USA 

COVID's role in increasing maternal mortality rates

• Arielle Dreher, 
•  Oriana González 

AXIOS

APRIL 10, 2023

Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios

The U.S. maternal mortality rate increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, disproportionately impacting Black women, with far higher odds of severe complications among pregnant patients with COVID infection at delivery, a new analysis published in JAMA Network Open found.

Why it matters: The United States has the highest maternal mortality rate of developed countries, and the pandemic made it worse — in 2021, 1,205 women died of maternal causes, data from the CDC show, compared to 861 in 2020 and 754 in 2019.

Driving the news: COVID-19 posed a serious risk to patients giving birth.

• The JAMA analysis, led by researchers from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, found the mortality risk of pregnant patients with COVID-19 at delivery between March 2020 and December 2020 was 14 times higher than those without the virus.

The big picture: Previous studies have found contributors to the high maternal mortality rate during the pandemic have included a lag in COVID-19 vaccination in pregnant people due to concerns over the potential effects of the vaccine that may persist despite studies showing they are safe.

• The CDC estimates that as of April 1, approximately 71% of pregnant people have completed the primary vaccination series (below the vaccination rate for those over the age of 18), and only about 23% of pregnant people have received an updated booster dose.
• "[I]f you have COVID-19 during pregnancy, you are at increased risk of complications that can affect your pregnancy and developing baby," said Scott Pauley, a CDC press officer, adding that the center is urging pregnant people to stay up to date on their vaccinations.

State of play: Risk factors that made someone more susceptible to severe COVID-19 are also risk factors that make a pregnancy higher risk including having higher blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetes.

• This is part of why maternal mortality rates increased in 2021, Rachel Bond, director of women's heart health at CommonSpirit Health, told Axios.
• The pandemic also exacerbated existing social determinants of health, and as a result disproportionately impacted women of color, who were often on the frontlines working "essential" jobs and getting sick.
• "At the core of the maternal mortality crisis is psychosocial stresses," Bond said, adding that both sexual and racial discrimination plays a role.

Why America was uniquely vulnerable to COVID

• Tina Reed, author of Axios Vitals

Data: The Lancet; Map: Alice Feng/Axios

The pandemic experience varied sharply from state to state, with some of the highest adjusted death rates reported in Arizona, the District of Columbia and New Mexico, according to an analysis published in The Lancet.

Why it matters: It's among the first deep dives to explore the social and economic factors at play during the pandemic in the U.S., and it found a nearly fourfold variation in COVID infection and death rates between states.

What they're saying: "What is clear from our study is that COVID-19 exploited and compounded existing local racial inequities, health disparities, and partisan politics," co-lead author Thomas J. Bollyky, director of the Council on Foreign Relations' Global Health Program in the U.S., said in a statement. The combination of local factors increased the burden of disease and the likelihood of poor outcomes, he said.

By the numbers: States with higher poverty, lower rates of educational attainment, less access to quality health care and lower levels of interpersonal trust saw disproportionately higher rates of COVID infections and deaths.

• When adjusting the data to account for age and comorbidities, Arizona saw the highest COVID death rate (581 deaths per 100,000 people). Washington, D.C., (526 per 100,000) and New Mexico (521 per 100,000) were the second and third worst, respectively.
• On the flip side, Hawaii had the lowest adjusted COVID death rate with 147 COVID deaths per 100,000 people. It was followed by New Hampshire (215 per 100,000) and Maine (218 per 100,000).

The big picture: Previous studies have connected state politics with better or worse COVID outcomes or homed in on racial disparities linked to poorer outcomes.

• But this study offers a more nuanced view of how the combination of factors made certain states more vulnerable than others. For example, the analysis found no association between the political affiliation of the state governor and death rates. But one key predictor of infections and total COVID deaths was the share of people that voted for President Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
• Researchers also considered the benefits of protective measures like mandates against their harms, such as lost employment and drops in test scores.
• "Our study suggests that the policy mandates and protective behaviours adopted in this pandemic were effective in reducing SARS-CoV-2 infections but might have been associated with employment and educational trade-offs," the authors wrote, adding the trade-offs warrant study that could inform future protective measures.

• "The more robust a health system, the better a state performed in the pandemic, but only in states where the public was willing to make use of health care services for vaccination or to get early treatment for their conditions," senior author Joseph Dieleman, an associate professor at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, said in a statement.

Between the lines: The analysis found states with more mandates, such as those that encouraged mask use, mobility restrictions and vaccination — and kept them longer — experienced lower infection rates.

• But only vaccine coverage had a strong association with the state-by-state variation in COVID death rates, they said.
• "Ultimately our public health policies seem capable of preventing transmission, but other societal factors like poverty, education attainment, and access to high-quality healthcare might have muddled the response and led to death rates being highest in some states that didn't have tremendously high infection rates," Dieleman said in a statement.

S. Korean lunar orbiter Danuri sends back photos of moon's far side
 

April 12, 2023

SEOUL, April 12 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's unmanned space vehicle Danuri has sent photos of the moon's far side during its mission to collect selenographic data, the science ministry said Wednesday.

Danuri, which is rotating around the moon 100 kilometers above the surface, took pictures of the Tsiolkovskiy crater on March 22 and the Vallis Schrodinger and Szilard M craters each on March 24 with its high-definition cameras, according to the Ministry of Science and ICT and the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI).

They are the first photos of the moon's far side that South Korea has taken.

On top of that, Danuri has sent separate photos taken with its wide-angle polarimetric camera, PolCam for short, designed to study the moon's surface composition and its volcanic deposits through measuring the degree of polarization.

The science ministry said people can check the real-time location of Danuri on the lunar orbit, along with its photos and collected data, on the orbiter's website (http://www.kari.re.kr/kplo).

Danuri entered the selenocentric orbit on Dec. 27 after 145 days of traveling from Earth and started its operation on Feb. 4 about a month after test runs.

It is assigned to measure the terrain, magnetic strengths, gamma rays and other traits of the lunar surface using six onboard instruments until the end of this year. The orbiter will also identify potential landing sites for future lunar missions.




This photo of the Tsiolkovskiy crater, provided by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), was taken March 22, 2023, with a camera onboard the South Korean lunar orbiter Danuri. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap)



This photo of Vallis Schrodinger, provided by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), was taken March 24, 2023, with a camera onboard the South Korean lunar orbiter Danuri. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap)



This photo of the Szilard M crater, provided by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), was taken March 24, 2023, with a camera onboard the South Korean lunar orbiter Danuri. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap)

brk@yna.co.kr
(END)

SOUTH KOREA
Main opposition accuses gov't of 'submissive' attitude toward U.S. over eavesdropping suspicions

Diplomacy 

 April 12, 2023

By Kim Na-young

SEOUL, April 12 (Yonhap) -- The main opposition Democratic Party (DP) on Wednesday blasted the office of President Yoon Suk Yeol for taking a submissive attitude toward the United States over suspicions that U.S. intelligence agencies eavesdropped on South Korea and other allies.

According to reports from The New York Times and The Washington Post, a set of leaked Pentagon documents shared on social media revealed that U.S. intelligence services eavesdropped on conversations at the South Korean presidential office in early March regarding whether to provide weapons support to Ukraine.

A day earlier, the defense chiefs of South Korea and the U.S. agreed on the assessment that much of the information in the purported documents was fabricated, while Yoon's office rejected the eavesdropping allegations as "absurd and false."

In Washington, Principal Deputy National Security Adviser Kim Tae-hyo also said that no circumstances have been found that indicate the U.S. eavesdropped on South Korea with "malicious intentions." Kim was in Washington to discuss preparations for Yoon's upcoming state visit to the U.S.

"Are there bad intentions and good intentions in eavesdropping?" Park Jie-won, an adviser to the DP and a former chief of the National Intelligence Service, said in a radio interview. "The act itself is illegal and bad."

Rep. Jung Chung-rai said the government is trying to defend the U.S.

"It's like someone who was slapped in the face saying he was not when the one who hit him says he did slap him in the face," Jung said. "Is the Yoon Suk Yeol administration a lawyer for the U.S.?"

The lawmaker appeared to be referring to remarks by Chris Meagher, an assistant to the defense secretary, earlier this week that the photos of the purported Pentagon documents appear to be "similar in format to those used to provide daily updates to our senior leaders."

"The presidential office said the eavesdropping allegation is an absurd lie. Then is it the U.S. defense ministry who is lying, or the presidential office?" DP Rep. Park Chan-dae said in a party leadership meeting.

The DP Chairman Lee Jae-myung said the party will push for legislative measures to strengthen the security of the presidential office and find out the truth of this case.

"Incidents like the Seoul sky being infiltrated by a North Korean drone and the presidential office being exposed to tapping of foreign intelligence services should never happen again," Lee said, referring to the document leakage case and the penetration of the no-fly zone around the presidential office by a North Korean drone in December.


Rep. Lee Jae-myung (C), the chairman of the main opposition Democratic Party, speaks at a party meeting at the National Assembly in western Seoul on April 12, 2023. (Yonhap)

nyway@yna.co.kr

(END)

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Can Indiana Jones overcome its Orientalist past?

Swara Salih

THE NEW ARAB
31 March, 2023

After a hiatus, the Indiana Jones franchise is back and problematic as ever. Typically reductive, the trailer for the new film, Dial of Destiny, slots back into regurgitating long-held tropes about the East as a dangerous and dastardly land.

Growing up, I didn’t watch the Indiana Jones series. The first one I ever saw was in high school when I saw Kingdom of the Crystal Skull with a friend in the cinema.

It wasn’t the best movie, but it thankfully did away with the series’ Orientalist tradition of portraying the East as a dangerous, exotic, and barbaric place needing to be tamed by the white saviour Dr Jones, who wants to “save” their cultural artefacts to place them in British museums.

A British 'shame': Demanding the return of the Rosetta Stone
Culture
Aisha Aldris

Unfortunately, with the new trailer for Dial of Destiny, this film series seems to be continuing to embrace its Orientalist roots just as enthusiastically even after so many years.

"Temple of Doom rightly has a notorious reputation for its racism and Orientalism, but this nature is ingrained throughout the franchise"

When I finally watched the original Indiana Jones series a few years ago, the Orientalist depictions of the region didn’t shock me as much as they should have. Perhaps that was because I was so used to such depictions before I started researching more of the depths of Orientalism.

But as I watched the second instalment, Temple of Doom, which takes place in India, the racism against South Asian people was staggeringly obvious.


London's statues celebrate Britain's colonisation of India
Culture
Ali Abbas Ahmadi

The Indian royals at the Pankot Palace in Mayapore ate baby snakes, monkey brains, eyeball soup, and beetles, and practised human sacrifice (attempting to with stolen children from Mayapore), and overall showed a farcical depiction of South Asian royals as “backwards” and “barbaric” for Dr Jones and the audience to be repulsed at.

Even if Steven Spielberg intended the dinner scene as a “joke”, it continues to repulse brown audiences to this day and is a depiction the filmmaker hasn’t apologised for, despite his overall regret about the quality of the movie.

It’s up to Dr Jones to save the innocent children from forced labour (and presumably human sacrifice) leaning more into the white saviour trope of the franchise.

Temple of Doom rightly has a notorious reputation for its racism and Orientalism, but this nature is ingrained throughout the franchise.

The depictions of Arabs and SWANA aren’t quite as cartoonish and outlandish but perpetuate racist Orientalism nonetheless.

Along with the yellow filter, when you bring up “Arab” and “Indiana Jones,” people likely think of the Arab swordsman working for Nazi intelligence (played by white British actor Terry Richards in heavy brownface) who superciliously swings his shamshir in front of Jones before the protagonist promptly shoots and kills him.

“Silly Arab, bringing a sword to a gunfight!” the film says.

The very premise of the film the swordsman appears in, Raiders of the Lost Ark, requires Jones and Marion Ravenwood to claim the titular Ark from its resting ground in Egypt.

The use of Egypt and its people as “barbaric and wild window” dressing for this plot makes Raiders of the Lost Ark a relic of Western Orientalism all on its own.

Black Adam: Hollywood returns to state of cultural blindness
Culture
Hanna Flint

But another, and perhaps more longstanding severe, element of the Indiana Jones franchise’s racism towards Arab peoples was in the very casting of his Egyptian and Arab ally, Sallah Mohammed Faisel el-Kahir, played by white Welsh actor Jonathan Rhys-Davies.

The conception of this character is rooted in Orientalist stereotypes of an exotic brown helper man to the white saviour, with Spielberg saying in an interview with Empire Magazine, “Sallah was originally written as a Sam Jaffe or Gunga Din type — almost a small creature from the Star Wars cantina in an earthbound adventure film. I had originally offered the part to Danny DeVito, who wanted to do it but couldn't fit it around his schedule for Taxi.”

For those that don’t know, “Gunga Din” is a reference to a poem by The Jungle Book author Rudyard Kipling, and depicts an Indian man subservient to a British coloniser during the British Raj.

Besides the troubling colonialist aspect of this comparison, Sallah is Egyptian and not Indian. But even besides that, conceiving an Egyptian character as “a creature from the cantina of Star Wars” is even more dehumanising, even if Spielberg thought he was being harmless in the comparison.


"As much as I'm open to franchises evolving from their Orientalist past, I don’t think we’ll be seeing much progress on this front with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which has no creative involvement from Arab or other North African peoples and no Arabs or North Africans in the main cast"

While Sallah, the character, maybe thankfully be more benign in his actual overall depiction with Rhys-Davies giving him some actual interiority (though he is still very much a sidekick to Dr Jones), the casting of a non-North African and non-Arab in this Egyptian role is troubling enough but becomes more severe back in 2015 with Rhys-Davies’ Islamophobic comments about Muslims on CNN.

“There is something in Islam that is belligerent, offensive, insidious and ideologically opposed to the values that we believe,” he said, referencing Islam as a core reason for terrorism, and blaming Muslims writ-large for not condemning or stopping such terrorist acts — when Muslims make up nearly two billion worldwide and are not all to hold accountable for the acts of a microcosm of a percentage of those who claim to share their faith.

In contrast, Rhys-Davies said: “There is something in Christianity that offers hope,” and “the jewel in the crown is the abolition of slavery,” neglecting to mention or consider how many millions suffered and died under British colonialism justified in the name of the European Christian faith.



While not all Egyptians are Muslim of course, over 90% of the country is, along with most of the SWANA region. So, for Rhys-Davies to make these comments and not apologise for them while continuing to feature an Egyptian character that has conceptions in these Orientalist stereotypes is rather deplorable.

The trailer for the new film that came out last December features a voiceover by Sallah. “I miss the desert,” he says as we see a Moroccan street bathed in the yellow filter, with him bidding his friend Dr Jones to come back to the Orientalist playground.

Every flash of Morocco also has a yellow filter.

The last scene in the trailer shows Dr Jones and his goddaughter Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) in a Moroccan room filled with, what are presumably dangerous criminals, again, all lighted with that Orientalist yellow filter.

“Get back!” he yells at them while cracking his whip. Except for this time, all of the people here, including some North Africans, have guns as well.

Again, the film depicts North Africa as a dangerous and exotic place, steeping deeper into the Orientalism that is seemingly so inherent to the franchise, and arguably one that has been useful in selling it.

 
Disney's Moon Knight helps Marvel overcome orientalist past
Culture
Hanna Flint

As much as I am open to franchises evolving and improving upon their Orientalist pasts, I don’t think we’ll be seeing much progress on this front with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

It has no creative involvement from Arab or other North African peoples (director James Mangold and script by Mangold, Jez Butterworth, and John-Henry Butterworth) and features no Arabs or North Africans in the main cast.

Of course, as more trailers, synopses, and reviews come out, there might be more than initially meets the eye, but based on the history, what marketing has chosen to emphasise first, and the continuation of the casting of a certain Islamophobe, I fear that North Africa’s image in mass entertainment will suffer once again — although, I sincerely hope I’m wrong.

Swara Salih is a writer and podcaster who has written for The Nerds of Color and But Why Tho?. He co-hosts The Middle Geeks podcast, which covers all things SWANA/MENA representation, and is a co-host of the Spider-Man/Spider-Verse podcast Into The Spider-Cast.

Follow him on Twitter: @spiderswarz

SEE

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: My Favorite Muslim 

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2006/02/ibn-khaldun-14th-century-arab.html

Israeli protests seek to uphold the settler colonial status quo, Palestinian resistance is the means of liberation


Tara Alami
06 Apr, 2023

The New Arab

The anti-government Israeli protests that have taken place over the last months highlight an unravelling of contradictions within the Zionist project. But ultimately, they seek to continue flying the colonial flag, writes Tara Alami.

The self-serving rallies by Israeli settlers remain nothing but a trivial backdrop to decades of genocide and dispossession committed by the state whose colonial flag they uphold and love, writes Tara Alami. [GETTY]

During the past several years, Zionist settlers have periodically organised protests against their colonial government’s tendency towards “extremism.” While so-called progressive settlers fill the streets of the territories occupied in 1948, built on the rubbles of raided Palestinian villages and unmarked mass graves, “Israel” is declared the 4th happiest country in the world. A desperate attempt to curate the image of the Zionist state as a pleasant, democratic, queer haven where citizens manage to thrive despite being surrounded by Palestinian and Arab “terrorism”.

This will inevitably fail as soon as settlers who would quietly endorse the theft of Palestinian land and life, are displeased with state repression directed towards themselves. Like when an elected finance minister calls himself a “fascist homophobe,” undermining years of Zionist pinkwashing efforts.

It’s difficult to hide genocide, dispossession, and occupation behind a translucent veil of civil rights.

''Zionist settlers’ attempts to maintain democracy within a nation-state built on violence and destruction while not only separating themselves from that material reality, but also refusing to accept that such a state can and will have a monopoly on violence towards its own citizens as well, is a sign of a crumbling propaganda machine.''

Like the 2011 protests, settlers in “Israel” are rallying behind basic demands, like a democratic government and social justice issues. Surrounded by hundreds of Israeli flags, some even advocate for an “end to the occupation” and to stop building “illegal settlements" in the West Bank, as if the Zionist state within the borders formed in 1948 is not a settlement in and of itself.

But behind this thin veneer of ostensibly “progressive” slogans and posters is, perhaps at best, a fundamental refusal to reckon with the implications of the existence of the Zionist state on stolen Palestinian land. Or most likely, an endorsement with recommendations for cosmetic changes that preserve individual liberties for colonisers coddled by a genocidal settler-colonial ethnostate.

It’s the freedom to colonise comfortably that matters to settlers, not progressive reforms or lack thereof.

Zionism being witnessed in its clearest form – extremist – is an uncomfortable development for settlers and those bankrolling the Zionist project. In an angsty response to Biden lightly scolding Netanyahu for his proposed judicial overhaul, Ben Gvir contended that the Zionist state is “not another star on the American flag.” And yet, the same “progressive” settlers condemning Netanyahu are rallying behind banners of the intertwined flags of two settler colonies, the Zionist state and the US. Additionally, Zionist cops are using quintessentially American police violence to dispel protestors.

Britain's colonial legacy is still felt in Palestine today
Perspectives
Gabriel Polley

On 2 April, one of the most notorious state-sponsored hasbara propagandists, the ‘Special Envoy for Combatting Antisemitism,’ was fired by the Zionist government after publicly criticising Netanyahu. But even settlers who vaguely criticise “Israel” or their politicians from within, insist on obfuscating reality. In a typical response by Zionist “critics,” former Attorney General Ben Yair, says that the state practices apartheid, whilst also consciously refusing to acknowledge that apartheid is a tool secondary to Zionist settler-colonialism. This is because doing so would implicate them in more than 75 years of ethnic cleansing and land theft — an admission too damning for the illusion of the Zionist regime’s potential as the only progressive, democratic state in the region.

Zionist settlers’ attempts to maintain democracy within a nation-state built on violence and destruction while not only separating themselves from that material reality, but also refusing to accept that such a state can and will have a monopoly on violence towards its own citizens as well, is a sign of a crumbling propaganda machine.

In reality, the accelerated unravelling of contradictions within Zionist society and politics by settlers’ infuriation with a modicum of state repression as they proudly rally behind a colonial flag, is an imminent consequence for a colonial nation threatened by ongoing, steadfast Palestinian resistance to decades of genocide and dispossession.

The so-called progressive house of cards within which the colonial, genocidal face of Zionism which was loosely hidden over the past several decades, is bound to fall when Zionist settlers themselves cannot reconcile the contradictions underlying their livelihood and existence on stolen land.

Palestinians – whether in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, Gaza, the territories stolen and occupied in 1948, or in exile – are seeking and struggling for liberation from a settler-colonial enterprise and imperialist proxy. The clear display of contradictions within Zionist society certainly does not amount to liberation, but signs of a faltering nation struggling with itself are a progressive move towards the unavoidable end of the Zionist project.

Palestinian martyr, intellectual, and revolutionary Basel Al-Araj insists we engage with the Zionist enemy, certainly not in what Kanafani calls “a conversation between the sword and the neck,” but rather in an attempt to understand and properly respond to the weakness of its foundation, to signs of its deterioration, and ultimately to its forthcoming ruin from within.

As a banner at one of the rallies which read: “Save Our Startup Nation” highlighted all too well, the purpose of such callous spectacles is to preserve the status quo — a settler-colonial nation bankrolled by the imperial core, a neoliberal colony founded and upheld by genocide and land theft, but with aesthetically pleasing, digestible individual liberties.

Like they do every year during Ramadan, Israeli Occupation Forces stormed and raided Al-Aqsa during prayer just days ago. At least 400 Palestinian worshippers were reportedly detained, women were beaten and tortured and rubber-coated steel bullets and stun grenades were used by Zionist soldiers, and more than 500 Palestinians were injured. The self-serving rallies by Israeli settlers remain nothing but a trivial backdrop to decades of genocide and dispossession committed by the state whose colonial flag they uphold and love.

The ultimate goal is to save the ostensible liberty to invest in a security and surveillance tech startup, the liberty to be queer, to wear vegan boots and build national parks, to have five elections within four years, and most importantly, the liberty to also colonise, pillage, and murder — but quietly.



Tara Alami is a Palestinian writer and organiser from occupied Jerusalem and occupied Yafa. She is based in Tiohtià:ke (Montreal).
Follow her on Twitter: @taraxrh

Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.

How Washington uses "proxies" to instigate "color revolution" in Venezuela?

(Xinhua) 13:34, April 10, 2023

CARACAS, April 9 (Xinhua) -- At the first "Summit for Democracy" held by the United States in December 2021, Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido was invited to speak online as a self-proclaimed "interim president."

Just over a year later, however, Guaido was no longer in the limelight because he had been ditched by Washington as a worthless pawn.

"A GUEST OF HONOR"

On the evening of Feb. 4, 2020, Guaido attended the State of the Union address by then U.S. President Donald Trump, who introduced Guaido as Venezuela's "true and legitimate" leader. The following day, Guaido met with Trump at the White House, and photos of them in the Oval Office made headlines.

Born in 1983 in La Guaira in Venezuela, Guaido obtained a degree in industrial engineering from the Andres Bello Catholic University in 2007. In 2009, Guaido helped found the Popular Will party. He was sworn in as president of the opposition-controlled National Assembly of Venezuela on Jan. 5, 2019.

In May 2018, Nicolas Maduro was re-elected in Venezuela's presidential election. However, under the pretext of "democracy" and "human rights," the United States, together with its allies and Venezuela's opposition, refused to recognize the legitimacy of Maduro's government. On Jan. 23, 2019, Guaido declared himself the "interim president" of Venezuela. On the same day, the United States announced its recognition of Guaido and expressed support for him. Maduro immediately announced that Venezuela severed its diplomatic relations with the United States.

While financing Guaido, the United States has attempted to pressure Maduro to step down through diplomatic isolation, economic sanctions and military threats. Under American pressure, more than 50 countries and the European Union recognized Guaido as the so-called "legitimate president."

In fact, Washington's search for "proxies" like Guaido began early. As disclosed by the Fact Sheet on the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) released by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs last year, after Hugo Chavez, the "anti-U.S. fighter," was elected president of Venezuela in 1999, NED accelerated its behind-the-scenes operations.

It provided continuous funding to the Venezuelan opposition and invited people to "training courses" in the United States. In 2005, Guaido and four other Venezuelan "student leaders" attended NED-funded training for insurrection. Later, Guaido enrolled at a U.S. university and, with the support of NED, has been active in relevant political groups in the United States.

On April 30, 2019, Guaido showed up along with some military personnel outside an aviation military base in the east of the capital city of Caracas, calling on civilians and soldiers to act against the government of Maduro.

"Today interim President Juan Guaido announced start of Operacion Libertad. The U.S. Government fully supports the Venezuelan people in their quest for freedom and democracy. Democracy cannot be defeated," then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted on the same day.

At a think tank event in May 2022, former U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton mentioned the U.S. attempt to subvert Maduro's government, saying that "my only regret is we didn't succeed, although we came close."

After the failed coup, the "interim government" led by Guaido, with the support of the United States, tried to launch a "color revolution" and incited young people to protest against Maduro's government violently. Official figures showed that months of violent protests caused hundreds of casualties and economic losses of tens of billions of dollars in the South American country in the first half of 2019.

WASHINGTON'S REVERSAL

The continued violence has not toppled Maduro's government. As Guaido's attempts to grab power failed and his support among Venezuela's opposition was on the decline, many in the United States began to question betting on him. In 2022, as tensions in Ukraine mounted, global energy supplies tightened and prices soared, Washington's attitude towards Guaido changed.

On Dec. 30, 2022, a vessel chartered by U.S. energy giant Chevron approached Venezuelan waters to pick up a cargo of Venezuelan crude destined for the United States for the first time in nearly four years.

Coincidentally, Venezuela's opposition passed a resolution to dissolve the "interim government" and remove Guaido as "interim president." A U.S. government spokesperson said it respects the decision and will continue to maintain communication and cooperation with Venezuela's opposition.

Asked whether Washington still recognized Guaido as "interim president," Coordinator for Strategic Communication at the U.S. National Security Council John Kirby said earlier this year that he did not want to "get into hypotheticals."

The end of Guaido's "interim government" could pave the way for the United States to ease oil sanctions on Maduro's government, opening up an alternative source of supply for Western nations boycotting Russian crude, said a report by the Financial Times.

The United States used to be a main destination for Venezuela's energy, but the South American country's ties with Washington have deteriorated since Chavez took office. Therefore, the United States imposed unilateral sanctions, including the oil embargo, to put pressure on Venezuela, while supporting "proxies" that could be used for its own sake. Guaido is among the "proxies."

However, once those "proxies" are not in the interests of the United States, it will throw them away without hesitation. That is the fate of Guaido.

(Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun)