I’ll add more as I hear what they’re covering.
#HandsOffVenezuela on twitter
‘Venezuela Cuts Relations with United States Over Coup Support’, jan. 23, telesurenglish.net
‘The Case for the Legitimacy of Maduro’s Second Term’, jan. 10, 2019, telesur english
‘Unelected Brussels bureaucrats support ‘democracy’ in Venezuela ‘on behalf of EU’, 23 Jan, 2019, RT
“European Union has sided with “democratic forces” in Venezuela, backing the self-proclaimed president Juan Guaido over the elected government of Nicolas Maduro.
“Unlike Maduro, the parliamentary assembly, including Juan Guaido have a democratic mandate from Venezuelan citizens,” President of the European Council Donald Tusk tweeted on Wednesday evening, urging all of Europe to support “democratic forces” in Venezuela.
Meanwhile, the unelected EU High Representative for foreign policy, Federica Mogherini, likewise declared her support for Guaido’s self-proclaimed government, in language strangely reminiscent of EU support extended to Ukraine’s coup in 2014.”
From WikiLeaks: @wikileaks 47m47 minutes ago
WikiLeaks Retweeted A/J REMIGIO CEBALLOS:
“High military command in Venezuela now publicly stating support for Nicolas Maduro as Commander in Chief. Says military backs Maduro. Without army support, US government backed opposition cannot take control.”
‘Oil Sanctions on Venezuela Would Make Economic Recovery ‘Impossible’
The Trump administration is currently evaluating oil sanctions on Venezuela. If implemented, they would make the current economic crisis in Venezuela far worse, and would make a recovery impossible, says CEPR’s Mark Weisbrot
Reuters reported on January 17 that Trump administration officials recently met with U.S. oil company executives to explore the possibility of imposing oil sanctions on Venezuela. Approximately half of Venezuela’s oil exports continue to go to the United States, despite various financial sanctions that the U.S. already has in place against the government and government officials. Oil sanctions have often been considered against Venezuela, but so far haven’t happened, presumably because of the effect these would have on the U.S. oil market and on U.S. refiners. Reuters quotes one executive as saying that the oil sanctions planning is “more serious than I’ve heard before.”
Weisbrot also explains how relatively easy it would be to downsize the hyperinflation some say is a million %.
Mark Weisbrot: Trump’s Threats to Invade Venezuela Are Part of U.S. Strategy of Regime Change’, July 11, 2018, democracynow.org, video and transcript
“A tweet posted by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo condemning the landing of two Russian bombers in Venezuela as a “squandering” of public money, has quickly backfired, with many eager to point out some glaring hypocrisies.
Russia sent the two Tu-160 strategic bombers on the 10,000km trip to land at Simón Bolívar International Airport on Monday in a show of support for the government of President Nicolas Maduro, which has repeatedly expressed concerns that the US is trying to topple it.”, RT, Dec. 11, 2018
more from trnn: ‘The US Strategy for Regime Change in Venezuela: TRNN Live’ January 23, 2019; Alex Main discusses the crippling economic sanctions the U.S. has imposed on Venezuela with TRNN’s Sharmini Peries and Greg Wilpert.
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
a few morning additions. from bill van auken at wsws (who loathes ‘bourgeois capitalist’ maduro):
“A US official speaking not for attribution told reporters that if the Maduro government acted against Guaidó and his supporters, their “days will be numbered,” while media reports indicated that Washington is considering a naval blockade of Venezuela to stop its oil exports and the seizure of Venezuelan assets in the US on the supposed behalf of the “interim president.”
“It was revealed last year that US officials repeatedly met between the fall of 2017 and the beginning of last year with a group of Venezuelan military officers seeking US support for the overthrow of Maduro. These contacts failed to reach fruition because Washington believed that the conspiracy was insufficiently prepared.
These calculations may now have changed. An isolated uprising by a group of national guardsmen who seized arms and police stations on Monday has been followed yesterday with a video statement from division Gen. Jesús Alberto Milano Mendoza, appearing together with other officers, declaring that the army should revolt against Maduro and that the high command should not serve as “the armed branch of the government for its personal benefit.” Milano Mendoza had previously served as the chief of Chávez’s presidential guard.”
he also notes that the davos elites had rolled out the carpet for fascist bolsonaro , as he’s courting foreign investment for plundering brazil’s common minerals and rainforest.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/01/24/pers-j24.html
‘Exiled Venezuelan Officers Incite the Military to Stop Supporting Maduro’
“Some Venezuelan military officers are becoming more and more compelled to turn against President Nicolas Maduro, exiled military officers have claimed, MSN reports.
The US-based exiled military officials say that the serving officers have become disillusioned with Maduro, but no one wants to lead an all-out insurrection. The opposition officers also claim that the military is unwilling to repress massive protests, and have called for the people of Venezuela to take to the streets.”
https://sputniknews.com/latam/201901191071625270-venezuela-military-exiled-officers/
this is so lavrovian: ‘US interfering in Venezuela? No need to ask Mueller to determine that – Lavrov’ (self explanatory, but anyway i’ll add):
“The Russian minister said the speed of the developments on Wednesday indicated that the opposition’s move was likely orchestrated by foreign actors.” [of course it was, plus the cia]
“We hope the Venezuelan opposition prioritize national interests and call on them not to be pawns in someone else’s dirty game,” he said, adding that Russia will support any attempts by the conflicting parties to resolve their differences, as long as they don’t resort to violence.”
“Responding to questions from the media, Peskov said Caracas has not asked for Russia’s help to deal with the political crisis. At the moment Moscow considers the situation in the country to be an internal matter and does not plan to intervene diplomatically or in any other way, he said.”
Thank you for posting on this, wendye. I am at a loss to understand Trump’s logic. Not that he is logical at any stage of the political game, but this seems blatantly foolhardy. He won election in large part in order to call a halt to ongoing predation by the government of the US inflicted upon weaker adversaries – a long march which many voters were desperate to bring to a standstill.
And here he is upping the ante publicly and with fanfare, declaring himself to be no less eager for regime change than his predecessors. The result will be that his role in history has now been forged.
Colin Powell said before the invasion of Iraq “If you break it, you own it.” If this now leads to the breaking of Venezuela, Trump will own that.
If it leads to more folk calling for the impeachment of this administration and all those participating in this decision, Trump will own that.
And, perhaps more positively, if it leads to the enlightenment, finally, of the American people in general as to what their government and its secret minions have been involved in yea these many years to subvert other governments and accumulate wealth to the upper classes,
Trump will own that. He may indeed have now become our very own American Mephistopheles:
[“The more I try to do evil, the more it transforms itself into good.”]
I just hope above all hopes that the Venezuelan people are not to suffer as a consequence of all of this. The world has seen far too much suffering at the hands of the empiricists.
i’m tempted to say ‘from your mouth to the gods’ ears’, juliania, but this putsch has been approved by the people who matter™. after the glowing reports of guaido, then dick durbin following, the only reason i can think of that there might not be a ‘sense of congressional’ approval vote would be due to pelosi wanting to stick DT in the eye.
and this list of nations approving: the United States, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru today the UK and france, plus European Parliament President Antonio Tajani, European Council President Donald Tusk, and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini believe that the people of VZ will Stop Suffering under the king who’s crowned himself. this made me cringe when i’d seen it a few minutes ago, as i’d grossly underestimated the amount withheld from maduro’s venezuela:
and as chinahand on twitter notes:
really the fix has been in since Obomba had declared VZ a direct threat to the security of america’; again, DT just up the ante due do advice from pompeo, bolton, and rexxon tillerson, whose oil is under VZ and under offshore fields in ‘contention’ with guyana next door.
but i’d indeed forgotten the Orange One’s campaign rhetoric: out of nato, out of nafta, out of afghanistan, etc. dah, some say amerikan presidents are rule by the deep state, but there must be any number of ‘deep states’ operative.
the first commenter in yesterday said b at MoA has a worthy thread up on these doings, but he believes the coup will fail as the others have due to the military having supported chavez and maduro. this may be another sort of ball game.
but i’ll add two links, then take them over yonder:
‘Putin: Foreign interference in Venezuela’s internal affairs grossly violates international law’, RT today
‘Former U.N. expert Alfred de Zayas said in an interview that the U.S. attempted coup in Venezuela is against international laws. Alfred de Zayas, a former United Nations expert who visited Venezuela in 2017 as a U.N. representative, said that the United States is conducting an illegal coup in the country which is against international laws’, telesurenglish.net
My long response has disappeared, wendye. Thank you for posting this.
I guess there is censorship working on posts that criticize the situation too strongly. I think this will boomerang on Trump. I wish peace and a Lavrovian vision to all Venezuelans!
i wish the same thing, juliania. ain’t lavrov a peach of a diplomat? he’d also said that moscow would be willing to negotiate with any ‘parties who remain non-violent’, but that’s long been in the eye of the MSM beholders.
sorry it took me so long to dig your first comment out of purgatory; wordpress changed a bit ago, and now chrome doesn’t even recognize wordpress admin, or maybe the reverse. but it makes creating a diary a very different thing. ah, i’m blathering sorry….
Thanks for getting me out of the coal bin, wendye. What a sorry century this is.
And yes, Lavrov is a lovely, lovely man.
it is indeed, and as MLK, jr. had said: the US is the greatest exporter of violence, and built on the evils of racism, genocide, and (capitalist) greed. or close to that.
i’ll say as per the petition you’d brought, even he’d acknowledged at some point that the countervailing force of malcolm x was a blessing, as i remember it, after they’d met, post x’s haj. sleep well, tomorrow’s another day.
Do you see the way that Adam Garrie interprets Venezuela/Davos? https://eurasiafuture.com/2019/01/25/donald-trump-has-inadvertently-killed-off-the-davos-format/
no, i hadn’t, never heard of garrie as far as i remember. but i guess i’m not really taking his point, if he means that the cia/US coup in VZ is the reason for that list of ‘elite’ leaders not attending. but i had been waiting for that panel, but at c99% i’d mistakenly said it was about VZ in particular.
i’d kinda wondered if putin might have shown up today; he hadn’t atteneded 2ince 2009.
i have a few disgusting things too add in a separate comment for more white space.
grotesque additions: a disgusting virtue-signaling psyop: ‘Venezuela’s Juan Guaidó offers Nicolás Maduro amnesty if he goes quietly’; In TV interview opposition challenger says he is determined to bring an end to president’s ‘dictatorship’, the guardian
“The 35-year-old opposition leader renewed his call for Venezuela’s military – whose members have been offered an amnesty – to turn on their commander-in-chief.
He also indicated Maduro – who was sworn in for his second six-year term on 10 January despite a storm of international condemnation – could himself be offered an amnesty if he agreed to step aside. “This amnesty, these guarantees are on the table for everyone who is prepared to put themselves on the side of the constitution in order to recover the democratic order,” he said.”
‘Washington escalates coup provocations in Venezuela’ bill van auken, 25 January 2019, wsws
“US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is set to appear at a closed-door session of the United Nations Security Council Saturday morning to discuss the political crisis in Venezuela. The move comes after Washington declared the presidency of Nicolas Maduro “illegitimate” and recognized the self-proclaimed “interim president” Juan Guaidó of the right-wing, US-funded Voluntad Popular (Popular Will) party as the government of South America’s most oil-rich country.
The turn to the Security Council, where Russia and China, which both have extensive economic and political ties to Caracas and are certain to veto any resolution backing what amounts to a US-orchestrated coup, has all the earmarks of a propaganda gesture, aimed at making a show of appeal for UN support in order to pave the way for a unilateral US intervention.” [snip]
“The Wall Street Journal presented the unelected Guaidó’s self-proclamation as “interim president” in charge of Venezuela as the act of the entire nation reclaiming its “democracy,” while hinting strongly at the potential for a more direct US intervention. “It’s tempting to think the U.S. should send in troops, a la Panama in 1989, to assist the rebellion,” the Journal commented. “But Venezuelans have to win their freedom themselves, and if they do they are likely to prize it all the more.” And should they fail to “win their freedom” according to Washington’s dictates and interests? Clearly, as Trump and his aides have repeatedly declared, “all options are on the table.”
None of the media makes any mention of the millions of dollars in funding by the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID poured into Guaidó’s Voluntad Popular party.” increasing dem support, etc.
‘Congresswoman who fixed Democratic primary for Clinton now ‘fixing’ democracy in Venezuela’ 25 Jan, 2019 RT
“The House Foreign Affairs Committee has even offered a simple explanation on how a ‘dream team’ of Democrats have prepared a package of laws, which will ensure Venezuela’s transition into a better future. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell will be bringing humanitarian aid, Donna Shalala will stop the arming of Maduro’s thugs with batons and tear gas, while Debbie Wasserman Schultz gets arguably the hardest task of them all – taking on Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.”
and from jeffrey st. clair at counterpunch:
““+ Things Democrats do when the government is shut down: Pass the NATO Support Act in the House without a single Democratic vote against it.
+ Can someone explain to me (rhetorical device) why Reps. AOC, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Barbara Lee voted with Liz Cheney in favor of the NATO Support Act? Not one Democrat or “Democratic Socialist” voted against this pathetic endorsement of an obsolete and provocative military alliance?”
+ Only 22 brave souls voted against NATO, all of them libertarian Republicans. These are the first warm feelings I’ve ever had for Rep. Louie Gohmert.”
Craig Murray: The Coup in Venezuela Must Be Resisted
Venezuela has elections. Juan Guaido has never even been a Presidential candidate. Despite massive CIA opposition funding and interference over years as Big Oil tries to regain control of the World’s largest oil reserves, Nicolas Maduro was democratically re-elected in 2018 as President of Venezuela.
The coup now under way is illegitimate. I opposed Maduro’s move to replace the elected National Assembly. Sometimes I read back things I wrote in the past and decide I was wrong. Sometimes I think the article was right, but a bit of a potboiler. Occasionally I am proud, and I am proud of my analysis on Venezuela written on 3 August 2017. I believe it is still valid.
thanks, grayson, although i can’t really try harder to read his past opinion given it’s all italics, no paragraph breaks. but i am trying to remember why maduro had done that, but can’t. frayed synapses.
cruising the twittersphere, i’d run into this brief explanation from (ish) ben norton:
“The opposition won the 2015 National Assembly election fairly, then waged an internal war against the state, refusing to follow Supreme Court orders. Then the opposition boycotted the 2017 Constituent Assembly election and 2018 presidential election, all while calling for a coup.”
but the MUD rebuttal always said: ‘but maduro stacked the court w/ his appointees’.
I too am a bit puzzled as to why it would have seemed important for Trump to upstage Davos by launching a move against Venezuela. Perhaps to offset having capitulated in the shutdown might seem more likely, though even that doesn’t really explain what has looked like a very precipitous declaration. (One comment I saw somewhere put that capitulation down to the Super Bowl needing to be served by airlines staying viable – not being a football fan, I wouldn’t know.) These strange people move in very strange ways and what wouldn’t be important to me is obviously much more so to them. Is there a football mafia?
A very precipitous declaration that seems to have had a unanimous chorus of froglike voices all around the planet. Another coalition of the willing? I know I have crocuses blooming already but is it really springtime in Washington D.C.? Time to commit another geopolitical error of devastating proportions? Leap into the arms of the warmongers and empire builders before —before what?
I await February, and Groundhog Day. It can’t be any weirder than all of this.
DT’s alleged reason for not going to davos was that he needed to negotiate the shutdown, but i will say that the elites at davos were very condemnatory of his having ‘shut it down’.
as to his having backed guaido, i reckon the stars were aligned almost perfectly for him to do so, but this little tidbit from the WaPo was fascinating:
“‘With risks ahead, Trump administration pins hopes on Venezuela’s opposition’, jan 24, WaPo
“The U.S. pressure campaign is aimed partly at convincing Maduro that he cannot continue to govern, and partly at building up Guaidó.
“We have been engaged with the same strategy: to build international pressure, help organize the internal opposition and push for a peaceful restoration of democracy. But that internal piece was missing,” the official said. “He was the piece we needed for our strategy to be coherent and complete.”
Control over oil revenue — and $20 million in humanitarian aid Secretary of State Mike Pompeo promised Thursday — would give Guaidó both international legitimacy and practical help.”
but the other stars aligned are ‘turning back the pink tide’ rubric, from honduras 2009 until clinton’s state dept forward. now with right wing govt. in brazil and chile, colombia in nato with amerikan bases, same w/ ecuador, and all of those nations looking to smash bolivarianism and leftists for good, it was perfect timing. add pence meeting w/ the opposition and offering to fund it/him, as ‘legitimate interim president’, and it’s quite a ballgame afoot.
MoA comments are discussing the possible coup management on their previous thread’s third page, a hopeful sign that there may be some change in the situation – not apparent yet other places, but I did see this earlier opinion piece at RT that has my ‘team leader’ Jill Stein in it – not too long, this one:
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/449686-debbie-schultz-fixing-venezuela/
Sorry if it’s a repeat.
i have stein’s tweet above in ‘jan. 25 grotesque additions’, but it is key how few elected dems are protesting the putsch. a fellow i just read (and liked his essay) actually said that ro (someone) and ocasio both objected. clicking thru his link i found ‘ocasio retweeted’ ro whoosit (kannon?), but good on him. and folks over yonder are bullish on tulsi, with one dissenter, so i have him this:
but…but…presidents and ticking time bombs! and never mind her being bff’s with thug narendra modi.
i should have added, but hadn’t: i’m worn out on reading today, and i often fail to bring over here what i’ve dug out in answer to Qs over yonder at c99%.
often if you have the time, you can click into the ‘cross-posted at’ at the bottom of the OP.
this is one i hadn’t added here, among others, and i know how you love wee brave abby martin, as i do, and luckily, there’s a transcript for this one!
‘Attempted Coup in Venezuela with Abby Martin, Greg Wilpert, Paul Jay’
January 25, 2019, TRNN
https://therealnews.com/stories/attempted-coup-in-venezuela-with-abby-martin-greg-wilpert-paul-jay