Pence in Bogota: Selling the Trump Regime’s Coup Plot Against Venezuela
by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org - Home - Stephen Lendman)
In Bogota, Colombia, Pence promoted the Trump regime’s attempted coup against Venezuelan social democracy.
Leaders of so-called Lima Group countries (aka US regional colonies) attended to show support for the scheme - short of military intervention they oppose.
Usurper in waiting Guaido was there. Ahead of Saturday’s humanitarian aid Trojan horse PR stunt, he violated his travel ban by crossing into Colombia, reportedly aided by its ruling regime.
An unconfirmed report said he was covertly helicoptered cross-border. “We are returning to Venezuela this week,” he said. It’s unclear how Maduro authorities will handle things when he arrives.
After illegally declaring himself interim president on January 23, violating international and Venezuelan constitutional law, he should have been held accountable straightaway. He’s guilty of sedition, treason, or both - the highest of high political crimes.
On Monday, Pence announced new illegal US sanctions on former and current Venezuelan political officials connected to the ruling Bolivarian party.
As US vice president, Pence is a front man for the imperial state; Wall Street; the military, industrial, security, media complex; Big Oil, and other US predatory corporate interests.
In an earlier article, I called him an evangelical Christian fascist, a neocon hardliner, an imperial war cheerleader, an Islamophobe, Russophobe, Iranophobe, and homophobe.
Hostile to aliens of the wrong color and Muslims from the wrong countries, he’s against virtually everything just societies hold dear.
Along with Trump, Pompeo, Bolton, and Abrams, he’s freedom-loving peoples’ worst nightmare. DLT impeachment and removal from office supporters should be careful what they wish for.
Replacing him with Pence would jump from the frying pan into the fire of likely greater imperial toughness than already, increasing the possibility of nuclear war, a nightmarish doomsday scenario if launched.
In his Monday address, Pence recited his usual litany of bald-faced Big Lies. Falsely calling democrat Maduro “the tyrant in Caracas,” he lied accusing what he called government “henchmen” of “burn(ing) truckloads of food and medicine, and murder(ing) civilians.”
Fact: The Saturday burning incident occurred in Colombian territory, anti-Bolivarian democracy thugs responsible, likely recruited by the CIA. Venezuelan security forces had nothing to do with it. Video evidence and eyewitness testimonies proved it.
Fact: Weekend violence along Venezuela’s borders with Colombia and Brazil, continuing on Monday,” was orchestrated in Washington, part of the plot to replace Bolivarian social democracy with US-controlled fascist tyranny.
Fact: Venezuelan security forces largely responded with tear gas. Live fire and other violence were from hostile anti-government guarimbas, their actions orchestrated by the US and its regional proxies.
The “new day” Pence and other Trump regime hardliners seek is control over all other nations as client states under puppet regimes, their sovereign independence eliminated, their resources looted, their people exploited.
Weekend violence was likely prelude for worse to come, a nation under siege, its economy and people harmed by sanctions war.
According to Venezuelan envoy to Russia Carlos Rafael Faria Tortosa, so-called US “humanitarian aid” included uninspected boxes of “decayed food, and expired and unusable medications.”
The weekend Trump regime PR stunt combined tragedy, travesty, and farce, attempting to send Venezuelans stuff earmarked for the rubbish heap, making the ruse more contemptible.
Interviewed by ABC News on Monday, his first appearance on US television in years, Maduro explained the following, saying:
“Everything that the United States government has done has been doomed to failure. They are trying to fabricate a crisis to justify political escalation and a military intervention in Venezuela to bring a war to South America.”
Pence’s Monday meeting with Lima Group leaders in Bogota was “part of the politics to attempt to establish a parallel government in Venezuela.”
The Trump regime “wants Venezuela’s oil. (It’s) willing to go to war for that oil. The extremist Ku Klux Klan government that Donald Trump directs wants a war over oil, and more than just oil,” calling Venezuela under his leadership a “pacifist, humble nation.”
He continued adding: “Venezuela has the right to peace. Venezuela has legitimate institutions. I, as President of Venezuela, am prepared for a direct dialogue with your government…”
“We are South Americans. You are North Americans. (We should) look for 21st century solutions not Cold War solutions. The Cold War should stay behind.”
“We cannot have this war of are you a communist. Are you anti-communist, inter-communist, anti-communist. That is not of this century.”
“We are Democrats that believe in a new type of socialism, and we have the right to the diversity of criterion and ideology. And so President Trump should always be ready to see Venezuela’s truth - the other side of the coin and rectify and start a new path.”
Maduro called the path pursued by Trump and his predecessors “fractured…a path of a coup d’etat, of an intervention” - flagrantly violating international and US constitutional law.
Calling for “peaceful dialogue” to resolve differences, he knows the US doesn’t negotiate. It demands. It wants Venezuelan social democracy eliminated.
That’s what Trump, Pence, Pompeo, Bolton, Abrams, and the vast majority of congressional members are all about.
They want all sovereign independent countries transformed into US vassal states - by brute force if other tactics fail, operating by Washington rules alone.
That’s what the scourge of imperialism is all about - humanity’s greatest threat if US hardliners push things too far.
A Final Comment
On Monday, Brazilian Vice President Antonio Hamilton Mourao said Lima Group countries oppose “a military solution to the situation” in Venezuela, adding his government won’t let the US use its territory as a platform for attacking the Bolivarian Republic.
On the same day, EU Foreign Affairs and Security Policy spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic said “(w)e need a peaceful political and democratic and Venezuelan-owned resolution of this crisis. This obviously excludes the use of force.”
Around 50 nations support illegally self-designated interim president/usurper in waiting Guaido.
Most UN members states either expressed public support for Maduro or refused to endorse the US-designated puppet.
The largely US-controlled Organization of American States got only 16 out of 34 member states to express support for regime change, short of the required number needed for its endorsement.
Through his spokesman, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres failed to recognize unconstitutionally self-proclaimed interim president Guaido.
The African Union supports Maduro. Its deputy chairperson Thomas Kwesi Quartey’s expressed “solidarity with the people of Venezuela and…support for constitutional president Nicolas Maduro.”
US congressional members supportive of ousting him expressed opposition to military intervention. A world community majority opposes the Trump regime’s coup attempt either publicly or by refusing to endorse it.
On Tuesday, an emergency Security Council meeting will be held on Venezuela, called for by the Trump regime - wanting to use the session to promote regime change in the country.
If a resolution is proposed in defense of the coup plot, Russia and China will surely will use their veto power to block it.
A long struggle ahead remains to preserve and protect the hemisphere’s leading democratic government. US hardliners aren’t about to back off from their plot to topple it.
Sustained mass resistance is vital to foil their diabolical aims - along with plenty of help from Russia, China, and other allied nations.
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