by William Skink
Those not blinded by American Exceptionalism have long understood the antipathy many US leaders have had toward any international law restrictiong America’s ability to act, even unilaterally, when our alleged interests are being threatened.
While the US doesn’t hesitate to thumb its nose at international bodies, like the UN, what happend at the Venezuelan embassy last week sends one of the most disturbing signals yet that a strain of fascist lawlessness is metastasizing in this country.
And one of the most troubling aspects of what’s happening is how few citizens even know what’s going on, thanks to a compliant corporate media that is worse than the “state media” of more overt authoritarian regimes across the world because our media isn’t seen by the educated classes as being what it is.
Since any opposition to the coup in Venezuela has been effectively disappeared from mainstrean media, I have to go to places like Activist Post to read about Venezuela’s response to US lawlessness:
Venezuelan Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Ron on Thursday urged the Trump administration not to hand over the country’s embassy in Washington, D.C. to leaders of an attempted coup after U.S. law enforcement forcibly removed peace activists who have lived there for since last month as guests of President Nicolás Maduro’s government.
“We denounce these arrests, as the people inside were there with our permission, and we consider it a violation of the Vienna Conventions,” Ron said in statement.
Four members of the Embassy Protection Collective were arrested Thursday—David Paul of CodePink, Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese of Popular Resistance, and Adrienne Pine, a professor who wrote an op-ed for Common Dreams about why she participated in the effort to protect the embassy.
“We do not authorize any of the coup leaders to enter our embassy in Washington D.C.,” Ron said. “We call on the U.S. government to respect the Vienna Conventions and sign a Protecting Power Agreement with us that would ensure the integrity of both our embassy in Washington, D.C. and the U.S. Embassy in Caracas.”
While the McResistance frets about the real origin story of Russiagate coming out, the worst aspects of the Trump regime is going unchecked.
Americans might not be paying attention, but the rest of the world most definitely is.