We Must All Become Yellow Vests

We, the readers of Countercurrents, are very well-informed people, perhaps more well informed than the readers of any other newspaper in the world.  Since the situation in Venezuela has become apparent, scholar after scholar, journalist after journalist, commentator after commentator has come forward to provide information on what is going on there.  America’s actions in Venezuela have been put in the context of a long history of American attempts to bring about regime change all over the world.  We fully understand that what is happening in Venezuela is part and parcel of America’s plan for destroying a nation without military intervention.  We know that this attempt at regime change in Venezuela has been a long time coming; how, in fact, it is not the first time the U.S. has sought to seize control of the nation.  We know how the people are deliberately made to suffer without any regard for their humanity.  We know all about America’s unremitting drive to maintain its unilateral hegemony.  We have noted that a great polarization is today occurring in the world and that the attractor for that polarization has become Caracas.  Anyone who reads the articles about what is happening in Venezuela knows, clearly and precisely, everything there is to know about the situation.  Really and truthfully, no more analysis is needed.  Now is the time for direct action.

Aside from daily updates, the time has arrived for people to put down their pens – or more precisely, take their fingers off their keyboards, find somewhere they can purchase a yellow vest, and take to the streets.  Put pressure on those countries who support U.S. intervention in the sovereign nation of Venezuela.  Support those nations and organizations that support Maduro over and against American bullying.

In those situations in which people are already members of organizations, such as unions or parties,  or for that matter, cities, towns or communitiesthey must educate their fellow members – it is they and it the readers of Countercurrents who must be educated and then persuaded to put pressure on those organizations and groups to support the people of Venezuela.

We must make some arrangement to provide humanitarian aid for the people of Venezuela, just as Chavez once provided humanitarian aid to the poor people of America by sending them fuel oil for their homes.   Arrangements should be made for shipments of food and medicine to be sent to the people of Venezuela.  They should understand, that neither they nor their country are alone-but rather that the eyes of the world are upon them, and that they are inspiring the hearts and minds of people everywhere.

And as for the communist and/or socialist parties, who sadly often spend their time trying to distinguish themselves from their comrades on the basis of their Marxist, or Marxist Leninist or Maoist or Trotskyist, or Social Democratic positions – that all has to stop.   The time is now for anyone who considers himself left leaning in any way, to join together to form one huge anti capitalist organization to protect the people of the nation of Venezuela.  And when they have finished doing that, they should show their solidarity to the struggles of the yellow vests of France, the workers on strike all around the world, the struggles of women and minorities everywhere.

Marx famously said, “Philosophers have only interpreted the world” and the point is to “change it.”

True that Comrades.   The world is polarizing even as nature is dying before our eyes from Capitalist contamination……the time for resistance is now and the place for it to begin is Venezuela.

Mary Metzger is a 72 year old retired teacher who has lived in Moscow for the past ten years. She studied Women’s Studies under Barbara Eherenreich and Deidre English at S.U.N.Y. Old Westerbury. She did her graduate work at New York University under Bertell Ollman where she studied Marx, Hegel and the Dialectic. She went on to teach at Kean University, Rutgers University, N.Y.U., and most recenly, at The Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology where she taught the Philosophy of Science. Her particular area of interest is the dialectic of nature, and she is currently working on a history of the dialectic. She is the mother of three, the gradmother of five, and the great grandmother of 2.