Venezuela

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Re: Venezuela

Post by blindpig » Fri Apr 03, 2020 1:01 pm

Message from Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to the people of the world
By President Nicolás MaduroApr 02, 2020

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Caracas, 29th March 2020

To the peoples of the world,

In greeting you with affection, I take the liberty of addressing you on the occasion of denouncing the severe events taking place against the peace and stability of Venezuela, at a time when the concern of the States and Governments should be focused on the protection of the life and health of their citizens, due to the acceleration of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As it is publicly known, last March 26, the government of the United States announced a very serious action against a group of high officials of the Venezuelan state, including the Constitutional President of the Republic, Nicolás Maduro.

This action consisted in the presentation of a formal accusation before the American judicial system, which is not only illegal in itself, but also seeks to support a false accusation of drug trafficking and terrorism, with the sole objective of simulating the alleged prosecution of the Venezuelan authorities.

This American performance includes the unusual offer of an international reward to anyone who provides information about the President and the high Venezuelan officials, leading to a dangerous moment of tension in the continent. I therefore consider it necessary to make an account of the facts, which reveal the perverse plot behind the accusations of the Department of Justice.

Just one day before, on March 25, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela denounced before national and international public opinion the development in Colombian territory of an operation aimed at attempting against the life of President of the Republic Nicolás Maduro Moros, his family members and high State officials; as well as attacking civil and military objectives in our country, accusing Mr. Cliver Alcalá, a retired general of the Venezuelan armed forces, of being the military chief of that operation.

This denunciation was made with all responsibility, after a control operation in the road to the north of Colombia, near the border with Venezuela, was announced on March 24, in which the police of that country captured a batch of war weapons in a civilian vehicle.

The investigations revealed that it was a sophisticated arsenal aimed at a group of former Venezuelan and Colombian military and paramilitary personnel who were training in camps located in Colombian territory.

On March 26, the aforementioned Cliver Alcalá, gave a statement to a Colombian media outlet — from his residence in the city of Barranquilla, Colombia — in which he confirmed his participation in the reported events, confessing to being the military leader of the operation and revealing that the weapons were purchased by order of Mr. Juan Guaidó, national deputy, who calls himself interim President of Venezuela and serves as Washington’s operator in the country. He also confirmed that the weapons were intended to carry out a military operation to assassinate senior members of the Venezuelan State and Government and to produce a coup d´état in Venezuela.

Mr. Alcalá clarified that the weapons were purchased through a contract signed by himself, Mr. Juan Guaidó, U.S. advisors and Mr. Juan José Rendón, political advisor to President Iván Duque, and carried out with the knowledge of Colombian government authorities.

In the face of this confession, the unusual response of the United States government has been the publication of the accusations mentioned at the beginning of this letter, with the extravagant inclusion of the name of Mr. Alcalá, as if he were part of the Venezuelan authorities and not a mercenary hired by the United States to carry out a terrorist operation against the Venezuelan government.

As a demonstration of this statement, I need no more proof than to mention the alleged capture of Mr. Alcalá by Colombian security forces and his immediate surrender to U.S. DEA authorities, in a curious act in which the prisoner, without handcuffs, was shaking hands with his captors, right in front of the stairs of the plane that would take him on a special VIP flight to the United States, which shows that in reality this whole set-up is about the rescue of someone they consider a U.S. agent.

It must be stressed that the unsuccessful armed operation was originally designed to be executed at the end of this month, while all of Venezuela is fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. Actually, this is precisely the main battle that concerns humanity today.

A battle that our nation is successfully waging, having managed to stop the contagion curve, reinforcing health provisions and keeping the population in a massive quarantine, with a low number of positive cases and deaths.

For all these reasons, the Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela alerts our brothers and sisters of political organizations and social movements around the world about the reckless and criminal steps being taken by the administration of Donald Trump which, despite the frightening acceleration of the growth of COVID-19 affecting the American people, seems determined to deepen its policy of aggression against sovereign states in the region, and especially against the Venezuelan people.

During the pandemic, the U.S. government, instead of focusing on policies of global cooperation in health and prevention, has increased unilateral coercive measures, has rejected the requests from the international community to lift or make flexible medicines, medical equipment and food.

At the same time, it has banned humanitarian flights from the United States to Venezuela to repatriate hundreds of Venezuelans trapped in the economic and health crisis in the northern country.

By denouncing these serious facts, Venezuela ratifies its unwavering will to maintain a relationship of respect and cooperation with all nations, especially in this unprecedented circumstance that obliges responsible governments to work together and put aside their differences, as is the case with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Under such serious circumstances, I request your invaluable support in the face of this unusual and arbitrary persecution, executed through a new version of that rancid McCarthyism unleashed after World War II. At that time, they willingly labeled their adversaries as Communists in order to persecute them; today they do so by means of the whimsical categories of terrorists or drug traffickers, without having any evidence whatsoever.

Condemning and neutralizing today these unjustifiable attacks against Venezuela will be very useful to prevent Washington from launching similar campaigns against other peoples and governments of the world tomorrow. We must adhere to the principles of the United Nations Charter, to prevent excessive unilateralism from leading to international chaos.

Brothers and sisters of the world, you can be absolutely sure that Venezuela will stand firm in its fight for peace and that, under any circumstances, it will prevail. No imperialist aggression, however ferocious it may be, will divert us from the sovereign and independent path that we have forged for 200 years, nor will it distance us from the sacred obligation to preserve the life and health of our people in the face of the frightening global pandemic of COVID-19.

I take this opportunity to express my solidarity and that of the people of Venezuela, to all the people who today also suffer consequences from the effects of the pandemic. If we are obliged to draw any lesson from all this difficult experience, it is precisely that only together we can move forward. The political and economic models that advocate selfishness and individualism have demonstrated their total failure to face this situation. Let us firmly advance towards a new World with Justice and social equality, in which the happiness and fulfillment of the human being is the center of our actions.

I appreciate the solidarity that you have permanently expressed towards my country and my people, denouncing the criminal blockade to which we and many other nations are subjected. I take this opportunity to reiterate my respect and affection, and to invite you to continue united, plowing a future of hope and dignity.

https://www.liberationnews.org/message- ... rationnews
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Re: Venezuela

Post by blindpig » Tue Apr 07, 2020 12:44 pm

Catastrophe in Venezuela? Psychological Warfare and Fake News in Times of Pandemic
April 6, 2020
By Mision Verdad – April 4, 2020

Since Europe became the focus of Covid-19 and exposed the fragility of its health systems, it began a race to keep Venezuela on the media agenda using the “humanitarian crisis” narrative and its inability to be sustained upon the arrival of the pandemic.

All the “analyses” prior to the detection of the first infections, on March 15, were based on an imaginative exercise in which an unprecedented health catastrophe loomed. The political crisis was the most powerful argument that supported the narrative of the forced migration of millions of Venezuelans last year, not to mention the blockade and unilateral coercive sanctions that have been deepening in recent years as the main cause of the collapse of the services in Venezuela.



In the country, this campaign of terror tried to be capitalized by the opposition through the parallel government of Guaidó, whose only base of operations is really virtual in order to sustain an international facade.

The initial campaign

These media, journalists and other political operators have previously begun to take the pulse of the news through rumors. The first case of Latin American coronavirus was registered in Brazil on February 26, but a month earlier they had attributed a case to Venezuela.

More than real concern about the situation that had to be faced, the anti-Chavista info-mercenary apparatus seemed to be rubbing its hands at a possible collapse of the health system. ” What will happen to the coronavirus in Venezuela? ”,“ Venezuelan doctors fear the worst with the arrival of the coronavirus ”,“ Venezuela’s challenges in front of the coronavirus ”, among other similar ones, were headlines that circulated in international media before and after the cases were confirmed.

Before the World Health Organization (WHO) decreed the new coronavirus as a global pandemic, Venezuela established an epidemiological cordon in ports and airports in the country, after learning of the first case in Latin America (in Brazil).

The media war intensified when the first cases of Covid-19 in Venezuela were verified, this time through Juan Guaidó himself.

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Guaidó’s team launched their own digital platform where they sell false information about what is happening in Venezuela around the coronavirus. Photo: Archive

After President Maduro’s first press conference announcing the first infection, the self-proclaimed tried to put together an operating theater where he would “take care” of everything related to the pandemic through the social networks.

Basically, his “orders” consisted of repeating the measures adopted by the government of President Nicolás Maduro through social networks, the only bastion that he has to project himself.



Guaidó’s “measures” included social distancing and the suspension of work and academic activities which were taken into account in the context of sanctions that prevent the operation of the State’s services and care, as well as taking into account the big European picture, where the pandemic was wreaking havoc.

In this absurd competition, the only recurring refrain was to point out the state’s inability to face the tragedy to come, in addition to saying that it had a group of experts and the true balance of those infected. So far it has not shown the “real” figures it claims to have and the means it used to get them.

By all accounts, a media hoax for merely politicking purposes.

False cases

The week in which the first Covid-19 contagions were detected, a video of a nurse at the General Hospital of Guatire went viral, denouncing the lack of inputs and isolation of 11 people for suspected infection.

Considering the seriousness of the case, the health authorities came and dismantled the false accusations of the nurse. Similar situations occurred in other parts of the capital and all turned out to be false.

Another emblematic case consisted of trying to link the alleged disappearance of the president of the National Constituent Assembly (ANC), Diosdado Cabello, to a quarantine due to contagion of coronavirus. This news was denied with his appearance on his regular TV show on Wednesday nights.

As the days passed, more cases appeared that were reported at the time. The image of Guaidó was becoming a joke as the Bolivarian government was succeeding in containing the virus and in social protection for the population.

The effectiveness of the state against psychological warfare

In addition to social quarantine, the Patria system served as a powerful tool that served to systematize possible new cases of contagion. Through a survey, this technological platform that has more than 18 million Venezuelans registered, has been helping to “flatten the curve.”

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Nicolás Maduro’s government has been supporting a set of measures to “flatten the curve” in this context of a pandemic. Photo: Minci

Meanwhile, Juan Guaidó has been fading from social networks and is only supported internationally by corporate media.

Two weeks after the quarantine, he still predicted the “collapse”, arguing that in a few weeks Venezuela would be the country with the most cases of coronavirus. This fact contrasts with the reality offered by the contagion map in the region, where the country appears as one of the countries with the lowest rate of infection, thanks to the appropriate measures applied to contain the pandemic.

As an alternative to the state apparatus, the virtual president “launched” the José María Vargas Plan, an alternative that supposedly would face the crisis based on a study by its “experts”. Nothing is yet known of the implementation of this plan.

In this new scenario, he has also sought alternative ways to get around the criminal blockade of the United States. Recently, the Maduro government formally requested a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the amount of 5 billion dollars to strengthen the health system.

Along the same lines, Venezuela received help from Cuba with the arrival of a medical delegation “that has had successful experience in combating the coronavirus”, and from China, which has sent three flights with medicine, specialists and other supplies to fight the emergency.

To try to gain ground in the media, Guaidó tried to star in the moment by requesting the “cessation of usurpation” and offering himself as the only legal alternative to receive the IMF loan, being the only internationally recognized “authority”.

Almost a month after quarantine, a comparative exercise is not necessary, nor should one go too deeply into comparing the effectiveness between the government of President Nicolás Maduro and the virtual presidency of Juan Guaidó to contain the pandemic.

What is clear so far is the enormous effort that has been made to prop up the narrative that Venezuela is a time bomb for the pandemic to wreak havoc. This discourse coincides with the image that was intended to be projected last year: the country as a focus of disturbance in the region.

Despite the fact that the consequences of not applying measures in time are already being felt in Brazil, Ecuador, Chile and other South American countries, they forcefully state that “the coronavirus catastrophe has an epicenter in Venezuela, forcing the international community to look towards there”.

Undoubtedly, what underlies psychological operations through the media is that the exit from Chavismo has not stopped being on the agenda, and a global pandemic, in this case, too, is a useful resource to promote it.

Source URL: Medium / Mision verdad

Translated by JRE/EF

https://orinocotribune.com/catastrophe- ... -pandemic/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Venezuela

Post by blindpig » Thu Apr 09, 2020 1:36 pm

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Adolf Trump Goes for Venezuela: A Jump into Nothingness?
April 8, 2020
By Stella Calloni on April 4, 2020

In the midst of a desolate scenario, when the United States has become the country with the highest number of those infected by the corona virus, President Donald Trump and his team of serial criminals like Elliott Abrams, Cuban-American Mauricio Claver-Carone, Marco Rubio and others, announced that their country and 22 other nations would launch a far-reaching operation against drug trafficking in the Western Hemisphere, deploying naval and air force military reinforcements in the Caribbean Sea and the South Pacific.

From Venezuela, President Nicolas Maduro denounced this situation to the world, in an extraordinary letter to the governments while the majority of the countries of the world and even the United Nations are requesting that the United States lift the sanctions against Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and other countries, in view of the very serious emergency of a pandemic of this magnitude.

So far there has been no positive response and the most serious thing is that the threatening military maneuver is not stopping and in the last hours journalists and humanitarian agencies in Colombia have been denouncing the presence of US troops in their country where there are 9 US military bases.

Holman Morris, director of Colombia’s channel three, warned this weekend that U.S. troops and helicopters have arrived at the Colombian-Venezuelan border in the Santander area, posing a scenario of invasion and war at a time when United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for an “immediate global ceasefire in all corners of the world” warning of what any act of war could mean for the most vulnerable and war-torn countries where there has been a collapse in health systems, while COVID 19 is claiming thousands of lives daily.

In the midst of the pandemic, a U.S. aircraft carrier, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, is being grounded in Guam, with 5,000 crew members, 10 percent of whom are affected by Covid 19, after its commander pleaded with his superiors for the sick to be released. The carrier’s captain, Brett Crozier, told the Pentagon that the coronavirus was spreading rapidly on board and asked for help in quarantining his crew. In his letter released initially by the San Francisco Chronicle, Crozier wrote “the spread of the disease is on the move and is accelerating. We are not at war. Sailors don’t need to die,” he warned. The sick sailors were brought off the ship but Crozier was relieved from his post for the way he handled the situation. As he was leaving the ship to fly back to Washington, his sailors cheered and chanted his name out of gratitude for his brave gesture. The Pentagon was also critical of Crozier for releasing the number of infections.

“For security reasons, we will not report the total number of affected, service members in the individual unit, base or Combatant Command,” declared U.S. Defense Department spokeswoman Alyssa Farah at the time, while also reporting that more than 2,000 of New York’s 40,000 police officers are infected. There is no protection for anyone.

How many sick or dead soldiers will the U.S. hide right now? How many black bags will go under ground in that country, without the families knowing about it?



LATIN AMERICA UNDER THREAT OF WAR

In Latin America, the United States has imposed four coups d’état in this century and validated illegal presidents, such as Lenin Moreno of Ecuador, who ascended to government in the name of a political party and a program, which he ignored just days after taking office, violating the popular will, as Sebastián Piñera does, harshly repressing the longest popular uprising of all time in Chile, both constituting new forms of dictatorship and causing dozens of deaths, injuries and prisoners.

In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro was elected under a de facto government, without international observation and keeping the candidate that the polls predicted as the winner, Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva, in prison under false accusations after President Dilma Rousseff was impeached in 2016 – with the complicity of the justice system, parliament and the media. These elections cannot be considered free.

In Honduras, the current government is an unbridled continuity of the dictatorship that was imposed with the coup d’état against President Manuel Zelaya in June 2009. The murders of leaders, indigenous journalists and peasant leaders are daily occurrences. The coup d’état in Paraguay in 2012 that overthrew President Fernando Lugo in hours also allowed a return to the longstanding dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner through personalities who were associates of the dictator or his descendants.

The 2004 coup against Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide, kidnapped by US troops and taken out of his country, the poorest and most punished in Latin America and the Caribbean, was left in eternal chaos, constituting another crime against humanity against a defenseless people. In Bolivia, the self-proclaimed President Jeanine Añez, whose “presidential” sash was placed on her by the military coup leaders, violated all the rules after the coup against President Evo Morales, in which the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS) Luis Almagro, was a chief protagonist (Nov 2019).

And what about that scandalous character Juan Guaidó, who, at the height of his delirium and imperial decline, proclaimed himself on a Caracas street as president in charge of Venezuela, by order of the Trump government? A president without a country, collecting large sums of money from the world and asking for the invasion of Venezuela, because otherwise he knows that he would never be elected by the people of that country, not even by the opposition to Maduro’s government.

In fact, the de facto or subjugated governments of the continent, which respond to the US administration, are showing total disregard for their people in the face of the pandemic that is ravaging the world. We see this in Brazil, Ecuador, Chile, Colombia, Bolivia, Honduras and others where the population has been deprived of its essential rights.

Meanwhile, Washington is waging a war, covertly and not so much, against countries such as Mexico, Argentina and other Caribbean countries for trying to find their own way. At this time and with these circumstances, the pandemic is spreading equally against everyone and it is evident the differences with which the governments that can still decide their own strategies to face the tragedy.

For its part, the United States, while creating an almost unbelievable war front, is leaving the American population to its fate, knowing that thousands will die in the streets, since millions of inhabitants are not covered by any social security, nor do they have access to medicine or equipment, nor sufficient food, while the private health care system is geared towards the privileged. This is what the capitalist system looks like in this turbulent cycle, which also indicates its collapse.

Ten million unemployed in recent days most of them will become totally unprotected social disappearances, without social security, without public hospitals and without labor laws, to favor the big profit and exploiting companies.

Trump, besides admitting, with a chilling coldness that if the deaths by COVID-19 reach 200,000, “we will have done a good job”, announced the deployment of troops, ships and aircraft carriers in clear position to invade Venezuela, under the false argument of the fight against drug trafficking, which they themselves administer. The plan is also to go through Cuba, Nicaragua and subjugate the rest of the countries in the region, imagining that this could save their electoral campaign and cover up other failures of their administration in the midst of negotiations between Russia and Saudi Arabia for oil. All the while continuing the antiquated media campaigns against China and the Russian Federation as those countries are sending tons of aid, scientists and doctors to countries around the world including the US. This enormous contradiction cannot be hidden anymore. Nor can we hide the solidarity without borders of a small but immense country like Cuba.

The failure to stop the military operation in the Pacific and the Caribbean that also threatens Central America, Mexico and the rest of the region and especially all countries where there are military bases and establishments of the United States is another leap into the breach of Trump in these circumstances.

Their delirious fundamentalism believes that there is still time for its dreamed global governance, a mirror in which they looked at themselves and which was shattered when other powers appeared on the horizon, not precisely emerging, very consolidated ones that ended up with imperial unilaterality and not through brutal wars, like those dreamed of by the decadent businessmen of the arms and death industry.

In this way, entangled in his delirium of further strengthening the military supremacy of the United States, violating all international laws, ignoring the rights of the countries of the world, and the economic pandemic that dying capitalism is facing, the US president has become the greatest danger facing humanity and the American people. In these hours, as never before in history, a virus, barely a speck in a microscope, laid bare in weeks the entrails of an empire, of a deeply inhumane and perverse system, which is slowly and dangerously collapsing.

Source URL: Resumen Latinoamericano – English

https://orinocotribune.com/adolf-trump- ... thingness/
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Re: Venezuela

Post by blindpig » Sat Apr 18, 2020 1:51 pm

The pandemic in Venezuela: a class issue
Mission Truth

Apr 17 · 10 min read

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Polar is the symbol of (privileged) classes that traces the management of the pandemic in Venezuela. Photo: Archive

It is proven that the majority of the coronavirus cases in Venezuela have come from outside. And it could not be otherwise: after having passed through Wuhan (China), the foci of contagion for Covid-19 have intensified in the capitalist countries of Western Europe, but also in the United States, where trade, tourism and Corporate finances travel at overwhelming speed that has fueled the spread of the virus.
On March 21, the country's Minister of Communication and Information, Jorge Rodríguez, stressed that 100% of the cases that have been verified are "imported from Europe, Colombia and the United States." Back then the cases were approaching 100.
Quoted by Europa Press, Rodríguez stated : "We have two critical cases, which were among the first diagnosed and are hospitalized in private clinical centers (...) the Government provides Interferon and chloroquine, regardless of purchasing power", to contribute to the recovery of the patients.
Currently, Venezuela is the country with the lowest number of infections and deaths from the pandemic in the region, with 197 confirmed cases, 111 people recovered and 9 deaths. And this is due to several reasons.
The Venezuelan government has made a difference compared to other administrations in the region for its timely treatment of the pandemic. The quarantine measures taken on time, the use of Big Data tools such as the Patria system to massify the test tests, house-to-house care through medical brigades and direct social assistance to workers and small companies, are far from the policies of "save yourself who can" applied by governments as close as Brazil and Colombia.

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President Maduro took the measures recommended by the WHO to prevent and flatten the Covid-19 infection curve. Photo: EFE

It has been a common policy to place the interest of capital above people. The business sectors have known how to play their cards selling the thesis that the death that we can most regret is that of the economy. This has happened in Italy, recently in Spain, and in many of the Latin American countries, where the business elite has influenced so that the restrictions do not limit the movements of labor and capital.
Venezuela has operated in a political and crisis management logic that distances itself from the canon of capitalist countries, putting people's lives in the foreground. And precisely for this reason it has been able to stop the vertigo of the pandemic, in a complicated national situation that is marked by the fall in oil prices, the US blockade and geopolitical pressure from Washington to overthrow the government.
Given that the panorama is marked by these factors, the struggle of Venezuelans against the Covid-19 acquires greater vigor and international significance at this juncture.
This was noted by the President of the People's Republic of China, Xi Jinping, in a telephone conversation with President Nicolás Maduro a week ago, where he stated that the Asian country “closely follows the evolution of the current circumstances in Venezuela and considers that the The Venezuelan government has taken, without delay, resolute measures with a high sense of responsibility (…) these timely measures have demonstrated the leadership of President Maduro before the international community. ”
Genealogy of a power relationship
In 1995, the then prince and current king of Spain, Felipe VI, landed in the Sarisariñama tepuy located in the intricate jungle of the Gran Sabana, south of Venezuela, after an invitation made by Lorenzo Mendoza, the president of the Companies oligopoly Polar.
The idyllic trip of royalty narrated by a report by ALnavío , sealed relations between the Casa de los Borbones and the most exalted capitalist in Venezuela, and was marred by a plane crash that still remains unclear and that linked a pilot , the technical staff and a worker who accompanied the visit.
After the meeting in the southern reaches of Venezuela, Mendoza had found the key to export his products in the Spanish market, and he would do so thanks to his personal relationship with the future head of the Spanish crown, who recently renounced his father's assignments. , Juan Carlos I, after the sonorous case of corruption that links the Royal House with opaque foundations in Switzerland.
In short, that would be the beginning of a relationship between the Venezuelan capitalist and the Casa Real network of business influences. Empresas Polar began to place its products in the Spanish market a few years ago, but received a dose of capitalist competition that it never encountered in Venezuela due to its monopoly and rentier configuration: the supermarket giant in Spain, Mercadona, launched its own line of flours and put the sales of Flour Pan in serious trouble by expelling it from its establishments.

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The launch of Mercadona precooked flour frustrated the rise of Lorenzo Mendoza in the Spanish market with the “Harina Pan”. Photo: Digital
Economy
Mendoza was able to rebound by limiting the use of transgenic corn in its products, but it has not been enough. However, his relationship scheme within Spain has allowed him to find other investment tentacles.
An adventure that could go wrong
In January this year, Empresas Polar announced the purchase of the Venezuelan company Antojos Araguaney, which produces tequeños and cheeses at its factories in Madrid and Tenerife, although the company's management and a percentage of 20% of its shares will continue in the hands of its original creators.
This acquisition, according to the La Tabla portal , required constant trips by the company's management layer from Madrid to Caracas and vice versa. The trips occurred when the pandemic was spreading in Spain and the Pedro Sánchez government had not yet taken the containment measures.
The flow of money based on the alliances formed between Lorenzo Mendoza and the Bourbons, built a passageway for the importation of the epidemic from one of its main European centers.
The security and escort company 365 , which works for Polar, has been found to have infected workers. This places the spotlight on Lorenzo Mendoza's companies and on his network of industries and commercial workers (called “franchisees” under a neo-feudal view), because a focus of contagion could be brewing there that could expand in a chaotic way.
The “trade” of the pandemic
For some time, Empresas Polar has been mutating into a subsidiary company of foreign funds and private banks with the aim of gaining positions in the international market and protecting its capital outside Venezuelan borders. But as the ALnavío media affirms , Empresas Polar depends on 70% of the income that its sales in Venezuela give, which forces it to maintain the production and trade of its products, and also, its international positioning.
Venezuela is similar to the reality reported by the writer Daniel Bernabé in the Spanish context:
"The virus spread in Europe from Germany, with its businessmen, and from the United Kingdom, with its drunk tourists, also from Switzerland, with its bankers and briefcases."
The case of Empresas Polar shows us the anatomy of the pandemic and a diagram on the transport of the virus: the links between the Spanish Crown and Mendoza, and the transnational businesses of the largest private company in Venezuela, all subordinated by those who are most Above and they had already spread to Spain in early January, as Bernabé relates, they facilitated the import of the virus in the form of commercial exchange, purchase of risky companies and expansion of the investment portfolio of the Mendoza businesses.
It can be said that the adventure of the Venezuelan capitalist opened a kind of import channel for the pandemic, deeply rooted in his traditional business behavior as a net importer of raw materials, technology and capital goods to give realism to his stunted advertising message of “Made in Venezuela".

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Lorenzo Mendoza at the wedding of the Infanta Cristina. Photo: The Table

Mendoza has already spoken worried about his situation and predicts that the quarantine will be lifted in order to sell his "beer". It should not be forgotten that in northern Italy, for example, one of the factors that fueled the infections and deaths from coronavirus was the pressure from businessmen in the city of Bergamo to keep the factories open, bypassing the confinement measures.
The movement of labor and capital continued uninterrupted and there are the results: thousands of deaths because factories and massive workplaces represent quite efficient furnaces to spread the virus.
Risk and ecstasy of capital
Thus, Lorenzo Mendoza speaks on behalf of the Venezuelan elite and puts on the table a declaration of purpose shared by an entire traditionally importing and commercial bourgeoisie: that the machinery continue to function, because in the end what matters is maintaining the rhythm of work in its industries and its network of franchisees, but not to reverse the contagion curve and save as many people as possible, and even less if that happens by temporarily sacrificing its profit rate.
That sums up his "Made in Venezuela".
In his work Liquid Modernity , the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman warned that the contemporary transformations of capitalism had brought about the splitting of time in relation to space. It should be noted that the speed of communications, of new information technologies, and the amazing interconnection of finance and commerce, have been the engines of a long-wave process that dynamited distance and space in terms of power, economy and culture.
With the erosion of distance and space, capitals would shed their national frameworks, travel freely wherever profitability was, and encounter no state resistance to exercise dominance. The weight of this transformation flattened national borders and gave global capital its current form: extraterritorial, flexible, speculative and evasive of national controls.
Mendoza, as well as the structures of its companies, are testimonies of these transformations of the time, where capital is poured into risky and speculative adventures. In the face of the “beer” crisis, will Mendoza cut the personnel of the industries to try to save their adventure from tequeño and cachapa in Spain? The record of the rich Venezuelan fools could predict a tragic future a la Cisneros: those investments to buy brands in the United States and Mexico that were leveraged with public money and then bequeathed to us on 'Black Friday' and the financial crisis of '94.

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Black Friday marked the collapse of the oil rentier model in Venezuela. Photo: Venepress

Those days when the bankers saved their lives at the expense of the people.
Mendoza is the businessman hinge between the deformed import-industrial capitalism and the financialized and mafia capitalism that took its final shape with the sacking of Cadivi. The business adventures of the 12 apostles of Carlos Andrés Pérez are again present but in the form of Covid-19, as a reminder of the way of thinking of an elite that has little Venezuelan.
USA and the failure of the ruling class
That of Mendoza is a symptom that encompasses the heterogeneous Venezuelan capitalist class. The Covid-19 has brought the paralysis of economic activities, which has exposed the vulnerabilities of a business scheme based on the opening of still lifes, in fast and hectic trade to capture the growing number of currencies circulating in the cities, before which subsidized production in the field and divestment in the industrial park have become the norm.
The ruling class has had to adapt to the economic dynamics of the blockade and the loss of oil revenues, being forced to gradually inject capital into the country, but always in the lines that represent profitability and rapid profits, namely trade, import or forex reselling.
It is the Mendoza style that sets the tone: investing in industries and production abroad while businesses here limit themselves to selling beer.
In view of the situation, the business union represented by the Fedecámaras triad, Conindustria and Consecomercio, has filled the public press with announcements announcing the dissolution and closure of companies, setting a tone of rejection of the quarantine ordered by the Venezuelan State.
The new inflationary escalation is the practical manifestation of this demand and is spiced with calls to establish an "emergency government" to "solve" the economic effects of the pandemic, which involves carrying out the US fantasy of seeing a change. regime in Venezuela.
While this is happening, money is in the pockets of the poor to surf the ill effects of a besieged economy.
From above, the Trump Administration has tightened the nuts reopening a cycle of economic tension that lies in the decrease in oil income, the blockade on the importation of gasoline, and in general, in the crisis of money available to cover the health and food needs of the country.
The effect of these pressures is transferred to layers of local capital, generating reactions that do not go in the same direction. The agricultural capitalists demand a direct subsidy from the State, the merchants clamor for the lifting of the quarantine, while the industrialists bet more frontally on the fall of the government.
The US sanctions have generated an internal conflict within the ruling class, which is manifested in the restrained verb of some sectors that have benefited from the dollarization downstream in recent months, and others that are waiting for the overthrow of the Government to reopen the economy but with the national laws that protect the dismantled workers.
In both cases, the business class receives the boomerang effect of Trump's foreign policy and translates it according to their immediate interests.
In a complicated financial situation that has linked the oil storm with the exchange rate and the productive one, the Venezuelan Government continues with its commitment to economically serve the population in the midst of the pandemic, including also small and medium-sized companies.
Faced with this, businessmen linked to industry, imports and commerce respond in unison with the well-known discourse of the "crisis of confidence" that prevents investments from arriving, when what they really want to reaffirm, in Creole, is that the quarantine has once again exposed the fragility of its businesses, the dependence on imports and parasitic investment in commercial speculation. The Polar model failure.
Money as an expression of power and culture has its own language, and what it is trying to tell us at the moment is that stopping the Covid-19 is not the priority, but rather prolonging a perverse scheme of corporate parasitism that will soon celebrate 40 years of failure.

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Re: Venezuela

Post by blindpig » Wed Apr 29, 2020 1:25 pm

The US transfers the stolen money to Venezuela into Guaidó's pocket and uncovers a new war on anti-Chavism

Mission Truth
Apr 26 · 8 min read

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Illustration by Victor Juhasz for Rolling Stone magazine, which portrays the systemic corruption of American banks. Photo: Rolling Stone

What started as an assault on the state accounts deposited with Citibank ended in the distribution of loot among the most emblematic actors of anti-Chavism.
The money recently self-allocated by anti-Chavez parliamentarians comes from some of the billions in Venezuelan assets frozen abroad by the Trump administration and its allied governments, much of which comes from oil sales and profits. of CITGO.
This is the assault on assets of the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) in the Citibank financial institution in the United States, transferred to another non-Venezuelan account in the New York Federal Reserve.

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Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Photo: Bloomberg

It is possible that the US elite has grown tired of seeing Guaidó and the local coup coalition squander the funds allocated for regime change, which is why they have taken a step forward to centralize the management of kidnapped resources to Venezuela.
When your media allies take the lid off
Both Joshua Goodman, of the media The Associated Press (AP), and Orlando Avendaño, of the ultra media PanAm Post , have described how the deputies of the National Assembly (AN) in contempt, affiliated with Guaidó, discreetly agreed to pay $ 5,000 a month retroactive to January and until December of this year.
All in the middle of an informal meeting by electronic means where a "Special Law of the Fund for the Liberation of Venezuela and Attention to Vital Risks" was approved, consisting of the distribution of 80 million dollars, 23% of what was stolen by the administration. Trump to the Republic.
17% of the $ 80 million would go to "the defense and strengthening of the national legislature and the social protection of its members."
Goodman and Avendaño confirm the existence of the salary or "support" even though no public parliamentary document refers to the payment.
The same AP journalist affirms that "two legislators and three assistants from Guaidó previously confirmed the plan" while Avendaño refers to a source, an official from the "interim government" of Juan Guaidó, who confirmed that "they passed a payroll that is supposed to the OFAC (Office of Administration of Foreign Assets of the Treasury Department) for the release of these resources ”.

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The anti-Chavez faction led by Guaidó in the AN “legislates” and secretly distributes the funds looted by the United States to Venezuela. Photo: Archive

None of the sources reveals his name due to the retaliation they may receive from those who claim to defend democracy in Venezuela and the world, however they allude to the fact that the decision generated “a fierce debate that lasted months and that threatened to divide the anti-Maduro coalition ”.
The faction that supports Luis Parra, president of the National Assembly elected last January, may not be part of said payroll since it has even received threats of sanctions for supporting a dialogue with the government and rejecting unilateral coercive measures applied by the United States. and the European Union against the country.
Goodman, Avendaño and others point out that during the five years of legislative administration, the payments that anti-Chavez deputies have received, most in the AN but in contempt since 2016, amount to one thousand dollars a month without explaining the origin.
They add that it is much less than what legislators earn elsewhere in Latin America and that some legislators would surely refuse to raise the money.
Certain conditions apply to the fraud bonus
The so-called "Liberation Fund" stipulates a majority disbursement (45%) in social spending to "alleviate the humanitarian crisis", in principle they would issue three monthly bonds of $ 100 each for the "health heroes", whose payment was announced It would be through digital wallets managed by the Organization of American States (OAS) at a cost of $ 9.2 million (less than 3% of what was stolen by Washington).
This was announced by Guaidó and Alfonso Marquina, who serves as president of the Finance Commission of a network of tutelage that insists on being called the National Assembly.
However, the PanAm Post , citing a "high source" of the OAS, has affirmed that the institution will not serve as comptroller of the resources due to "statutory and legal difficulties in carrying out this work."
Since the announcement of the aforementioned voucher, 60 thousand doctors and nurses fighting the coronavirus pandemic were discussed, however the number dropped to 45 thousand, and it should be noted that to this date there are more than 100 thousand health workers activated against the global pandemic in Venezuelan streets, hospitals and health centers.

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More than 100 thousand Venezuelan and Cuban doctors, nurses and laboratory personnel combat Covid-19 in streets, sentinel hospitals, CDI and private clinics. Photo: Ismael Francisco / AP

It was recently learned that the registration of health personnel on the website is only an application in which the economic allocation will depend on certain requirements.
The self-proclaimed information “ministry” stated that “the selection of applicants will be prioritized based on the following criteria: role they perform, socioeconomic data and workplace. It is important to emphasize that receiving receipts does not imply admission to the program. ”
Guaidó assured that all medical, nursing and health workers "may choose to obtain this support without distinction of political color," in addition, the accompanying media scaffolding has promoted expectations in this regard and maintains a campaign of "validation" of the postulates, without there being transparency regarding the criteria of allocation of the mentioned bonds.
Shocks inside the money cyclone
The American newspaper The Grayzone has detailed that , from 2017 to December 2019, the Trump administration spent at least $ 654 million (almost double what was stolen from Citibank) in "aid" programs related to Venezuela.
Although Washington claims they were earmarked for humanitarian efforts, much of the money from American taxpayers financed attempts to destabilize and overthrow the Venezuelan government.
At least 128 million of this money from the USAID went directly into the pockets of the leaders of the coup operation.
A report from Los Angeles Times July 2019 cites a legislative assistant who alleged that the diversion of funds from USAID "Guaidó pay salaries and their officials." This caused a division in the anti-Chavez wing of Parliament and maintains divergences regarding the destination and use of the funds.

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From right to left, Carlos Vecchio, Mark Green (head of the Usaid), Lilian Tintori and Julio Borges, after the announcement of a line of US financing for anti-Chavism in late 2019. Photo: Twitter

Faced with the request made by their ranks to process funds to resolve some problems that the same sanctions have caused to national life and to face the Covid-19 with them, the leaders of the coup have affirmed that they cannot.
Economist Francisco Rodríguez, director of Torino Economics , quoted the US financial advisory firm Bloomberg and recalled that "on past occasions, (Guaidó) has made significant mobilizations of funds to pay obligations whose legal support has been questioned."

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Francisco Rodríguez, an opposition economist who on several occasions has questioned the management of funds frozen in Venezuela by Guaidó. Photo: El Universal

In his Twitter account he said that "it is the first time" that the Guaidó team "claims not to have access to their external accounts" and demanded transparency in the management of international funds by making public some of the various sources of financing:
Joint ventures of which Petróleos de Venezuela (Pdvsa) is a majority partner: $ 7 billion in deposits in foreign accounts for unpaid dividends.
CITGO, a US subsidiary of PDVSA: $ 1.4 billion in cash and dividend equivalents.
Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) that recognizes Guaidó: $ 408 million in funds available to face the pandemic in member countries.
He summarizes saying that the Guaidó faction may have between 3.6 and 12 billion dollars "for Venezuelans residing abroad and facing economic, health or other difficulties caused by the COVID crisis- 19 ”.
He also argued that the First Justice deputy “Carlos Paparoni declared that there was 3 billion dollars. They themselves approved $ 80 million a month ago to finance their travels. Don't tell me later that they don't have money. ”
He expressed his agreement that the fake deputies and ambassadors charge well, but that
"It is deeply disturbing that lawmakers are willing to approve a generous compensation package for themselves without having yet found the time to discuss how they can use the funds at their disposal to help Venezuelans."
For his part, Gustavo Tarre Briceño, Juan Guaidó's representative to the OAS, denied that the coup administration has 15 billion dollars, although he acknowledged that the amount of money “recovered”, which is actually available, does not reach 400 million Dollars.
Two questions arise:
Are the 342 million stolen from Citibank available for the opposition faction to “legislate” on them?
If so, why haven't they?
First Justice deputy José Brito, who led criticism of Guaidó last January, stated via Twitter :
“Five thousand dollars a month for each main deputy and 4 thousand dollars for each substitute deputy, plus a retroactive of 25 thousand dollars (…) is what Alí Guaidó and his forty thieves want to give each deputy to buy his complicit silence as a result of the dispossession of 80 million dollars to the BCV ”.

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The anti-Chavez deputy José Brito has led the opposition to Guaidó within the Venezuelan Parliament. Photo: Archive

In addition, Brito criticized that, while Guaidó approved that large sum of money to give to those deputies, the doctors who are fighting the Covid-19 will supposedly only give them $ 100. "To doctors, only $ 100 shit, but to those deputies who don't give a fuck, who don't even go to the National Assembly, $ 5,000," he said.
The deputies in contempt added to the coup authorized the theft of $ 342 million but gave them $ 80 million, one wonders if the Treasury Department will continue to apply the same method when they "legislate to recover" the rest of the funds withheld due to the sanctions .

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Re: Venezuela

Post by blindpig » Wed Apr 29, 2020 1:51 pm

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No New Cases of Covid-19 in Venezuela this Tuesday – Maduro: “We Will Accept Humanitarian Aid From any Country”
April 28, 2020 orinocotribune coronavirus, COVID-19, humanitarian aid, Jorge Rodriguez, President Maduro, Venezuela, WHO

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro reported that this Tuesday there were no new Covid-19 cases recorded in Venezuela. The country has 329 cases in total, of which 142 people are already recovered (43.2% of the total), 89 patients are in sentinel hospitals, 64 in Comprehensive Diagnostic Centers, 24 in private hospitals and 10 deceased.

As of this Tuesday, Venezuela is above 15,500 tests per million inhabitants, Rodríguez noted. With these figures, Venezuela is the country in Latin America and the Caribbean with the fewest cases of Covid-19 in the region, according to a report by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) shown by the Minister for Communication and Information, Jorge Rodríguez.

He explained that the Venezuelan health system has thousands of Covid-19 tests, which are applied to those who present symptoms of the virus, free of charge. Rodríguez showed that, in other countries, such as Chile, citizens must pay large sums of money in order to be diagnosed.

On the other hand, Rodríguez reported that, through house-to-house sessions, 400,000 homes across the country have been reached to detect cases of Covid-19. “Today, Venezuela is the country in Latin America and the Caribbean that has carried out the most tests per million inhabitants,” he said.

Maduro orders maximum security at the border
This Tuesday, President Maduro ordered a maximum security alert to be kept on the border with Colombia and Brazil, to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus by people who are returning to Venezuela through those countries. “Welcome home!” said the President.

“I know that there is concern among many Venezuelans that we are going to get infected. I ratify the order of maximum alert, please, with all returning migrants, the quarantine must be carried out, with conscience, with love. And if one detects a case in San Antonio, the quarantine must be fulfilled and we are going to provide care for them there!” said the Venezuelan head of state.

As of last Friday, more than 20,000 Venezuelans had entered Venezuela through the border, where several epidemiological barriers were set up to take care of those returning to the country, fleeing from xenophobia and humiliation.

It should be noted that, in addition, the Venezuelan government ordered that all persons entering the country through the border through Colombia or Brazil – both with exponential Covid-19 curves – must carry out a mandatory quarantine of at least 14 days, and in addition, they must be Covid-19 tested.



To the people who plan to return, Maduro said: “We all protect ourselves and there will always be a government that will reach out. Here you will have everything that you have been denied there. They were fooled by false promises or hatred against us.” He added: “They have returned to the country, fleeing from xenophobia, repression, misery, persecution, the humiliation of their children, making them suffer a harsh situation … They left Venezuela believing that they were going to get solutions, and they got suffering, they bring a memory of suffering.”

He said that Venezuela is prepared to take care of the thousands of compatriots who are returning to the country, to be treated in the midst of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, which is already affecting more than three million people worldwide. “We are waiting for the wave to come from Peru. We have problems, but they will never lack our support. The hand of the Bolivarian revolution will always reach their homes, to accompany them in health, with food, and community work,” stressed the Venezuelan president.



All Venezuelans who have entered the country were treated by epidemiological centers. Out of more than 20,000 compatriots, more than 8,000 are already in their homes.

Venezuela will accept humanitarian aid from any country with WHO mediation

On the other hand, President Maduro indicated that Venezuela will accept humanitarian aid from any country that wishes to collaborate in the fight against the Covid-19 coronavirus, with the mediation of the World Health Organization (WHO), due to the position taken by the government of the United States (USA) this Tuesday at the United Nations Security Council (UN), in which they alleged that “Maduro does not accept humanitarian aid” offered by the North American nation.

“The United States has been saying ‘why does Maduro not accept international aid.’ What do you want to donate to Venezuela? With the World Health Organization and the Pan American Health Organization, everything you want! (…) We are ready to receive any humanitarian aid from any country,” said the Venezuelan President.

Source URL: Alba Ciudad

Translated by JRE/EF

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Re: Venezuela

Post by blindpig » Fri May 01, 2020 1:11 pm

The intellectual deviations of the "left" in Venezuela

Mission Truth

Apr 30 · 9 min read

Por William Serafino

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Photo: The Confidential

The pandemic of the new coronavirus in Venezuela has revived in a month the panorama of acute economic destabilization of previous times.
The stampede of the parallel dollar and, consequently, the high prices on the shelves, once again become the determining factors of a scenario of enormous economic difficulty for the country in the short and medium term.
Unlike the shortage cycles of 2015 and 2016 and the systematic hyperinflation of 2017 and 2018, the short circuit of the Venezuelan economy, this time, comes from the hand of this external and unpredictable event, accompanied by its destructive effects on prices. world oil and international trade.
As an immediate effect, the pandemic has suddenly interrupted the fragile balance of power that the Venezuelan Government had built with private economic actors since the beginning of this year, which brought with it the stabilization of the price of the dollar, the mobility of economic activity ( especially commercial) from the flow of foreign exchange from remittances and some degree of relief compared to the chaos of previous years.
At the same time, the United States has taken advantage of the pandemic to radicalize its hybrid war against Venezuela (a topic quite well explained by Arantxa Tirado in his last article ), while the Venezuelan Government concentrates on stifling the Covid-19 contagion curve.
As the US State Department has been saying since 2018, "the sanctions are working."
And the reality offers the living testimony of that affirmation: the country has been left with minimal gasoline inventories, the money stolen from the Republic at the hands of the US Treasury Department is being distributed among the management layer of the continued coup, while the Imports and oil revenues on which the country depends are on the floor like never before in their recent history.
With its latest moves, framed in the “anti-narcotics” military deployment and an overdose of illegal sanctions, the Trump Administration is showing its interest in transforming the Covid-19 into an artillery instrument of the confrontation against Venezuela.
The intention is to bring the country into a climate of extreme social and political tension that creates the conditions for a new coup skirmish, as the tightening of the blockade does its job complicating the health and economic management of the pandemic.
Since the success of this macabre new calculation by the White House is not guaranteed, in the meantime they have instrumentalized the Venezuelan question to distract attention, as much as possible, from the social and health chaos that is causing the pandemic within US territory. This is confirmed by nothing more and nothing less than the gringo magazine Newsweek .

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The United States has surpassed the million infected by Covid-19, in an unprecedented health and social crisis. Photo: Carmen Vivas

For the first time in the short wave of the conflict for the (geo) political control of Venezuela, Washington intensifies its maneuvers to overthrow Chavismo while adrift as a nation-state and world power.
The noises of secession , the fuss of civil war and social outbreak have begun in the face of chronic unemployment, the pile of dead and the critical inequality that the pandemic is leaving. This picture of systemic collapse has caused the US leadership in the international system to erode, generating the conditions of instability, chaos and uncertainty that have led to major geopolitical transitions in the last five centuries.
In addition to the material difficulties of the country in the midst of these unprecedented and uncontrollable conditions, there are the ideological difficulties to understand the framework of the current situation. There is a feeling of emptiness and loss of ideological coordinates that used to explain our reality in a coherent way, especially from the left. But it goes further.
There is a certain idea that no approach can fully explain the social and political framework in which we operate. Among the various historical and social causes that provoke this sensation, the fragmented thinking that globalized after the collapse of the socialist experience in 1989–1991 stands out. The neoliberal paradigm emerged victorious.
And no current of modern thought escapes that legacy.
The catastrophic clash with reality, in concrete terms, has generated a mosaic of misperceptions about the various topics and public debates that articulate our political reality. A sample of this, by importance scale, we have in the idealistic filter when analyzing the performance of Chavismo in the State and in the economy.
Historically, from the right, it is assumed that the Government insists on a failed model. In that there is no news. However, the mainstream of the self-styled Venezuelan "left" insists on adding a nuance: it would no longer be a matter of economic mismanagement, which, too, but a conspiracy between Maduro and private capital to intentionally provoke hunger of millions of people with a salary of $ 4.
According to their views, Maduro would enjoy this situation as part of his systematic policy of handing over the legacy of Chávez, while being an active accomplice of the capitalist currents that are intentionally destroying the country.
For them, the Government has opted for a neoliberal aspect to take political and economic advantage without caring about the rest of society.
The main problem with this approach is that it starts from premises that do not land in the material conditions of the country.
Venezuelan oil is trading at $ 9 (it is being produced at a loss), historically the country imports what it needs with that income and right now the billion dollar resources of the Republic are being hijacked by the Washington-Guaidó mafia. In summary: the country is financially in a situation that borders on bankruptcy when the oil crisis is combined with the US blockade and the pandemic.
However, these factors of distortion and evident crisis are not taken into account when analyzing the economic problem, since it is about forcing the idea that the economy is numbers and figures and not power relations.
As the pamphlet rules in their heads, they are eager for "revolutionary" oeducation proclamations and edipts and other "radical" measures that change the situation completely, as if reality worked like this, on principle. They assure that the situation can turn upside down if "revolutionary" measures are taken, evading something as important and elementary as that the country has no money.
While they think that it all comes down to gimmicky proclamations and measures, Maduro must ride the contradictions of being at the forefront of a historically inefficient state like that of Venezuela, incapable of mobilizing financial resources, in possession of a devalued currency and living with a private sector that is developed in light of a declining oil rent. Under such conditions, it is difficult to project a scenario of sudden victory.
Ideological purism prevails (governing with "the people", "ending the bureaucracy", "distributing wealth", etc.) above a reality that sets specific political limits. It starts from the false idea that you can make a revolution to the Venezuelan, face the dominant powers, and at the same time, have a lifestyle and a political reality that survives the existential tensions that processes of these characteristics generate. It is fragmented thinking.
For them, Maduro should "defend" - truly, not a lie as he usually does - the "working class." It does not matter that, instead of forming a working class in the country, a proletariat dependent on the State and the tertiary sector was historically formed, stimulated by the consumption of a diminished and minimal oil rent. But that is not important; Knowing how the society in which you live works is always a secondary element.

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Oil socially and economically reconfigured Venezuelan society, destroyed agriculture and industry, and made the country dependent on imports and income. Photo: Cantera Magazine

Maduro should also destroy the capitalists, declare a war without quarter, regardless of whether these measures create shortages or exacerbate difficulties in the midst of the pandemic. It does not matter. The important thing is to have a radical, "revolutionary" stance, to look good with yourself.
Lastly, it should implement the communes and give all power to "popular power", as if a cultural change was made official by decree.
But politics does not work that way. Maduro has had to manage a state that is becoming unfeasible, a destroyed economy and an international war that has already put a price on his head. In such a scenario, where each movement defines strategic issues, it has had to build consensus with sectors that are committed to its downfall. That implies governing.
It is very easy to ask for the heads of the businessmen, but not to assume the costs of the country being left without the few basic inputs that it has left or that Washington makes its onslaught worse.
It is extremely simple to demand structural changes in the economy, in the State, but not have to manage the country's growing needs with public coffers on the floor.
This intellectual deviation goes far beyond economics. And his vision of it stems from a key error in understanding the Venezuelan political process in its origins and formation.
They tend to believe, and take for granted, that Chavismo is an organized and systematic popular movement that Chavez crystallized in elections. And no, it is totally the opposite: Chavismo was born as a military movement that upon reaching the State became hegemonic in Venezuelan society because it knew how to interpret it.

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Chávez based his political strategy of the first years on the basis of an alliance scheme that encompassed various factors of Venezuelan society. Photo: Wikipedia

They fall into the mistake of thinking that Chavismo is a kind of autonomous entity, trying to dramatize a confrontation between "the people" and "the bureaucrats" and "the military". And this is also a misreading: Chavismo took shape because it was forged in a logic of power management, and not because it has fought organizedly against the neoliberal governments prior to Chávez.
The problem with this perception is that everything related to the State, from CLAPs or community management of different issues in public institutions, is seen as non-revolutionary or not very transformative forms of organization. The "revolutionary" is that which is purest, the one that shouts the loudest, the one that makes the best claims for the working class.
These intellectual distortions cover all other areas, including the terrible failure to analyze the Venezuelan process from an economic perspective, where political success is measured in terms of GDP or inflation. The coup in Bolivia has knocked to the ground the myth that the economy precedes politics.
The political and social dynamics, the organizational instruments that Chavismo has created, escape from the analysis, in the midst of circumstances where eating and having public services is a daily challenge. Fragmented thinking overcomes again and eclipses the common effort of thousands of Venezuelans who face an unprecedented situation, organizing themselves according to the instinct and lessons of Chávez.
The so-called "left" currents have been misled by their own myths. According to its corollary, the military (and less the police) are essentially not revolutionaries, the commune must replace all forms of "bureaucracy", the state is always bad, businessmen must always be cornered.
From this magical thinking emanates the thesis that politics is a matter of principle and not a contingency of ever-changing historical and social factors. This causes his theory of power and politics to be extremely childish, even though he is reviewing Marxism. As long as politics are principles and essences, the field of action will always be limited: everything that is not "revolutionary", and pure ideologically, must be discarded.
Having a political strategy that encompasses various sectors of society seems to be synonymous with treason.
If Chávez had based his political strategy on these schemes, we would not have come here. And that continues to be charged by those who call themselves "left".
Let's continue learning from what he taught us so we don't get lost.

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Re: Venezuela

Post by blindpig » Tue May 05, 2020 11:51 am

Ex-US Green Beret Claims Authorship in Failed Terrorist Plots in Venezuela

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Former U.S. Green Beret Jordan Goudreau and retired National Guard Captain Javier Nieto Quintero claimed that the operation is aimed to “capture” high-ranking officials. | Photo: Social Media

Published 4 May 2020 (9 hours 28 minutes ago)

Venezuela’s government has frustrated now twice, on Sunday and Monday, mercenaries from illegally trying to enter the country in order to carry out attacks and among those arrested are former soldiers, mercenaries, and United States’ operatives. All behind “Operation Gedeon,” a new attempt to oust President Nicolas Maduro and destabilize Venezuela.

As news about the foiled attempts came out, parallelly a United States former Army special forces operative claimed responsibility. The man is Jordan Goudreau, a former Green Beret who recorded himself saying he’s been hired by lawmaker Juan Guaido to overthrow Venezuela’s President Maduro.

Goudreau served in Iraq and Afghanistan and now runs a Florida-based security company called Silvercorp USA since 2018. The company’s website gloats about having operations in more than 50 countries, with an advisory team made up of former diplomats, experienced military strategists, and heads of multinational corporations.

#LIVE |@NicolasMaduro: "Venezuelan opposition is so decomposed that they are privatizing the complot now, hiring a terrorist mercenary and then letting him down. But this person called Jordan Goudreau, ex-U.S. soldier, has proven there is a contract signed between him and Guaido" pic.twitter.com/LDI2Z9a5bF

— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) May 5, 2020
Yet Goudreau’s story with Venezuela is quite recent as it goes back to February 2019, when he worked security at a concert in support of Guaido organized by British billionaire Richard Branson on the Venezuelan-Colombian border.

“Controlling chaos on the Venezuela border where a dictator looks on with apprehension,” he wrote in a photo of himself on the concert stage posted to his Instagram account as an AP investigation reported.

Soon after he met Lester Toledo, then Guaido’s coordinator for the delivery of so-called humanitarian aid. In Bogota, it was Toledo who introduced Goudreau to Cliver Alcala, the ringleader of the Venezuelan military deserters that are hiding in Colombia and who is now in U.S. custody on charges of drug trafficking.

According to Goudreau, his plan had been coordinated with Guaido who signed a contract on Oct. 16, 2019, for US$212 million. Miami-based opposition Venezuelan journalist Patricia Poleo published the document Sunday evening, which she purported to be a copy of the original contract.

#BREAKING | 8 mercenaries linked to "Gedeon operation" against the Venezuelan government were captured in Chuao, a coastal locality in the Venezuelan state of Aragua. pic.twitter.com/XB1AcGaLZ2

— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) May 4, 2020
Poleo interviewed Goudreau, who asserted that Silvercorp was hired to provide services, including “strategic planning,” “equipment procuring” and “project execution advisement,” by none other than Guaido, who despite the evidence has denied it.

Also, several audio recordings of an alleged conference call between Guiado, Goudreau, and senior Guaido envoy Sergio Vergara, in which they agreed to sign the contract were released. Now he has gone public arguing he only got US$50,000 through political consultant Juan Jose Rendon and the opposition kept promising to get him the rest but didn’t deliver.

The U.S. mercenary was allegedly responsible for training a contingent of 300 Venezuelan army deserters in three makeshift camps alongside the Colombian-Venezuelan border who were to enter Venezuela in a heavily armed caravan and seize the capital within 96 hours.

In a video released on social media, Goudreau confirmed that the amphibious landing attempt on Sunday had been launched from Colombia as part of “Operation Gedeon” and that “other units” were active in the “south, west, and east of Venezuela.”

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— Patricia Poleo (@PattyPoleo) May 3, 2020
Alongside retired National Guard Captain Javier Nieto Quintero - who was involved in the failed attempt to kill Maduro with a drone in 2018 - they claimed that the operation is aimed to “capture” high-ranking officials and “liberate” the Venezuelan people.

However, as of now, the Venezuelan Armed Forces have frustrated two incursions, eight terrorists were killed and more than a dozen captured.

Among the detained is Antonio Jose Sequea, who was photographed on April 30, 2019, alongside Leopoldo Lopez during the failed coup attempt in Caracas. Also, Adolfo Baduel, son of retired general Raul Baduel former Defense Minister to Hugo Chavez; and two alleged and currently named U.S. citizens.

On Sunday, after the first attack was stopped Silvercorp’s account tweeted “strikeforce incursion into Venezuela. 60 Venezuelan, 2 American ex-Green Beret.” Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez said the government has evidence linking the attacks to the U.S. and Colombia.

As the plot thickens, with now three alleged U.S. operatives under Venezuelan custody and a public admission from a mercenary hired by Guaido, the repeated charges from Venezuela that the U.S. and its local opposition want a violent and undemocratic overthrow of the current government are more real than ever.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Ex- ... -0015.html

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Venezuela Foils Another Terrorist Infiltration, 8 Captured

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Eight terrorists were arrested by the Venezuelan people along the Colombian border on Monday, May 4th. | Photo: Con el Mazo Dando

Published 4 May 2020 (17 hours 20 minutes ago)

This is the second time in the last two days that terrorists have attempted to illegally enter Venezuela via naval incursion from neighboring Colombia.

The Venezuelan people foiled Monday another terrorist infiltration from neighboring Colombia, putting an end to a second attempt to breach the Bolivarian Republic's territorial integrity.

Local fishermen detected the armed incursion and alerted the Venezuelan armed forces. According to Aragua's Governor Rodolfo Marco, through local intelligence units and the joint civic-military unity the apprehension of these perpetrators was made possible.

The Venezuelan authorities reported that the eight "terrorists" were arrested inside the town of Chuao in the Aragua state; they were armed and attempting to infiltrate to cause harm to the South American nation.

"We continue in Popular Victory, how great we are! #BolivarianFury operation is proving its efficiency. Mercenaries who step on our homeland's soil will be exposed to the people's dignity," the President Constituent Assembly Diosdado Cabello said shortly after the apprehension of the suspects.

1. Este es uno de los 2 gringos detenidos en #Chuao, el hijo de Baduel confirmó que trabajan para la seguridad de @realDonaldTrump. Esta historia pica y se extiende pic.twitter.com/naXuwmpdld

— Madelein Garcia (@madeleintlSUR) May 4, 2020
This is one of the two U.S. nationals captured in Chuao, Baduel's son confirmed that they work for the security of DonaldTrump.
​​​​​​​
Among the detained is Antonio Jose Sequea, who was photographed on April 30, 2019, alongside Leopoldo Lopez during the failed coup attempt in Caracas. Also, Adolfo Baduel, son of retired general Raul Baduel former Defense Minister to Hugo Chavez; and two alleged and currently named U.S. citizens.

This is the second time in the last two days that terrorists have attempted to illegally enter Venezuela via naval incursion from neighboring Colombia.

The Venezuelan authorities are still investing the attempted infiltration on Sunday, which saw the arrest of one U.S.-sponsored Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agent and the death of a few terrorists.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Ven ... -0008.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Venezuela

Post by blindpig » Thu May 07, 2020 1:45 pm

Mercenary Confesses Failed Plot Was to Bring President Maduro to US

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Former United States ex-green beret Luke Denman that was captured Monday. | Photo: VTV.

Published 6 May 2020

U.S. mercenary Luke Denman's group aimed at abducting Venezuela's president Nicolas Maduro.


Former United States ex-green beret Luke Denman, that was captured Monday by Venezuela's Armed Forces, confessed Wednesday that his group aimed at kidnapping President Nicolas Maduro as part of 'Operation Gedeon'.

"I was expecting anywhere between US$50,000 to US$100,000," Denman admitted, confessing he arrived in Colombia on Jan. 16 in Rioacha in order to train Venezuelan deserters.

While Maduro said there is no doubt that Colombia's President Ivan Duque was involved in the military incursion that U.S. mercenaries attempted to accomplish on Sunday.

He also confirmed that Duque ordered the expulsion from his country of people involved in acts of destabilization in Venezuela

"Juvenal Sequea, Hernan Aleman, and Alexander Russo -the one who armed the drone to kill me- are now in Bogota. Ivan Duque will expel them because he wants nothing to do with those who failed," the Venezuelan leader said at a press conference from Caracas.

#BREAKING | #lukedenman, a captured mercenary involved in the latest coup in Venezuela, reveals that their plan included to take President @maduro_en to the U.S. in a plane. pic.twitter.com/6iWBM3W9vm

— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) May 6, 2020
The U.S. mercenaries are "convicted and confessed," he stressed and explained that his country's institutions will judge them according to the due process.

The head of state recalled that the U.S. President Donald Trump, who receives a report every day on Venezuela, affirmed he knew nothing of the foiled armed infiltration in his country.

"It is impossible that Trump did not know what happened in Venezuela this weekend. Mike Pompeo said they have not had direct participation, but have they had indirect participation?"

The Venezuelan president also reiterated that the former U.S. green beret Jordan Goudreau, who is the head of the Silvercorp company, has worked with Trump for several years.

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"He has served as Donald Trump's bodyguard for many years. Jordan Goudreau was named by the State Department as the security chief for the show they put on in Cucuta," recalled Maduro, referring to the concert that the opposition Juan Guaido organized in such Colombian city to disguise the first attempt to invade Venezuela in 2019.

The Bolivarian leader explained that the U.S. mercenary established negotiations with the State Department and with the Venezuelan opposition led by Guaido, who delegated to J.J. Rendon and Sergio Vergara the hiring of a company to carry out a military invasion.

The negotiation process, which ended in September 2019, led to the preparation of a contract worth US$212 million, which was signed by Goudreau.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Mer ... -0013.html

Is it OK to 'lol-cia' this time? Jfc, the covert/regime change ops against Venezuela have been nothing but 'Amateur Hour'(complete season), all else needed is a kid playing 'Tiny Bubbles' on an accordion. That clown looks like a suspect from local 'police blotter' who passed out in the broken-in house after sucking down all the tequila.

But the sanctions, they ain't no joke, those are crimes against humanity.
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Re: Venezuela

Post by blindpig » Thu May 07, 2020 3:34 pm

The US government at the forefront of the failed coup against Venezuela: five data demonstrate this
Mission Truth

May 6 · 8 min read

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Passports of neutralized US mercenaries in Chuao. Photo: Twitter

1. Contract, reward and intellectual authorship
The contract between the deputy Juan Guaidó and the Silvercorp security company to execute an armed intervention against Venezuela was signed on October 16, 2019, as recorded on the paper.
Jordan Goudreau, CEO of Silvercorp and visible face of "Operation Gideon" that ran aground on the Venezuelan coasts of La Guaira and Aragua a couple of days ago, has publicly acknowledged that he never received the agreed amount, even though from Colombia, specifically in Riohacha and the upper Guajira, training activities aimed at the mercenary platoon that would attempt to enter the country along its coasts had already been carried out in the course of 2020.
Goudreau claims they decided to go it alone, even though they had been practically scammed by Guaidó. The goal was to capture Maduro , he said in his own words.
But it is on March 26, the day the US Department of Justice launched the false accusation of "narcoterrorism" against President Maduro (and other top military and institutional leaders), when that capture target Goudreau refers to was accompanied by a reward of $ 15 million. The outsourcing of a new coup maneuver was made official, hours after Clíver Alcalá's failed attempt at the land border with Colombia.

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US Attorney General William Barr led the charge against Nicolás Maduro and other Venezuelan leaders in March. Photo: VOA

Seeing himself swindled by Guaidó, without the money promised to keep the mercenaries together, the fortune hunter Goudreau saw in the 15 million dollars offered by the State Department of Mike Pompeo an opportunity. After all, Washington had transformed the kidnapping of Maduro, his overthrow, into a “legal” act and would even reward him with the juicy reward.
The judicial narrative of the "capture" would blur a new artillery coup maneuver.
The false accusation was the exit shot, the act that gave him false legality and a direct financial incentive to the adventure of Goudreau and company. Washington was aware of the operation from the beginning, so when the move by Clíver Alcalá failed, they launched the reward for Maduro's head as a direct incentive, a payment in the future, a promise of benefit to the Silvercorp mercenaries.
After all, whoever killed or kidnapped Maduro would earn the millions of the reward. Who would pay? Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State.
2. Financial tutelage and control of economic resources
It is well known that the cycle of looting of Venezuelan assets and resources abroad following the self-proclamation of Guaidó in 2019 has led to direct control of the United States.
Venezuelan public money is not directly controlled by the fake Guaidó government , but by the United States Treasury Department and its agencies, an institution that authorizes the transfer of stolen resources to the country to execute illegal debt payments, but also for the payment of subsistence allowances, travel and onerous salaries to deputies subject to US guidelines.

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US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, in charge of applying the illegal sanctions, has become the administrator of the resources stolen from Venezuela. Photo: CNBC

Since Guaidó does not directly manage the resources that have been hacked into the nation, it is impossible for him to have signed a $ 212 million contract with Silvercorp without prior authorization from the Treasury Department.
In the hypothetical event that the operation succeeded, the money would have been transferred from Venezuelan national accounts held by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), to Goudreau's pocket.
Ultimately, the United States would be responsible for paying the mercenaries who would assassinate or capture Maduro: "indirectly" with the State Department reward led by Mike Pompeo or directly authorizing the transfer to Silvercorp by the imaginary government of Guaidó. An act of war mixed with the corruptions of Creole fascism.
3. The DEA and its network of drug traffickers on the ground
Traditionally, the DEA often uses the infiltration of its agents in drug trafficking cartels as a strategy. The premise is that they can capture intelligence, dismantle rival groups, and obtain inside information for their anti-drug operations. Only in movies these goals are met. It is a constant, as we indicated in a recent investigation in this rostrum , that the agents are committed to drug trafficking, working for cartels and managing part of the business.
DEA agents often recruit or cooperate with drug traffickers to pursue targets that only exist on paper. The drug traffickers become agents, negotiate truces, favorable legal conditions in case of falling, among other benefits. Thus, the DEA and drug traffickers become a single institution. No one knows where each entity begins and ends.
The DEA criminal division, its district office in Orlando, Florida, and Acting Deputy Chief Charles Miracle, were instrumental in shaping the Justice Department's gunned-down indictment against Maduro.
As confirmed by the Minister of Communication Jorge Rodríguez, the DEA agent José Alberto Socorro Hernández, alias “Pepero”, would be in charge of delivering the trucks with machine guns and the rest of the war material to the mercenaries once they landed in Macuto, done that prevented the state security forces. The drug trafficker was captured by the FAES.
Alias ​​"Pepero" publicly confirmed in a confession that another DEA agent, Orlando Laufer, instructed him to manage a simulated confrontation between criminal gangs in the Petare neighborhood (Miranda state), one that should not have casualties but would have to do the Enough noise to distract security forces as the operation moved toward Macuto.

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The populous Petare neighborhood was several days under the crossfire of criminal gangs managed by the DEA. Photo: El Nacional

In light of these tests, the DEA was involved at the institutional level configuring the false accusation against Maduro, but also on the ground, providing logistical support to the mercenaries and mobilizing irregular maneuvers in the Petare neighborhood, through its network of drug traffickers. Colombians and Venezuelans. Its drug machinery works in this way, from tentacles and militant narcos. The mechanism is made to wash your hands when the maneuver fails.
4. The mercenary Luke Denman speaks
In the failed raid on Chuao, Luke Alexander Denman and Airan Seth Barry were captured, both mercenaries hired by Silvercorp according to documents obtained and publicly presented by President Nicolás Maduro, and also confirmed by Jordan Goudreau.
Denman, in a public confession shown at a press conference by the Venezuelan head of state on May 6, confirmed that Jordan Goudreau was commanded by President Donald Trump, a statement that gives more realism to what was said by Adolfo Baduel, also captured in Chuao, who claimed that the US mercenaries were linked to the private security team of the White House chief.
During the video presented, Denman expanded and explained his movements in Colombia, the contacts with Antonio Sequea, his role as coach in relation to the general scheme of the operation, in addition to confirming the complaints previously made by the Bolivarian Government about the involvement of US factors. in the training camps in Colombia, when Clíver Alcalá's attempt failed.
Denman had instructions to secure an airport (Maiquetía's, of course) to guarantee the entry and exit of the plane where Maduro would be kidnapped for the United States. The key to the reward reappears.
The pictures of Goudreau in the corrupt Venezuela in Cúcuta Live Aid in 2019 and some images that link it to Donald Trump public events reinforce the credibility of the comments of Denman. Silvercorp has most likely been hired for security duties at Trump events in Florida, where the company operates and there are recurring political events from the interventionist hardline diaspora.

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Jordan Goudreau wears a typical hearing aid for President Donald Trump's security personnel. Photo: Pedro Carvajalino / Twitter

The gravity of this confession would bind the United States government in an illegal act of war in light of international law, and has forced Washington to be forced to deny any connection to the operation.
5. Strategy and new frustration
There has been recurrent incitement to the military uprising and the coup d'etat by senior officials who run the US government.
They have even gone to the extreme, on several occasions, of offering the suspension of sanctions to all those military leaders who contribute to overthrow the Bolivarian Government. Not only did they publicly support the failed coup of April 30, making their complicity evident, but they have also outlined a speech that promotes the permanent destabilization within the FANB.
In this sense, the illegal sanctions of the Trump Administration have been shaped to create divisions within the country's civil and military leadership, promoting a scheme of incentives and rewards for those who cooperate in the overthrow of Maduro.
This pursued objective, virtually, was being accomplished with mercenary incursions into Venezuelan territory. Had Operation Gideon accomplished its mission, Washington would have shown its joy and satisfaction.

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Donald Trump and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Photo: Archive

However, the operation stalled catastrophically and they have chosen to wash their hands, but only because the movement failed. The US government encourages assassination and the coup against Maduro, but paradoxically denies its relationship with the loudest attempt in recent months.
This makes it impossible to trust your version of the situation.
The revelations of the last hours reveal the organization chart of the operation in general , the hierarchy of the actors involved and the distribution of their roles at all times.
This radiograph also allows us to see how the US government acted: it operated with its judicial arm at the end of March to “legalize” the assassination or kidnapping of Maduro that was underway, the funds were authorized to Silvercorp since 2019, the DEA was in charge of the the plumbing of the coup on the ground (the distraction through a shooting in Petare and the distribution of the war material), while the incentive and sanctions scheme would, in theory, open a negotiation channel to favor the fall of the Bolivarian Government when the fighting began. A full-blown wet dream.

Your denial is directly proportional to your participation. Because the strategy has been designed by them.

https://medium.com/@misionverdad2012/el ... 9df4a24077

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Well done!
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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