Standoff at the Venezuelan embassy
“The receiving State is under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the premises of the mission against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the mission or impairment of its dignity.”
— Article 22 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, 1961.
Whistles blowing, sirens blaring through bullhorns,
strobe lights flashing to pounding, banging rhythms
It must be the embassy medieval thugs mistook
for a butcher shop—or the one thugs entered to
kidnap towering truth-teller?
Instead, evening’s infested with
pot and pan-banging blue arm bands, Assault-Right
hipsters with Hitler haircuts; choreographed from
The War House and Capitalist Hill.
Ordinarily, big banner headlines splash
Post, Times, Wall Street Journal:
Americans Holed up in Foreign Embassy
surrounded by secret police blocking food,
medicine, supplies; shutting off electricity,
assaulting, arresting peaceful protestors:
Replacing rule of law with Law of Jungle;
Violating Vienna Convention, abdicating
responsibility
to
protect…
Ordinarily, Fox-box foot-soldiers/State Department
stenographers are on the ground grindin’— 24/7
with talking heads hopping mad—shit-fit, send-
in-the Marines-mad—for Boeing’s war of the week
versus strongman who became the wrong man!
Rogue state with redacted 1st and 4th amendments,
we wait for wet, cold, Wikileak words: “Live from New
York, it’s Saturday…”
© 2019. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.
Our poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner is an acclaimed performning artist, educator and an oficial of the National Writers Union.
Find much more of his work at http://upsurgejazz.com.
The debate over the EPA's new math misses the point. The agency hasn't changed its values, it has simply stopped pretending to account for communities it was never built to protect.
The survival of Cuba's socialist project remains one of the most critical holdouts against hemispheric domination, making its defense a global litmus test for sovereignty.
Branding Cuba an "extraordinary threat" on the anniversary of a regional peace declaration, the U.S. has escalated an assault designed to destroy hemispheric solidarity and justify hybrid war.
After 41 years in French captivity, revolutionary militant Georges Ibrahim Abdallah speaks, offering an analysis of October 7th, global fascism, and the Palestinian resistance.
Reuters sells custodial plunder as a pricing issue, turning blockade into “market caution.” We restore the missing record: seizures, supervision, and the re-routing of Venezuelan oil revenue through…
