Venezuela news
Russia, which often warns against anyone interfering in its “near abroad,” has no problem propping up hostile regimes in America’s back yard. “We’ll have military cooperation with whoever we want,” Maduro’s foreign minister, Jorge Arreaza, told UN reporters last week, confirming Moscow’s growing military support for his regime…
With foreigners solidifying their support for the regime, and as a political stalemate settled since January, Guaidó knew time wasn’t on his side. Sources tell me concerns that an emboldened Maduro would soon move to arrest or otherwise stop him prompted his Tuesday airbase video.
Cuba employs direct command and control over the Venezuelan military, says Stratfor’s Latin America watcher Reggie Thompson, but now units may start to switch sides. And then violence may well worsen as “security forces start to turn against each other,” Thompson warns.
Let’s face it: Venezuela was an unsustainable mess much before Tuesday. The currency is useless, food and medicine are scarce and street violence rampant. A Venezuelan friend says cartels have started distributing US currency, illegal inside the country, to ordinary citizens, so they can buy groceries. “These dollars aren’t given for nothing,” she said, indicating criminal gangs will only grow stronger.
But all that is nothing compared to what’s next. Unless either side can quickly shore up the entire military, street fighting is likely to become bloodier than ever. Heavy tanks and Russian-made air assets will come in.
And even if Maduro goes, chaos is likely to persist as Cuban-backed paramilitary gangs, known as “colectivos,” continue their violent activity.
Please read the whole thing.
Also see this:
On a day of high drama in Caracas, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Tuesday afternoon that Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro was believed to have been ready to leave the country hours earlier, but had been persuaded by the Russians not to go.
“It’s been a long time since anyone has seen Maduro,” he told CNN. “They had an airplane on the tarmac. He was ready to leave this morning as we understand it. And the Russians indicated he should stay.”
Pompeo said Maduro had been intending to fly to Cuba.
Ah, but Trump is Putin’s puppet, don’t you see?
It is outrageous that so many people angry for so long about Trump’s supposed collusion with Russia (remember that?) also support Bernie Sanders, who refuses to say Maduro must go, praises socialist Latin American regimes, and spent his 1988 honeymoon on a Burlington sister city trip to the waning Soviet Union.
This must end. The U.S. is going to have to intervene. Maduro actually wants to resign and is being prevented from doing so by Russia and the Cubans!
As I said before, this is about much more than Venezuela now. Every new U.S. president gets tested by our enemies eventually to see if he has balls or not. This is Trump’s test. Putin is seeing how far he can push him. Trump must not only stop this incursion into our sphere of influence, but Russia must be made to pay a price for having even tried.
Those kids in Venezuela are going out every time they are asked to. Every time they are facing the certainty of being tear gassed, and the possibility of being jailed, tortured, injured, and/or killed. Those kids have never known a country without Chavismo. It wasn’t they who screwed up and voted for this abomination in the beginning. All they want is to have a future.
I know who those kids are. I was jailed for five days in 2017 with those kids, when I got rounded up in a protest just because I was several blocks away, and didn’t run fast enough or far enough. And now those same kids are out there getting beaten and killed again because they want liberty.
The thing of it is, if they were only facing Maduro and his thugs, they and Guaidó and the Opposition could win. But they’re not. They are facing the Cuban G2, the Russians, and the Chinese. It is time for the U.S. to tell the international interlopers to pick on someone their own size. It’s time for the U.S. to stand up to the bullies who are making problems in our neighborhood. It’s just that simple.
Call Mariners. Pronto!
Putin is a paranoid coward and must be treated as such. Call off his bluff and see how fast he will fold. All his military might is mostly a Potemkin village.
News out of VZ has been more difficult to come by given my sourcing habits the last couple of days. I tend to use #venezuela (normal propaganda/noise to information/signal ratio has been 25:1, since the uprising began has worsened to 35 or 40:1) on Twitter, alongside “Caracas Chronicles”, with various individual writers or articles as encountered along the way. Yesterday I began looking at #OperationLibertad, which was a bit better noise/signal wise.
The dictatorship has clamped down on VZ’s communication systems again (for of course they would) so the volume of unique reporting seems to have fallen off. Reliable website suggestions are most welcome.
As to visible events, at least those I can see, the mass demonstrations do not appear to have changed in character, though they do appear less well organized as far as elevated stages for speakers and sound systems go.
Young men still rush at, rock toss at, stick swing at the riot police and throw the occasional molotov cocktail, but these people are not well organized on the whole. They don’t seem to have a plan and are generally poorly prepared to interact with the police. They have no prepositioned stretchers for bearing away their inevitable wounded, for instance. Teamwork or job assignments seem non-existent. But of course one cannot see everywhere.
The US strategic thinking is also dark to our vision, which is appropriate to my way of looking at it. I speculate that given Pres. Trump’s direct total embargo threat to Cuba April 30, it may be that the US is now laying a predicate to end the Cuban dictatorship in the near term, and with it, one may presume, the Nicaraguan as well.
It does not appear at all likely to me that US troops will be used in Venezuela on the ground, at least not until such time as a duly constituted VZn government invites them in. Indeed then probably only to help with aid distribution, organization and trading help, etc.
US air power may be another matter, should an absolute need arise. Otherwise, unless Maduro or the Cubans prove so stupid as to attack and harm American citizens in VZ, I can’t see the reason to send troops. That wouldn’t precluded constantly threatening to send troops, however. Threats, in these circumstances, are prudent and can help keep the bad guys off balance or ill deployed, and this is to the good.
Ach, training, not “trading” help.