By Theodore Shoebat
The Trump backed rebel politician in Venezuela, Juan Guaido, is now calling for support from the military, to support his opposition to the government. “Come to the side of the Venezuelan people,” Juan Guaido said in a message aimed at the armed forces, in a speech to a crowd at a public square in Caracas. He was supposedly trying to convince the military to allow foreign aid into Venezuela.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said that the US will be giving $20 million to Venezuela to help with food and medicine shortages. This is taking place in the midst of an outbreak of violence. Around twenty people were killed in demonstrations, allegedly by security forces or pro-government militants. 350 demonstrators have reportedly been detained.
To oversee the situation in Venezuela, the Trump administration has appointed notorious neo-conservative Elliot Abrams. “This crisis in Venezuela is deep and difficult and dangerous, and I can’t wait to get to work on it,” Abrams said in brief remarks to reporters. Abrams was once part of PNAC (Project for the New American Century), which was a major lobbyist group for regime change and military intervention in Iraq and which, after this was done, does not exist any longer; but its agents, like Abrams, are still active.
In 1998, Abrams signed a letter, under the auspices of PNAC, addressed to president Clinton, calling for Saddam’s removal. Now this same agent for regime change is active, but this time in Latin America. What also makes this story interesting is that this is the same Abrams who was supposedly in a rift with Trump back in 2017 because Abrams had criticized him. Well now he is working under Trump. Goes to show you, these politicians aren’t enemies, and they’re not friends either.
Guaido, the man who Trump just declared to be the legitimate president of Venezuela, is now pushing to entrench his power in the government. With America’s backing, his empowerment is obvious. “The people who think that we are going to fizzle, I think they are not going to be happy,” said Guaido.
After Maduro declared that his government was cutting ties with the US, it appears that he has softened his stance, stating now that he is simply cutting ties with president Trump while maintaining relations with the rest of the US government. Maduro also announced that all Venezuelan diplomats and consulate personnel in the US will return to Venezuela by Saturday. A spokesperson from the US State Department released a statement that the US does not even recognize the Maduro government:
“The United States does not recognize the Maduro regime as the government of Venezuela. Accordingly, the United States does not consider former president Nicolas Maduro to have the legal authority to break diplomatic relations with the United States, declare our diplomats personae non grata or close Venezuelan diplomatic missions in the United States.”
And Trump recently declared:
“Today, I am officially recognizing the President of the Venezuelan National Assembly, Juan Guaido, as the Interim President of Venezuela”
Wait, what happened to “democracy”? The US is not even asking for an election but is undemocratically appointing the president of Venezuela.
Russia has expressed support for the Maduro regime and released a statement:
“We see in the unceremonious actions of Washington a new demonstration of total disregard for the norms and principles of international law, an attempt to play the role of the self-proclaimed arbiter of the destinies of other nations”
What ever happened to America first? Now Trump is involved in the politics of another country. It only goes to show you, politicians change, foreign policy doesn’t. This is because politicians do not have full control when it comes to foreign policy. Foreign policy, rather, is under the control of a cabal of war mongers who work under certain organizations (like PNAC) that are formed and disappear once their purpose is fulfilled, while the agents doing the lobbying still remain active in their conspiracy.
Mike Pompeo rejected Maduro’s order that US diplomats leave Venezuela, affirming that the US does not even recognize the Maduro regime.
Venezuela is a major OPEC country. 39% of Venezuela’s oil was delivered to the US last year. The US Treasury Department recently said that it will use economic and diplomatic tools to make sure that all commercial transactions with the Venezuelan government are “consistent” with the US-recognized government of Venezuela led by Guaidó. We are currently witnessing an attempted coup in Venezuela by the United States. Maduro declared:
I believe there’s no doubt that [US President] Donald Trump wants to impose a de facto government, unconstitutional government, a coup against the people and democracy in Venezuela … There’s no doubt that is Donald Trump with his craziness of believing he’s the world’s police.
The US is threatening to sanction Venezuelan oil, as we read in a report from the McClatchy DC Bureau:
The Trump administration is poised to level severe sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry if President Nicolás Maduro takes drastic action such as arresting top opposition leaders or killing protesters following international recognition of the National Assembly leader as the head of state, according to current and former administration officials.
The sanctions under discussion range across a cap on oil purchases from Venezuela, penalties against the state run oil company to a full embargo. Venezuela sits on the largest oil reserves in the world.
A full embargo on purchasing Venezuelan oil is the strongest tool left in the administration’s economic arsenal, but so far officials have been reluctant to take it knowing of the chaos it would unleash on the already-suffering country.
But the administration is now ready to sanction the oil industry as the crisis heightened this week and plans are in place for a Venezuela government without Maduro. The administration has recognized the president of Venezuela’s opposition-controlled National Assembly, Juan Guaidó, as the de facto leader of Venezuela.
“They’re waiting for Maduro’s next move now,” said one person familiar with administration discussions. “If/when he does something stupid, like arrest (National Assembly Leader) Juan Guaidó or start killing protestors, oil sanctions should come fairly quickly.”
The White House, National Security Council, State Department, Commerce and Treasury departments among other agencies have been wrestling for months about which of a range of options to take.
The White House has long pushed for stronger oil sanctions, but has met resistance from almost every other agency whose top officials fear of worsening an already perilous humanitarian crisis that has already driven millions of Venezuelans out of the country and into the region.
Guaido is the official that the United States wants in Venezuelan because he would be under American control. Hence why the US wants the oil purchases to be done through a Guaido government and not a Maduro regime. While Guaido has declared himself president, Maduro is of course rejecting this with the backing of top Venezuelan military leaders. Neo-conservative war monger John Bolton recently said:
“What we’re focusing on today is disconnecting the illegitimate Maduro regime from the source of its revenues … We think consistent with our recognition of Juan Guaidó as the constitutional interim president of Venezuela that those revenues should go to the legitimate government, it’s very complicated, we’re looking at a lot of different things we have to do, but that’s in the process.”
Guaidó, in a recent interview with Univision, said: “We have to remember that we are still in a dictatorship in Venezuela and that they are still withholding the weapons and that represents a threat,” which means that Guaido wants the guns, which means he wants the power. His attempt at a coup is being backed by the United States. In 2017, when Trump was asked about the possibility of military intervention in Venezuela, he said:
“We’re not considering anything but all options on the table. All options, always, all options are on the table”
The opposition towards the Maduro government is not exactly “democratic”, but has used violence against authorities:
If a regime change really does occur and Maduro is thrown out, and this brings instability to Venezuela, expect migrants from Venezuela to start striving to come to the United States. If you get upset about this, remember, you cheered on the US’ foreign policy.
What this situation shows is how susceptible to American hegemony Latin America is. The US controls Latin America by purchasing its products (like the United States purchasing Venezuelan oil). For example, Bolivia was dependent on the US since it was purchasing Bolivian minerals. In the 1950s Guatemala began to become under heavy fire for resisting United Fruit. But the US backed a revolution against the Arbenz regime in Guatemala once it no longer cooperated with the US government and United Fruit. In 1952, the military officer and president of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz, signed into law a measure that nationalized properties of United Fruit, a move that sparked the enmity of the monopoly.
THE US BACKED REVOLUTION IN GUATEMALA
The history of this American backed revolution should give us a better understanding as to how the US contrives revolutions.
United Fruit had very close ties to Eisenhower and the CIA. John Foster Dulles, the then Secretary of State, and his brother Allen Dulles, the director of the CIA, were close to United Fruit through their collaboration with the law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell. This law firm had a very powerful client, the International Railways of Central America (IRCA), which controlled most of Guatemala’s railways. But this changed once the railways were bought by the United Fruit Company, a deal that would be mediated by Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA, who had also been the director of the Schroder Bank, the very bank used by the CIA to bankroll their covert operations.
United Fruit hired as a consultant Spruille Braden, a lobbyist, militarist, and member of the Council of Foreign Relations. In March of 1953, Braden gave a speech at Darmouth College calling for a US military intervention against the “Communists” in Guatemala. Very soon after this speech was made, United Fruit organized an armed uprising in the city of Salama. A number of the rebels were put on trial during which it was revealed that the United Fruit Company was behind the revolt. But what was not unmasked was how United Fruit had conspired with the CIA in sparking the revolution, and how they both schemed to overthrow the Arbenz regime in Guatemala.
By the end of 1953, tensions between the US and Guatemala sparked at an intensely high moment. Anastasio Somoza Debayle, the dictator ruling over Nicaragua was worried that tensions in Guatemala would boil over into his country. Hundreds of Far-Left militants, including Ernesto Guevara (the infamous “Che” Guevara), would travel to Guatemala looking for a fight with Washington. It was in Guatemala where Ernesto experienced a spiritual — rather, a demonic — “possession” (to use his own words) in which he contorted in a sanguinary urge for violence and longed in a lust for blood. He would write in his diary:
“I will be with the people, and I know it because I see it etched in the night that I, the eclectic dissector of doctrines and psychoanalyst of dogmas, howling like one possessed, will assault the barricades of trenches, will bathe my weapon in blood and, mad with fury, will slit the throat of any enemy who falls into my hands. … And I see, as if an enormous tiredness shoots down my recent exaltation, how I die as a sacrifice to the genuine revolution of individual will, acrid smell of gunpowder and of blood, of the dead enemy; now my body contorts, ready for a fight, and I prepare my being as if it were a sacred place so that in the bestial bowling of the triumphant proletariat can resonate with new vibrations and new hopes.”
While the Far-Left were devising how to use the crises for their own sinister plans, Guatemala was getting flooded by CIA agents preparing for their covert plan ,Operation Success. The CIA recruited a former Guatemalan army colonel and furniture salesman, Carlos Castillo Armas, to be the head of the “Liberation Army” for the revolution against the Arbenz regime. His paramilitary force was being armed and trained by the CIA in Nicaragua. The US ambassador to Guatemala, John Puerifoy, was selected to coordinate Operation Success and the transition of power in Guatemala. CIA were roaming with and around Guatemala almost in the open. The goal was to cultivate an atmosphere of tension in the region so as to spark dissension and revolt in the armed forces.
In 1954, The Swedish cargo ship, the MS Alfhem, left a Polish port loaded with Czechoslovaki arms and docked in the Guatemalan port of Puerto Barrios. The CIA was monitoring the ship. It was carrying arms, supposedly, for the Arbenz regime. The CIA did not stop the ship, because it gave the CIA the situation it was looking for, an excuse for military action in Guatemala.
The CIA’s chief of clandestine operations, Frank Wisner, was exasperated by America’s decision not to intercede the ship, “until he realized that the shipment of… weaponry was just the excuse the United States needed to intervene.” Allen Dulles assembled a meeting with the CIA’s executive intelligence advisory board and with the Council on National Security Council, and got their backing for a military operation against Guatemala. What 9/11 was to the Iraq War, the docking of the Alfhem was to Operation Success.
U.S. military cargo planes flew to Honduras and Nicaragua to provide weapons to the CIA backed rebels led by the American appointed Carlos Armas. On May 20th, CIA saboteurs placed explosives on the railroad tracks outside of Puerto Barrios. They detonated the explosives as the military train, full of weapons for the Guatemalan military, was passing by. But they did little damage. So the CIA operatives opened fire on the military train as it passed by, killing one Guatemalan soldier and wounding several others. Regardless, the train, and the weapons, reached their destination.
Throughout Latin America, the CIA was producing newspaper articles and propaganda films and circulating booklets telling people about the rising Communist threat in Guatemala. Arbenz sent his foreign minister to speak with the US ambassador John Puerifoy, to commence deliberations for negotiations with Washington and stave off the regime change policy.
A group of military officers asked Arbenz to purge the government of Communists, but Arbenz insisted that he had them under control. Soon a retired air force chief defected and joined the rebellion. He got his anti-Arbenz message heard through a radio station called “La Voz de Liberacion.” The broadcasts of the station were directed by a CIA agent name David Atlee Phillips. The broadcasted messages called for Guatemalans to join the revolution, giving the impression that their movement had thousands of fighters. Not too long after, American mercenaries began flying bombing missions over Guatemalans. On June 18th, 1954, Castillo Armas — now the leader of 400 fighters — crossed the Honduran border to commence the US backed revolution.
On June 24th, the fighters took over the small town of Chiquimula. Armas declared the town the headquarters of his “provisional government.” The radio station, la Voz de Liberacion, was beating the war drum with propaganda about how victorious the US backed fighters were. Arbenz requested a UN investigation in his country, which vexed the Americans who told the British and the French that if they did not vote against UN involvement in Guatemala, that there would be no American support for them in Cyprus, Indochina, and the Suez. The Americans got their way and the UN investigation was voted against, leaving Guatemala isolated. Guatemala’s military leaders forced Arbenz to resign on June 27th.
Latin American countries are not sovereign. They are under the control of the US security umbrella or Russia.
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