The Fifth Democratic Presidential Debate

For all of those, myself included, who are confident of a 2020 Blue Wave last night's Democratic presidential debate in Houston should prompt a reassessment. What was on display was an aged, sclerotic party mouthing the same exhausted decades-old now-completely-meaningless platitudes. It's a party in thrall to a bankrupt centrism whose most zealous adherents are the 1%.

Where to begin? Why not the standard-bearer? That Joe Biden continues to top the polls is a very bad sign for the Democratic Party. Last night he repeated his performance of previous debates and primarily spouted gibberish. It comes in a gush. Most of it is nonsense, or of a sense internal to Biden's addled brain. That Biden continues to top the polls shows that either polls are entirely worthless or that a significant plurality of respondents know next to nothing about the current state of political affairs.

Bernie Sanders shit all over the bed last night in a dramatic display of fawning cowardice when Univision's Jorge Ramos asked him why he hasn't criticized Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. Bernie responded by calling Maduro a "murderous tyrant." As Max Blumenthal tweeted,

If a performative Miami ambush journalist like Ramos can make Bernie parrot Bolton with a few provocations, imagine what the Beltway blob can do once it oozes its way into his administration.

That's why you need Tulsi Gabbard in the debates. Presumably she would have stepped in and repeated her mantra about no more regime change wars; at which point she could've reminded the millions of viewers about Uncle Sam's rich legacy of coups and dirty wars in South America, including George W. Bush's failed ouster of Hugo Chavez and the more recent failed coup of Juan Guiado.

Elizabeth Warren is being declared the winner. But to me she seemed tweaked out, a twitchy and insincere version of her previous debate performances. Kamala Harris, who is also being touted as a winner of last night's debate, was slick and utterly unbelievable.

All in all a very bad night for Democrats.

Craig Murray on Tuesday's Failed Coup in Venezuela

It is strange how the urgent installation of liberal democracy by force correlates so often with oil reserves not aligned to the USA, as in Libya, Iraq or Venezuela, while countries with massive oil reserves which permit US military domination and align with the West and Israel can be as undemocratic as they wish, eg Saudi Arabia. Venezuela is an imperfect democracy but it is far, far more of a democracy than Saudi Arabia and with a much better human rights record. The hypocrisy of Western media and politicians is breathtaking.

Craig Murray, "Venezuela and Binary Choice"

“Operation Liberty” a PSYOP?

So miserable a failure was yesterday's coup attempt in Venezuela (see Bill Van Auken's "Guaidó launches abortive military coup in Venezuela") it's hard to imagine the Trump administration could have convinced itself that it was going to work; unless the failed coup, dubbed “Operation Liberty,” was never meant to succeed but merely a rouse to promote the PSYOP that the Maduro government was on the verge of collapse.

As Nicholas Casey explains in "Venezuelan Opposition Leader Steps Up Pressure, but Maduro Holds On":

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, speaking on CNN’s “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer,” said Mr. Maduro and senior leaders in his government had been prepared to fly to Cuba on Tuesday morning, with “an airplane on the tarmac,” but that Russia, a powerful ally of Mr. Maduro’s, had “indicated he should stay.” Mr. Pompeo offered no evidence.

John R. Bolton, the White House national security adviser, said top officials in Mr. Maduro’s government had committed to transitioning power to Mr. Guaidó. He identified them as Vladimir Padrino López, the defense minister, Maikel Moreno, the head of the Supreme Court, and Rafael Hernández Dala, the commander of Mr. Maduro’s presidential guard.

“All agreed Maduro had to go,” Mr. Bolton said. But Mr. Padrino and Mr. Moreno both came out publicly in defense of Mr. Maduro on Tuesday.

But it is crediting Trump, Bolton and Pompeo too much to think they have any developed long-term plan for taking control of Venezuela. The fact remains that Juan Guaidó and Leopoldo López and their "extreme right-wing political party Voluntad Popular" have a small base of support, and it is among the country's wealthy elite. The members of the military who participated in yesterday's shenanigans were duped into doing so:

Dozens of other Venezuelan soldiers told the country’s news media that they had been tricked into participating in the provocation staged outside the La Carlota air base, awakened at three in the morning and told to grab their rifles and turn out for an important event where they would receive medals.

The only plan that works for the United States is to stage a provocation and then bomb a country from above. But as we know from Syria (how many bombing raids has Israel made in the last six years?) that isn't much a plan either.

Trump is following the Neocon logic of "If at first you don't succeed, make the problem bigger" by blaming Cuba for Venezuela's problems.

It's hard to imagine that Maduro will continue to allow Guaidó to scurry around staging provocations. On the other hand, Guaidó is such a clown, giving him his freedom to serially embarrass himself is perhaps Venezuela's greatest defense.

Nicholas Kristof should be in Prison, Not Julian Assange

For a good example of the absolutely decrepit state of mainstream opinion writing read Nicholas Kristof's embarrassing "Hungry and Desperate, but Away From a Country in Chaos."

The template remains unchanged: A nation's people are being brutalized by its leadership. So the enlightened, benign United States must intervene in that country to replace its leaders with ones of its own choosing.

What always goes unmentioned is that a majority of the citizens of the targeted country doesn't want its leaders evicted by the United States. What also goes unmentioned is that the leaders selected by the U.S. favor privatizing their country's assets.

As Kristof proudly proclaimed in the aftermath of Muammar Gaddafi's ouster in 2011:

I’m a believer in humanitarian intervention to avert genocide or mass atrocities — when the stars align, as I believe they did in Libya — so maybe I’m deluding myself to justify our bombing campaign. Yet it seems to me that the NATO military intervention prevented a massacre in Benghazi, saved countless Libyan lives and has put the country on a track of hope.

Countries like the United States, France, Britain and Qatar did something historic in supporting a military operation that was largely about preserving lives, not national interests. While plenty can still go wrong, my sense is that Libya is muddling along toward a future far better than its oppressive past.

In the years that followed, when Libya descended into civil war and chaos, Kristof changed his tune and became critical of the "humanitarian intervention," not only there but in Syria as well.

The important thing to note here is that Kristof's change of tune on Libya and Syria never translates into an aversion to making another call for a new regimen change operation.

This is also the case with Kristof's fellow columnist Thomas Friedman, who supported the invasion of Iraq, only to acknowledge later that he was wrong, but then ended up arguing for the removal of Assad in Syria.

People like Kristof and Friedman are not really independent thinkers. They are Borgs. They will always advocate for whatever war is being boosted at the moment, to fall back later, in order to maintain any credibility at all, and criticize the intervention, as Kristof does persuasively now with the war in Yemen.

Trump Will End Up Missing Mueller

Trump has a war of his own (see Bill Van Auken's "Tensions rise between US, Russia and China over Venezuelan coup"). Add to that his decision to join the court case to abolish Obamacare, and one can safely predict his defeat in 2020. Any Democrat, even Hillary, should be able to romp. With the ludicrous Mueller out of the picture, Trump will own his own narrative; it will be a litany of missteps and pratfalls. Mueller will have turned out to be Trump's best friend, and he will miss him dearly.

Info War on Venezuela

It is total information warfare when it comes to Venezuela. I noticed Saturday morning that Twitter had labeled photos of the #HandsOffVenezuela march in Washington, D.C. as sensitive content, a bizarre form of censorship. Why are pictures of peace protesters sensitive?

The New York Times persists in blaming the Maduro administration for the blackout caused by U.S. sabotage. Nicholas Casey's lurid "Venezuela Was Crumbling. A Blackout Tipped Parts of It Into Anarchy.," appeared in the Saturday national edition. The passage devoted to identifying the cause of the massive multi-day power outage blames a brush fire:

The spectacular power failure was most likely result of a simple brush fire that destabilized the country’s electrical grid, union leaders said. It underscored the lack of maintenance of key infrastructure and the years of mismanagement of the country’s economy, which have become the twin hallmarks of the nation’s economic collapse.

Anonymous "union leaders" become anonymous "local electrical engineers" in a Reuters story, "Venezuela's Guaido launches national tour in 'new phase' to oust Maduro," which appeared Saturday:

Maduro has blamed a U.S. cyberattack for the outage, and this week the country’s chief prosecutor asked the Supreme Court to probe Guaido for alleged involvement in “sabotage” of the country’s electricity system. But local electrical engineers told Reuters the blackout was the result of years of lack of maintenance.

I think it's pretty obvious that these anonymous sources are opposition figures peddling lies to cover their Yankee masters' asses. Collapsing a nation's power grid certainly qualifies as a crime against humanity.

Nicholas Casey was back at it on Sunday with his latest info-war salvo, "‘It Is Unspeakable’: How Maduro Used Cuban Doctors to Coerce Venezuela Voters," a story built out of quotes from Cuban defectors.

The fact is that the U.S.-led Guaido-fronted Venezuelan opposition has been getting shellacked, even with the full power of the Western mainstream media monopoly filling the air with flak.

The New York Times might despise Trump, but it's willing to fetch the water when it comes to generating cover for yet another regime change campaign.

Venezuela's Blackout the Result of Sabotage

While The New York Times continues to pitch the sabotage of Venezuela's Guri hydroelectric plant as a Maduro administration lie, a desperate conspiracy theory meant to shield a tottering regime from responsibility, a Reuters story appeared yesterday, "Venezuela seeks to restore power amid looting; China offers help," confirmed, to my mind at least, that the power plant was in fact sabotaged:

China on Wednesday offered to provide help and technical support to restore electricity, and backed Maduro’s assertion that the problem was the result of sabotage.

China, always so reticent to pick sides in international disputes, is willing to stake Maduro on this. That's big. Yes, China has significant investments in the country. Regardless of that, the PRC is willing to joust directly with the USA not in the South China Sea but in Uncle Sam's "backyard."

Niqnaq features Colonel Cassad's take, "Eclipse in Venezuela: a crime against humanity."

Mainstream Media: Purveyor of Fake News

Over the weekend The New York Times performed an about-face and debunked the regime change casus belli that Venezuelan troops set fire to aid trucks stuck at the Colombian border (see "Footage Contradicts U.S. Claim That Nicolás Maduro Burned Aid Convoy"). Max Blumenthal had already debunked the Maduro-burns-aid-trucks canard in real time.

Glenn Greenwald has a masterly write-up in "NYT’s Exposé on the Lies About Burning Aid Trucks in Venezuela Shows How U.S. Government and Media Spread Pro-War Propaganda" where he concludes that

What we have here is classic Fake News – spread on Twitter, by U.S. officials and U.S. media stars – with the clear and malicious intent to start a war. But no western proponents of social media censorship will call for their accounts to be cancelled nor call for their posts to be deleted. That’s because “Fake News” and the war against it is strictly a means of combating propaganda by U.S. adversaries; the U.S. and its alliesmaintain extensive programs to spread Fake News online and none of those anti-Fake News crusaders call for those to be shut down.

And the next time claims are made about Venezuela designed to fuel regime change and wars, the independent journalists and analysts who were absolutely right in this instance – who recognized and documented the lies of the U.S. Government weeks before the New York Times did – will again be ignored or, at best, mocked. Meanwhile, those in the media and Foreign Policy Community who uncritically amplified and spread this dangerous lie will be treated as the Serious People whose pronouncements are the only ones worth hearing. With rare exception, dissent on Venezuela will continue to be barred.

That’s because the U.S. media, by design, does not permit dissent on U.S. foreign policy, particularly when it comes to false claims about U.S. adversaries. That’s why skeptics of U.S. regime change in Venezuela, or dissenters on the prevailing orthodoxies about Russia, have largely been disappeared from mainstream media outlets, just as they were in 2002 and 2003.

"Classic Fake News" methods of mainstream reporting are spreading to cover larger sections of the daily newspaper. Brexit, the trade war with China, the occupation of Afghanistan repeat the same talking points endlessly, so much so it is hard not to ignore them (which is likely the intention).

Trump Will Prioritize the Coup in Venezuela for Domestic Politics Alone

Judging from the main write-up in The New York Times, Katie Rogers' "Pence, in Colombia to Meet Guaidó, Announces New Venezuela Sanctions," the Trump administration's right-wing coup push is floundering.

Yes, U.S. special forces are being positioned in Puerto Rico and Colombia, but allies -- Brazil, Spain, Peru, to name several -- are getting cold feet when it comes to the military option.

Juan Guaidó, the self-appointed interim president of Venezuela and public face of the U.S.-backed coup, has abruptly tossed away his commitment to non-violence and requested a foreign military invasion of his homeland. As Rogers reports,

In their discussions, Mr. Pence said, Mr. Guaidó had reiterated a request for military support — a possibility that President Trump has called “an option” — but on Monday the vice president did not make any commitments. Instead, Mr. Pence told reporters that he had assured the opposition leader that “all options” remain, but that “we hope for a peaceful transition.”

Worse yet for the coup was Macro Rubio's incendiary tweet calling for Maduro to go the way of Gaddafi. A blood-curdling squeal of a war-pig, so plain, so obscene, it could not be ignored even in the pages of coup-friendly "newspaper of record":

Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, has been a vocal supporter of the effort to oust Mr. Maduro, and he drew criticism on Sunday when he appeared to compare the Venezuelan president to Muammar el-Qaddafi, the deposed Libyan ruler who was dragged through the streets and killed during a violent Arab Spring uprising.

Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democratic of Connecticut, accused the administration of using the delivery of humanitarian aid as a tool to bring about “regime change.”

“Venezuela didn’t just lurch into humanitarian crisis,” Mr. Murphy wrote on Twitter. “The aid is being sent there now as part of a regime change strategy. Many are hoping that it will be the match that lights a civil war against Maduro.”

It's good to see some opposition to the coup voiced in the U.S. Senate. Outside of Tulsi Gabbard and Ilhan Omar in the U.S. House of Representatives, I hadn't heard anything but war drums coming from congress.

Prominent democratic socialists Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been atrocious. (Look at Jacobin. There is nothing on the coup visible on its homepage.) They're trying to finesse their pro-coup stance by saying they are anti-authoritarian. The rationale is the same one used by Democrats who backed the invasion of Iraq. The excuse there was that Saddam Hussein was a butcher. But did Saddam Hussein butcher more Iraqis than lost their lives as a result of the U.S. invasion?

And what about Libya? Are Libyans better off today after Gaddafi's ouster? The country is going on nine years of civil war. Italy is on one side; France, the other. The goal? The largest oil reserves of any African nation.

In a sense Marco Rubio has done the people of Venezuela a great favor. He has reminded them what is in store if Maduro is ousted violently.

With Pence's ratcheting up sanctions -- "targeting assets of four Venezuelan governors allied with Mr. Maduro, . . . atop crippling American sanctions issued late last month against the state oil company, known as PDVSA" -- and granting an additional $56 million to the Venezuelan opposition, the U.S. is going to keep tightening the screws.

For domestic political reasons alone Trump will keep his foot on the pedal. It allows him to rail against socialism while spotlighting just how feckless and unwilling to rock the war machine AOC and Bernie are.

Full Speed Ahead to Another Lunatic Secret War

There is virtually no opposition within the US political establishment to the Trump administration’s reckless provocations. On the contrary, the corporate media was full of stories expressing shock that Maduro would use tear gas at the border and ban border crossings. There was no mention that the Venezuelan military’s tactics against right-wing thugs storming its borders resembled the methods used by the US border patrol against defenseless women and children seeking to exercise their right to apply for asylum.

Most telling is the response of the self-styled “left wing” of the Democratic Party, which has lent legitimacy to Trump’s threats. Senator Bernie Sanders, who announced his candidacy for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination last week, tweeted Saturday: “The people of Venezuela are enduring a serious humanitarian crisis. The Maduro government must put the needs of its people first, allow humanitarian aid into the country and refrain from violence against protesters.”

New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who told reporter Max Blumenthal in early February that she was “working on a response” to US war threats against Venezuela, has not issued a public statement since then.

Eric London, "US imperialism stages provocation on Venezuela’s borders"

*** 

Thwarted at the border, the opposition began rallying around the banner of foreign action to topple Mr. Maduro. Ahead of the meeting with Mr. Pence and other regional leaders in Bogotá on Monday, Mr. Guaidó wrote on Twitter that “we must keep all options open for the liberation of our homeland.” Julio Borges, another opposition leader, said he would ask for the use of force at that meeting.

President Trump has raised some hopes for such an intervention, saying that “the twilight hour of socialism” has arrived in the Western Hemisphere.

Nicholas Casey and Albinson Linares, "With Aid Blocked at Border, What’s Next Move for Venezuela’s Opposition?"

The coup plotters had a bad weekend. Their "Live Aid" invasion of Venezuela was a bust. What was supposed to be a pacific display of courage conjuring up the historic March from Selma to Montgomery turned into an opposition rock and bottle melee. Not even The New York Times could gussy it up:

At a pedestrian footbridge farther south, cheers erupted as aid trucks began to approach the border, with hundreds of young Venezuelans sitting atop the shipments.

But then Venezuelan national guard soldiers fired tear gas canisters toward the cars. Many of the protesters stepped off the trucks and rushed the soldiers, throwing stones. Soon, large crowds were tossing rocks up to the stone throwers on the bridge, as opposition activists and Colombian national police officers watched on.

Bernie Sanders had a bad weekend too. He tweeted his support of the Trump-led coup. Sanders will now lose the essential peace wing of party. It will cost him dearly.

There is only one path forward for the coup: a foreign military intervention. The Lima Group meets today. Additional sanctions will likely be announced, hurting the very people whose welfare purportedly is the prime motivation of the coup clown Guaidó. But as we have learned from a number of other examples -- Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Syria -- sanctions do nothing to actually change the leadership of a regime.

No, it is full speed ahead to another lunatic secret war.

Anti-Semitism, Socialism -- and What About Haiti?

We can tell from the post-holiday morning paper that the evolving strategy to maintain allegiance to a foundering status quo has for the time being settled on two epithets: "anti-Semite" and "socialist."

For the former, we have these three dispatches:

• Anti-Semitic Taunts by Yellow Vests Prompt French Soul-Searching
• 7 Labour Lawmakers Resign in U.K., in Rebuke of Jeremy Corbyn
• Anti-Semitic Attacks Fuel Continuing Rise in Hate Crimes in New York

For the latter, these three:

• Trump Delivers Blunt Warning to Venezuela Military Over Aid Impasse
• As Trump Attacks Maduro, Some See Bid for Florida Votes
• Kamala Harris Faces Questions About ‘Democratic Socialist’ Label and Jussie Smollett in N.H. Debut

Yes, it appears we have arrived at a point where to doubt the neoliberal status quo is to invite repudiation as an anti-Semite and a socialist, and this at a time when a prominent Jewish socialist has declared his intention to run for president.

One of the interesting takeaways from Trump's coup rally yesterday in Florida is Bolton's acknowledgement (first bullet in the second block) that the aid convoys being staged on the Venezuela's borders are a publicity stunt:

John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, told reporters in Miami before the speech that Venezuelan volunteers would bring in all the donated supplies, with no assist from the American forces that have stockpiled the aid on the Colombian side.

Regardless, the outcome would not be ideal for Mr. Maduro, Mr. Bolton said, because if the Venezuelan military blocked the aid, the world would see Mr. Maduro’s “true colors.”

“We hope that the press will be there to see the Maduro loyalists stopping humanitarian assistance from going to the poor people of Venezuela,” Mr. Bolton said. “People want to know why the Venezuelan people are rising up. That act by Maduro would be proof beyond words.”

But Venezuela is responding with PR of its own: delivering food aid to Colombia and staging a concert to rival the one staged by odious British billionaire Richard Branson.

And where's the news about the ongoing revolt in Haiti? Armed U.S. mercenaries were arrested there on Sunday. The mainstream press doesn't want to report on Haiti because it refutes the narrative concocted on Venezuela.

We Need to Elect More Ilhan Omars

There was some good news yesterday. The House of Representatives invoked the War Powers Act to end U.S. involvement in the Saudi-spawned genocide in Yemen. Why it took the Democrats more than a month to hold the vote is a good question. Now it's back to the Senate, where it was already passed in December but by the previous congress. Supposedly it will take another month before it is brought to a vote, and the Trump administration has, in so many words, already promised a veto. I doubt the resolution will garner as many votes, 56, as the first go-round. There will be an attempt to de-link the Khasshogi murder from U.S. facilitation of the war on Yemen. But that's going to be difficult.

The other goods news is that recently AIPAC-admonished Ilhan Omar, Representative for Minnesota's 5th CD, sprang off the ropes with her confrontation of notorious ghoul Elliott Abrams during the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing yesterday. As Bill Van Auken notes in "Washington escalates military threats as Venezuela regime change falters":

In testimony on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, the Trump administration’s special envoy on Venezuela, Elliot Abrams was asked whether the US had increased its troop deployments in South America in response to the Venezuelan crisis and responded, “I don’t believe so.” He added that direct US military intervention was not Washington’s “preferred route.”

Asked by a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee whether the US was funneling arms to Venezuela’s right-wing opposition, Abrams said that his answer was “a simple and unequivocal no.”

The committee’s Democratic chairman, Eliot Engel, introduced Abrams citing his posts in the Reagan and Bush administrations and his positions in various think tanks. Unmentioned was the fact that he pleaded guilty in 1991 to lying to Congress about the illegal funneling of money and guns to the CIA-backed “contras” in their terrorist war against Nicaragua and avoided jail only because of a pardon by Bush senior.

One member of the committee, Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar, challenged Abrams, citing his guilty plea in the contra affair, stated, “I don’t understand why members of this committee or the American people should find any testimony that you give today to be truthful.” She went on to detail his defense of the El Mozote massacre of some 800 civilians in El Salvador and similar genocidal acts by the dictatorship in Guatemala.

Abrams treated the questioning with contempt, interrupting Omar and declaring that her questions were an “attack” that did not merit an answer.

That the same kind of operations that Abrams defended in Central America are ongoing in Venezuela was indicated by the Venezuelan government’s interception of a shipment of 19 assault rifles, 118 explosive charges, 90 military-grade radio antennas and six latest generation smartphones on a Boeing 767 cargo flight by the 21Air company to the Valencia airport.

“This materiel was destined for criminal groups and terrorist actions in the country, financed by the fascist extreme right and the government of the United States,” a spokesman for the Venezuelan military charged.

The air cargo company, 21 Air, had previously run flights between US cities, but in recent months had shifted its operations to Venezuela, with stop-offs in Colombia.

For the little bit of good news there is no indication that the U.S. is going to halt its commitment to perpetual war. The U.S.-recognized coup leader, Juan Guaido, has proclaimed February 23 as the day that "volunteers" will deliver humanitarian aid from across the border in Colombia. It's a provocation. The U.S. has been powwowing with Brazil and Colombia on the next steps in the flagging coup. The New York Times, while sticking to the script that the coup is legitimate, nonetheless gives voice to skepticism regarding its implementation. According to "Humanitarian Aid Stalls, Testing Venezuela’s Opposition," by Nicholas Casey and Anatoly Kurmanaev:

“The opposition has created immense expectations, and it’s not at all clear they have a plan for actually fulfilling them,” said David Smilde, a Venezuela analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America. “Furthermore, the opposition and the U.S. have not been clear that this aid, even if allowed in, will make a significant dent in Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis.”

Some Venezuelans have even put off buying medication, expecting that the American donations will arrive across the border soon, Mr. Smilde said.

We need to elect more Ilhan Omars. 

The Enemy Within

Apparently Trump's State of the Union address was slathered with redbaiting. POTUS vowed never to allow the United States to become another Venezuela. The political class and the oligarchs who write the checks applauded.

Interestingly the 2020 campaign is shaping up to be a battle about socialism. A Gallup poll in August found that more Democrats favored socialism over capitalism. The base of the party is definitely social democrat, whether or not it self-identifies as such. That's why Howard Schultz bolted early and promised to stage a quixotic quest for the White House as a independent -- the base of the Democratic Party is too far left to nominate a billionaire.

Why is it that more Democrats favor socialism to capitalism? It has to do with the basics of life: housing, jobs, health care, education. The costs of housing, health care and education exceed the wages one earns to pay for them. Capitalism has produced this situation in the United States. No longer can politicians in either of the two parties blame socialist policies within the United States for the precarious lot of working people.

Cue Venezuela. The country is starving and roiled by civil unrest, so the argument goes, because of socialism, so much so that a military intervention is not out of the question. Of all the declared presidential aspirants to date, Tulsi Gabbard has provided the best rebuttal:

The root cause of mass immigration on our southern border is our history of US military intervention in Latin America that left countries destroyed. Before we talk about a wall, we need to end our ongoing threats of intervention - this time in Venezuela.

Get ready. The presidential election campaign will pit two fracturing parties in a two-party system that dates back to the Civil War. The emerging volcanic core of one party is white supremacist; the other, social democrat. There should be lots of heat and hopefully light too.

Mainstream Apologias for the Venezuelan Coup

More exhausted, threadbare apologias for the coup are on display in today's New York Times. Both Max Fisher's "Who Is Venezuela’s Legitimate President? A Messy Dispute, Explained" and Ana Vanessa Herrero's "In Fight for Venezuela, Who Supports Maduro and Who Backs Guaidó?" boil down to this: "Maduro's May 2018 reelection was widely criticized."

That's it. That's the justification for multinational intervention in the domestic affairs of a sovereign nation. The same rationale could be provided as a justification for a multinational intervention in the United States.

And what is the substance of the criticism of Maduro's reelection last year? Herrero's story hyperlinks to an article she wrote last month, "Venezuela Is in Crisis. So How Did Maduro Secure a Second Term?":

Mr. Maduro’s re-election in May 2018 was widely criticized, with reports of coercion, fraud and electoral rigging.

He first came to power in a snap vote following Mr. Chávez’s death in 2013, after the former leader had anointed him as successor.

But by the 2018 election, Venezuela’s economy had plummeted to new lows as a result of mismanagement and corruption, and the country was in the midst of a crisis.

Despite that, election officials said Mr. Maduro won 68 percent of the vote. The chaotic state of the country and the desperation of poor voters may actually have contributed to Mr. Maduro’s ability to maintain control.

Representatives of Mr. Maduro’s party tracked those who voted by registering their “Fatherland Card” — or national benefits card — and promised aid and government subsidized food handouts if he was re-elected.

Independent international observers were not on hand, and a crackdown on critics left several of them unable to participate. Opposition leaders called for a boycott of the election, and that, combined with the disillusionment of many longtime government supporters, meant the turnout was exceptionally low. Less than half of the country’s voters cast ballots.

Mr. Maduro’s stifling of dissent and targeting of the opposition has been widely reported. Since 2014, Human Rights Watch says, it has documented hundreds of cases of mistreatment of government opponents, including at least 31 cases of torture.

Less than half the country's voters participated in the 1996 U.S. presidential election. Should this have allowed Saddam Hussein to call legitimately for the Joint Chiefs to oust Bill Clinton?

In any event, how many votes were cast for Guaidó? This is something that The Times assiduously avoids. Guaidó, based on his performance in the 2015 parliamentary elections, commands 26.01% of people casting ballots in the Venezuelan state of Vargas. Not really a mass popular base of support.

Here is the Alliance for Global Justice rebuttal of the whole "widely criticized" canard that, let us remember, is the principal mainstream justification for the Guaidó coup:

Was the Venezuela 2018 presidential election open to opposition candidates?

The Venezuelan government did not block opposition candidates from participating, but encouraged it, and even agreed to push up the election date to meet opposition demands (from December 2018 to May 20, 2018). Nicolas Maduro received the votes of 6.2 million people, about 31% of the eligible voters, slightly more than what recent U.S. presidents received (Obama received 31% in 2008 and 28% in 2012, while Trump received 26% in 2016). The opposition candidates were Henri Falcón (who received 21% of the vote) and Javier Bertucci (who received 11%). Venezuela has an electoral system that is impossible to tamper with. Jimmy Carter once called it “the best in the world.”

Was the Venezuela presidential election of 2018 in accord with international standards?

The International Electoral Accompaniment Mission of CEELA (Council of Electoral Experts of Latin America) issued a report on the May 20 Venezuelan presidential election. CEELA made these conclusions: 

The electoral process for the Presidential and State Legislative Council Elections 2018 complied with all international standards and national legislation, particularly in the fields of audit and electoral administration.

CEELA Mission is of the opinion that the process was successfully carried out and that the will of the citizens, freely expressed in ballot boxes, was respected. 

c. The results communicated yesterday night by the National Electoral Council reflect the will of the voters who decided to participate in the electoral process.Such results are duly certified through the citizen verification audit. 

e. The CEELA Electoral Accompaniment Mission upholds that the electoral process has consolidated and reaffirmed strengthening of the electoral institutionalism that supports the democratic system.

How do Venezuelans themselves feel about the US Sanctions and US military intervention?

The vast majority of Venezuelans oppose military intervention and US sanctions to try to remove President Nicolás Maduro from power, according to a very recent poll by the firm Hinterlaces. 

Do you agree or disagree with the US economic and financial sanctions that are currently applied against Venezuela to remove President Maduro from power?

81% disagree, 17% agree, 2% not sure

Would you agree or disagree if there were international intervention in Venezuela to remove President Maduro from power?

78% disagree, 20% agree, 2% not sure

Would you agree or disagree if there were international military intervention in Venezuela to remove President Maduro from power?

86% disagree, 12% agree, 2% not sure

In general do you agree or disagree with a dialogue being held between the national government and the opposition to resolve the current economic problems in the country?

84% agree, 15% disagree, 1% not sure

The United States and its puppet Guaidó are massively out of step with Venezuelan public opinion. Venezuelans don't want war and sanctions. They want negotiations. The mainstream media is complicit in fomenting a civil war.

Next Steps in the Venezuelan Coup

It's worthwhile to read Grayzone's "The Making of Juan Guaidó: How the US Regime Change Laboratory Created Venezuela's Coup Leader," by Dan Cohen and Max Blumenthal, as a palliative to the latest putrid bit of Guaidó puffery from The New York Times' Ernesto Londoño, "Guaidó Steers Venezuela to a Perilous Crossroads."

Both reports are at least in sync at the bottom line: The Guaidó coup is meant to crack the Venezuela state. Cohen and Blumenthal make plain that:

“‘These radical leaders [of the opposition] have no more than 20 percent in opinion polls,” wrote Luis Vicente León, Venezuela’s leading pollster. According to León, Guaidó’s party remains isolated because the majority of the population “does not want war. ‘What they want is a solution.’”

But this is precisely why Guaidó was selected by Washington: He is not expected to lead Venezuela toward democracy, but to collapse a country that for the past two decades has been a bulwark of resistance to US hegemony. His unlikely rise signals the culmination of a two decades-long project to destroy a robust socialist experiment.

Lorenzo outlines the coup's next steps:

Oil sanctions imposed by the United States last week will soon strangle the country’s already-devastated economy, which will most likely cause shortages of fuel and make food and medicine even more scarce.

Bracing for the destabilizing effects of the sanctions, Mr. Guaidó and his allies in the international community said they intended to start pumping humanitarian aid into the country this week. Doing so would undermine Mr. Maduro, who recently scoffed at the prospect by saying “we’re not a country of beggars.”

Mr. Guaidó and his allies see the coming week, and the arrival of aid, as a potential make-or-break moment for a movement that has stirred hope for millions of Venezuelans, but has yet to take steps that meaningfully improve their lives.

[snip]

“This is not the time for dialogue,” Mr. Guaidó said firmly.

Mr. Guaidó said a lot was riding on establishing pipelines of aid that would include food, medicine and hospital supplies. His team’s hope is to rely on the Catholic relief agency Caritas and other volunteers to get the first deliveries started this week.

The convergence of the effects of American oil sanctions, which are expected to cut off significant sources of revenue for Mr. Maduro, and the attempted delivery of humanitarian aid will escalate the standoff. Economists believe fuel and food shortages are likely to worsen in the short run.

Starvation followed by aid. One cannot be too cynical here. Expect the worst. Guaidó is frightened of the colectivos:

Even if the armed forces were to throw their weight behind Mr. Guaidó, which would almost certainly spell the end of Mr. Maduro’s reign, Mr. Guaidó said he worried about the actions of the paramilitary forces that would be likely to stay loyal to Mr. Maduro.

“We cannot allow that to proliferate,” he said, drawing a parallel with the struggle that neighboring Colombia has faced from guerrilla and paramilitary groups over the years. “It could portend very serious consequences, even in the short term.”

Does the United States have the ability to mobilize death squads targeting the colectivos? I don't think so.

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.

Venezuela and the Zombie Politics of Death and Destruction

Sputnik has an interview with Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro which covers the U.S.-engineered coup underway. I've read the quotes about Venezuela possessing the world's largest proven oil reserves, but I had no idea about its abundance of other natural resources:

Sputnik: What do you think are the primary motives behind US actions in Venezuela? Oil?

Nicolas Maduro: There are a couple of goals. The primary goal is to get Venezuelan oil since we have the biggest reserves of certified oil in the world. We are certifying what is on track to become the biggest gold reserves in the world, we have a quarter of world's gas, we have vast reserves of diamonds, huge reserves of drinking water, aluminium, and iron. We are a power in the field of energy resources, natural resources. But there is a certain point that needs to be taken into consideration, which is more than 200 years old. Venezuela is the country where Bolivar was born, we have the strongest Bolivarian tradition here.

Over the course of 200 years, our revolutionary project has influenced Latin America and the countries of the Caribbean. They [the US authorities] fundamentally want to destroy the example, the idea, the spirit of Simon Bolivar. This is the second big reason — to kill this spirit — spiritually, culturally, politically. And to move without any resistance to neocolonialism in Latin America. They [the US] consider us their "backyard". And we say, we are not anyone's backyard, we are an independent republic. As you would say in Russia, we have a 200-year historical impulse, we are winning and we will win.

Yesterday Jacobin ended its silence on the coup. "The US Should Stay out of Venezuela" is an interview with former Ecuadorean foreign minister Guillaume Long. Long makes a couple of important points. The mainstream Western media makes it seem as if Maduro has no support; that Venezuelans uniformly favor the opposition. Long says that this is false, that there is still plenty of support for Chavismo. The country is split.

Long warns Europe of its drift to the coup camp:

As for the European Union, and its constituent powers, it is showing signs of adopting the Trump and Lima Group line. I think it is important that the European Union does not follow this path. Initially, they seemed to show restraint, but recent statements about recognizing Guaidó subject to elections within eight days fall in line with this hawkish approach.

Unfortunately, underlying all of this is a return to a kind of Cold War politics in Latin America. Bolsonaro has been the best example of this, saying he would not permit “communism” on the continent and vowing to rout out “the reds.” He said this with reference not only to the Workers’ Party (PT) and other left-wing parties in his own country, but also to left-wing governments like Venezuela and Cuba. This dynamic has been deepened by the United States’ intervention under Donald Trump and John Bolton, who have recently reintroduced figures like Elliott Abrams, one of the most notorious figures of the 1980s Contra dirty wars in Latin America, to the region’s politics.

I think Europe should be adopting a more nuanced approach which would allow it to play a more productive role in Venezuela, and indeed in Latin America, including even mediation some time down the road.

In the end, Long doesn't see Guaidó being able to topple Maduro, which means that the U.S. will escalate, which means death and destruction for Latin America:

It is hard to see how the Guaidó camp can succeed on its own, without the military and with society deeply divided. Even with the support of the Western powers. The escalation of sanctions is going to make the situation increasingly untenable. Economic sanctions always hurt the poorest in society and have been a substantial contributor to Venezuela’s economic crisis. They will also, in all likelihood, prevent the Maduro government from engineering the kinds of change that would increase its support base to pre-2015 levels.

The encouragement, particularly by the Trump administration, of further escalation in Venezuela is therefore extremely dangerous. It underestimates the resilience of the Chavista camp and rests on the idea of overwhelming popular support for the opposition. If Reagan-style policies from the 1980s are what the United States has in store for Venezuela, then it is very bad news for Venezuela and for Latin America as a whole.

Venezuela’s crisis has already produced a huge migratory crisis — and further escalation into violence would make this much worse. We have seen in Syria, Iraq, and Libya some of the potential outcomes in this regard. I don’t think even the continent’s right-wing governments have the stomach for that. This realization may eventually lead a growing number of Latin American states, including members of the Lima Group, to understand that the Venezuelan crisis should be resolved at the negotiating table.

The politics of death and destruction, this brain-dead march of the zombies, is on display in "Is There Room in 2020 for a Centrist Democrat? Maybe One or Two.," by Alexander Burns. The Democratic Party is fracturing. Both Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have captured the rank'n'file with promises to tax the rich. This is something the party's big donors cannot abide. The superannuated, Mike Bloomberg and Joe Biden, are being trotted out to defend a bankrupt neoliberal "centrism."

It is not going to work because the only audience that defense persuades is the 1%. Burns cites the polling on taxation:

Arkadi Gerney, a Democratic strategist who runs the Hub Project, a liberal advocacy group that has focused heavily on taxes, said that intensive issue polling had consistently found powerful support for raising taxes on the wealthy, not just among Democrats but also among working-class white voters in Mr. Trump’s base.

“The thing that was consistently the most popular in those experiments was: raise taxes on the rich,” Mr. Gerney said. “It is tapping into anger that a lot of people have.”

This anger is not going away. Mike Bloomberg complaining that Medicare For All will bankrupt the country after congress just gave trillions to corporations, Joe Biden saying he can reach across the aisle to work with Republicans -- that kind of hokum is not going to work.

The Attempted Coup in Venezuela: Which Side Are You On?

During clear "Which side are you on?" moments like these, and I am speaking of the U.S.-sponsored coup underway in Venezuela, it is interesting to click through the bookmarks on my web browser to see who is saying what. The Intercept and Jacobin have nothing to say as of this morning. Not surprising. The Intercept has long published Robert Mackey's regime-change talking points on Syria, while Jacobin stood on the sidelines when Trump bombed Syria last spring.

On the other hand, Consortium News has been good, as, of course, have been Craig Murray and Moon of Alabama.

A masterful write-up this morning can be found on World Socialist Web Site, Bill Van Auken's "US coup bid pushes Venezuela closer to invasion or civil war." The first WSWS posts on the coup were tainted by finger-pointing at Maduro's capitalist government; Van Auken manages to do without the petulant Trot predilection for ideological perfection.

In terms of the mainstream outlets, AP has an active "latest developments" story. Reuters provides up-to-date coverage, the latest dispatch being that Germany, France, Britain and Spain all plan to recognize the Guaido coup unless Venezuela schedules elections within eight days. Talk about blackmail.

The New York Times has been a beacon for the coup. Since Trump's election, the Gray Lady has refashioned itself as The Anti-Trump Times, unless he is bombing Syria or fomenting additional civil wars. Then the "newspaper of record" applauds the president for his statesmanship.

This morning the national edition of The New York Times features a frontpager by Nicholas Casey, "Within Venezuelan Military Ranks, a Struggle Over What Leader to Back," which is pure disinformation. The coup plan is obviously heavily dependent on the "bum rush" kabuki: There is so much opposition, both foreign and domestic, that Maduro has no other option but to resign, and Venezuela's military will deliver that message.

But it didn't work out that way. The military branded the coup "laughable." So onto Plan B: whip up the fiction that there is a rank'n'file officer rebellion brewing in Venezuela's armed services.

Unfortunately, Casey's reporting creates the opposite impression. There is no there there:

In 2017, [Lt. Hidalgo] said he was approached by a dissident military group called the Sword of God. Shortly afterward, he was captured by military intelligence agents but escaped to Brazil, he said.

Today, he works with Mr. Guillén, recruiting defectors who have left the country and have expressed interest in returning to start an uprising. During an interview, two of his comrades showed a spreadsheet with hundreds of names, ages, ranks and identification numbers — people they said were interested in joining them.

Among the documents were screenshots of what they said was a WhatsApp conversation with a young cadet in Venezuela expressing concern about whether he might be asked to put down the latest wave of protests.

“I’m not going to permit that someone fires on the people,” the message said. “The cadets are angry. We don’t want this government.”

A former American official said that these disgruntled military officers, along with thousands of other military-aged men who have fled the country, could present a serious challenge to Mr. Maduro if neighboring countries led by right-wing governments — like Colombia and Brazil — mobilized them, or allowed them to mobilize on their own.

Evidence of a rebellion within the military? WhatsApp screenshots and a quote from an anonymous U.S. ex-official.

Pathetic.

Alternative Media and the Coup in Venezuela

Recently I picked up Angus Mackenzie's Secrets again. I had started it several years ago and then set it down. The important message that Mackenzie has for his readers is that our current cult of government secrecy had its origins in the CIA's surveillance of the domestic alternative press in the Vietnam era, a.k.a., Operation MHCHAOS, sister to the FBI's COINTELPRO.

Yesterday morning I read the blog post from the alternative weekly newspaper The Stranger:

Venezuela has two presidents: President Nicolás Maduro has been in power for several years now and has overseen the complete implosion of the country’s economy. But they also have another president, Juan Guaidó, a 35-year-old National Assembly leader who has broad support among the people and the backing of powerful nations. One of those nations is the United States. After the Trump administration recognized Guaidó as Venezuela’s true president, Maduro tried to expel all U.S. diplomats and accused the U.S. of “gringo interventions and coups d’état.” Putin did more or less the same because Maduro is a Russian ally. Go figure.

Fifty years is a long time. So I guess it should be no surprise that an institution, the alternative weekly, which originally spread throughout the country because of opposition to the Vietnam War should now mindlessly parrot -- "Juan Guaidó, a 35-year-old National Assembly leader who has broad support among the people" [!] -- the legacy media and cheerlead another bloody foreign intervention. Nonetheless, it made me angry.

As Craig Murray writes in "The Coup in Venezuela Must Be Resisted":

Anybody who believes that a country’s internal democracy is the determining factor in whether the West decides to move for violent regime change in that country, is a complete idiot. Any journalist or politician who makes that claim is more likely to be a complete charlatan than a complete idiot. In recent years, possession of hydrocarbon reserves is very obviously a major factor in western regime change actions.

In Latin America over the last century, the presence of internal democracy has been much more likely to lead to external regime change than its absence, as maintenance of US imperialist hegemony has been the defining factor. That combines with oil reserves to make the current move a double whammy.

It is disheartening to see the Western “democracies” so universally supporting the coup in Venezuela. The EU in particular has leapt in to support Donald Trump in the quite ludicrous act of recognising corrupt Big Oil puppet Guaido as “President”. The change of the EU into full neo-con mode -so starkly represented in its bold support for Francoist violence in Catalonia – is what led me to reconcile with Brexit and a Norway style relationship.

When I was in the FCO, the rule on recognition was very plain and very openly stated – the UK recognised the government which had “effective control of the territory”, whatever the attributes of that government. This is a very well established principle of international law. There were very rare exceptions involving continuing to support ousted governments. The pre-1939 Polish government in exile was the most obvious example, though once Nazism was defeated Britain moved to recognise the Communist government actually in charge, to the fury of exiled Poles. I was involved in the question of the continued recognition of President Kabbah of Sierra Leone during the period in which he was ousted by military coup.

But I can think of no precedent at all for recognising a President who does not have and has never had control of the country – and has never been a candidate for President. This idea of the West simply trying to impose a suitably corrupt and biddable leader is really a very startling development. It is astonishing the MSM commentariat and political class appear to see no problem with it. It is a quite extraordinary precedent, and doubtless will lead to many new imperialist adventures.

One final thought. The right wing Government of Ecuador has been one of the first and most vocal in doing the West’s bidding. The Ecuadorean government has been colluding with the United States over the efforts to imprison Julian Assange, and at this very time has arranged for FBI and CIA personnel in Quito to take false and malicious statements manufactured by the Ecuador government in collaboration with the CIA, about Julian Assange’s activities in the Embassy in London.

Ecuadorean government documents had already been produced out of Quito, and shown to MI6 and CIA outlets like the Guardian and New York Times, purporting to show the diplomatic appointment of Julian Assange to Moscow in December 2017. I have believed throughout that these fake documents were most likely produced by Ecuador’s new CIA influenced government itself.

Today Ecuador, once a key part of the Bolivarian revolution, is simply a puppet of the CIA, voicing support for a US coup in Venezuela and working to produce fake testimony against Assange. I warn you firmly against giving credence to Luke Harding’s next “scoop” which will doubtless shortly emerge from this process.

To me it seems clear that the coup-planners had hoped to stampede the military into abandoning Maduro. That hasn't happened. The Times quotes a Venezuelan academic affiliated with a CIA-front called Citizen Control (the website, very slick, reminds me of the White Helmets website that appeared before that group became notorious) who outlines how the coup will proceed:

Rocío San Miguel, a defense analyst in Venezuela who studies the military, said it was notable that the military weighed in so long after Mr. Guaidó took the oath. For the time being, she said, commanders appeared to have concluded that Mr. Maduro has the upper hand.

While the armed forces “aspire to a peaceful resolution” to the crisis, they will “stick with the most concrete power structure, pragmatically,” said Ms. San Miguel, who runs an organization calledCitizen Control.

Ms. San Miguel said military leaders may ultimately flip. That, she added, would possibly happen if the rank and file were signaling clearly that they did not want to crack down on protesters.

“That would be the sign that Maduro has to leave,” she said.

Another Coup

The Unites States has initiated another coup. Yesterday on the streets of Caracas freshly-minted opposition leader Juan Guaidó appointed himself president of Venezuela. The White House promptly recognized the 35-year-old Guaidó as the legitimate president. The actual legitimate president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, responded by giving U.S. diplomats 72 hours to leave the country.

The U.S. State Department proclaims that it is not going anywhere. Maduro has said that the utilities to the U.S. embassy will be shut off. The U.S. has threatened a military intervention.

The reporting in The New York Times is an embarrassment, little more than cheerleading for yet another bloody civil war. Yesterday's "Who Is Juan Guaidó? Venezuela’s Young Opposition Leader," by Ana Vanessa Herrero and CIA asset Nicholas Casey, introduced Guaidó without answering the question in its title. You have to read Colonel Cassad, who is translated and re-posted by Niqnaq, to learn that Guaidó lives in Washington, D.C. He is basically an employee of the State Department.

We do learn from The Times story that Guaidó is a puppet of jailed opposition chief Leopoldo López.

In the latest dispatch ("After U.S. Backs Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s Leader, Maduro Cuts Ties," by Ana Vanessa Herrero), The Times manages this faint praise:

The opposition’s new leader, Mr. Guaidó, is an industrial engineer little known at home or abroad until this month, when he was sworn in as president of the National Assembly. His appointment reinvigorated that opposition-dominated legislative body, which had become ineffectual and deeply unpopular in recent years.

Moon of Alabama believes the coup will likely be a bust:

The military, which the U.S. already secretly tried to instigate stage a coup, is unlikely to do so. It does well under the socialists and has no interest in changing that. The U.S. also tried to incite Brazil and Columbia to invade their neighbor. But neither country is capable of doing such. The U.S. itself is also unlikely to invade. At the United Nation Venezuela has Russia's and China's support.

Like in 2017 we can expect several weeks of violent protests in Caracas, during which tens or hundreds of police and protester may die. There will also be a lot of howling from the U.S. aligned media. But unless there is some massive change in the political and power configuration, the demonstrations are likely to petter out.

Has the Trump administration a consistent game plan to achieve such a change in the balance of power? I for one doubt that.

China and Russia have made large investments in Chavista Venezuela. The U.S. has large investments in Venezuela pre-Chavez. Peace and tranquility are not in Venezuela's future. Its future looks a lot like Libya's or Syria's.