Bill and Hillary Clinton ‘resist’ Donald Trump by repeating his regime-change propaganda

Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton
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Former US president Bill Clinton and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton have just publicly intervened in the crisis surrounding Venezuela. The problem is – both Clintons have a long history of backing coups and brutal sanctions. And people really aren’t buying into their rhetoric.

A very Clinton intervention

Former presidential candidate Hillary said:

Bill then went even further:

Read on...

FACT: the Venezuelan government is accepting aid

As readers of The Canary will know, the Venezuelan government has actually been both requesting and accepting aid:

Observers did not miss the irony of the situation:

Furthermore, both the Red Cross and the UN have blasted Washington’s ‘politicisation’ of aid.

The Red Cross, meanwhile, has slammed “people not affiliated” with it for falsely using Red Cross clothing:

Cutting through the propaganda

Max Blumenthal’s Grayzone also challenged the Western-led narrative about Venezuela after visiting the “state-subsidised communal markets”:

Venezuelans have every reason to be wary of aid coming from the US. Trump even appointed alleged war criminal Elliott Abrams as his Venezuela liaison. This is the man who used ‘humanitarian aid’ to ship weapons to far-right death squads in Latin America in the 1980s.

A former adviser to late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez (who hasn’t been afraid to criticise current president Nicolás Maduro where appropriate) laid out the true intent behind the US ‘aid’ stunt:

A history of supporting sanctions

Bill Clinton and former UK prime minister Tony Blair pushed what former UN official Denis Halliday referred to as ‘genocidal sanctions’ against Iraq during the 1990s. The sanctions reportedly killed a million Iraqis – half of them children under the age of five.

The US has also been imposing crippling sanctions on Venezuela. But neither of the Clintons mentioned these sanctions in their statements of support for ‘the people of Venezuela’.

Former UN expert Alfred De Zeyas recently told investigative journalist Abby Martin that the consequences of US-led sanctions on Venezuela were ‘asphyxiating‘ the Venezuelan economy.

Hillary’s Honduras

In 2009, meanwhile, the left-leaning democratically elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, was removed in a military coup. Hillary Clinton backed the coup. She said in her autobiography:

We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras [after the coup] and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot.

As The Canary previously reported, extreme poverty and unemployment in Honduras increased dramatically after the US-backed coup. And many child refugees found their way across the US border.

In 2014, CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour asked Clinton what should be done with child refugees coming from Latin America. The latter replied:

we have to send a clear message, just because your child gets across the border, that doesn’t mean the child gets to stay. So, we don’t want to send a message that is contrary to our laws or will encourage more children to make that dangerous journey.

And then there was Libya, of course.

The ‘resistance’?

Many on the left have come to expect hypocrisy and support for US imperialism from the Clintons, of course. But unfortunately, even self-proclaimed ‘democratic socialist’ Bernie Sanders has essentially been parroting the Trump regime’s propaganda.

The ‘resistance’ to Trump clearly has its limits. And the main red line seems to be standing firmly against US imperialism.

The world deserves so much better.

Featured image via CNN/YouTube, White House/YouTube, and ABC News/YouTube

Get involved

  • In the US: write to your Congressperson and demand that they oppose the coup and end the crippling US sanctions that are exacerbating the humanitarian situation (be sure to be polite and concise in order to be effective).
  • In the UK: write to your MP and ask them to oppose the coup, the sanctions, and return Venezuela’s gold to the Maduro government, to help alleviate the suffering of Venezuela’s people (be sure to be polite and concise in order to be effective).

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