Sputnik: The major European countries have now recognised Guaido as Venezuela's interim president. What is your reaction on hearing this?
James Fetzer: Well, this is very embarrassing in my opinion. The election in Venezuela was actually his re-election. He is enormously popular in Venezuela. He won by like 68 percent and 20 percent per his nearest competitors. International observers, including Jimmy Carter, declared the election to be exceptionally fair and transparent. Jimmy has even said the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world. That means there is no legitimate basis for contesting the election of Maduro. And when it comes to the European Union they are acting as lackeys of the United States sad to say.
This is a pathetic example of the failure of those once great states to exercise independent judgement and in fact, a vast majority of the world's population, including China, Russia, India, Mexico, Turkey, South Africa and quite a few other states have spoken out in Maduro support. In my judgement, Maduro clearly deserves the support of the world and it is acutely disappointing to find these EU countries taking the opposite stand.
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Sputnik: What is your take on the proposals previously made by some countries to hold early elections on Venezuela? Doesn't that make sense how economically sufficient would be now to hold a new ballot you think?
James Fetzer: Well, it is not at all apparent that there is any reasonable justification unless the CIA believes it can micromanage a new election to make it come out differently. I mean this Guaido has no experience in government, he is a complete patsy. He is a fabricated candidate. He is a manufactured creature of the United States, which unfortunately has displayed the ongoing pattern of intervening in other states for its own benefit. We have seen this in the past in South America, in Chile, for example, when Salvador Allende was taken out because the United States then presided over by Richard Nixon didn't like his politics.
There was not a legitimate fear of a domino effect in South East Asia because Vietnam was fiercely independent and would not have succumbed to the influence of China. And yet we intervene where the only rationale I have ever seen that made any sense was half an hour programme broadcast in 1968 by Walter Cronkite, in which he showed the continental shelf off of the coast of Vietnam and how it has already been subdivided by the great international oil companies.
Even John Bolton has observed that if the US had access and control to Venezuela's oil that wouldn't be a problem. So that speaks volumes about what is really going on here. It is a tragic situation because so many other countries have to suffer because of the greed and gluttony of American corporations.
Sputnik: News at the roots of this core of poor governance has to be laid at the last two presidents and this is the reason why there is so much malaise in the country and we have got to this situation. Should Maduro be given the chance to actually recover the situation or, I mean we have got here the problem with Juan Guaido, he has got no strategy and no economic stance that anybody knows anything about, and the whole situation is a mess, isn't it?
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But the idea that the United States, that neocons like Mike Pompeo and John Bolton and now Elliott Abrams, who is a complete monster, who has been involved in many atrocities involving many nations, has been made the point man on Venezuela. In my opinion, this is shameful. I would like to believe that this is happening without the awareness of Donald Trump, who has seemed to me was moving in the right direction on a number of fronts, including exposing the fake news media in the United States, which is one of the major difficulties with which we have had to contend since the CIA began infiltrating the mainstream media in the 1950s and Operation Mockingbird. We no longer have a free and independent press.
The internet gave an opportunity for every American to say his piece, to speak his point of view, and now this massive suppression and censorship by Facebook and YouTube and Google is absolutely shocking for those of us who have grown up with an America that was much more free.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of James Fetzer and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Sputnik.