighters, tanks, and missile systems, according to the NGO Control Ciudadano, which monitors military activity.
In recent years, China has become Venezuela's biggest military supplier, providing communications gear, uniforms, radars, armoured vehicles, planes and helicopters.
Senior military officers head key sectors, including the food distribution services, which is run by Defence Minister Padrino, and the state-owned oil company PDVSA, which is run by Major General Manuel Quevedo, head of the national guard. Of the 32 cabinet posts in the government in 2017, 10 were held by active-duty military men and two were held by retired military personnel. They have become the centre of the Venezuelan political balance, any modification will have to go through their hands. They control the main channels that will make the distribution of humanitarian aid effective. Their role is fundamental.
Members of the military also control a television channel, a bank, and a construction group, as well as the military mining, gas and petroleum company known as Camimpeg. The company performs functions similar to PDVSA. It also repairs and maintains oil wells, and distributes the products of the oil, gas, mining and petrochemical industries.
Critics point to PDVSA's challenges under the military's leadership. The company suffers from lower production, dwindling export revenue and a shortage of skilled staff. However, Maduro has defended the military managers, arguing they understand more his world view. "I want a Socialist PDVSA," Maduro has previously said. "An ethical, sovereign and productive PDVSA. We must break this model of the rentier oil company."
According to local reports, the military's lower and middle ranks are ill-equipped, suffer difficulties in communication and are monitored by the intelligence services.
Salaries have also quickly decreased. More than 4,000 low-ranking officers deserted last year, Reuters news agency reported.
The middle ranks are earning around $3 to $4 a month, and that is impacting their own structure. The military has struggled to maintain its equipment as it suffers from a shortage of spare parts. According to some analysts, intelligence agents are also embedded among the military forces to guard against anti-regime activity, leading to abuses within the military ranks.Dozens of Venezuelan soldiers, accused of betrayal, have been arrested, according to Human Rights Watch. Authorities have also arrested the family members of some suspects in an effort to determine their whereabouts, the rights group said. In most cases, members of the country's General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM) or the Bolivarian National Intelligence Services (SEBIN) have carried out the arrests. More than 170 soldiers were arrested for treason, rebellion and desertion in early 2018, compared with a total of 196 for all of 2017, according to Reuters news agency, citing rights groups.
"The situation within our armed forces is very vulnerable at this moment," said Sebastiana Barraez, a journalist and an expert on Venezuela's military forces. "In the Venezuelan barracks, there is no food, there are no medicines, they are facing the same crisis people are experiencing. This situation has kept them distracted, and the sum of all these variables, means the military forces lack the proper training, and the force to be able to respond to any attack."
So far, the military, and in particular the higher ranks, have repeatedly pledged their loyalty to the Maduro, who has vowed to protect Chavez's legacy.
Eager to gain support from members of the military, Guaído's amnesty proposal would "grant amnesty to soldiers who willingly break ranks with the current government". But he has no way of enforcing the law. Venezuela's courts and most of the institutions are loyal to Maduro's government. He lacks legitimacy inside the country, basically the US created a parallel government to be able to execute its agenda legitimately. But they lack support, and they don't have the control nor the right mechanisms to make this happen. And due to their privileges and current conditions, analysts believe the higher ranks won't see themselves as part of any transitional government. They have reached a point of no return, in the economic benefits and privileges they've already accumulated, in the loyalty they have already pledged.
Some believe this can be attributed to the work of the intelligence services among the ranks. The intelligence control has taken its toll, most of the military personnel don't talk among each other, they are concerned they are being monitored, if they choose to change groups the government will have no issues in arresting them. Although there have been no major indications of cracks within the ranks, Colonel Jose Luis Silva, Venezuela's top military envoy to the US, pledged his support to the opposition. An air force general has also rebelled and urged others to follow.
Like it or not, Margaret Thatcher was influential in shaping the modern times. The Iron Lady famously asserted that there was no such thing as society—there were only individuals. This logic is still being carried out, as evidenced by the United States’ response to situations in Israel and Venezuela.Ilhan Omar pointed out a simple and undeniable truth. The politicians in the United States supports Israel’s apartheid state because they are getting payed to do so by lobbying interests, such as AIPAC. This was soon seen as anti-Semitic because of stereotypes of Jewish people being rich and running the world in a secret way.
Donald Trump justifies his turn to a whites-only state based on the assumption that he is protecting white women by splitting up brown families. His announcement speech for President came with the warning that immigrants are raping “our” women—with the implication that there is no such thing as white rape simply because white men own everything.
Likewise, the elites in Israel are given the green light to slaughter brown Christians & Muslims as long as they claim it is in the interest of Judaism. Judaism can only be seen by US WASP nation as the White man's wife. To an Evangelical, Jewish people can be tolerated because they are also generally white Europeans.
Ilhan Omar wanted to break up Evangelical dynamics. She told the children: do not be so hard on your mother. Look at your father. He controls her, he tells her how to treat you, and if she disobeyed, she would suffer a fate akin to yours, if not worse. But Daddy Yankee failed to listen. Instead Israel’s apartheid was once again framed as the natural condition for a weak and persecuted people. No other factors could be involved. And if you dare to question the Evangelical Christian conception of Jewish freedom you are now an anti-Semite.
While clearly the idea of the nation in Israel is supported, the idea of equal relations are not. To the contrary, there is a fear that if the hierarchy is upended, the relationships will split. Feminism, gay rights and children rights are seen as a threat to family—when it may be the only thing that will save it as a legitimate institution. Likewise, a stance against the Israel lobby and the apartheid state is seen as anti-Jewish—when in reality this is the only politics that encourages peace for both Israelis and Palestinians.
Israel, despite its backwards notions of human rights and democracy that are seen as essential to the nation state, remains a good steward because it has a Jewish commun identity.
The USA, despite its jingoism, has never had a clear economic national identity precisely because competition always has been its main objective. Competition, while naturally creating bonds between communities against each other, does little for economic unity within a nation as a whole. Instead, private companies rule from the outside in.
If the United States became just as upset about Israel’s form of ethnic "nationalism", perhaps we could have a similar effect on their political landscape.
But Israel presents no threat to the freedom of the 1%. Hierarchal divisions within the working class, while often being openly condemned, are in the interests of the 1%. To the contrary, when Nicholas Maduro wished to form a national identity that relied on economic unity that strived for equality, literacy, health care, and even racial and gender justice, this was seen as a tremendous threat to the freedom of capital.
In the United States there is so little difference between bias definitions of freedom of capital and freedom of humanity that one cannot believe that they ever could be separate, let alone contradictory goals. It is then rather ironic that the United States will only allow social nationalism, and never economic nationalism. Social nationalism for the masses, economic nationalism for the few.
The danger of economic nationalism is that some force other than the 1% now would control the economy. The government would now control the economy with the expectation of providing for the people it is elected by. If it did not, it could be voted out of office. The government would have the goal of providing an economy that works for the people who give it power, while economy controlled by the 1% has the only goal of profit. Therefore, the more unequal the 1% makes the economy, the less power the people have to question their rule. The more equal a government makes the economy, the more likely they will be elected. The 1% has no such incentive because they were never elected, and no one likes them. The rise of social patriotic communities are only used to demonize the last stand of economic nationalism, such as the effort in Venezuela.
The United States’ nationalism can only define itself by its Empire—which itself relies on ethnic nationalism that divides and lacks economic nationalism that unifies. Venezuela is assumed to rely solely on dictatorship because people like Trump and Branson can only imagine people supporting a government by force. Indeed, the only thing the US government provides for its people is what it takes by force from other countries through economic and military imperialism.
There is a truth that lies in Venezuela that scares the White House. The fact that a revolutionary people can put in power a government that can radically change society for the better is still scary. Venezuela is crumbling for mostly exterior reasons. However, nationalism will persist, one way or the other. As Marxist theory goes, the elites have a choice between socialism and barbarism. If there is no economic unity and community for the people, other groups will form—and give the social communities they can provide.
Donald Trump’s "America" is literally hollow.
It is only defined by the wall it can build around it—not by what goes on inside.
Any sense of economic nationalism is replaced by a social idea of the nation which mirrors the home. Right now the only merit in the home is that it has walls—and WASP Americans can feel safe from the outside world. But within these walls there is no unity besides the monsters its population imagine outside.
VENEZUELA
Big Picture: The Battle for Venezuela (02/09/2019)
PALESTINA
Jonathan Cook:: Anti-semitism is cover for a much deeper divide in Britain's Labour party
In the last week, a new confrontation has emerged over al-Aqsa Mosque compound, in the context of intensifying efforts by Israeli authorities and settlers to change the status quo and take over Palestinian properties in and around the Old City.
The Jordanian government recently decided to expand the composition of the Waqf – the body charged with managing al-Aqsa Mosque compound – to include a number of high-ranking Palestinians, alongside the long-standing Jordanian members.
Gates shuttered
The move came in response to what International Crisis Group’s Ofer Zalzberg described to Haaretz as “the erosion of the status quo” at the site, including the tolerance by Israeli occupation forces of “quiet worship” by Jews in the compound – “a relatively new development”, the paper noted.
Last Thursday, the newly expanded council inspected, and prayed at, a building located at the Gate of Mercy (Bab al-Rahma), shuttered by Israeli occupation authorities since 2003. At the time, the closure was justified on the grounds of alleged political activities and links to Hamas – but the building has remained closed ever since.
Overnight on Sunday, Israeli forces put new locks on metal gates that lead to the building. When Palestinian worshippers attempted to open the gates, clashes broke out, and a number of Palestinians were arrested by Israeli police.
Tuesday night saw renewed confrontations and arrests, while an Israeli court on Wednesday banned a dozen or so Palestinians from entering the compound. Both the Palestine Liberation Organisation and Hamas have condemned the developments, and warned of the “volatility” of the situation.
New facts on the ground
Events in the compound cannot be viewed in isolation from the bigger picture in Jerusalem, and in particular, what Israeli NGO Ir Amim has called an “accelerated, intensifying chain of new facts on the ground”, including “a mounting number of state-sponsored settlement campaigns inside Palestinian neighbourhoods”.
One expression of such campaigns is the eviction of Palestinian families from their homes so that settlers can take possession of the properties. Last Sunday, the Abu Assab family was expelled from their home in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, a fate facing hundreds more Palestinian families in occupied East Jerusalem.
What is taking place in Jerusalem is “an organised and systematic campaign of settlers, with the assistance of government agencies, to expel entire communities in East Jerusalem and to establish settlements in their stead”, in the words of an Israeli settlements’ monitor.
It is very clear what they want: a Jewish majority here and in East Jerusalem,” Silwan-based activist Jawad Siyam told the Independent recently. His community is blighted by the presence of the settler-run “City of David” compound, which is set to receive a further boost from Israeli occupation authorities in the form of a planned cable-car station.
Jerusalem has largely been out of the headlines for awhile, with most attention – understandably – being paid to the Great March of Return protests in the Gaza Strip and the bogged-down efforts to secure relief from the blockade. Israeli elections are also on the horizon, and speculation continues over what precisely the Trump administration has got in store by way of a “peace plan”.
In the background, however, accelerated Israeli colonial policies in occupied East Jerusalem could be leading to a new boiling point.
Grassroots activism
The Waqf has stated that it seeks the opening of the Bab al-Rahma site, a demand that has the potential to become a focus for the kinds of mass protests witnessed in the summer of 2017. Then, metal detectors introduced by Israeli occupation authorities outside al-Aqsa Mosque compound sparked spontaneous demonstrations, with the devices ultimately removed.
Whether or not the Waqf chooses such a path, it could also find its hand forced by the pressure of grassroots activism; there is considerable concern among Palestinians that the Israeli government – along with the so-called “Temple movement” activists – are ultimately working towards a spatial division of, and establishment of formalised Jewish prayers within, al-Aqsa Mosque compound.
Meanwhile, the United States is proceeding with the closure of its consulate in East Jerusalem, and relocation of Palestinian “affairs” to an office within the new embassy – a potent symbol, were one needed, that the Trump administration’s vision will be a stark departure from even the pretence of a “two-state solution”, and a rubber-stamp for Israel’s de-facto, single state.
This week’s events – however they develop – are a reminder, however, that while Israel and the US see Jerusalem as fair game for an accelerated process of colonisation and deepening imposition of Israeli sovereignty, the city’s Palestinian residents are experienced spoilers of Israeli designs, and may well soon reprise such a role.
Dror Dayan: Even though My Land is Burning
Dror’s film doesn’t shy away from the bloody reality in Nabi Saleh. One of the young local residents featured disappears from one minute to the next. Only later does the audience learn that he was killed by the Israeli military.
Nor does the film shy away from uncomfortable truths. The involvement of children in village resistance proved challenging to western audiences. At screenings in Germany, where Dayan now lives, this was one recurring question: are children not instrumentalized by their community by joining in the resistance?
Dayan doesn’t flinch. “From the very first second of their lives, these children grew up under occupation. It’s natural for them to resist.”
His answer is reflected in the film. One man featured in Even Though My Land is Burning simply asserts, “Tomorrow’s resistance will be led by them.”
Em 2019, a Semana Anual do Apartheid israelense acontecerá do dia 18 de março a 8 de abril no mundo inteiro.Ative um comitê em sua cidade, escola, universidade.
Para organizar as manifestações político-culturais, entre em contato com o BDS Brasil (https://bdsmovement.net/pt) ou acesse diretamente o link internacional apartheidweek.org e organize as atividades de solidariedade com o povo palestino há 71 anos ocupado.
O tema deste ano é "Parem de armar o Colonialismo".
E não se esqueça de checar a origem dos produtos que consome para boicotar Israel, inclusive Hewlett Packard.
The 15th Annual Israeli Apartheid Week of actions will take place all around the world between March 18th and April 8th 2019 under the theme “Stop Arming Colonialism”.
Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) is an international series of events that seeks to raise awareness about Israel’s apartheid regime over the Palestinian people and build support for the growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. It now takes place in over 200 cities across the world, where events such as lectures, film screenings, direct action, cultural performances, postering, among many more help in grassroots organizing for effective solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle.
Israel is able to maintain its illegal occupation and apartheid regime over Palestinians partly due to its arms sales and the military support it receives from governments across the world. The United States alone is the single largest supplier of arms and military aid to Israel, followed by European states. These directly sustain Israel’s oppression and human rights violations.
In the Global South, Israel has been known to supply weapons to genocidal regimes in Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and elsewhere. Presently, Israel is a major arms exporter to right-wing, authoritarian regimes from Brazil to India, the Philippines and beyond. These weapons are promoted as ‘field-tested’, which means they have been used to kill or injure Palestinians. In fact, Israel is already promoting the technology it has used to repress the Great March of Return in Gaza calling for the right of refugees to return home and an end to the siege. These arms deals finance Israel’s apartheid regime and its illegal occupation while simultaneously deepening militarization and persecution of people’s movements and oppressed communities in countries where they are bought.
The Palestinian-led BDS movement has reiterated the demand for a military embargo on Israel in the light of Israel’s violent repression of the Great March of Return. International human rights organizations such as Amnesty International have also responded to the Israeli massacre in Gaza with this demand. The UK Labour Party, in its conference in September 2018, passed a motion condemning Israel’s killing of Palestinian protesters in Gaza and called for a freeze of arms sales to Israel.
Ending arms trade, military aid and cooperation with Israel will undercut financial and military support for its regime of apartheid, settler-colonialism and illegal occupation. It will also end the flow of Israeli weapons and security technology and techniques to governments that suppress resistance of their own citizens, people’s movements and communities against policies that deprive them of fundamental rights, including the right to the natural resources of their country.
A military embargo on Israel is a measure for freedom and justice of Palestinians and oppressed peoples in many parts of the world. It can successfully be achieved with massive grassroots efforts, similar to the sustained global mobilization that eventually compelled the United Nations to impose a binding international military embargo against South Africa’s apartheid regime.
Israeli Apartheid Week 2019 will be an important platform for building the campaign for a military embargo on Israel. We invite progressive groups to organize events on their campuses and in their cities to popularize and build momentum in this direction.
If you would like to organize and be part of Israeli Apartheid Week 2019 on your campus or in your city, check out what events are already planned at apartheidweek.org, find us on Facebook and Twitter, register onlinehttp://apartheidweek.org/organise/ and get in touch with IAW coordinators in your region.
For more information and support, please contact iawinfo@apartheidweek.org.
BRASIL
