THE THE DEEP STATE REGIME CHANGE SIEGE OF VENEZUELA VERSUS THE DEEP STATE COUP D' ETAT AGAINST TRUMP.
Trump's Coup In Venezuela: What You're Not Being Told
Washington
is growing increasingly desperate as
its coup efforts go further south in Venezuela...
The failure of the
February 23 “humanitarian aid” provocation on the Venezuelan border was
a serious blow for Trump’s ongoing coup attempt. There
were mutual recriminations between self-appointed Guaidó, Colombian President
Duque and US Vice-President Pence. The US could not get a consensus from its
own Lima Cartel allies in
The coup was losing momentum. Then, on March 7, just days
after Guaidó’s anti-climactic return to Caracas, the country was plunged into
a nationwide blackout from which it has not yet fully recovered. What caused
it? How is it related to the “regime change” attempt? And, most importantly,
what are imperialism’s plans and how can they be fought?
February
23 was supposed to be the coup’s D-Day. The
idea was never to actually deliver “humanitarian aid” into the country, but
rather to create a “people’s power” moment, where large crowds of opposition
supporters on both sides of the border defied the Venezuelan armed forces,
which, when faced with a large crowd of peaceful demonstrators, would then
switch sides and join Trump’s puppet, Juan Guaidó. On the day, however,
things did not go according to Washington’s plan. The crowds of opposition
supporters did not
They
made a big story about “Maduro burning the aid trucks” at the Santander
bridge on the Colombian border. US officials even
insisted this justified military intervention under the Geneva Convention.
Never mind the fact that the Convention only applies in cases of war, the
fact is that the aid truck that was burned was set on fire by a “peaceful”
opposition supporter throwing a
Each of the trucks burned by Maduro
carried 20 tons of food & medicine. This is a crime & if
international law means anything he must pay a high price for this. #23FAyudaHumanitaria
 
Masked thugs, civilians killed by live
rounds, and the burning of trucks carrying badly-needed food and medicine.
This has been Maduro’s response to peaceful efforts to help Venezuelans.
Countries that still recognize Maduro should take note of what they are
endorsing.
Now,
two weeks too late, even the New York Times has been forced to admit that “one [Venezuelan
government] claim that appears to be backed up by video footage is that the
protesters started the fire.” The
same NY
The
admission by the NY Times, though it is unlikely
to be covered as widely as the initial false reports, is very significant. We
knew the US was lying, right from the beginning, as there was proof. Now it
has been forced to admit it. This should provide a salutary lesson for the
next time the US or its Venezuelan opposition make any outrageous claims
about the “Maduro regime." The lesson is: “question everything
Washington and the mass media tell you about a government they want to
overthrow.”
That evening, as if on cue, the Venezuelan opposition social
media operation started to explode with the hashtag #IntervencionMilitarYA
(#MilitaryInterventionNOW), aimed at putting pressure on the US and its
allies to launch a military intervention in the country. The campaign is very
revealing as to the character of the opposition (pro-imperialist and traitors
to their own country), but also as to the morale of their ranks (they do not
think they are the agents of “change” but rather invest all their hopes in
Trump).
Having been defeated on February 23, the meeting of the Lima
Group of countries in Bogotá the following morning was a further setback. Let
us remember that the Lima Group (more accurately known as the “Lima Cartel”)
is an ad-hoc group of countries created with the explicit aim of overthrowing
the Venezuelan government when the US could not get enough votes at the
The case
of Brazil is noteworthy because there is a major split within Bolsonaro’s
cabinet, and between him and the Armed Forces. Under pressure from the
generals and his own vice-president, General Hamilton Mourão, the far-right
president has been forced to retreat from several of his public statements,
specifically, support for the transfer of the Brazilian embassy to Jerusalem
and granting the US army access to a military base in Brazil. When the Lima
Group decided in January to cut off all contact with the Venezuelan armed
forces, the Brazilians kept communication lines open. The Brazilian army went as far as
vetoing the presence of US soldiers in the border with Venezuela as
part of the so-called “humanitarian aid” operation on 23 February.
Contrary to the attitude of the Colombian state, which turned
a blind eye and even helped the opposition rioters on the border with
Venezuela, the Brazilians contained them and prevented clashes. The reason is
not that the Brazilian generals are in any way progressive, nor that they
stand by the principle of sovereignty, but rather they understand that any
major conflict in Venezuela, including the possibility of a civil war, could
have a major impact on Brazil, with which it shares a large and inhospitable
border. The last thing the Brazilian generals want is accidentally getting sucked
into a major armed conflict in Venezuela, which they know would not be a
simple affair.
Faced
with such reluctance, the Bogotá meeting on 25 February ended with a
statement that used strong words of condemnation and issued unspecified
threats, but did not contain any serious commitment to the next steps in the
“regime change” operation. The US announced the inclusion of a few more
Venezuelan officials on their sanctions list, including four regional
governors. Hardly the “military intervention now”
that the opposition demanded.
Media reports have
talked of recriminations from Mike Pence (who had cut off his trip to South
Korea to attend the meeting) to Guaidó. According to one report, Pence told
Guaidó that “everything was failing in the offensive against the
Of
course, one should take such reports with a pinch of salt as sources are not
quoted. However, the general frustration of the US with the Venezuelan
coup is very real and makes this particular report plausible. Another
“The opposition had publicly sold the plan by promising that
an outpouring of Venezuelans on both sides of the border would link up, Mr.
Maduro’s security forces would back down and truckloads of aid would enter
for hungry Venezuelans. ‘I think they built up expectations that weren’t
carried out,’ said an opposition operative who was familiar with the
discussions. ‘They built up that there was going to be more aid, that it
would get in. And that the military would rise up. And it didn’t happen that
way.’”
The WSJ article is quite
detailed:
“‘As time passed, [Piñera] kept asking Guaidó where are the
people who are coming from the other side?’ said the person. The responses
weren’t satisfactory, he added. ‘Everything failed: coordination,
information, organization,’ said a senior Latin American official.”
The
picture painted here is of an angry exchange in which all blamed Guaidó, when
in reality Washington is responsible for the whole design of the coup. The US
officials in charge of the coup were so frustrated that they started a
completely ridiculous polemic against the media (CNN included),
which had started to
Must watch exchange
The
hawks in Trump’s administration – Bolton,
First, they assumed Maduro had no support whatsoever,
underestimating the strength of anti-imperialist feeling in the face of a
brazen US coup attempt, and the fact that, while support for Chavismo has
diminished, it still managed to get over 30 percent of the census to vote for
Maduro a year ago. Moreover, in the last few weeks, there has been a series
of impressive, anti-imperialist mass rallies led by Diosdado Cabello in all
states in the country.
Second, they thought that the opposition was able to
The failure of February 23 furthermore left Guaidó abroad, in
Colombia. He thought he would come back victorious, at the head of a US
convoy of “humanitarian aid," but found himself having violated a court
order not to leave the country and stranded in Bogotá. He started a short
tour of Latin America, on board a Colombian plane, but soon the US called him
to order. He discarded a plan to continue his tour in Europe and was told in
no uncertain terms that he had to return to Venezuela as “he was losing
momentum."
Again,
Abrams, Bolton and Rubio attempted to build up Guaidó’s return as another
D-Day, baiting Maduro to arrest him on arrival in order to build a casus
Blackout
Then came the blackout. Starting on Thursday, March 7, just
before 5pm, a major power failure affected 18 out of the country’s 23 states
and the Capital District. In Caracas, the Metro stopped working and tens of
thousands had to walk their way home, in the dark. After a few hours it
became clear that this was a major incident and power would not be restored
quickly. The government decreed Friday a national holiday.
The country’s main electricity generator, the Simon Bolivar
Hydroelectric plant, known as
The situation is serious. The government decreed another
holiday for March 11 and 12. Back-up electricity generators keep power supply
to essential installations, like hospitals, but there are serious problems
with public transport. Shops do not accept card payments and many have
increased prices and resorted to only
The
government has blamed the blackout on sabotage at El Guri and of course
Washington and the opposition have been quick to reject such idea, blaming
the power cut on a wildfire affecting the 765Kv power line between El Guri
and the Malena substation. This would have brought down the power line and
then in turn triggered a security stoppage at the El Guri Hydro plant.
However, the opposition
The government’s claim is that there was a cyberattack against
the system that controls the El Guri turbines and regulates power generation
and supply down the 765KV line to Malena. The government has also declared
that, when power was restored on Saturday, March 9, there was another such
attack, and that these attacks have been carried out by US imperialism.
For those tempted to dismiss these accusations as a
“conspiracy theory," let us look at the following facts. First, the US
and the mass media blatantly lied about the burning of the “aid” truck just
two weeks ago. Furthermore, what credibility has Marco Rubio got? On March
10, he tweeted there had been an explosion at a “German Dam," when in
reality a Venezuelan opposition journalist by the name of Germán Dam had
reported an explosion at a power substation.
In an
even more callous twist, Rubio “reported” 80 babies having died at a hospital
in Maracaibo due to the blackout, only to be corrected by the chief of the Wall Street Journal South America Bureau:
the hospital had recorded no neonatal deaths. None. Zero.
Secondly,
such an attack is possible and has been carried out before, even on
Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition systems that are not online. For
those interested, just look up the US-and-Israeli-made Stuxnet
virus, which was used to attack Iran’s nuclear power
“In the case of Venezuela, the idea of a
government like the United States remotely interfering with its power grid is
actually quite realistic... Given the U.S.
While the article in the end says a different scenario is
highly likely, it nevertheless highlights “the inability to definitively
discount U.S.
Third,
there is the matter of timing. The coup was stalling. Guaidó had returned to
the
Of course, to any explanation of the blackout, its severity
and its prolonged nature, we must add several other factors.
One is
the fact that the Venezuelan grid has been starved of investment and
maintenance for several years, something the left wing of the Bolivarian
movement has discussed openly.
The US is quick to point out this as the main cause, forgetting that
sanctions have prevented the country from re-negotiating its foreign debt,
which has sucked in an increasing amount of the country’s foreign reserves.
We must add that the Maduro government has chosen to pay the foreign debt and
hand over preferential dollars to the capitalists rather than use these
reserves differently. This means that sabotage is taking place in a system
that has already been weakened and therefore can be more easily damaged.
Another is the fact that thousands of workers have left their
jobs in the industry as a result of the economic
A third
is that some of these problems would have been alleviated, or perhaps
prevented, had the workers in the industry maintained the levels of workers’
control introduced during the Chavez government. Let us not forget that
electricity workers at one point were at the forefront of the struggle for
workers’ control, which was undone by the
bureaucracy.
Finally, the more recent US sanctions on PDVSA have prevented
Venezuela from importing and producing the fuel needed for the
What
next for imperialism?
The situation in Venezuela depends greatly on factors that are
developing behind the scenes. It is impossible to say what is actually
happening in the military barracks and in the officers’ quarters. The whole
policy of US imperialism is designed to put pressure on them, by making the
situation in the country unbearable, so that the
As
we have argued before, this ongoing imperialist coup attempt can only be
fought back with revolutionary measures, striking blows against the coup
plotters at home and their puppet masters abroad.
As
for the possibility of military intervention, it is clear that the US would
like Latin American countries to front it, but there is no appetite in the
Lima Group for military adventures, which can prove costly and damaging. That
leaves the US with very few options, the main one being to increase the
pressure, through sanctions, sabotage, provocations, etc. This much was
admitted by Elliot Abrams in a conversation with two Russian
To this
we have to add the ideas likely
There
is also a sense of urgency for the likes of Bolton, Pompeo, Abrams and Rubio. They
hoped for a quick resolution in this push for “regime change” back in
January, but they failed. They probably calculate that they need a resolution
well before the 2020 election in the US. Frustration and impatience only make
them more dangerous and ready to deploy tricks they have not yet used.
As we have argued before, this ongoing imperialist coup
attempt can only be fought back with revolutionary measures, striking blows
against the coup plotters at home and their puppet masters abroad. That means
arresting them and putting them on trial. Expropriating the coup-plotting
oligarchy as well as the multinationals. Above all, the revolutionary
Internationally,
we need to continue and strengthen the campaign against our own imperialist
governments in the US, the EU and the Lima Group countries, all of whom are,
to one degree or another involved in this reactionary plot.
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Families Are Crossing Southern U.S. Border In Record Numbers
In
February 2019, more than 36,000 people were apprehended while trying to cross
the border with their families, exceeding the number of other apprehended
people by almost 6,000. As Statista's Katharina Buchholz
notes, the number of families arrested has pushed total
border apprehensions to an 11-year high in February.
The
number of immigrants apprehended with their family in fiscal year 2019 so far
(October-February) has also exceeded the record for
most family apprehensions in a whole year, set in FY2018.
You
will find more infographics at Statista
Recently,
more immigrants that are coming across the Southern U.S.
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