Actress Angela Jolie: On the Wrong Side of Trump's Anti-Venezuela Rage

by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org - Home - Stephen Lendman)

In April 2012, Jolie was appointed special envoy to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, after earlier serving as a UNHCR goodwill ambassador since August 2001.

For years she met with refugees and internally displaced persons in over 30 countries, chronicling her work in a book titled "Notes from My Travels."

She also met with Pentagon and allied forces in US war theaters — failing to acknowledge US aggression and responsibility for refugee crisis conditions affecting countless millions.

Advocating for people in duress is laudable. It's not good enough without laying blame where it belongs for their condition. 

If US wars of aggression weren't raging in multiple theaters, few or no refugee crises would exist — the reality she should stress in her current capacity but hasn't.

Last week, she met with despotic Colombian President Ivan Duque in Cartqgena as part of a visit to the country's border with Venezuela.

A UNHCR statement said she went to "assess the humanitarian response to the exodus of Venezuelan refugees and migrants."

Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans live abroad in regional countries and the US, not millions as falsely reported.

Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez earlier explained that over five million Colombian nationals live in Venezuela, fleeing repression and intolerable conditions in their homeland.

According to a 2018 UNHCR report, Colombia has "7.7 million" internally displaced people. It's because of state-sponsored narco-terrorism, paramilitary death squads, and war ruling authorities are waging by other means.

US-supported state-sponsored ruthlessness in Colombia includes arbitrary arrests and detentions, targeted assassinations, and other extrajudicial actions against trade unionists, campesinos, human rights workers, journalists, and others opposing regime policies.

Jolie's two-day mission to Colombia failed to mention the Trump regime's coup plot to topple Venezuela's legitimate government.

Nor did she say anything about its aim to crush the Bolivarian economy and immiserate its people.

Showing up in Colombia, meeting with its despotic president, and addressing humanitarian issues affecting Venezuelans is red meat for propagandists, falsely blaming President Maduro for US war on Venezuela by other means.

Why didn't she visit the country to meet with its officials and people — in Caracas and elsewhere, to know what's going on firsthand.

Her knowledge about the Bolivarian Republic largely comes from misinformation and disinformation fed her.

Claiming "the number of Venezuelan refugees and migrants has risen to over four million" shows her ignorance about reality on the ground.

Colombia is hugely repressive to its own people. Thousands of Venezuelans entering the country returned home because of intolerable conditions, what she likely knows little or nothing about.

She's also likely unaware of US-designated puppet/usurper in waiting Guaido's illegitimacy, what Bolivarian social democracy is all about, and why Trump regime hardliners and their imperial partners want it eliminated.

Concern for displaced people is one thing. Understanding why the problem exists and laying blame where it belongs is far more important.

Trump regime hardliners bear full responsibility for harm to the Venezuelan people. Jolie's mission failed to address it — to her discredit.

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