The Venezuelan Election, A Blow to US Imperialism
Channel: Ed Mays
Date: 2021-01-07

If you listen to the US administration and the lapdog corporate press, Venezuela is a failed state and President Nicholas Madero, who was elected by overwhelming margins is a dictator.  And what’s more, Juan Guaidó a man with no power or popular support whom most Venezuelans have scarcely heard of, is the legitimate president!  Well, if you can swallow that, I guess you could swallow that the US, a country where the people voted one way and someone else who didn’t win the popular vote was installed as president twice in the last 20 years somehow has a right to criticize other country’s electoral systems.  Especially when their elections pass muster with international election observers and ours don’t.

Parliamentary elections were held in Venezuela on 6 December 2020. The US vehemently opposed the elections. There were election observers from all over the world. The United National Antiwar Coalition recently convened a panel of some of these observers and journalists whom we are going to hear from. There was no closing of polls or elimination of drop boxes at the last minute, no vote caging or purging, no gerrymandering, the voting machines are not owned by corporations with a conflict of interest, the political system is not a two party duopoly where the candidates and parties are owned outright by big business, and most importantly, no electoral collage to overturn the will of the people.  It’s a dictatorship alright…

Speakers include: Margaret Flowers, Vijay Prashad, Bahman Azad and Zoe PC.
Margaret Flowers- Pediatrician advocate for Medicare for All, Director of Popular Resistance, 2016 Green Party US Senate candidate in Maryland, leader in UNAC and the Sanctions Kill Coalition. 
Vijay Prashad- Indian historian, author of over 20 books, executive-director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, Chief Editor of LeftWord Books, his most recent book is ‘Washington Bullets’.
Zoe PC- Journalist with Peoples Dispatch, reports on people’s movements in Latin America.  She is also associated with Congreso de los Pueblos in Colombia.
Bahman (Faraz) Azad- Professor of Economics and Sociology at Berkeley College in New Jersey, exec. dir., U.S. Peace Council, represents the World Peace Council at the United Nations, author of ‘Heroic Struggle, Bitter Defeat’.
Thanks to the United National Antiwar Coalition
https://www.unacpeace.org/
Recorded 12/21/20

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