Above Photo: From Dsheavfp72.wordpress.com
“I dream, Peace is Possible
through a nightmare of wars,
No matter how brief the Dream”
~ by Daniel Shea © 3/26/19
Viet Nam Veteran
I arrived in Caracas Venezuela on March 10th 2019 with Margaret Flowers & Kevin Zeese after the three of us had to scramble to find alternatives flights to Venezuela via COPA Airlines, Panama to Caracas.
The reason we sought alternative flights was because American Airlines cancelled our flights from Miami to Caracas fearing reported power outages.
The electricity blackout was real but flights were still operational during daytime hours as we were soon to find out.
We were determined to join our place as delegates on the U.S. Peace Council and to witness for ourselves the extent of U.S. Corporate Media reports of massive civil unrest, of a starving population resorting to eating garbage and government violence to subdue protests.
We were on a mission, to listen, to observe, and to attempt to assess the root causes of opposition grievances and whether there might be avenues for talks to address their concerns and find compromises and produce a peace to the advantage of all concerned.
Our main mission was to express our Solidarity with COSI – Venezuela, the Committee of International Solidarity and Struggle for Peace.
I, a Viet Nam Marine Corp Veteran of 1968, and I, as a former Board of Directors of Veterans For Peace International and the current President of Veterans For Peace Chapter 72 of Portland Oregon have lived the hell of war, and wish never to have anyone live through that experience.
Unfortunately, my country never learned the lessons of the American War in Viet Nam, that it was criminal to send our armed forces to invade another country.
Viet Nam held no vital interest except the desire of imperialists to dominate Asia as a colonial power. Viet Nam was no eminent threat to our nation.
We left defeated, as war criminals who killed, estimates ranging from 4 to 6 million Vietnamese, mostly innocent civilian, women and children.
We left another war legacy, the legacy of spraying 20 million gallons of Agent Orange Dioxin over Viet Nam a deadly toxic chemical weapon that continues to take lives and causes many debilitating birth anomalies and diseases including cancers affecting both Vietnamese and U.S. Veterans and their families.
We have 58,320 U.S. Soldiers names, including eight women carved in black granite in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC as a cold reminder of the consequences of War.
Thus, every U.S. War, whether a so-called humanitarian military intervention or regime change assualt on another nation, it is like a bullet striking my heart, opening old wounds, that trigger my PTSD causing depression, anger, and even suicidal urges to end the nightmare and shame of my country’s bullying violence and terrorism that threaten the nation’s of the world with our way or the highway.
I have chosen to walk a path of Peace, to rejected violence and war, thus raise my voice as a Veteran For Peace, challenge those who beat the drums of war, oppose dishonest diplomacy at the point of an arsenal of nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction.
I guess it is no surprise that the U.S. Peace Council would invite two Veterans For Peace members Gerry Condon a former GI Resister and current President of VFP International and myself to join their delegation.
It didn’t take long before the delegation were invited to meetings with various government ministries, popular people’s projects or cultural programs, but most obvious was that the so-called crisis and massive unrest was just not happening.
That is to say, that in Caracas these popular myths of violent unrest in the U. S. Media were not true.
Our observation was the unrest was a lie manufactured by the U.S. State Department and the Trump Goons, VP Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, National Security Advisor John Bolton and Special Envoy to Venezuela Elliott Abrams the infamous 1980s criminal conspirator in the Iran Contra Scandal and lying to Congress.
One has to put much into perspective, there was an electricity blackout when I arrived on the 4th day of the outage and lasted an additional two days.
Was it a crisis, of course it was but it didn’t cause unrest, it brought people together, just like in the USA when a national disaster strikes, people go out of their way to help each other, the same in Venezuela.
I was humbled by the tenacity of the Venezuelans to persevere under this difficult hardship, the government trying to ease their burden declared taking the days off during the blackout, making them Blackout Holidays and you saw families in the streets, going to the parks, lovers holding hands, taking walks and meeting friends but no unrest.
Why the lies, why these threats of regime change intervention?
What are the Venezuelan Opposition Parties grievances, would they be willing to sit down for peace talks to find comprises.
Sorry to say, we were not able to get a meeting with opposition leaders to discuss the possibility.
What did seem apparent, was that the United States had their hands so far up the self declared president of Venezuela, Juan Guaido’s ass, he nor the opposition parties couldn’t venture far from the uncompromising position the United States was dictating, Maduro must go “Or Else”.
The “Or Else” is the real crisis, was the dark cloud hanging over all of Venezuela, the threat of U.S. Military Intervention.
Donald Trump doesn’t give a shit about democracy or the suffering of Venezuelans, or he would lift the Sanctions at the root of much of the economic crisis, that and the drop in Oil Prices in the global market.
The real interest of the United States in Venezuela is it’s Oil and they have made that pretty clear in their own public statements.
““It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela,” ~ Bolton told Fox News in an interview.
I will be giving a report back on Venezuela Saturday March 30th 2019
Eye Witness Report Back from Venezuela
Dan Shea of Veterans For Peace &
U.S. Peace Council Delegate
3:00 PM at Sunnyside Community House
3520 SE Yamhill St, Portland, OR 97214
Please join me, both in Solidarity with the Peace Loving People of Venezuela and in Solidarity with the March 30th Mobilization taking place in Washinton, DC as officials of NATO come to celebrate 70 years of war making!
We Say No to NATO, War and Racism!
!!!!!!!HANDS OFF VENEZUELA!!!!!!!