"New and Great Friends"

 So I guess now the Trump administration is blatantly blocking the Venezuelan opposition leader's efforts to return to her own country in order to help with earthquake relief—presumably because we find it more convenient to have the country's current authoritarian leader govern without elections indefinitely, so long as she remains in effect a U.S. puppet. 

In case anyone was still wondering whether that commando raid on Maduro was really about "supporting Venezuelan democracy"—here's your answer. The same government that kidnapped Maduro is now so wedded to his successor regime that we won't even help the country's democratic opposition set foot in her homeland in the midst of a catastrophic earthquake. 

Meanwhile, Venezuela's nominally "socialist" and "Bolivarian" ruling clique has had no trouble sliding into the role of a Yankee client state. "Vassal state" was apparently the word one anonymous government official used for them, as reported in the Intercept. 

This phrase—"vassal state"—brought back to mind for me Anatole France's prescient warning about the risks of U.S. Empire in the Western Hemisphere, over a century ago: "Following upon Cuba, reduced to the state of a vassal republic, Hawaii, Porto Rico, and the annexation of the Philippines [...]" (Roche trans.) 

As Edgar Lee Masters wrote of that early phase of U.S. imperial malfeasance in Cuba and the Philippines: after first being sold on the idea of a crusade to "liberate" these countries from Spain, "the American people beheld the United States move up and occupy the place vacated by Spain. We took their war and their methods."

So too, the U.S. has sidled up to Venezuela and occupied the place vacated by the head of state we kidnapped. We have adopted his methods—extrajudicial killings and political repression—and are helping to retain his authoritarian successors in power, so long as they obediently serve us, while excluding the party that actually won the country's last election. 

Trump says that our new client-state relationship with Venezuela means that we will assist with recovery from the catastrophic earthquakes. "The U.S.A. stands ready, willing, and able to help! I have instructed all agencies of our government to get ready to move quickly," he apparently wrote; "We will be there for our new and great friends."

Yet, our government sent a deportation flight full of Venezuelan asylum-seekers and refugees—many of whose legal status Trump terminated by executive fiat last year when he cancelled Temporary Protected Status for the country—on the eve of the earthquake. 

Many of these people, who were just deported from the United States, are now reportedly missing in the rubble. They seem to have perished and disappeared in the earthquake, just hours after the U.S. government expelled them on a plane. 

So that's how we treat our "new and great friends"? So much for U.S. friendship. What did these innocent men and women do to deserve "friendship" like this? 

As Voltaire wrote of the Lisbon earthquake: 

Come, ye philosophers, who cry, "All's well,"

And contemplate this ruin of a world.

Behold these shreds and cinders of your race,

This child and mother heaped in common wreck,

These scattered limbs beneath the marble shafts--

A hundred thousand whom the earth devours,

Who, torn and bloody, palpitating yet,

Entombed beneath their hospitable roofs,

In racking torment end their stricken lives.

[...]

What crime, what sin, had those young hearts conceived

That lie, bleeding and torn, on mother's breast? (McCabe trans.)