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VENEZUELA AND TRUTH  
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Craig Murry
January 5, 2026
Consortium News
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_ Mainstream media’s nonsense reporting about Venezuela omits the
most important truths, including the 1976 C.I.A.-linked torture/murder
of the father of Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, who Trump declared
to be now in charge. _

Independence Day in Venezuela on July 5, 2021 , A.Davey, Flickr, CC
BY-NC-ND 2.0

 

The mainstream media covered Venezuela non-stop over the weekend. They
many times mentioned Delcy Rodríguez, Vice President, because Trump
stated she is now in charge.

They never mentioned that 2026 marks the 50th anniversary of the
torture to death of her father, socialist activist Jorge Rodríguez,
by the C.I.A.-backed security services of the U.S.-aligned Pérez
regime in Venezuela.

That would of course spoil the evil communists versus nice democrats
narrative that is being forced down everybody’s throats.

Nor did they mention that the elected governments of Hugo Chávez
reduced extreme poverty by over 70 percent, reduced poverty by 50
percent, halved unemployment, quadrupled the number receiving a state
pension and achieved 100 percent literacy. Chávez took Venezuela from
the most unequal society for wealth distribution in Latin America to
the most equal.

Nor have they mentioned that María Corina Machado is from one of
Venezuela’s wealthiest families, which dominated the electricity and
steel industries before nationalisation, and that her backers are the
very families that were behind those C.I.A.-controlled murderous
regimes.

Economic sanctions imposed by the West – and another thing they have
not mentioned is that the U.K. has confiscated over £2 billion of the
Venezuelan government’s assets – have made it difficult for the
Maduro government to do much more than shore up the gains of the
Chávez years.

But that Venezuela is a major production or trafficking point for
narcotics entering the U.S.A. is simply a nonsense. Nicolás Maduro
has his faults, but he is not a drug trafficking kingpin. The claim is
utter garbage.

President Maduro’s final election rally here in Caracas, Venezuela
attracted more than one million people.

Corporate media will never show you images like this. It destroys
their narrative about Venezuela being a dictatorship.
pic.twitter.com/rVhayMhG8X [[link removed]]

— Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) July 26, 2024
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Over the weekend almost every Western government came up with a
statement that managed to endorse Trump’s bombing and kidnap –
plainly grossly illegal in international law – and simultaneously
claim to support international law. The hypocrisy is truly off the
scale. It is also precisely the Western powers that support the
genocide in Gaza that support the attack on Venezuela.

DEATH OF INTERNATIONAL LAW

The genocide in Gaza demonstrated the end of hopes – which were
extremely important to my own worldview – for the rule of
international law to outweigh the brutal use of force in international
relations. The kidnap of Maduro, the rush of Western powers to accept
it, and the inability of the rest of the world to do anything about
it, have underlined that international law is simply dead.

In the long list of appalling awards of the Nobel peace prize, none
can be worse than the latest to the Venezuelan traitor María Corina
Machado, intended actively to promote and bring forward the
imperialist attack on Venezuela by the United States.

It takes a great deal of effort to come up with a worse decision than
to award [Henry] Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize immediately after the
massive bombing of Laos and Cambodia. It was a dreadful award, but it
was intended to recognise the putative Paris peace deal and prod the
United States towards honouring the peace process. Initially it was a
joint award with Vietnamese negotiator Lê Duc Tho (who sensibly
declined).

“THE KIDNAP OF MADURO, THE RUSH OF WESTERN POWERS TO ACCEPT IT, AND
THE INABILITY OF THE REST OF THE WORLD TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT, HAVE
UNDERLINED THAT INTERNATIONAL LAW IS SIMPLY DEAD.”

The Kissinger award was a terrible mistake, but the Committee were
seeking to end a war, starting from a willingness to cooperate with
unprincipled realpolitik. In the award to Machado, they are
deliberately seeking to endorse and promote the start of a war. That
is a very different thing.

Similarly the award to Obama was a crazed moment of hope after the
despair of the invasion of Iraq. It was a combined mistaken belief
that Obama would be better, with a mistaken idea it would encourage
him to be so.

I accept that the line I am drawing is a thin one; rewarding the
perpetrators of Western aggression is only a short step away from
actually encouraging Western aggression. But nevertheless a line has
been crossed.

Maria Corina Machado at Protest Rally, August 2024. (VOA, US
Government)

The gross hypocrisy of the morally bankrupt Committee chairman,
Jørgen Watne Frydnes, in claiming that the prize is for non-violent
action on Venezuela, at the very moment that Trump gathered the
largest invasion force since Iraq off Venezuela makes me feel thoughts
towards Frydnes that ought not qualify me for any peace prize at all.
I feel similarly towards [U.N. Secretary-General Antonio] Guterres and
all those others abandoning their supposed international role to lick
Trump’s boot today.

So what now for Venezuela? Well, on the most optimistic reading
Trump’s action was performative. He had to do something to avoid the
Grand Old Duke of York jibes after that immense concentration of
forces off Venezuela, and he has produced a spectacular that actually
changes little.

On this reading, the Americans may be making the same mistake they
made in Iran, in believing that decapitation strategy and bombing will
spark internal revolution. In Iran, they actually strengthened support
for the Government.

As of Saturday afternoon, the Bolivarian government in Caracas
genuinely did not yet know what had happened, how far there was
collusion in the armed forces in Maduro’s kidnap, and whether they
still had the control of the army.

Trump’s plain signal that the U.S. views Rodríguez as in charge,
and Trump’s contemptuous dismissal of Machado – the only bright
point in an appalling day – might give pause to any in Venezuela
expecting active U.S. support for a coup.

To those who claim Maduro was a tyrant, I refer you to the comic opera
Guaidó coup of April 30, 2019. Guaidó had been declared President of
Venezuela by the western powers despite never even having been a
candidate. He attempted a coup and wandered around Caracas with
heavily armed henchmen, declaring himself president but just being
laughed at by the army, police and population.

In any country in the world Guaidó would have been jailed for life
for attempting an armed coup, and I expect in the majority he would
have been executed. Maduro just patted him on the head and put him
back on a plane.

So much for the evil dictatorship.

By pure chance, on Friday I had texted Delcy Rodríguez about
arrangements for travel and accreditation so I could go and report
from Venezuela and bring you more of the truth from that country that
the media is hiding from you. I made plain I was not asking for
financial support. Things are obviously fluid at the moment, but it is
still my intention to get there.

===

Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He
was British ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004
and rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. His coverage
is entirely dependent on reader support. Subscriptions to keep this
blog going are gratefully received
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_Subscriptions to keep Craig Murray’s blog going are __gratefully
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Because some people wish an alternative to PayPal, Murray has set up
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a __Patreon account_ [[link removed]]_. This article
is from __CraigMurray.org.uk_ [[link removed]]_._

_The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may
not reflect those of _CONSORTIUM NEWS.

* President Nicolás Maduro; Trump administration; Venezuela; Jorge
Antonio Rodriguez; Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez;
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