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US, Russia engage on Venezuela

By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | May 12, 2019

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov remarked last Thursday in Moscow that no contacts between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump are expected at the G20 summit in Japan on June 28-29. “An encounter is not planned so far and there is no talk about a meeting,” Peskov said.

This remark was made in the run-up to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s forthcoming visit to Russia on April 12-14. There has been much speculation in the US media that a summit meeting between Trump and Putin was likely among Pompeo’s talking points with the Russian leadership.

The ‘pull asides’ that Trump has been resorting to on the sidelines of international events to have a quick word with Putin have fallen into a pattern. Firstly, things remained strictly between the two statesmen at a personal level and secondly, Trump had to take care no feathers were ruffled back home while the Robert Mueller inquiry on ‘Russia collusion’ was going on. The arrangement left the Russian side unhappy, since the unstructured informal conversations eventually led to nothing. Russian-American relations continued to deteriorate.

Unsurprisingly, it has taken over one year for Pompeo to schedule his first visit to Moscow after he took over as state secretary in April 2018. (No US secretary of defence has yet visited Russia during the Trump presidency, either.) The proposal on Pompeo’s visit was hurriedly mooted by Washington just a few days ago, earlier this month. Therefore, if Pompeo’s visit is being treated on a low key, it could be that Moscow doesn’t expect anything much to come out of it.

The point is, although the Mueller inquiry could not prove any ‘collusion’ between Trump and the Kremlin, Russia still remains a toxic subject domestically in the US. For Trump’s detractors, he and Russia are often synonymous. The narrative that Trump and people around him were engaged in improper activities with Russia is not about to wither away and there are further moves likely in the Washington Beltway to find out about any other possible links between the Trump organisation and even his family and Russian entities or oligarchs.

Then, there is the vexed issue of the US sanctions against Russia, which inherently curb the scope for any meaningful expansion of ties. The post-2016 sanctions do not stem from executive orders but emanate out of laws passed by the US Congress, which takes away from Trump’s hands the powers to remove them — and, equally, they  are not even tied to specific Russian behaviours. The Russians understand well enough that the sanctions won’t be lifted for a long time.

Within such constraints, what is it that Pompeo’s visit hopes to achieve? At a state department briefing on May 10, an unnamed senior US official disclosed that arms control will top Pompeo’s agenda during the Russia visit. He said Trump seeks new agreements with Russia “that reflect modern reality. These agreements must include a broader range of countries and account for a broader range of weapon systems than our current bilateral treaties with Russia.” Besides, he said, “There will be a full range of global challenges to discuss, including Ukraine, Venezuela, Iran, Syria, and North Korea.”

However, there are enough signs that the main thing to watch could be whether a US-Russia deal on Venezuela becomes possible. Three weeks back, Fiona Hill, senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council in the White House, had visited Moscow for consultations. Amongst others, she met Putin’s foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov. According to media reports, Hill prioritised Venezuela as the most important topic in the US-Russia relations at the moment.

Arguably, more than oil or the Monroe Doctrine, what motivates Trump could be the impact of a regime change in Venezuela on the Hispanic voters in the 2020 presidential race in Florida. This impression would only have been reinforced last week when Pompeo met Lavrov on the sidelines of the Arctic Council meeting in Helsinki when, again, Venezuela figured prominently in their discussion.

With the recent US-backed coup attempt in Venezuela on April 30 having failed spectacularly, the probability of an outright US intervention is low — almost non-existent.  Trump would be reaching out for Russian help for a constitutional transition in Caracas that he could project as a ‘win’. Both Washington and Moscow are highly experienced in adopting a transactional approach to their relationship.

For Russia, on the other hand, its support for the Maduro government in Caracas is driven as much by financial and energy interests as by Moscow’s vision of a multipolar world order that is based on international law. As the Moscow-based analyst Fred Weir wrote recently, “while it may look and sound like a Cold War standoff, for Russia it is really about the simpler issue of establishing rules for competing big powers in a post-Cold War world. In Venezuela, and between the US and Russia generally, there is no sharp ideological divide over world-shaping doctrines like communism versus capitalism.”

Simply put, the Russian-American discord over Venezuela boils down to this: Washington wants Russia to stop ‘meddling’ in the Western Hemisphere, while Moscow would expect that the US also should stop fomenting anti-Moscow revolutions in Russia’s backyard. Otherwise, Russian experts acknowledge, it matters little to Moscow who rules in Caracas.

The influential strategic thinker in Moscow Fyodor Lukyanov told Weir, “The relationship that emerged between Russia and Venezuela was an accident. It was mainly the initiative of Hugo Chávez, who was seeking counterbalances to his country’s dependence on the US. Of course this was enthusiastically supported in Moscow. But it should be pointed out that at that time, the early 2000s, Chávez was rich and could pay for Russian arms and advice. Since Chávez died, and his successor has not proven so adept or popular, many in Moscow have been worried about our heavy investments in a potentially unstable regime.”

It is entirely conceivable that this complicated Russian-American tango of ‘meddling’ in the other side’s region could be in the first instance what prompted Washington to schedule Pompeo’s hurried visit to Russia to meet Lavrov and Putin in Sochi on April 14. Evidently, the Trump administration’s resuscitation of the Monroe Doctrine provides a diplomatic opening to Moscow, which of course continues to cherish the territories of the former Soviet republics as its own ‘sphere of influence’, too.

To quote Lukyanov again, “This citing of the Monroe Doctrine is something quite intriguing, and it would be warmly welcomed in Moscow if we thought the Americans took it seriously.” Indeed, some reports on Fiona Hill’s talks in Moscow last month hinted that she made a proposal to what roughly involved Russia letting up on Venezuela in exchange for some US concessions on Ukraine.

Be that as it may, significantly, Russian and Venezuelan foreign ministers met in Moscow on the eve of Lavrov’s meeting with Pompeo in Helsinki last week. What needs to be factored in is that although the coup attempt of April 30 failed, the situation in Venezuela is fluid. According to the Russian media, President Maduro has expelled dozens of army officers for their involvement in the coup, including high ranking officers.

To be sure, Moscow would know that a political solution is needed. The good part is that regime change is off the table as of now, which gives the respite to negotiate. After the meeting with Pompeo in Helsinki, Lavrov told the media that he’d rule out any foreign military intervention in Venezuela.

But the problem is that trust is lacking between Washington and Moscow. Russia cannot be sure that the American side will keep its side of the bargain — that is, assuming there is a will to negotiate at all. Again, there is the issue of US sanctions, which has crippled the Venezuelan economy over recent years. This is important because Russia’s exposure to Venezuela is huge. At the very least, Russian investments (loans) to Venezuela since 2005 amount to $17 billion.

May 12, 2019 Posted by | Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Trudeau continues push to overthrow Venezuela’s government

By Yves Engler · May 10, 2019

The effort Justin Trudeau is putting into overthrowing Venezuela’s government is remarkable.

During the past 12 days the prime minister has raised the issue separately with the leaders of the EU, Spain, Japan and Cuba. On Tuesday Trudeau had a phone conversation with European Council President Donald Tusk focused almost entirely on Venezuela, according to the communiqué .“Prime Minister Trudeau reiterated his support for Interim President Juan Guaidó”, it noted.

The next day Trudeau talked to Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez about ousting president Nicolás Maduro. Venezuela is the only subject mentioned in the official release about the call.

Venezuela was also on the agenda during Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to Ottawa on April 28. The post meeting release noted, “during the visit, Prime Minister Abe announced Japan’s endorsement of the Ottawa Declaration on Venezuela.” Produced at an early February meeting of the “Lima Group” of governments opposed to Maduro, the “Ottawa Declaration” called on Venezuela’s armed forces “to demonstrate their loyalty to the interim president” and remove the elected president.

On May 3 Trudeau called Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel to pressure him to join Ottawa’s effort to oust Maduro. The release noted, “the Prime Minister, on behalf of the Lima Group, underscored the desire to see free and fair elections and the constitution upheld in Venezuela.”

Four days later foreign affairs minister Chrystia Freeland added to the diplomatic pressure on Havana. She told reporters, “Cuba needs to not be part of the problem in Venezuela, but become part of the solution.”

Freeland was highly active after Guaidó, Leopoldo Lopez and others sought to stoke a military uprising in Caracas on April 30. Hours into the early morning effort Freeland tweeted, “watching events today in Venezuela very closely. The safety and security of Juan Guaido and Leopoldo López must be guaranteed. Venezuelans who peacefully support Interim President Guaido must do so without fear of intimidation or violence.” She followed that up with a statement to the press noting, “Venezuelans are in the streets today demonstrating their desire for a return to democracy even in the face of a violent crackdown. Canada commends their courage and we call on the Maduro regime to step aside now.” Then Freeland put out a video calling on Venezuelans to rise up and requested an emergency video conference meeting of the Lima Group. Later that evening the coalition issued a statement labeling the attempted putsch an effort “to restore democracy” and demanded the military “cease being instruments of the illegitimate regime for the oppression of the Venezuelan people.”

Three days later Freeland attended an emergency meeting of the Lima Group in Peru. The coalition released a communique after that get together accusing Maduro’s government of protecting “terrorist groups” in Colombia.

At another Lima Group meeting in Chile on April 15 Freeland announced the fourth round of Canadian sanctions against Venezuelan officials. Forty-three individuals were added to the list of 70 leaders Canada had already sanctioned. CBC reported that the latest round of (illegal) sanctions were designed to “punish Venezuelan judges who rubber-stamped Maduro’s moves” and “lower-ranking police officials who took prominent roles in suppressing the attempt by Venezuela’s opposition to bring humanitarian aid into the country on February 23.”

The Venezuelan government responded to Canadian sanctions by denouncing Ottawa’s “alliance with war criminals that have declared their intention to destroy the Venezuelan economy to inflict suffering on the people and loot the country’s riches.” A recent Center for Economic and Policy Research report gives credence to this perspective. Written by Jeffrey Sachs and Mark Weisbrot, “Economic Sanctions as Collective Punishment: The Case of Venezuela” concluded that 40,000 Venezuelans may have died over the past two years as a result of US sanctions.

The Liberals want us to believe their campaign to oust Venezuela’s government is motivated by support for democracy and human rights. Yet in recent weeks the Trudeau government has deepened ties to repressive Middle East monarchies, gutted its promise to rein in international abuses by Canadian mining companies’ and justified Israeli violence against those living in the open-air prison known as the Gaza Strip.

Last month members of Mouvement Québécois pour la Paix interrupted a speech by Freeland at the University of Montréal to criticize Canada’s policy towards Venezuela. Activists should be disrupting Freeland and other Liberal MPs public events across the country to demand an end to their effort to overthrow the government of Venezuela.

May 10, 2019 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

Trump and Putin Hold a 90-Minute Telephone Call, US Liberals Go Ballistic

By Robert Bridge | Strategic Culture Foundation | May 8, 2019

Like a pit bull with its favorite chew toy, the Democrats refuse to abandon the debunked ‘Russian collusion’ script, to the point where a simple phone call between Moscow and Washington triggers rabid media hysterics.

When tasked to cover last week’s telephone conversation between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, the left-leaning mainstream media had a golden opportunity to prove it had moved beyond partisan politics, above intrigue, and above subjective bias. Predictably, it failed the test miserably. What the media did prove, however, came as no surprise: it is totally incapable of casting a gaze beyond the debris-strewn battlefield field known as Russiagate and report on US-Russia relations in a dispassionate and honest manner.

Instead, it obsessed over petty details, like the duration of the phone call and the fact that it was initiated by Donald Trump instead of the Russians. “Trump Initiated Putin Call, And It Was 90 Minutes, Not 60,” a snooty headline in the Huffington Post screamed, much like dozens of other unhinged outlets as if the world’s myriad problems can be sorted out in an afternoon over Twitter.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told the journalists that Trump and Putin discussed a number of global flash points, predominantly Venezuela, where the US, Russia and even China are jockeying for position as a showdown continues between Washington’s man in Caracas, Juan Guaido and the embattled but duly elected President Nicolás Maduro. Given that the US has long considered Latin America its private hunting grounds makes it all the more unacceptable for Washington policymakers and the media that Moscow and Beijing are nosing around in their backyard.

With no loss of irony, which we’ll come to in a moment, the US pundit class assailed Trump for taking Vladimir Putin’s word at face value when he said that Russia, as quoted by Trump, “is not looking at all to get involved in Venezuela other than he’d like to see something positive happen for Venezuela.”

In one uniformed and very agitated voice, the media bloodhounds demanded to know how it was possible that Trump placed faith in Putin, when just days earlier his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed that Maduro was preparing to flee to Cuba – but was discouraged by Russia.

“He had an airplane on the tarmac, he was ready to leave this morning as we understand it and the Russians indicated he should stay,” Pompeo told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer with a remarkably straight face. “He was headed for Havana.”

Trump himself probably didn’t know exactly who or what to believe since just last month Pompeo the pompous practically fell out of his chair laughing as he told an audience from Texas A&M University about his heyday as CIA chief.

“I was the CIA director,” he began with a smile. “We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.”

When glory moments involve the lowest examples of human behavior it is painful to imagine what a bad day looks like. But I digress.

Regrettably, the young and impressionable students and faculty welcomed the creepy confession as some kind of a big joke, chortling as Pompeo resembled a frat boy discussing last night’s drunken endeavors. It may speak volumes about the American state of mind that no audience member thought to inquire as to what use Mr. Secretary of State was putting those “entire training courses” especially as the United States continues to employ psychological warfare against Maduro. Those methods include suggesting that top officials in his inner circle have secretly betrayed him, while disseminating the ‘news’ that he is about to flee. Such tricks from the regime change handbook may be giving the Venezuelan leader many a sleepless nights, but thus far it has failed to dislodge him from power.

May 8, 2019 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

CIA Intervention in Venezuela

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | May 6, 2019

As far as I know, no evidence has yet surfaced that definitively establishes direct CIA involvement in the U.S. regime-change operation in Venezuela. But it is a virtual certainty that the CIA is directly embroiled in the operation.

How do we know that? Because that’s what the CIA does. It’s what it has always done. Regime-change has always been one of the core missions of the CIA. If there is a U.S. regime-change operation, you can bet your bottom dollar that the CIA is at the center of it.

You can also be certain of something else: secrecy. The long-established modus of the CIA is to keep its role in regime-change operations secret, even if it has to lie or commit perjury to maintain that secrecy.

For example, think back to the Chilean coup in the 1970s.

When the Chilean people elected Salvador Allende president, the CIA immediately went into action. It began offering bribes to Chilean congressmen to get them to vote against Allende’s confirmation. (Allende had received only a plurality of the votes and, therefore, under the Chilean constitution the Chilean congress determined who was going to be president.)

It also orchestrated the kidnapping and assassination of Gen. Rene Schneider, who was the overall commander of Chile’s armed forces. He was standing in the way of a CIA-inspired military coup, which the CIA was secretly inciting within the Chilean national-security establishment.

In the months leading up to the coup, the CIA was doing its best to maximize the economic suffering of the Chilean people. GOP President Richard Nixon called it “making the economy scream” and it was intended to aggravate the economic crisis that had been brought on by Allende’s socialist policies. The CIA even tried to starve the Chilean people to death by bribing truckers who delivered food across the country to go on strike.

All of this CIA mayhem was kept top-secret. In fact, CIA and U.S. involvement in the 1973 coup was considered so secret that the CIA may well have played a role in the Chilean execution of American Charles Horman during the coup. He had inadvertently discovered strong circumstantial evidence of the U.S. role in the coup and, therefore, posed a grave threat to the secrecy of CIA involvement in the coup.

When CIA Director Richard Helms was summoned before Congress and asked about CIA involvement in the circumstances surrounding the coup, he committed perjury in order to keep the CIA’s role in the coup secret. When he was later convicted of lying to Congress, his CIA counterparts glorified him for having lied to Congress for the sake of “national security.”

It was no different with respect to the CIA’s regime-change operations against Cuba.

Although the CIA was planning and orchestrating the invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs through the use of Cuban exiles, the CIA was doing everything it could to hide its own role in the invasion.

Later, the secrecy was expanded to include the CIA’s partnership with the Mafia to achieve regime-change in Cuba through the assassination of Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

In 1954, the CIA successfully planned and orchestrated the regime-change operation against Guatemala’s democratically elected president, Jacobo Arbenz. Secrecy, once again, was the policy. It wasn’t until years later that the American people discovered the CIA’s role in the operation.

The year before, 1953, the CIA had done the same in Iran. In a coup in which the CIA’s role was kept secret at the time, the CIA successfully ousted the country’s democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, and replaced him with the Shah. The CIA then proceeded to train the Shah’s secret police force, the SAVAK, in the dark-side arts of torture, indefinite detention, and assassination in order to help him maintain his grip on power. Again, secrecy was the order of the day.

There is something else to keep in mind as the Venezuela regime-change operation continues to unfold — the short term vs. the long term.

In the short term, the CIA secretly celebrated its regime-change operations in Iran, Guatemala, and Chile. Medals were secretly passed out to CIA participants. The long-term results of those interventions, however, proved to be disastrous. Relations between Iran and the U.S. continue to suffer. Guatemala was ruled by a succession of brutal military dictatorships that threw the county into a 30-year-long civil war that killed more than a million people. Chile was ruled by a brutal military dictatorship for more than 15 years, one that rounded up, incarcerated, tortured, raped, or killed some 50,000 innocent people. Moreover, don’t forget the disastrous long-term results of the U.S. regime-change operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya.

Of course, the solution to all this mayhem is not to require the CIA to provide real-time transparency in its regime-change operations. It wouldn’t comply with such a law anyway, based on concerns for “national security.” The only solution is to abolish the CIA, the NSA, the Pentagon, and the military-industrial complex, restore America’s founding foreign-policy principle of non-interventionism, and restore a limited-government republic to our land.

May 7, 2019 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

US sanctions against Iran, Cuba, Venezuela breach human rights: UN expert

Press TV – May 7, 2019

A UN rights expert has slammed unilateral US sanctions against Iran, Cuba and Venezuela, saying the use of economic measures for political purposes violates human rights and international law.

In a statement released on Monday, Idriss Jazairy, UN special rapporteur on the negative impact of the unilateral coercive measures, warned that the US bans against the trio might precipitate man-made humanitarian catastrophes.

“Regime change through economic measures likely to lead to the denial of basic human rights and indeed possibly to starvation has never been an accepted practice of international relations,” he said.

“Real concerns and serious political differences between governments must never be resolved by precipitating economic and humanitarian disasters, making ordinary people pawns and hostages thereof,” he added.

Jazairy also voiced worries about Washington’s termination of sanctions waivers for major Iranian crude buyers, saying the move harms not only the Iranian nation, but also their trade partners.

“The extraterritorial application of unilateral sanctions is clearly contrary to international law,” he said.

“I am deeply concerned that one State can use its dominant position in international finance to harm not only the Iranian people, who have followed their obligations under the UN-approved nuclear deal to this day, but also everyone in the world who trades with them,” he noted, referring to the landmark 2015 agreement — officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Recently, the US ended six months of waivers which allowed Tehran’s eight largest customers to continue importing limited volumes. It also threatened the buyers of Iranian oil with sanctions if they fail to stop their purchases.

The anti-Iran American sanctions had been lifted under the JCPOA, but they returned in place last year when the US abandoned the multilateral accord.

Elsewhere in his statement, the UN rights expert denounced the economic hardship caused by the US sanctions in Cuba and questioned Washington’s claim that its sanctions against Venezuela were aimed at “helping” its people.

He further called on the international community to “challenge” Washington’s restrictive measures against sovereign countries which amount to “a threat to world peace and security.”

“I call on the international community to engage in constructive dialogue with Venezuela, Cuba, Iran and the United States to find a peaceful resolution in compliance with the spirit and letter of the Charter of the United Nations before the arbitrary use of economic starvation becomes the new ‘normal’,” Jazairy said.

May 7, 2019 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

How GMO Seeds and Monsanto/Bayer’s “RoundUp” are Driving US Policy in Venezuela

By Whitney Webb | MintPress News | May 6, 2019

CARACAS, VENEZUELA — As the political crisis in Venezuela has unfolded, much has been said about the Trump administration’s clear interest in the privatization and exploitation of Venezuela’s oil reserves, the largest in the world, by American oil giants like Chevron and ExxonMobil.

Yet the influence of another notorious American company, Monsanto — now a subsidiary of Bayer — has gone largely unmentioned.

While numerous other Latin American nations have become a “free for all” for the biotech company and its affiliates, Venezuela has been one of the few countries to fight Monsanto and other international agrochemical giants and win. However, since that victory — which was won under Chavista rule — the U.S.-backed Venezuelan opposition has been working to undo it. 

Now, with Juan Guaidó’s parallel government attempting to take power with the backing of the U.S., it is telling that the top political donors of those in the U.S. most fervently pushing regime change in Venezuela have close ties to Monsanto and major financial stakes in Bayer.

In recent months, Monsanto’s most controversial and notorious product — the pesticide glyphosate, branded as Roundup, and linked to cancer in recent U.S. court rulings — has threatened Bayer’s financial future as never before, with a litany of new court cases barking at Bayer’s door. It appears that many of the forces in the U.S. now seeking to overthrow the Venezuelan government are hoping that a new Guaidó-led government will provide Bayer with a fresh, much-needed market for its agrochemicals and transgenic seeds, particularly those products that now face bans in countries all over the world, including once-defoliated and still-poisoned Vietnam.

U.S.-Backed Venezuelan opposition seeks to reverse Chavista seed law and GMO ban

In 2004, then-president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, surprised many when he announced the cancellation of Monsanto’s plans to plant 500,000 acres of Venezuelan agricultural land in genetically modified (GM) soybeans. The cancellation of Monsanto’s Venezuela contract led to what became an ad hoc ban on all GM seeds in the entire country, a move that was praised by local farmer groups and environmental activists. In contrast to anti-GM movements that have sprung up in other countries, Venezuela’s resistance to GM crops was based more on concerns about the country’s food sovereignty and protecting the livelihoods of farmers.

Although the ban has failed to keep GM products out of Venezuela — as Venezuela has long imported a majority of its food, much of it originating in countries that are among the world’s largest producers of genetically modified foods — one clear effect has been preventing companies like Monsanto and other major agrochemical and seed companies from gaining any significant foothold in the Venezuelan market.

In 2013, a new seed law was nearly passed that would have allowed GM seeds to be sold in Venezuela through a legal loophole. That law, which was authored by a member of the Chavista United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), was widely protested by farmers, indigenous activists, environmentalists, and eco-socialist groups, which led to the law’s transformation into what has been nicknamed the “People’s Seed Law.” That law, passed in 2015, went even farther than the original 2004 ban by banning not just GM seeds but several toxic agrochemicals, while also strengthening heirloom seed varieties through the creation of the National Seed Institute.

Soon after the new seed law was passed in 2015, the U.S.-backed Venezuelan opposition led by the Roundtable of Democratic Unity (MUD) — a group comprised of numerous U.S.-funded political parties, including Guaidó’s Popular Will — took control of the country’s National Assembly. Until Venezuela’s Supreme Court dissolved the assembly in 2017, the MUD-legislature attempted to repeal the seed law on several occasions. Those in favor of the repeal called the seed bill “anti-scientific” and damaging to the economy.

Despite the 2017 Supreme Court decision, the National Assembly has continued to meet, but the body holds no real power in the current Venezuelan government. However, if the current government is overthrown and Guaidó  — the “interim president” who is also president of the dissolved National Assembly — comes to power, it seems almost certain that the “People’s Seed Law” will be one of the first pieces of legislation on the chopping block.

The AEI axis

Some of the key figures and loudest voices supporting the efforts of the Trump administration to overthrow the Venezuelan government in the United States are well-connected to one particular think-tank, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). For instance, John Bolton — now Trump’s national security advisor and a major player in the administration’s aggressive Venezuela policy — was a senior fellow at AEI until he became Trump’s top national security official. As national security adviser, Bolton advises the president on foreign policy and issues of national security while also advising both the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense. As of late, he has been pushing for military action in Venezuela, according to media reports.

Another key figure in Trump’s Venezuela policy — Elliott Abrams, the State Department’s Special Representative for Venezuela — has been regularly featured at AEI summits and as a guest on its panels and podcasts. According to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Abrams’ current role gives him the “responsibility for all things related to our efforts to restore democracy” in Venezuela. Other top figures in the administration, including Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, were featured guests at the AEI’s “secretive” gathering in early March. As MintPress and other outlets have reported, Guaidó declared himself “interim president” of Venezuela at Pence’s behest. Pompeo is also intimately involved in directing Trump’s Venezuela policy as the president’s main adviser on foreign affairs.

Other connections to the Trump administration include Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos who was previously on AEI’s board of trustees.

AEI has long been a key part of the “neoconservative” establishment and employs well-known neoconservatives such as Fred Kagan — the architect of the Iraq “troop surge” — and Paul Wolfowitz, the architect of the Iraq War. Its connections to the George W. Bush administration were particularly notable and controversial, as more than 20 AEI employees were given top positions under Bush. Several of them, such as Bolton, have enjoyed new prominence in Trump’s administration.

Other key Bush officials joined the AEI soon after leaving their posts in the administration. One such was Roger Noriega, who was the U.S. representative to the Organization of American States (OAS) during the failed, U.S.-backed 2002 coup and went on to be assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs from 2003 to 2005, where he was extremely influential in the administration’s policies towards Venezuela and Cuba.

Since leaving the Bush administration and promptly joining the AEI, Noriega has been instrumental in pushing claims that lack evidence but aim to paint Venezuela’s current President Nicolas Maduro-led government as a national security threat, such as claiming that Venezuela is helping Iran acquire nuclear weapons and hosts soldiers from Lebanon’s Hezbollah. He also lobbied Congress to support Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo López, Guaidó’s political mentor and leader of his political party, Popular Will.

Not only that, but Noreiga teamed up with Martin Rodil, a Venezuelan exile formerly employed by the IMF, and José Cardenas, who served in the Bush administration, to found Visión Américas, a private risk-assessment and lobbying firm that was hired to “support the efforts of the Honduran private sector to help consolidate the democratic transition in their country” after the U.S.-backed Honduran coup in 2009. In recent months, Noriega and his associates have been very focused on Venezuela, with Cardenas offering Trump public advice about how “to hasten Maduro’s exit,” while Rodil has publicly offered “to get you a deal” if you have dirt on Venezuela’s government.

While the AEI is best known for its hawkishness, it is also a promoter of big agricultural interests. Since 2000, It has hosted several conferences on the promise of “biotechnology” and genetically modified seeds and has heavily promoted the work of former Monsanto lobbyist Jon Entine, who was an AEI visiting fellow for several years. The AEI also has long-time connections to Dow Chemical.

The most likely reason for the AEI’s interest in promoting biotech, however, can be found in its links to Monsanto. In 2013, The Nation acquired a 2009 AEI document, obtained through a filing error and not intended for public disclosure, that revealed the think tank’s top donors. The form, known as the “schedule of contributors,” revealed that the AEI’s top two donors at the time were the Donors Capital Fund and billionaire Paul Singer.

The Donors Capital Fund, which remains a major contributor to the AEI, is linked to Monsanto interests through the vice chairman of its board, Kimberly O. Dennis, who is also currently a member of the AEI’s National Council. According to AEI, the National Council is composed of “business and community leaders from across the country who are committed to AEI’s success and serve as ambassadors for AEI, providing us with advice, insight, and guidance.”

Dennis is the long-time executive chairwoman of the Searle Freedom Trust, which was founded in 1988 by Daniel Searle after he oversaw the sale of his family pharmaceutical company — G.D. Searle and Company — to Monsanto in 1985 for $2.7 billion. The money Searle had made from that merger was used to fund the trust that now funds the AEI and other right-wing think tanks. Searle was also close to Donald Rumsfeld, who led G.D. Searle and Co. for years and was Secretary of Defense under Gerald Ford and George W. Bush. Searle was also a trustee of the Hudson Institute, which once employed Elliott Abrams.

After the family company — which gained notoriety for faking research about the safety of its sweetener, aspartame or NutraSweet — was sold to Monsanto, G.D. Searle executives close to Daniel Searle rose to prominence within the company. Robert Shapiro, who was G.D. Searle’s long-time attorney and head of its NutraSweet division, would go on to become Monsanto’s vice president, president and later CEO. Notably, Daniel Searle’s grandson, D. Gideon Searle, was an AEI trustee until relatively recently.

Why is a top donor to Marco Rubio increasing his stake in Bayer while others flee?

Yet, it is AEI’s top individual donor noted in the accidental “schedule of contributors” disclosure who is most telling about the private biotech interests guiding the Trump administration’s Venezuela policy. Paul Singer, the controversial billionaire hedge fund manager, has long been a major donor to neoconservative and Zionist causes — helping fund the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), the successor to the Project for a New American Century (PNAC); and the neoconservative and islamophobic Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), in addition to the AEI.

Singer is notably one of the top political donors to Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and has been intimately involved in the recent chaos in Venezuela. He has been called one of the architects of the administration’s current regime-change policy, and was the top donor to Rubio’s presidential campaign, as well as a key figure behind the controversial “dossier” on Donald Trump that was compiled by Fusion GPS. Indeed, Singer had been the first person to hire Fusion GPS to do “opposition research” on Trump. However, Singer has largely since evaded much scrutiny for his role in the dossier’s creation, likely because he became a key donor to Trump following his election win in 2016, giving $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund.

Hedge fund manager Paul Singer has raised millions for a pro-Marco Rubio super PAC. Moritz Hager | World Economic Forum

Singer has a storied history in South America, though he has been relatively quiet about Venezuela. However, a long-time manager of Singer’s hedge fund, Jay Newman, recently told Bloomberg that a Guaidó-led government would recognize that foreign creditors “aren’t the enemy,” and hinted that Newman himself was weighing whether to join a growing “list of bond veterans [that have] already begun staking out positions, anticipating a $60 billion debt restructuring once the U.S.-backed Guaidó manages to oust President Nicolas Maduro and take control.” In addition, the Washington Free Beacon, which is largely funded by Singer, has been a vocal advocate for the Trump administration’s regime-change policy in Venezuela.

Beyond that, Singer’s Elliott Management Corporation gave Roger Noriega, the former assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs under Bush, $60,000 in 2007 to lobby on the issue of sovereign debt and for “federal advocacy on behalf of U.S. investors in Latin America.” During the time Noriega was on Singer’s payroll, he wrote articles linking Argentina and Venezuela to Iran’s nonexistent nuclear program. At the time, Singer was aggressively pursuing the government of Argentina in an effort to obtain more money from the country’s prior default on its sovereign debt.

While Singer has been mum himself on Venezuela, he has been making business decisions that have raised eyebrows, such as significantly increasing his stake in Bayer. This move seems at odds with Bayer’s financial troubles, a direct result of the slew of court cases regarding the link between Monsanto’s glyphosate and cancer. The first ruling that signaled trouble for Monsanto and its new parent company Bayer took place last August, but Singer increased his stake in the company starting last December, even though it was already clear by then that Bayer’s financial troubles in relation to the glyphosate court cases were only beginning.

Since the year began, Bayer’s problems with the Monsanto merger have only worsened, with Bayer’s CEO recently stating that the lawsuits had “massively affected” the company’s stock prices and financial performance.

Forcing open a new market for RoundUp

Part of Singer’s interest in Bayer may relate to Venezuela, given that Juan Guaido’s “Plan País” to “rescue” the Venezuelan economy includes a focus on the country’s agricultural sector. Notably, prior to and under Chavismo, agricultural productivity and investment in the agricultural sector took a backseat to oil production, resulting in under 25 percent of Venezuelan land being used for agricultural purposes despite the fact that the nation has a wealth of arable land. The result has been that Venezuela needs to import much of its food from abroad, most of which originate in Colombia or the United States.

Under Chávez and his successor, Maduro, there has been a renewed focus on small-scale farming, food sovereignty and organic agriculture. However, if Maduro is ousted and Guaidó moves to implement his “Plan País,” the opposition’s coziness with foreign corporations, the interests of U.S. coup architects in Bayer/Monsanto, and the opposition’s past efforts to overturn the GM seed ban all suggest that a new market for Bayer/Monsanto products — particularly glyphosate — will open up.

South America has long been a key market for Monsanto and — as the company’s problems began to mount prior to the merger with Bayer — it became a lifeline for the company due to less stringent environmental and consumer regulations than many Western countries. In recent years, when South American governments have opened their countries to more “market-friendly” policies in their agricultural sectors, Monsanto has made millions.

For instance, when Brazil sought to expand biotechnology (i.e. GM seed) investment in 2012, Monsanto saw a 21% increase in its sales of GM corn seed alone, generating an additional $1 billion in profits for the company. A similar comeback scenario is needed more than every by Bayer/Monsanto, as Monsanto’s legal troubles saw the company’s profits plunge late last year.

With countries around the world now weighing glyphosate bans as a result of increased litigation over the chemical’s links to cancer, Bayer needs a new market for the chemical to avoid financial ruin. As Singer now has a significant stake in the company, he — along with the politicians and think tanks he funds — may see promise in the end of the anti-GM seed ban that a Guaidó-led government would bring.

Furthermore, given that Guaidó’s top adviser wants the Trump administration to have a direct role in governing Venezuela if Maduro is ousted, it seems likely that Singer would leverage his connections to keep Bayer/Monsanto afloat amid the growing controversy surrounding glyphosate. Such behavior on the part of Singer would hardly be surprising in light of the fact that international financial media have characterized him as a “ruthless opportunist” and “overly aggressive.”

Such an outcome would be in keeping with the increased profit margins for Monsanto and related companies that have followed its expansion into countries following U.S.-backed coups. For instance, after the U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014, the loans given to Ukraine by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank forced the country to open up and expand the use of “biotechnology” and GM crops in its agricultural sector, and Monsanto, in particular, made millions as the prior government’s ban on GM seeds and their associated agrochemicals was reversed. If Maduro is ousted, a similar scenario is likely to play out in Venezuela, given that the Guaidó-led government made known its intention to borrow heavily from these institutions just days after Guaidó declared himself “interim president.”

Feature photo | Luis Arrieta inspects a freshly planted coffee field that used to be a peach orchard in the coastal area of Carayaca on the outskirts of Caracas, Venezuela, Oct. 10, 2018 . Fernando Llano | AP

Whitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism.

Kieran Barr contributed to the research used in this report.

May 6, 2019 Posted by | Economics | , , , , | Leave a comment

Fake news alert: CNN says Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido ‘won election in January’

RT | May 6, 2019

CNN took the concept of “fake news” to a whole new level with a recent report on Venezuela, in which it claimed that citizens “chose” coup leader Juan Guaido over current president Nicolas Maduro in January “elections.”

In a report on Sunday’s deadly Venezuelan military helicopter crash, CNN wrote that “pressure is mounting” on Maduro to step down “following elections in January in which voters chose opposition leader Juan Guaido over him for president.”

The report was finally corrected on Monday after being published on Sunday afternoon and remaining unfixed overnight. It now reflects the fact that Guaido was not elected, but “declared himself interim president” in January.

A correction added to the bottom of the piece explains that the earlier version had “incorrectly described” the situation. Elections? Military coups? Really, who can keep up these days!?

Amazingly, the botched report which initially referenced these mysterious imaginary elections, was the product of work by no less than six journalists — two whose names appear on the main byline and four more listed as contributors at the bottom. Normal practice would see the piece run past a couple of editors too, before being published. That’s potentially eight pairs of eyes — and none of them managed to catch the glaring error.

A number of journalists and Twitter users called CNN out for the “blatant” lie and “shameful” and “terrible” reporting.

It wasn’t the first Venezuela-related embarrassment for CNN. Reporter Jake Tapper was called out on social media last week after he tweeted a link with a picture of opposition army defectors wielding guns to claim Maduro’s government “mows down citizens in streets.”

CNN likes to be known for its so-called adversarial journalism when it comes to the Trump administration, but so far, it seems fully on board with its regime change policies in Venezuela — although, even the White House hasn’t gone so far as to pretend fake elections took place in January.

May 6, 2019 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

“Just A Human Being”: Rachel Maddow’s Latest Resistance Hero

By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | May 6, 2019

This is where three years of failed Russiagate conspiracy theorizing and fixation leads you — into the arms of fanatical endless war proponent John Bolton: “John Bolton God bless you, good luck..” one can now hear on “resistance” network MSNBC prime time.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow is now championing neocon national security adviser John Bolton’s “humanity” given he apparently went loose cannon this past week, vowing to confront Russia over Venezuela even as his boss President Trump downplayed Moscow’s role in the crisis after a Friday phone call with Putin.

“This is what John Bolton, human being, thought his job was this week,” Maddow said on her show Friday night. Both Pompeo and Bolton had clearly gone a bit rogue with their overly bellicose Venezuela comments, while Trump appeared to be more restrained — and for Maddow this was of course cause for championing the neocon interventionist line: “Hey, John Bolton, hey, Mike Pompeo, are you guys enjoying your jobs right now?” she questioned.

On Friday Trump had said following the phone call, Putin is “not looking at all to get involved in Venezuela other than he’d like to see something positive happen in Venezuela, and I feel the same way.”

Maddow, who once prided herself on slamming and deconstructing Bush-era regime change wars, now finds Trump not jingoistic enough. She stridently questioned:

“How do you come to work anymore if you’re John Bolton? Right, regardless of what you thought about John Bolton before this, his whole career and his track record, I mean, just think of John Bolton as a human being. This is what John Bolton, human being, thought his job was this week.”

She further cut to a clip of Bolton criticizing Russia’s alleged military involvement in Venezuela to prop up Maduro, because apparently uber-hawk Bolton is now a “fearless truth-teller” in Maddow’s world.

“You thought that was your job,” Maddow said. “But it turns out not at all, not after Vladimir Putin gets done with President Trump today.”

It bears repeating that among the loudest right-leaning voices who joined the chorus of leading establishment Democrat Russiagaters included previously forgotten about neocons who were quickly rehabilitated by the “Resistance” — David Frum, Max Boot, Robert Kagan, Bill Kristol among them.

And then there was the nauseating phenomenon of watching liberals lionizing Trump-skeptical Republican Congressional leaders like Lindsey Graham, Jeff Flake, and the late Sen. McCain.

Because it’s awful, just awful! – that Trump might actually prefer peace to waging war in multiple places…

Restraint vs. war in multiple places? Maddow apparently advances the humanity of those advocating the latter.

It amounted to, at times, a picture of a President at odds with the officials who this week have called vociferously for a change in power in Caracas and have consistently declined to rule out a US military intervention.

Trump has become frustrated this week as national security adviser John Bolton and others openly teased military options and has told friends that if Bolton had his way he’d already be at war in multiple places. — CNN

And now, months into 2019, we get to hear Maddow waxing eloquent about the innocent “human side” of none other than John Bolton.

Of course, Maddow should first consider whether Bolton or his neocon ilk ever once paused to consider whether those they advocate dropping bombs on — from Iraq to Syria to Libya to Yemen to Gaza to Venezuela — are themselves actually human beings who simply wish to live out their daily lives in peace.

May 6, 2019 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Russophobia, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

‘A lot to learn from Iran’: Tehran helps Venezuela ‘survive’ under US sanctions, FM Arreaza says

RT | May 6, 2019

Iran, which has been living under tight US sanctions for several decades, is consulting the crisis-hit Venezuela on how to overcome economic blockade and boost production, Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza revealed.

For several decades, Tehran “has been growing its economy under the [US-imposed] sanctions in a bid to seek independence in various industries,” Arreaza told reporters during his visit to Moscow. Explaining further, he said Iran has indispensable experience in defying continuous US pressure.

We have a lot to learn from Iran. We have Iranian consultants in Venezuelan government that help us survive the blockade and boost production.

Iran has been suffering from US-imposed sanctions since the 1979 Islamic Revolution which toppled the pro-Western Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The restrictions targeted Iranian finances, exports and imports, as well as energy and the military.

Most of the sanctions that crippled Iran’s economy were lifted after Iran and the five world powers, the US, the UK, France, China and Russia, plus Germany, signed the 2015 nuclear deal. But the US has unilaterally quit the landmark accord under President Donald Trump who labeled it as “the worst deal ever,” and reimposed the sanctions last November.

Likewise, the US slapped Venezuela with restrictions targeting the Latin American country’s oil industry, including the major state-run company PDVSA. These sanctions were strongly condemned by Caracas which dismissed them as economic blackmail.

Iranian advisory aside, Venezuela is seeking alternative ways of dealing with friendly countries around the world, including China and Russia. “These methods and routes aren’t built up overnight, we need much time to create them,” he admitted.

May 6, 2019 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

A Nuclear War? Over Venezuela?

By Ron Paul | May 6, 2019

Is President Trump about to invade Venezuela? His advisors keep telling us in ever-stronger terms that “all options are on the table” and that US military intervention to restore Venezuela’s constitution “may be necessary.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was on the Sunday news programs to claim that President Trump could launch a military attack against Venezuela without Congress’s approval.

Pompeo said that, “[t]he president has his full range of Article II authorities and I’m very confident that any action we took in Venezuela would be lawful.” The man who bragged recently about his lying, cheating, and stealing, is giving plenty of evidence to back his claim.

The president has no Constitutional authority to start a war with Venezuela or any other country that has not attacked or credibly threatened the United States without Congressional approval. It is that simple.

How ironic that Pompeo and the rest of the neocons in the Trump Administration are ready to attack Venezuela to “restore their constitution” but they could not care less about our own Constitution!

While Washington has been paralyzed for two years over disproven claims that the Russians meddled in our elections to elect Trump, how hypocritical that Washington does not even hesitate to endorse the actual overturning of elections overseas!

Without Congressional authority, US military action of any kind against Venezuela would be an illegal and likely an impeachable offense. Of course those Democrats who talk endlessly of impeaching Trump would never dream of impeaching of him over starting an illegal war. Democrats and Republicans both love illegal US wars.

Unfortunately, Washington is so addicted to war that President Trump would likely have little difficulty getting authority from Congress to invade Venezuela if he bothered to ask. Just as with the disastrous US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the mainstream media is nothing but non-stop war propaganda. Even so-called progressives like Rachel Maddow are attacking the Trump Administration not for its reckless saber-rattling toward Venezuela but for not being aggressive enough!

The real lesson is that even a “Constitutional” war against Venezuela would not be a just war. It would be a war of aggression for which Americans should be angry and ashamed. But the mainstream media is pumping out the same old pro-war lies, while the independent media is under attack from social media companies that have partnered with US government entities to decide what is “fake news.”

The latest outrage in the mainstream media is over the most sensible thing President Trump has done in some time: last week he spent an hour on the telephone with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss, among other things, the dangerous situation in Venezuela.

While President Trump’s neocon advisors are purposely trying to position him so that war is the only option, we can only hope that President Putin was able to explain that the Venezuela problem must be solved by the Venezuelans themselves. Certainly the US, perhaps together with the Russians, could help facilitate discussions between the government and the opposition, but the neocon road to war will surely end up like all the other neocon wars: total disaster.

The media is furious that Trump dared to speak to Putin as the two countries increasingly face-off over Venezuela. The Democrats and neocons are pushing for a direct confrontation that may even involve Russia. Republicans agree. Do they really prefer thermonuclear war? Over Venezuela?

May 6, 2019 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

The New False Positive Being Planned Against Venezuela

Orinoco Tribune | May 5, 2019

The defeat of the military political operation of April 30, 2019 against the government of President Maduro, adds to the long list of failures that led to Ivan Duque accusing the Venezuelan government of protecting the ELN, in a desperate attempt to meet one of the two tasks that have been assigned to him within the uribista government: to close the roads to the one of peace in Colombia and to attack Venezuela.

Once again defrauded by the Venezuelan opposition, the United States continues giving more and more prominence to the Colombian right. The call of Ivan Duque to the Venezuelan military during that day, shows a clumsy despair before the incapacity of the Venezuelan right, which gave one more element to President Maduro to accuse the US government and Colombia of being behind the failed coup d’etat. But the Bolivarian triumph in this battle does not end with the war.

The new false positive, to link the Venezuelan government with the ELN, is still under construction.

ELN, A GUERRILLA ORGANIZATION THAT IS APPROACHING ITS 55TH ANNIVERSARY

The National Liberation Army (ELN) and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) were born in 1964 while Raúl Leoni occupied the presidency of Venezuela. Not even the most tendentious versions of history mention any possibility that Leoni’s government was behind its founding, nor any political group of the Venezuelan left, since all the existing ones for that moment were less strong than those that existed. They gave rise to the Colombian guerrillas during the last half of the 20th century.

Since its inception, both guerrilla groups have operated throughout the country, which obviously includes the territories of the porous border with Venezuela.

After the FARC-EP secretariat signed the peace agreements, and with it the demobilization of most of its troops, the ELN became the largest and oldest guerrilla group on the continent. The Uribista government of Duque, decided to breach and tries to modify the agreements with the FARC-EP and got up from the dialogue table with the ELN, that is, closed any near possibility of achieving a negotiated political solution to the conflict. And at the same time, it has made repression and judicialization the only government response to popular demands, while paramilitaries and the Public Force execute a new genocide against leaders and social leaders.

The reality is obvious, in Colombia there is no peace , no post-conflict and is on the verge of a humanitarian crisis. In more than five decades of confrontation, the Colombian state has not had the true political will to solve the social conflict generated by the war and its Public Force, has not managed to defeat the ELN militarily, not even with the support of paramilitary forces or the contest of the US military institutions. They have more than 16 facilities of different types in the country. On the contrary, on more than one occasion, it has been forced to negotiate. So far, the ELN has held dialogues with five presidents and seven Colombian governments.

The first dialogues had the support of Carlos Andrés Pérez, who was in his second term as president of the then Republic of Venezuela and later with the support of the governments of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, whose interest in the peace of Colombia has been evident.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PROJECTION OF THE URIBE GOVERNMENT

The Colombian government refuses to assume that the entire state is in check because of the penetration of drug trafficking into its institutions. The production of cocaine and the planting of coca have a constant increase in Colombia and, according to Donald Trump himself, had never been as high as since Ivan Duque’s presidency. But the Uribe government insists on attributing to the Venezuelan government, the status of “narco-government” that actually belongs to him, and now he blames it for his own inability to win a war that has lasted more than half a century.

The caricature of President Maduro that has been built by media corporations and the voices of the Colombian government, as a fool without popular support that only remains in the presidency with the support of the FANB, is opposed to that of the man they accuse of being behind all the struggles of the Colombian people and now, even to sustain a guerrilla organization that was born when he was only one year old and since then has remained active uninterruptedly.

What looks like typical psychological projection, is actually a new attempt to generate a false positive – as denounced by the Venezuelan chancellor – but to succeed they need to erase history.

FROM IRAN TO VENEZUELA

A few days ago, Donald Trump announced that the United States would declare Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a “foreign terrorist organization,” as indeed it happened. Since this military force is the institution of an independent republic, recognized by the United Nations, this measure has no precedents and sows a very bad precedent as it is a violation of international law and the most elementary diplomatic norms.

The ELN, for its part, has been included in the list of foreign terrorist organizations designated by the US for many years , so it is not unreasonable to assume that, in addition to the argument to justify the involvement of Colombia in the first war between countries of the region of the 21st century, another dangerous objective of this attempt to link the Venezuelan government with the Colombian guerrilla organization, could be to declare the FANB as a foreign terrorist organization, given that they have not managed to co-opt, divide or defeat it.

If the internal consensus were achieved or if the pressure from the United States forced it, it would be expected that before August 2019 the Colombian state will add to its terrible history of wars, a costly and complicated military aggression against Venezuela.

Coincidentally, a few hours after the failed coup d’etat in Venezuela, Trump decided to change his ambassador in Bogotá, Kevin Whitaker, to post Philip Goldberg, whose record can give clues to the new strategies that will be directed from Colombia against Venezuela.

Goldberg was expelled from Bolivia in 2008 for allegations of conspiracy made by President Morales, he was recently in charge of business in Havana, he was also part of the diplomatic corps in Kosovo, he is an intelligence specialist and was the Coordinator in Bogotá of the terrible Plan Colombia.

Therefore, while it is important to disprove the false opinion matrices and investigate the non-governmental organizations that sustain these matrices with pseudo-investigations -even some linked to sectors that call themselves the left, Venezuela must continue preparing to respond in other areas because the lies will keep coming out of the laboratories without ceasing and will be as diverse as the tactics require; what has not changed much in the last two centuries are the strategic objectives of the United States on the region and the world.

Source: Mision Verdad

Translated by: JRE\EF

RELATED CONTENT: Venezuelan Military Deserters Removed From Hotel in Cúcuta for Late Payments

May 5, 2019 Posted by | Deception | , , , , | Leave a comment

Anti-War Voices on Both Sides Warn of Coming CIA Provocation to Kill Guaidó, Blame Maduro

By Whitney Webb | MintPress News | May 3, 2019

Prominent American anti-war figures from across the ideological spectrum are warning that the Trump administration may soon turn on Juan Guaidó — the man they recognize as Venezuela’s interim president — in order to justify military intervention in Venezuela.

These warnings followed Guaidó’s failed attempt to lead a military uprising on Tuesday, which analysts characterized as a desperate move, with Guaidó’s parallel government having failed to gain any significant traction in Venezuela since late January. With Guaidó now quickly losing legitimacy and momentum since Tuesday’s failed coup, it has become increasingly probable that his political patrons — the United States — may soon turn on him, as any harm done to him could be blamed on Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, which would allow the U.S. government to justify aggressive action against the Maduro-led government.

One of the first prominent anti-war voices to raise concern that the U.S. government, particularly the CIA, may now see Guaidó as more valuable dead than alive was Daniel McAdams, executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity and co-host of the Ron Paul Liberty Report, with the former congressman, presidential candidate and well-known libertarian. During Tuesday’s edition of the Liberty Report, Paul raised concern that a provocation could be used to push for foreign (i.e., U.S.) military intervention in Venezuela:

The big danger is a hard war breaking out. I’d still bet it won’t be too bad, with thousands of troops moving. But it could be a guerrilla war or something like that. If there is a false flag or some important official on either side gets killed, you can’t tell what might happen.”

McAdams responded, pointing out that Guaidó himself could soon become such a target for a provocation:

He [Guaidó] has been a kind of a hapless figure so far. He calls for mass protests and no one shows up. I don’t think he realizes right now that he is actually now worth more dead than alive not only to the CIA, but also to his own opposition people. A shot in the crowd or something like that to take Guaidó out. It might shock you, Dr. Paul, but the CIA is pretty good at this kind of things.”

May 4, 2019 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism | , , | Leave a comment

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