Here We Go Again
The USA has been shamelessly meddling in Latin American politics for a century or more, but there was a certain interval when my Psychopathic Uncle Sam backed off a bit. Now he's back at it full force.
The recent decision by Trump to "recognise" some bozo who just declared himself the President of Venezuela, over the man who was actually elected President by the people of that nation, is yet another painfully sad example of the old rule that when US Presidents find themselves in political trouble at home, they attack a third world nation.
Operation Condor II
The USA has been toppling populist governments and backing their replacement with authoritarian right-wing semi-dictatorships for years now. Bolsonaro is just the most recent example. But instead of the actual hard coup d'etat with soldiers shooting people that was used to topple Allende and Perón and so many others in the 1970's, (a practice that led to 30,000 people being raped, tortured, and murdered by the dictatorship here in Argentina), this time the CIA and their loathsome lackeys are using the golpe blando or soft coup.
How Macri Came To Power
Here in Argentina that meant setting up a federal prosecutor named Nisman to be their fall guy. First they fed him forged information alleging that the Iranians had been behind the bombing at the AMIA Jewish cultural center, then they left him hanging with no real support for the wild accusations he'd made. At that point either he killed himself, or he was suicided by one of the professional teams who have "helped" so many inconvenient Americans conveniently kill themselves. Nisman's death was blamed on then-President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, despite the fact that there was not one shred of evidence to connect her with his death in any way.
And the heavy hand of manipulation was very obviously to be seen. When the first forensic investigation didn't yield the results the manipulators wanted, the investigation was then handed to a second team of military investigators who reliably told the plotters what they wanted to hear.
A long string of ever-wilder accusations, equally without proof, was then used to discredit Presidenta Kirchner, even though she was not eligible to run for another consecutive term. The next step was for the vulture funds to pour money into the campaign of a right-wing politician named Mauricio Macri, who was then mayor of Buenos Aires. A few months and a little vote fraud later, Macri was President of Argentina. And do you know what was his very first act as President? He decided to pay the vulture funds every penny of their outrageous claims, without even attempting to negotiate, or objecting to being billed for the blatantly illegal actions of the vulture funds, such as seizing a ship of the Argentine Navy.
Golpe Blando
Having started to write about events in Venezuela, I then digressed into a long aside about Argentina. My purpose was to illustrate, from the example I know best, how the soft coup works. And events now taking place in Venezuela are, let there be zero doubt, a coup in the making, though Trump's need for political distraction may cause this one to be far from soft. Let's face it, the man has as much subtlety as a bulldozer.
Cue The Dancing Clowns
Within 15 minutes of the dramatic announcement that Trump's Amerikkka would be recognising it's latest stooge Guaido, Argentina's own not-so-beloved President Macri was announcing that his government would do the same, quickly followed by Bolsonaro of Brazil and the rest of the servile clown posse of Latin American puppet governments.
This in itself is evidence that this whole sad circus was all arranged in advance. Nothing happens in 15 minutes in this country. Argentinos take more than 15 minutes to decide what to order in a coffee shop, including at least one phone call to mama to ask her advice.
Quo F***ing Vadis
So what happens next? God only knows. If Trump feels he really needs to throw the red meat to his arch-conservatard base of power, he may authorise direct military action. One step down the scale of nastiness, he may encourage direct military action through proxies Colombia and perhaps Brazil. It is difficult to say whether the Brazilian military would accept being used so, but certainly Colombia would.
The one certainty is that the people of Venezuela will be the ones to suffer as Trump rolls out his very own war of aggression. Because Iraq, Libya, America's humiliating failure in Syria, and the 18 long years of chaos & disaster in Afghanistan just isn't enough to satisfy the bloodlust of certain factions in the US power structure, or to assure the profits of the big defense contractors.
Op Ed by George Galloway in RT
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/449597-venezuela-maduro-us-trump/
The photo at the top of this article is my own, of course, showing a view through the trees of the BsAs skyline from the back side of the hippodromo (horse racing track), on the edge of the Bosque Viejo aka Bosque Palermo