The Venezuelan Military Will Not Flip

Based on the Wednesday turnout at opposition rallies in Caracas, it is becoming obvious that the only hope for the Guaidó coup is a foreign military intervention. Colonel Cassad writes about Wednesday's coup rallies:

Yesterday’s opposition rallies was quite sluggish and a lack of pictures which would demonstrate broad public support from [Washington]-appointed puppets. Main support for Guiado in Caracas is the rich areas in the South and South-West of the capital, where the positions of the opposition parties have been traditionally strong. But large-scale protests, which have gripped and paralyzed the whole capital would be to organize opposition until you can. Therefore promising a “soon to negotiate with the military” and expecting financial tranche from [United States] (we are talking about the sum of $20m), the opposition with the help of social networking (with massive support from the USA) is trying to shake more large-scale protests. Rallies in support of Chavez of course get ignored, as they do not fit into the imposed image of the “tyrant against the people.”

Moon of Alabama observed yesterday:

Videos from Venezuela showed a crowd of some hundred people in the better off quarters of Caracas. Meanwhile pictures of several pro-Maduro demonstrations in various cities showed much larger crowds. New demonstrations will be held on Saturday and are likely to show similar results.

The primary coup push is from the mainstream Western media with the canard that the opposition has support in the Venezuelan military (see "Juan Guaidó Says Venezuelan Opposition Had Secret Talks With Military" by Megan Specia and Nicholas Casey):

A member of the opposition said that the talks had been with midlevel military officers and had taken place in recent weeks. It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Guaidó was present.

The purpose was to explain the National Assembly’s amnesty guarantees, the opposition member said, adding that the officers expressed concern about the Trump administration’s past threats of military intervention in Venezuela and said that the armed forces would be outgunned in any fight.

This is the same story Casey peddled last week. South Front convincingly debunks the whole "mid-level Venezuelan officers in WhatsApp revolt" plotline:

On January 29, CNN released an interview with two “Venezuelan army defectors” who appealed to US President Donald Trump to arm them to defend “freedom” in Venezuela. They claimed to be in contact with hundreds of willing defectors via WhatsApp groups and called on Venezuelan soldiers to revolt against the government of President Nicolas Maduro.

“As Venezuelan soldiers, we are making a request to the US to support us, in logistical terms, with communication, with weapons, so we can realize Venezuelan freedom,” one of the alleged defectors, Guillen Martinez, told CNN. Another one, Hidalgo Azuaje, added: “We’re not saying that we need only US support, but also Brazil, Colombia, Peru, all brother countries, that are against this dictatorship.”

During the entire clip, these persons were presented in a manner alleging that they had just recently defected and are now calling on others to follow their step. However, therein lies the problem. The badges on their uniform say FAN – Fuerza Armada Nacionales. This is an outdated pattern, which has been dropped. Now, Venezuela’s service members have a different badge – FANB, which means Fuerza Armada Nacional Bolivariana. So, either the “Venezuelan army defectors” somehow lost the letter B from their uniform, or the entire interview is a staged show involving former Venezuelan service members, who have been living for a long time outside the country, or in the worst case – actors.

The military is not going to flip, and NYT coup propagandists Ana Vanessa Herrero and Nicholas Casey, in an act of self-sabotage, explain why in "Maduro Turns to Special Police Force to Crush Dissent":

The group came into existence in 2017 as Mr. Maduro struggled to wrest control of the country’s poor neighborhoods from criminal gangs.

The government had been organizing joint raids with the police and armed forces, called Operation Liberate the People, which became increasingly bloody. In a single two-year period, the government said the raids killed more than 500 people.

Facing mounting opposition to the raids, Mr. Maduro changed course, creating the special unit of his national police charged with a similar task.

The new police are taught to be loyal to the president, training at Venezuela’s National Experimental Security University, an institution founded under Mr. Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez.

Mr. Izquiel, the criminologist, said that officers leave after only six months training that is largely conducted by ideologically driven professors who preach allegiance to Mr. Maduro’s government.

Even before the protests, the police unit had been involved in several high-profile crackdowns.

Among them was the killing of Óscar Pérez, a rogue police pilot who commandeered a helicopter and captured the attention of many Venezuelans in 2017 when he fired blank ammunition on government buildings and unfurled a banner calling for Venezuelans to rebel against Mr. Maduro.

For months, he continued to attack military bases and taunt the government on social media.

In an interview with The New York Times shortly before his death, Mr. Pérez asserted that a pro-Maduro paramilitary group had penetrated the special police unit and exerted influence over it. It was an explosive assertion even then, because it meant that civilian vigilantes were acting as uniformed police officers.

The day of Mr. Pérez’s death, the leader of the paramilitary group, a man named Heiker Vásquez, was killed fighting alongside FAES officials who had surrounded Mr. Pérez.

Uniformed members of the special police unit were also photographed in Mr. Vásquez’s funeral procession along with members of his paramilitary group, known as the Three Roots. In Venezuela, these armed paramilitary groups are known as “colectivos,” and typically have their roots in fervently pro-Chávez circles.

“If it’s not FAES in these raids, it’s colectivos dressed in FAES uniforms,” said Ms. Solórzano, the legislator, saying that she believes the pro-government groups are being armed and asked to fight alongside regular officers.

Back in Hugo Chavez's day large shipments of  AK-47s were imported from Russia with the purpose of arming the colectivos. There is nothing that the opposition has that can match it.

That's why the next turn of the wheel in the U.S. coup will be fleshing out Bolton's "5,000 Troops to Columbia" legal pad message. There are already reports of U.S. Army South Commander Maj. Gen. Mark Stammer's Colombia junket.

Don't expect any congressional opposition. Max Blumenthal's interviews are truly depressing.