BFUU Committee Condemns US Military Actions in Venezuela

The Social Justice Committee of the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists condemns the recent United States military actions against Venezuela. We believe the Trump administration’s accusation that Venezuela is responsible for trafficking drugs, such as fentanyl, into the US is a fabrication used as an excuse to justify US interference in Venezuela. We believe President Trump and allies like Marco Rubio and Steven Miller want regime change in Venezuela for multiple reasons : 1) to procure Venezuela’s oil, the largest reserve in the world, 2) to punish Venezuela’s support for Palestine, 3) to destroy the socialist economic system of Venezuela because socialist systems in the Western Hemisphere (such as Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua) challenge the US hyper-capitalist ideology with “the threat of a good example” due to their universal healthcare, education, and housing.

We denounce the recent US military attacks on fishing and commuter boats in the Caribbean. We regard these attacks, that have thus far killed at least 57 people, as murder, and we regard the perpetrators as war criminals who deserve to be arrested and tried for their crimes at the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

Reporter Greg Palast wrote in Raw Story: ”...according to the latest UN World Drug Report, Venezuela is neither a major drug producer nor a key trafficking corridor to the US… after these little commuter boats were attacked, not sunk, we were never shown the drugs, the evidence. There was indeed a drug boat, a submersible, attacked by the US. But American media generally failed to mention that, unlike the fishermen and commuters killed coming from Venezuela, the one real drug haul came from Colombia and was captured in the Pacific Ocean, not the Caribbean.” We applaud trustworthy media sources such as Common Dreams, the Intercept, Truth Out, and Consortium News.

We condemn the hostile movement of US naval ships towards the Venezuelan coast, like the Gerald Ford, the largest aircraft carrier in the world.

We call on the US government to cease these military exercises and to abide by the US Constitution and international law, which ratified treaties are the "supreme Law of the Land" in the US. We urge peace with all our neighbors in the Americas. We urge reparations be paid to the families of the innocent fishing victims killed by US aircraft.

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Social Justice Committee of the
Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists