lopez, leopoldo

=5/19 coup fail, spanish embassy
truthout
From the very beginning in 2009 until this year, OFF officials and its founder, Thor Halvorssen, have invited speakers who have supported gross violations of human rights or committed such themselves. A media scandal broke in 2010 as busloads of Norwegian school kids were shipped in to hail people they had been told were “heroes of human rights” and “voices of freedom.” It turned out that three of the speakers had recently participated in or actively promoted military coups against democratically-elected governments in Latin America. One of them, Leopoldo López, <a href="https://vimeo.com/11150995" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; cursor: pointer; line-height: inherit;">was a key figure</a> in the internationally condemned right-wing military coup against Venezuela’s president Hugo Chávez in 2002. López demanded the ousting of all elected authorities. Followed by his own armed police force, he broke into the apartment where the minister of interior and justice was hiding and had him handcuffed and dragged out to a waiting mob that beat, kicked and spit at him before he was finally arrested. This was described by Amnesty International as one of the most serious human rights violations, among many, perpetrated during the short-lived coup d’état. López is Thor Halvorssen’s cousin.Halvorssen’s relative was accompanied to the 2010 Oslo Freedom Forum by fellow coup maker Marcel Granier. He was the general director of RCTV, the most watched TV channel in Halvorssen’s native Venezuela. In 2002, Granier and RCTV were supportive of the coup. They also manipulated footage and bluntly lied to their own viewers about the events during the coup to ensure the ouster of Chávez, as shown in the Irish documentary <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id%E2%80%94ZFtjR5c" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; cursor: pointer; line-height: inherit;">The Revolution will not be Televised</a>. Before Chávez’s allies got the president back in power, RCTV and other private TV stations were warmly thanked by the leaders of the coup, saying that they could never have succeeded had it not been for RCTV and the rest of the private media. Granier and López were dubbed “voice of freedom” and “hero of human rights,” respectively....cousin thor<h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1.5rem; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 0px; font-weight: 400; padding-top: 0.75rem; padding-bottom: 0.75rem;">Fortunate son of Venezuela’s elite</h2>Halvorssen is the scion of an oligarchic Venezuelan family closely linked to the political opposition that formed against recently deceased former President Hugo Chavez. His mother, Hilda Mendoza Denham, a direct descendant of Venezuela’s first two presidents, is a member of one of her country’s most influential clans.Halvorssen’s father, also named Thor Halvorssen, was a wealthy heir who gained control over Venezuela’s telecommunications monopoly. In 1989, then-President Carlos Andres Perez appointed Halvorssen Sr. as Venezuela’s “anti-drug ambassador.” That same year, President Perez’s government was responsible for committing one of the worst massacres in modern times: up to 3,000 persons were killed protesting President Perez’s harsh International Money Fund-imposed austerity program (“<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12593085" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Victims of Venezuela’s Caracazo clashes reburied,</a>” BBC News, 21 February 2011).Halvorssen Sr. is reported to have helped expose the secret bank accounts his longtime friend Perez used to embezzle public money, allegedly earning the wrath of the president and his inner circle.As Perez sought to fend off scrutiny and an electoral challenge, a series of bombs exploded around Caracas. Halvorssen Sr. was immediately arrested and accused of orchestrating a terrorist plot to manipulate the Venezuelan stock market. He was imprisoned under harsh conditions and only freed after 74 days thanks in part to intervention from Amnesty International.With his father cleared of all charges, Halvorssen Jr. <a href="https://tthoro.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/thor_halvorssens_response.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">refers</a> to him today as a former “political prisoner,” describing him as the force that helped inspire his interest in human rights. But there was another side to the elder Halvorssen that was wrapped in intrigue and which remains shrouded in mystery.Besides his role as a businessman and government official, Halvorssen Sr. was a part-time spook who, according to a 19 November 1993 report by the Associated Press,“cooperated with the <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/cia" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">CIA</a>” and “was used to funnel money to Nicaraguan Contra leader Eden Pastora” (“Trafficker, Alleged Terrorist Penetrated CIA, DEA in Venezuela”).In her book Hostile Acts, journalist Martha Honey notes that Halvorssen Sr. served during the early 1980s as president of the Committee in Defense of Democracy in Nicaragua, a CIA front group “used to rally regional public opinion against the Sandinistas …” (p. 237).A 29 November 1993 article by US News and World Report describes Halvorssen Sr. as a “CIA source” and notes that he was also a US Drug Enforcement Agency informant at the time, but that the agency eventually cut him loose, citing his tendency towards “duplicity and manipulation.” According to the report, Halvorssen Sr. “had unusual ties to and knowledge of drug traffickers” (“<a href="https://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/931129/archive_016185.htm" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">At play in the fields of the spies</a>”).Just as the father retreated from the international scene, the son began to make his name.<h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1.5rem; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0.75rem; padding-bottom: 0.75rem;">Anti-feminist, anti-environmentalist, anti-Arab</h2>In a 2010 interview with Klassekampen, Halvorssen said, “Personally, I am no right-wing ideologue, as some have described me. I’m liberal. Period” “<a href="http://www.klassekampen.no/57490/article/item/null" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Jeg er liberalist</a>”). He described himself in the same terms to The Electronic Intifada.But a look at the early stages of Halvorssen’s career, which he spent as a conservative operative combating gay rights initiatives, feminism and multiculturalism on US college campuses, suggests otherwise.Like his father, Halvorssen enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania. He first gained notice in 1994, when he authored a guest commentary for The Daily Pennsylvanian demanding that prospective students be warned before applying to the school that “it may be deadly to live in West Philadelphia,” the mostly African-American area surrounding Penn’s campus.As editor of the conservative student magazine Red and Blue, Halvorssen courted controversy when the magazine ran a November 1994 column called “<a href="http://articles.philly.com/1995-03-02/news/25701981_1_haitian-students-student-magazine-student-groups" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">One Man’s Vision of Haiti</a>” that was illustrated with a sketch of a voodoo doll. “To the best of my knowledge,” the article’s author wrote, “the only imports from Haiti we have in this country are exiled dictators and cab drivers.”The article’s publication stirred the outrage of African Americans and Haitians on campus, eventually prompting Penn administrators to temporarily withdraw school funding from Red and Blue. For Halvorssen, the incident crystallized his sense that conservatives on campus were an oppressed minority.He emerged after college as the executive director of a newfangled right-wing group called FIRE, or the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, defending evangelical students against charges of anti-gay discrimination and combating hate crimes legislation.FIRE has been funded by two right-wing foundations that also support Halvorssen’s human rights mini-empire: the Sarah Scaife Foundation and the <a href="https://thefire.org/article/13730.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">John Templeton Foundation,</a> an evangelical outfit <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/romney-names-high-profile-supporters-religious-right-committee" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">directed</a> by John Templeton Jr., a veteran right-wing activist who has <a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/10/a-big-donor-goe.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">donated</a> more than $1 million to ban same-sex marriage in California. In 2009, HRF <a href="http://www.thehrf.org/media/031309.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">noted</a> that the Oslo Freedom Forum “was made possible in large part thanks to a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation.”<h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1.5rem; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 0px; font-weight: 400; padding-top: 0.75rem; padding-bottom: 0.75rem;">Right-wing campus operations</h2>Halvorssen also found work at the time as a program director for the <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/intercollegiate-studies" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Intercollegiate Studies Institute</a>, another prominent right-wing campus operation. Under his direction, the group condemned the establishment of a women’s studies program at Yale University, complaining in an 1 April 1998 press release that the program “delves into the most radical issues of militant feminism and homosexuality while completely ignoring traditional female roles.”Halvorssen’s political empire expanded with his founding of the Moving Picture Institute, a libertarian film company that produced “Mine Your Own Business.” <a href="http://www.earthworksaction.org/media/detail/opposition_surges_to_romanian_gold_project_propaganda" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Financed by a Canadian mining company</a>, the film was promoted as “the world’s first anti-environmentalist documentary” (“<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/movies/19stra.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">A Maverick Mogul, Proudly Politically Incorrect</a>,” The New York Times, 19 August 2007). The Moving Picture Institute received more than $300,000 through Donors Capital Fund and Donors Trust from 2005 through 2011, according to those organizations’ IRS filings.Next, Halvorssen oversaw the making of a 2007 documentary called Indoctrinate U (the entire film <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHyvRHrYYBA" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">is on YouTube</a>). The film features an amateur conservative filmmaker named Evan Coyne Maloney wandering around campuses attempting to interrogate befuddled school administrators and poking fun at feminist students who had established women’s centers on their campuses.Towards the end of Indoctrinate U, Daniel Pipes and ultra-Zionist scholar <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/martin-kramer" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Martin Kramer</a> surface as talking heads, warning that Arab donors have been stealthily guiding the anti-American agenda of university departments.Kramer also appears on the pages of Breivik’s manifesto making remarkably similar statements: the killer quotes him attacking the Palestinian-American scholar <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/edward-said" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Edward Said</a> and complaining that “academics were so preoccupied with ‘Muslim Martin Luthers’ that they never got around to producing a single serious analysis of bin Laden and his indictment of America.”<h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1.5rem; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 0px; font-weight: 400; padding-top: 0.75rem; padding-bottom: 0.75rem;">Campaign for Venezuela regime change</h2>In 2004, Venezuela’s US-backed political opposition lost a hard-fought 2004 referendum aimed at recalling Chavez, whom it considered illegitimate from the start. The voting results <a href="https://www.cartercenter.org/news/documents/doc2023.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">were certified by former US President Jimmy Carter’s Carter Center</a> as “reflect[ing] the will of the Venezuelan electorate.” According to the Carter Center, “balloting day was conducted in an environment virtually absent of any violence or intimidation.”However, at an earlier opposition protest rally demanding Chavez’s ouster, Halvorssen’s mother was shot and wounded, allegedly by a Chavez loyalist.It was then that Halvorssen claimed to realize that “defending [college] students’ rights while there were people in Venezuela being shot for disagreeing with the government” was “a little absurd” (“<a href="http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/0308/feature3.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">My dinner with Thor</a>,” The Pennsylvania Gazette, March-April 2008).He embarked on an international campaign for regime change in Venezuela, with his Human Rights Foundation leading the way.In 2005, Halvorssen <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/903jhsjt.asp?page=3" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">took to the neoconservative Weekly Standard</a> to paint Chavez as an anti-Semitic dictator seeking to establish a “resistance bloc” that placed the US, Europe and Israel in grave danger. Halvorssen called for “democratic alternatives to Chavez,” describing him as a key supporter of “terrorist groups in South America and terror sponsors in the Middle East.”That same year, Halvorssen <a href="http://mediamatters.org/video/2005/08/24/robertson-lies-about-his-chavez-comments-claims/133707" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">appeared as a guest</a> on the radical right-wing televangelist Pat Robertson’s television program The 700 Club. A week before hosting Halvorssen, Robertson had urged the US to “take him [Chavez] out,” declaring, “if he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it.”When Robertson denied calling for Chavez’s assassination — an obvious falsehood — Halvorssen leaped in to defend his host. “The person who began this, who started the concept of assassination for political reasons, was in fact Hugo Chavez, and his foreign minister is a former guerrilla terrorist,” Halvorssen told Robertson. “They basically have no standing to criticize anyone who made remarks that like — you know, that were misinterpreted, like the ones you made.”Halvorssen’s obsession with overthrowing Chavez deepened after the president was re-elected. In 2008, Halvorssen railed against the actor and film producer Danny Glover in an editorial for Fox News, accusing him of “coddling Chavez” for accepting financing from the Venezuelan government for two films in development. He went on to accuse Hollywood supporters of Chavez of providing “a terrific boost” to the morale of Palestinian “terrorists.” The source for Halvorssen’s unusual claim was Aaron Klein, a writer for the far-right conspiracy site WorldNetDaily (“<a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,343350,00.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Hollywood A-Listers Prove Ignorance in Supporting Hugo Chavez</a>,” 31 March 2008).<h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1.5rem; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0.75rem; padding-bottom: 0.75rem;">Venezuelan terror-sympathizer hired by Human Rights Foundation</h2>Also in 2008, Halvorssen’s Human Rights Foundation hired Aleksander Boyd, a Venezuelan opposition representative based in London. Boyd was a notorious promoter of terrorism against Venezuela’s elected government, having written the following on his website:“I wish I could decapitate in public plazas [Venezuelan politicians] Lina Ron and Diosdado Cabello. I wish I could torture for the rest of his remaining existence Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel … I wish I could fly over Caracas slums throwing the dead bodies of the criminals that have destroyed my country … Only barbaric practices will neutralize them, much the same way [Genghis] Khan did. I wish I was him.” He later declared, “Re: advocating for violence yes I have mentioned in many occasions that in my view that is the only solution left for dealing with Chavez” (“<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/sep/01/friendsinlowplaces" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Friends in low places</a>,” The Guardian, 1 September 2007).When the Norwegian magazine Manifest criticized Halvorssen’s hiring of Boyd in a 12 May 2010 exposé, Halvorssen responded, “We knew of his comments before we hired Boyd and asked him about these comments and he stated, plainly, that it was an entry in his dream diary that was online.” He added that Boyd left the Human Rights Foundation in 2009.In 2010, Halvorssen invited his first cousin, the Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, to speak at the Oslo Freedom Forum. Lopez, the Harvard-educated mayor of a wealthy district in Caracas, was among the politicians who signed as witnesses in the new government after Chavez was briefly ousted in the failed US-backed coup in 2002.Lopez is the son of a former oil executive — Halvorssen’s aunt — who allegedly funnelled profits from the state-run oil company into his new political party, leading to corruption charges that placed his political ambitions in peril, as the Associated Press reported in February (“<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/17/leopoldo-lopez-corruption-venezuela_n_2705862.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Leopoldo Lopez, Opponent Of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Faces Corruption Charges In Venezuela</a>”).<a href="https://wikileaks.org/cable/2009/11/09CARACAS1408.html" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Described</a> by the US embassy in Venezuela as “vindictive, and power-hungry” but also as “a necessity,” Lopez <a href="http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/weisbrot_testimony_vz_democracy.pdf" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">received large sums of financial support</a> from the US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy.At the 2009 Oslo Freedom Forum, Lopez was a <a href="https://vimeo.com/5232625" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">presented as a “human rights leader,”</a> appearing at an event that had been graced by Nobel Prize recipient Elie Wiesel and Nobel nominee Vaclav Havel. He stirred his audience with lofty rhetoric about peace, democracy and the coming wave of freedom, casting the Venezuelan opposition as “David against Goliath.” “We know that we will overcome,” Lopez proclaimed, “we know that change will come in Venezuela.”Noting that Lopez’s appearance at the Oslo Freedom Forum was covered far more heavily in Venezuelan media than in Oslo, where it was virtually ignored, Manifest accused Halvorssen of using his human rights confab for the purpose of “whitewashing Leopoldo Lopez … to establish a real contender for the Venezuelan presidency.”The magazine described the Oslo Freedom Forum as a cleverly crafted “Washing Machine.”<h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1.5rem; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 0px; font-weight: 400; padding-top: 0.75rem; padding-bottom: 0.75rem;">The burden of knowing</h2><h2 style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.25; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://fair.org/home/pathological-deceit-the-nyt-inverts-reality-on-venezuelas-cuban-doctors/" title="Pathological Deceit: The NYT Inverts Reality on Venezuela’s Cuban Doctors" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Pathological Deceit: The NYT Inverts Reality on Venezuela’s Cuban Doctors</a></h2><div class="fair_post_meta_data fair_list_author" style="text-transform: uppercase; margin: 0px 0px 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://fair.org/author/lucas-koerner/" title="Posts by Lucas Koerner" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">LUCAS KOERNER</a> AND <a href="https://fair.org/author/ricardo-vaz/" title="Posts by Ricardo Vaz" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">RICARDO VAZ</a></div>A New York Times “exposé” of Cuban doctors’ supposed interference in Venezuelan elections was riddled with inaccuracies, omissions and misrepresentations.After<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/americas/100000006385986/the-us-blamed-maduro-for-burning-aid-to-venezuela-new-video-casts-doubt.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;"> debunking</a> Washington’s lies about the burning of “humanitarian aid” trucks on the Venezuelan/Colombian border (more than two weeks after being <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2019/02/24/burning-aid-colombia-venezuela-bridge/" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">scooped</a> by independent journalists), the New York Times quickly reverted to form in an<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/17/world/americas/venezuela-cuban-doctors.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;"> article</a> by Nicholas Casey headlined “‘It is Unspeakable’: How Maduro Used Cuban Doctors to Coerce Voters” (<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/17/world/americas/venezuela-cuban-doctors.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">3/17/19</a>).As the title not-so-subtly suggests, Casey claimed to present bombshell revelations regarding the Nicolás Maduro government’s alleged weaponization of Cuban medical personnel as a means of holding on to power. On closer inspection, however, the article is riddled with factual inaccuracies, omissions and misrepresentations.<h3 style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; max-width: 750px; line-height: 1.25; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Dubious claims of politicized healthcare</h3>Relying on the testimony of three Cuban doctors who have defected from the Venezuelan/Cuban health mission and taken up residence in other countries, as well as 16 anonymous sources within Venezuela, Casey provides the reader with shocking vignettes of how Cuban medical personnel have supposedly been used to manipulate Venezuelan politics.One central allegation is that the Barrio Adentro healthcare mission staff, most of them Cuban doctors, are denying patients care on the basis of political affiliations. One Cuban doctor currently residing in Chile told the Times that one patient was refused treatment “because she was from the opposition.” The only other evidence to substantiate this grave accusation is the account of an opposition mayor who claims he was “denied medication.”As has been widely documented (Guardian, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/13/why-do-north-korean-defector-testimonies-so-often-fall-apart" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">10/13/15</a>), defector testimonies are often unreliable, given the political stakes involved. Similar reservations apply to a politician aligned with an opposition spearheading a foreign-backed <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14304" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">coup</a> in Venezuela.Likewise worthy of skepticism is Human Rights Watch Americas director Jose Miguel Vivanco, whose quote, “it is unspeakable,” gives the piece its headline, though a reader might assume these were the words of an actual doctor. <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/10682" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">Human Rights Watch</a>, whose <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/10732" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">revolving door</a> with the US national security state is now notorious, can always be counted on to attack the Venezuelan government, though its charges have been <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/8084" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">debunked</a> on several <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/10301" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">occasions</a>.Vivanco is an especially dubious source, given his extremely <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13194" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">biased</a> track record on Venezuela. Just over a decade ago, the HRW official was publicly<a href="https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2008/12/17/more-100-latin-america-experts-question-human-rights-watchs-venezuela-report" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;"> rebuked</a> by over 100 Latin America experts for a report on Venezuela that did “not meet even the most minimal standards of scholarship, impartiality, accuracy or credibility,” which included similar sweeping allegations of politicized denial of care, based on the second-hand testimony of one individual.<h3 style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; max-width: 750px; line-height: 1.25; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Implausible electoral interference</h3>The Times’ questionable allegations of denial of care quickly give way to even dodgier claims of Cuban doctors interfering in Venezuelan politics. “One former Cuban supervisor said that she and other foreign medical workers were given counterfeit identification cards to vote in an election,” Casey wrote, adding that Cuban doctors “were asked to vote with false identification” in 2013.Anyone who knows <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13801" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">how voting works in Venezuela</a> would dismiss these allegations immediately. The first step upon entering a polling station is presenting ID and biometrically scanning fingerprints. Computerized voting screens will literally not open unless a valid fingerprint is presented. Cuban doctors, since they are of course not Venezuelans, would not have their fingerprints in the system, and thus not get past this first step. (It’s worth noting that Cuban doctors in Venezuela number roughly 30,000, in a country with an electorate of around 20 million, making the notion of a secret program to enable them to vote illegally in hopes of affecting electoral outcomes rather far-fetched.)Another passage suggested a similar lack of familiarity with the Venezuelan electoral process:<blockquote style="border-radius: 3px; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-width: 0px; border-style: solid; border-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); margin: 5px 5px 20px 30px; padding: 25px 30px 5px;">On the day Mr. Maduro was elected to his first term, [a Cuban doctor] witnessed officials opening ballot boxes and tampering with votes, including destroying ballots that chose the opposition.</blockquote><div id="attachment_8931565" class="wp-caption alignright" style="float: right; margin: 0px 101.188px 10px 15px; background: rgb(236, 240, 245); border: 1px solid rgb(187, 195, 232); max-width: 100%; padding: 5px; text-align: center; width: 361px;">
In Venezuela, the vote count is electronic, verified by paper receipts.</div>First off, there are no “ballot boxes” or “ballots,” because voting is fully automated. After the voter makes their selection on the computer screen, a paper receipt is printed and placed in a box. At the end of election day, 54 percent of all voting machines, chosen at random, have their electronic totals cross-checked with the paper receipts. Destroying the receipts (not ballots) would not serve any purpose, other than raising a red flag when they did not agree with the electronic tally. (If the Times’ source had bothered to name the voting center, one could check the results and confront the National Electoral Council with any discrepancy, since the paper tallies are kept for a number of years.)Secondly, all parties or candidates have witnesses at every electoral center. At the end of the day, the witnesses and the electoral delegates all sign a certificate validating the results. In the case of the April 14, 2013 election, there was not a single electoral center where opposition candidate Henrique Capriles’ witnesses did not validate the results, nor any reports of destruction of ballots, perhaps because there are no “ballots.”For someone who covers Venezuela regularly, Casey makes a remarkable number of errors in his account of the country’s electoral system. For example, he wrote, “In mid-2017, Mr. Maduro made a bid to consolidate power: a referendum for a second legislature to replace the opposition-controlled National Assembly.” What took place on July 30, 2017, was an election, not a referendum, for a national constituent assembly, a body that is outlined in Articles 347–349 of the 1999 <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/constitution/title/5" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">Bolivarian Constitution</a>, and which is much more than a “second legislature.” Furthermore, the National Assembly was declared “null and void” by the Venezuelan Supreme Court in 2016 (BBC, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-35287291" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">1/11/16</a>), after defying a court order to unseat three legislators pending an investigation for electoral crimes.<h3 style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; max-width: 750px; line-height: 1.25; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Whitewashing opposition violence</h3>Given their factual implausibility, Casey’s anonymously sourced claims of ballot-stuffing and illegal voting in the 2013 presidential election represent a thinly veiled maneuver to delegitimize Maduro’s victory, which was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/22/united-states-contempt-venezuelan-democracy" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">challenged by no country in the world</a> except the United States—a fact that is conveniently omitted.One unnamed source accused the Chavista government of “blackmail[ing]” voters that the opposition would eliminate the Barrio Adentro medical mission if Capriles won. Casey did not inform readers that the Venezuelan opposition has long vowed to <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/11781" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">suspend bilateral cooperation agreements</a> with Havana should it come to power.<div id="attachment_8931560" class="wp-caption alignright" style="float: right; margin: 0px 101.188px 10px 15px; background: rgb(236, 240, 245); border: 1px solid rgb(187, 195, 232); max-width: 100%; padding: 5px; text-align: center; width: 360px;">
Cuban doctor hanged in effigy in Caracas. (The sign reads, “Out with Cuban ‘Doctors’!” (photo: News24.com, via <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/10547" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">Venezuelanalysis</a>)</div>Nor did Casey mention the opposition’s repeated acts of violence against Cuban health professionals and clinics. Following Capriles’ US-sanctioned refusal to recognize the <a href="http://cepr.net/documents/publications/venezuela-election-audit-05-2013.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">indisputable</a> 2013 election results, and his call for his supporters to “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKl2ZwVNfPE" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">discharge that anger</a>” in the streets, seven people were killed in the ensuing<a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/8652" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;"> street violence</a> that saw 18 Cuban-staffed neighborhood health clinics set ablaze. The violent anti-government protests of 2014 likewise featured no less than<a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/10651" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;"> 162 attacks</a> against Cuban doctors, who were prominently <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/10547" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">lynched in effigy</a>. In omitting these rather important details, Casey succeeded in inverting reality: He presented Cuban medical staff as witting or unwitting gendarmes of a brutal regime, rather than frequent victims of <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/10684" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">opposition violence</a>.This whitewashing of right-wing terror extended also to Casey’s framing of the 2017 anti-government mobilizations, which he said led to 100 deaths in a “government crackdown,” leaving out the <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13081" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">numerous killings</a> carried out by opposition supporters, including <a href="https://twitter.com/marcorubio" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">mob lynchings</a> of Afro-Venezuelan men and <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13089" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">sniper assassinations</a> of Chavista activists.In addition to relitigating the internationally recognized 2013 election, Casey repeated the now-boilerplate allegations of fraud in the 2018 presidential elections, pointing to opposition figures barred from running, with “Leopoldo López…dragged between house arrest and a military prison,” and Capriles “banned from running, along with most opposition parties.” Casey didn’t mention that <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11452" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">López</a> was <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/11502" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">convicted</a> of inciting violence during the 2014 street protests, while Capriles was <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13040" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">barred</a> due to  corruption <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13576" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">allegations</a> that even the opposition has moved to <a href="http://talcualdigital.com/index.php/2018/08/23/tsj-en-el-exilio-pide-investigar-a-capriles-radonski-por-caso-odebrecht/" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">investigate</a>.Casey’s highly selective picture of Capriles and López is particularly disingenuous, given that both politicians actively participated in the short-lived 2002<a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2336?artno=2018" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;"> military coup</a>, with the former leading an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=818bu4FoIak" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">attack</a> against the Cuban embassy, and both of them involved in the mob <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdMM793V-Hk" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">kidnapping</a> of Interior Minister Ramón Rodríguez Chacín. That alone would have disqualified them from holding political office anywhere else in the world.It is also <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/ANALYSIS/13564" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">false</a> that opposition parties were banned, since what was required of them was to revalidate their legal status by collecting a minimum number of signatures following their boycott of the December 10,  2017, municipal elections. Whether or not this was a political hurdle, some opposition parties, such as Acción Democrática, <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/News/13621" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">fulfilled it</a>. And the fact remains that opposition candidates did run against Maduro, notably former Lara Gov. Henri Falcón, who was actively <a href="https://twitter.com/frrodriguezc/status/993305182783098880" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">undermined</a> by the hardline factions of the opposition, and was even <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/ANALYSIS/13699" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">threatened</a> with US sanctions for defying the opposition boycott.<h3 style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; max-width: 750px; line-height: 1.25; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Erasure of sanctions</h3>In an article explicitly dedicated to uncovering alleged foreign interference in Venezuelan state and society, it is ironic that Casey entirely omitted the most egregious form of external intervention: US sanctions. Since 2017, Trump’s financial sanctions have battered the healthcare system directly, with recurring cases of medicine shipments blocked or assets destined for imports frozen as a result of US financial crimes enforcement <a href="https://www.fincen.gov/news/news-releases/fincen-warns-financial-institutions-guard-against-corrupt-venezuelan-money" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">directives</a>, according to Torino Capital chief economist<a href="https://venezuelablog.org/crude-realities-understanding-venezuelas-economic-collapse/" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;"> Francisco Rodriguez</a>. In one such case, the Venezuelan government <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13519" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">denounced</a> the freezing of $1.6 billion of its assets by Brussels-based financial services agency Euroclear, half of which was reportedly destined for medicine imports.US economic sanctions also debilitate healthcare indirectly by decimating the Venezuelan economy overall. According to conservative estimates, US financial sanctions cost Venezuela at least <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14073" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">$6 billion annually</a> in lost revenues, or around six percent of GDP. For comparison, healthcare spending in Latin America<a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.CHEX.GD.ZS?locations=ZJ" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;"> averages</a> approximately seven percent of GDP, and, prior to the crisis, Venezuela was importing around <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14360" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">$2 billion</a> in medicine per year. Rodriguez estimates that the new US oil sanctions, amounting to an effective trade embargo, will cost Venezuela an additional 15 percent in real GDP loss, for a cumulative contraction of 26 percent in 2019.Despite his stated <a href="https://twitter.com/caseysjournal/status/1107258311374749697" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">concern</a> for the “politicization” of healthcare in Venezuela, Nicholas Casey doesn’t think it relevant to mention his own government’s deliberate effort to destroy the Venezuelan economy, further devastating the country’s fragile health sector and <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14360" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">killing thousands,</a> if not tens of thousands, of Venezuelans. Rather, the New York Times’ Andes bureau chief mobilizes anonymous sources and defectors—whose testimony ranges from dubious to preposterous—to further demonize Venezuela and <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13194" style="text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">provide cover</a> for Washington’s murderous regime change policy....links
 a televised appearance in 2016, Guaidó <a href="https://twitter.com/RedRadioVe/status/1088237230211190790" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">dismissed</a> deaths resulting from guayas – a guarimba tactic involving stretching steel wire across a roadway in order to injure or kill motorcyclists – as a “myth.” His comments whitewashed a deadly tactic that had <a href="https://www.telesurtv.net/news/Muere-joven-venezolano-por-guaya-colocada-por-grupos-fascistas-20140222-0059.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">killed</a> unarmed civilians like Santiago Pedroza and <a href="http://notitweet-sucesos.blogspot.com/2014/02/este-es-elvis-duran-el-motorizado.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">decapitated</a> a man named Elvis Durán, among many others.This callous disregard for human life would define his Popular Will party in the eyes of much of the public, including many opponents of Maduro. <h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Cracking down on Popular Will </h2>As violence and political polarization escalated across the country, the government began to act against the Popular Will leaders who helped stoke it.Freddy Guevara, the National Assembly Vice-President and second in command of Popular Will, was a principal leader in the 2017 street riots. Facing a trial for his role in the violence, Guevara <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics/venezuela-opposition-leader-guevara-seeks-refuge-in-chile-ambassadors-home-idUSKBN1D50LN" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">took shelter</a> in the Chilean embassy, where he remains.Lester Toledo, a Popular Will legislator from the state of Zulia, was wanted by Venezuelan government in September 2016 on charges of financing terrorism and <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/12395" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">plotting</a> assassinations. The plans were said to be made with former Colombian President Álavaro Uribe. Toledo escaped Venezuela and went on several speaking tours with Human Rights Watch, the US government-backed Freedom House, the Spanish Congress and European Parliament.Carlos Graffe, another Otpor-trained Generation 2007 member who led Popular Will, was <a href="http://www.el-nacional.com/noticias/oposicion/carlos-graffe-salio-libertad-tras-cinco-meses-prision_217102" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">arrested</a> in July 2017. According to police, he was in possession of a bag filled with nails, C4 explosives and a detonator. He was released on December 27, 2017.Leopoldo Lopez, the longtime Popular Will leader, is today under house arrest, accused of a key role in deaths of 13 people during the guarimbas in 2014. Amnesty International <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/07/venezuela-leopoldo-lopez-moved-to-house-arrest-as-repression-deepens/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">lauded</a> Lopez as a “prisoner of conscience” and slammed his transfer from prison to house as “not good enough.” Meanwhile, family members of guarimba victims <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/12939" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">introduced</a> a petition for more charges against Lopez.Yon Goicoechea, the Koch Brothers posterboy and US-backed founder of Justice First, was arrested in 2016 by security forces who claimed they <a href="https://www.telesurtv.net/news/Detienen-en-Venezuela-a-opositor-equipado-con-explosivos-20160829-0053.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">found a kilo</a> of explosives in his vehicle. In a New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/04/opinion/venezuela-prison-democracy.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">op-ed</a>, Goicoechea protested the charges as “trumped-up” and claimed he had been imprisoned simply for his “dream of a democratic society, free of Communism.” He was <a href="https://twitter.com/YonGoicoechea/status/926828442594799616?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dw.com%2Fen%2Fvenezuelan-authorities-release-two-anti-maduro-activists-from-prison%2Fa-41241026" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">freed</a> in November 2017....<div><a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/the-making-of-juan-guaido-how-the-us-regime-change-laboratory-created-venezuela-coup-leader/254387/">https://www.mintpressnews.com/the-making-of-juan-guaido-how-the-us-regime-change-laboratory-created-venezuela-coup-leader/254387/</a></div><div>
</div><div><p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://grayzoneproject.com/2019/01/29/the-making-of-juan-guaido-how-the-us-regime-change-laboratory-created-venezuelas-coup-leader/amp/?twitter_impression=true" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">Project</a> — Before the fateful day of January 22, <a href="https://twitter.com/venanalysis/status/1087447663153500166" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">fewer than one in five</a> Venezuelans had heard of Juan Guaidó. Only a few months ago, the 35-year-old was an obscure character in a politically marginal far-right group closely associated with gruesome acts of street violence. Even in his own party, Guaidó had been a mid-level figure in the opposition-dominated National Assembly, which is now held under contempt according to Venezuela’s constitution.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">But after a single phone call from US Vice President Mike Pence, Guaidó proclaimed himself as president of Venezuela. Anointed as the leader of his country by Washington, a previously unknown political bottom dweller was vaulted onto the international stage as the US-selected leader of the nation with the world’s largest oil reserves.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Echoing the Washington consensus, the New York Times editorial board <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/24/opinion/venezuela-guaido-maduro.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">hailed </a>Guaidó as a “credible rival” to Maduro with a “refreshing style and vision of taking the country forward.” The Bloomberg News editorial board <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-25/guaido-s-bold-stroke-for-democracy-in-venezuela" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">applauded</a> him for seeking “restoration of democracy” and the Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/revolt-in-venezuela-11548289111" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">declared</a> him “a new democratic leader.” Meanwhile, Canada, numerous European nations, Israel, and the bloc of right-wing Latin American governments known as the Lima Group recognized Guaidó as the legitimate leader of Venezuela.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">While Guaidó seemed to have materialized out of nowhere, he was, in fact, the product of more than a decade of assiduous grooming by the US government’s elite regime change factories. Alongside a cadre of right-wing student activists, Guaidó was cultivated to undermine Venezuela’s socialist-oriented government, destabilize the country, and one day seize power. Though he has been a minor figure in Venezuelan politics, he had spent years quietly demonstrated his worthiness in Washington’s halls of power.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">“Juan Guaidó is a character that has been created for this circumstance,” Marco Teruggi, an Argentinian sociologist and leading chronicler of Venezuelan politics, told the Grayzone. “It’s the logic of a laboratory – Guaidó is like a mixture of several elements that create a character who, in all honesty, oscillates between laughable and worrying.”<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Diego Sequera, a Venezuelan journalist and writer for the investigative outlet, Mision Verdad, agreed: “Guaidó is more popular outside Venezuela than inside, especially in the elite Ivy League and Washington circles,” Sequera remarked to the Grayzone, “He’s a known character there, is predictably right-wing, and is considered loyal to the program.”<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">While Guaidó is today sold as the face of democratic restoration, he spent his career in the most violent faction of Venezuela’s most radical opposition party, positioning himself at the forefront of one destabilization campaign after another. His party has been widely discredited inside Venezuela, and is held partly responsible for fragmenting a badly weakened opposition.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">“‘These radical leaders have no more than 20 percent in opinion polls,” <a href="http://www.caraotadigital.net/nacionales/luis-vicente-leon-la-oposicion-politica-venezolana-vive-su-peor-momento-historico/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">wrote</a> Luis Vicente León, Venezuela’s leading pollster. According to Leon, Guaidó’s party remains isolated because the majority of the population “does not want war. ‘What they want is a solution.’”<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">But this is precisely why he Guaidó was selected by Washington: he is not expected to lead Venezuela towards to democracy, but to collapse a country that for the past two decades has been a bulwark of resistance to US hegemony. His unlikely rise signals the culmination of a two-decades-long project to destroy a robust socialist experiment.<h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Targeting the “troika of tyranny”</h2><p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Since the 1998 election of Hugo Chavez, the United States has fought to restore control over Venezuela and is vast oil reserves. Chavez’s socialist programs may have redistributed the country’s wealth and helped lift millions out of poverty, but they also earned him a target on his back. In 2002, Venezuela’s right-wing opposition briefly ousted him with US support and recognition before the military restored his presidency following a mass popular mobilization. Throughout the administrations of US Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Chavez survived numerous assassination plots before succumbing to cancer in 2013. His successor, Nicolas Maduro, has <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/27/maduro-assassination-plot-venezuela_n_3820765.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">survived</a> <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2344973.stm" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">three attempts</a> on his life.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">The Trump administration immediately elevated Venezuela to the top of Washington’s regime change target list, branding it the leader of a <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-national-security-advisor-ambassador-john-r-bolton-administrations-policies-latin-america/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">“troika of tyranny.”</a>Last year, Trump’s national security team <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/08/world/americas/donald-trump-venezuela-military-coup.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">attempted</a> to recruit members of the military brass to mount a military junta, but that effort failed. According to the Venezuelan government, the US was also involved in a plot codenamed Operation Constitution to capture Maduro at the Miraflores presidential palace, and another called <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-27/inside-the-failed-plot-to-overthrow-venezuelan-president-nicolas-maduro" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">Operation Armageddon</a> to assassinate him at a military parade in July 2017. Just over a year later, exiled opposition leaders <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J71BT0stT3k" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">tried and failed to kill Maduro</a> with drone bombs during a military parade in Caracas.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">More than a decade before these intrigues, a group of right-wing opposition students were hand selected and groomed by an elite, US-funded regime change training academy to topple Venezuela’s government and restore the neoliberal order.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;"> <h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Training from the “‘export-a-revolution’ group that sowed the seeds for a NUMBER of color revolutions”</h2><p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">On October 5, 2005, with Chavez’s popularity at its peak and his government planning sweeping socialist programs, five Venezuelan “student leaders” <a href="https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/venezuela-marigold-revolution" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">arrived</a> in Belgrade, Serbia to begin training for an insurrection.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">The students had arrived from Venezuela courtesy of the Center for Applied Non-Violent Action and Strategies, or CANVAS. This group is <a href="http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2013/01/14/breaking-desperate-for-destabilization-in-venezuela-us-funded-otpor-rears-its-ugly-head/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">funded</a> largely through the <a href="https://grayzoneproject.com/2018/08/20/inside-americas-meddling-machine-the-us-funded-group-that-interferes-in-elections-around-the-globe/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">National Endowment for Democracy</a>, a CIA cut-out that functions as the US government’s main arm of promoting regime change; and offshoots like the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. According to leaked internal <a href="https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/17/1792423_information-on-canvas-.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">emails</a> from Stratfor, an intelligence firm known as the <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/12/15/stratfor-canadian-government_n_4449505.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">“shadow CIA,”</a> “[CANVAS] may have also received CIA funding and training during the 1999/2000 anti-Milosevic struggle.”<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">CANVAS is a spinoff of Otpor, a Serbian protest group founded by <a href="http://www.williamengdahl.com/englishNEO1Oct2017.php" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">Srdja Popovic</a> in 1998 at the University of Belgrade. Otpor, which means “resistance” in Serbian, was the student group that gained international fame – and Hollywood-level <a href="https://vimeo.com/143379353" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">promotion</a> – by mobilizing the protests that eventually toppled Slobodan Milosevic. This small cell of regime change specialists was operating according to the theories of the late Gene Sharp, the so-called “Clausewitz of non-violent struggle.” Sharp had worked with a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, Col. <a href="http://peacemagazine.org/archive/v24n1p12.htm" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">Robert Helvey</a>, to conceive a strategic blueprint that weaponized protest as a form of hybrid warfare, aiming it at states that resisted Washington’s unipolar domination.<div id="attachment_254388" class="wp-caption aligncenter" source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" width="width" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; margin: 0px auto 24px;">
A fence covered with posters of Slobodan Milosevic behind bars, titled “When?” and “People’s Movement Otpor” in Belgrade, Serbia, March 30, 2001. Darko Vojinovic | AP]</div><figure id="attachment_1809" class="wp-caption alignnone amp-wp-inline-086b83d24e4412010a175ea3dba11ca3" source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 40px 12px; max-width: 100%;"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Otpor was supported by the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID and Sharp’s Albert Einstein Institute. Sinisa Sikman, one of Otpor’s main trainers, once <a href="https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/17/1792423_information-on-canvas-.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">said</a> the group even received direct CIA funding. According to a <a href="https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/17/1713359_re-insight-venezuela-canvas-analysis-.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">leaked email</a> from a Stratfor staffer, after running Milosevic out of power, “the kids who ran OTPOR grew up, got suits and designed CANVAS… or in other words a ;export-a-revolution’ group that sowed the seeds for a NUMBER of color revolutions. They are still hooked into U.S. funding and basically go around the world trying to topple dictators and autocratic governments (ones that U.S. does not like ;).”</figcaption></figure><p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Stratfor revealed that CANVAS “turned its attention to Venezuela” in 2005 after training opposition movements that led pro-NATO regime change operations across Eastern Europe.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">While monitoring the CANVAS training program, Stratfor outlined its insurrectionist agenda in strikingly blunt language: “Success is by no means guaranteed, and student movements are only at the beginning of what could be a years-long effort to trigger a revolution in Venezuela, but the trainers themselves are the people who cut their teeth on the ‘Butcher of the Balkans.’ They’ve got mad skills. When you see students at five Venezuelan universities hold simultaneous demonstrations, you will know that the training is over and the real work has begun.”<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;"> <h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Birthing the “Generation 2007” regime change cadre</h2><p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">The “real work” began two years later, in 2007, when Guaidó graduated from Andrés Bello Catholic University of Caracas. He moved to Washington DC to enroll in the Governance and Political Management <a href="http://sri.ucab.edu.ve/sites/default/files/Convenio%20UCAB-%20CAF%20George%20Washington%20University.pdf" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">Program</a> at George Washington University under the tutelage of Venezuelan economist Luis Enrique Berrizbeitia, one of the top Latin American neoliberal economists. Berrizbeitia is a <a href="https://www.caf.com/media/3571/resumenexecutive.pdf" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">former executive director</a> of the International Monetary Fund who spent more than a decade working in Venezuelan energy sector under the oligarchic old regime that was ousted by Chavez.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">That year, Guaidó helped lead anti-government rallies after the Venezuelan government <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2424" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">declined to</a> to renew the license of Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV). This privately-owned station played a leading role in the 2002 coup against Hugo Chavez. RCTV helped mobilize anti-government demonstrators, falsified information blaming government supporters for acts of violence carried out by opposition members, and banned pro-government reporting amid the coup. The role of RCTV and other oligarch-owned stations in driving the failed coup attempt was chronicled in the acclaimed documentary, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">That same year, the students claimed credit for stymying Chavez’s constitutional referendum for a “21st century socialism” that <a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2890" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">promised</a> “to set the legal framework for the political and social reorganization of the country, giving direct power to organized communities as a prerequisite for the development of a new economic system.”<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">From the protests around RCTV and the referendum, a specialized cadre of US-backed class of regime change activists was born. They called themselves “Generation 2007.”<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">The Stratfor and CANVAS trainers of this cell identified Guaidó’s ally – a street organizer named Yon Goicoechea – as a “key factor” in defeating the constitutional referendum. The following year, Goicochea was <a href="https://www.cato.org/friedman-prize/yon-goicoechea" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">rewarded</a> for his efforts with the Cato Institute’s Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty, along with a $500,000 prize, which he promptly invested into building his own Liberty First (Primero Justicia) political network.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">[milton prize px]<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">no lnx pix<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;"> Goicoechea receives the Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, May 15, 2008. Seth Wenig | AP<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Friedman, of course, was the godfather of the notorious neoliberal Chicago Boys who were imported into Chile by dictatorial junta leader Augusto Pinochet to implement policies of radical “shock doctrine”-style fiscal austerity. And the Cato Institute is the libertarian Washington DC-based think tank founded by the Koch Brothers, two top Republican Party donors who have become aggressive supporters of the right-wing across Latin America.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Wikileaks published a 2007 email from American ambassador to Venezuela William Brownfield sent to the State Department, National Security Council and Department of Defense Southern Command praising “Generation of ’07” for having “forced the Venezuelan president, accustomed to setting the political agenda, to (over)react.” Among the “emerging leaders” Brownfield identified were Freddy Guevara and Yon Goicoechea. He applauded the latter figure as “one of the students’ most articulate defenders of civil liberties.”<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Flush with cash from libertarian oligarchs and US government soft power outfits, the radical Venezuelan cadre took their Otpor tactics to the streets, along with a version of the group’s logo, as seen below:<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Otpor | Venezuela px]<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">“Galvanizing public unrest…to take advantage of the situation and spin it against Chavez”<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">In 2009, the Generation 2007 youth activists staged their most provocative demonstration yet, dropping their pants on public roads and aping the outrageous guerrilla theater tactics outlined by Gene Sharp in his regime change manuals. The protesters had mobilized against the arrest of an ally from another newfangled youth group called JAVU. This far-right group “gathered funds from a variety of US government sources, which allowed it to gain notoriety quickly as the hardline wing of opposition street movements,” according to academic George Ciccariello-Maher’s book, “Building the Commune.”<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">While video of the protest is not available, many Venezuelans have identified Guaidó as one of its key participants. While the allegation is unconfirmed, it is certainly plausible; the bare-buttocks protesters were members of the Generation 2007 inner core that Guaidó belonged to, and were clad in their trademark Resistencia! Venezuela t-shirts, as seen below:<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Juan Guaido | Protest<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Is this the ass that Trump wants to install in Venezuela’s seat of power?<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">That year, Guaidó exposed himself to the public in another way, founding a political party to capture the anti-Chavez energy his Generation 2007 had cultivated. Called Popular Will, it was led by Leopoldo López, a Princeton-educated right-wing firebrand heavily involved in National Endowment for Democracy programs and elected as the mayor of a district in Caracas that was one of the wealthiest in the country. Lopez was a portrait of Venezuelan aristocracy, directly descended from his country’s first president. He was also the first cousin of Thor Halvorssen, founder of the US-based Human Rights Foundation that functions as a de facto publicity shop for US-backed anti-government activists in countries targeted by Washington for regime change.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Though Lopez’s interests aligned neatly with Washington’s, US diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks highlighted the fanatical tendencies that would ultimately lead to Popular Will’s marginalization. One cable identified Lopez as “a divisive figure within the opposition… often described as arrogant, vindictive, and power-hungry.” Others highlighted his obsession with street confrontations and his “uncompromising approach” as a source of tension with other opposition leaders who prioritized unity and participation in the country’s democratic institutions.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Leopoldo Lopez | Wealth<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Popular Will founder Leopoldo Lopez cruising with his wife, Lilian Tintori.]<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">By 2010, Popular Will and its foreign backers moved to exploit the worst drought to hit Venezuela in decades. Massive electricity shortages had struck the country due the dearth of water, which was needed to power hydroelectric plants. A global economic recession and declining oil prices compounded the crisis, driving public discontentment.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Stratfor and CANVAS – key advisors of Guaidó and his anti-government cadre – devised a shockingly cynical plan to drive a dagger through the heart of the Bolivarian revolution. The scheme hinged on a 70% collapse of the country’s electrical system by as early as April 2010.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">“This could be the watershed event, as there is little that Chavez can do to protect the poor from the failure of that system,” the Stratfor internal memo declared. “This would likely have the impact of galvanizing public unrest in a way that no opposition group could ever hope to generate. At that point in time, an opposition group would be best served to take advantage of the situation and spin it against Chavez and towards their needs.”<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">By this point, the Venezuelan opposition was receiving a staggering $40-50 million a year from US government organizations like USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy, according to a report by the Spanish think tank, the FRIDE Institute. It also had massive wealth to draw on from its own accounts, which were mostly outside the country.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">While the scenario envisioned by Statfor did not come to fruition, the Popular Will party activists and their allies cast aside any pretense of non-violence and joined a radical plan to destabilize the country.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Towards violent destabilization<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">In November, 2010, according to emails obtained by Venezuelan security services and presented by former Justice Minister Miguel Rodríguez Torres, Guaidó, Goicoechea, and several other student activists attended a secret five-day training at the Fiesta Mexicana hotel in Mexico City. The sessions were run by Otpor, the Belgrade-based regime change trainers backed by the US government. The meeting had reportedly received the blessing of Otto Reich, a fanatically anti-Castro Cuban exile working in George W. Bush’s Department of State, and the right-wing former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">At the Fiesta Mexicana hotel, the emails stated, Guaidó and his fellow activists hatched a plan to overthrow President Hugo Chavez by generating chaos through protracted spasms of street violence.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Three petroleum industry figureheads – Gustavo Torrar, Eligio Cedeño and Pedro Burelli – allegedly covered the $52,000 tab to hold the meeting. Torrar is a self-described “human rights activist” and “intellectual” whose younger brother Reynaldo Tovar Arroyo is the representative in Venezuela of the private Mexican oil and gas company Petroquimica del Golfo, which holds a contract with the Venezuelan state.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Cedeño, for his part, is a fugitive Venezuelan businessman who claimed asylum in the United States, and Pedro Burelli a former JP Morgan executive and the former director of Venezuela’s national oil company, Petroleum of Venezuela (PDVSA). He left PDVSA in 1998 as Hugo Chavez took power and is on the advisory committee of Georgetown University’s Latin America Leadership Program.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Burelli insisted that the emails detailing his participation had been fabricated and even hired a private investigator to prove it. The investigator declared that Google’s records showed the emails alleged to be his were never transmitted.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Yet today Burelli makes no secret of his desire to see Venezuela’s current president, Nicolás Maduro, deposed – and even dragged through the streets and sodomized with a bayonet, as Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi was by NATO-backed militiamen. <p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">View image on TwitterView image on Twitter<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Pedro Mario Burelli<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">@pburelli<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;"> .@NicolasMaduro, jamas me has hecho caso. Me has fustigado/perseguido como @chavezcandanga jamás osó. Óyeme, tienes sólo dos opciones en las próximas 24 horas:<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">1. Como Noriega: pagar pena por narcotráfico y luego a @IntlCrimCourt La Haya por DDHH.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">2. O a la Gaddafi.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Escoge ya!<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">1,051<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">10:09 PM - Jan 16, 2019<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">1,252 people are talking about this<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">The alleged Fiesta Mexicana plot flowed into another destabilization plan revealed in a series of documents produced by the Venezuelan government. In May 2014, Caracas released documents detailing an assassination plot against President Nicolás Maduro. The leaks identified the Miami-based Maria Corina Machado as a leader of the scheme. A hardliner with a penchant for extreme rhetoric, Machado has functioned as an international liaison for the opposition, visiting President George W. Bush in 2005.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">maria corina machado | george bush<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Machado and George W. Bush, 2005.]<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">“I think it is time to gather efforts; make the necessary calls, and obtain financing to annihilate Maduro and the rest will fall apart,” Machado wrote in an email to former Venezuelan diplomat Diego Arria in 2014.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">In another email, Machado claimed that the violent plot had the blessing of US Ambassador to Colombia, Kevin Whitaker. “I have already made up my mind and this fight will continue until this regime is overthrown and we deliver to our friends in the world. If I went to San Cristobal and exposed myself before the OAS, I fear nothing. Kevin Whitaker has already reconfirmed his support and he pointed out the new steps. We have a checkbook stronger than the regime’s to break the international security ring.”<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Guaidó heads to the barricades<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">That February, student demonstrators acting as shock troops for the exiled oligarchy erected violent barricades across the country, turning opposition-controlled quarters into violent fortresses known as guarimbas. While international media portrayed the upheaval as a spontaneous protest against Maduro’s iron-fisted rule, there was ample evidence that Popular Will was orchestrating the show.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">“None of the protesters at the universities wore their university t-shirts, they all wore Popular Will or Justice First t-shirts,” a guarimba participant said at the time. “They might have been student groups, but the student councils are affiliated to the political opposition parties and they are accountable to them.”<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Asked who the ringleaders were, the guarimba participant said, “Well if I am totally honest, those guys are legislators now.”<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Around 43 were killed during the 2014 guarimbas. Three years later, they erupted again, causing mass destruction of public infrastructure, the murder of government supporters, and the deaths of 126 people, many of whom were Chavistas. In several cases, supporters of the government were burned alive by armed gangs.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Guaidó was directly involved in the 2014 guarimbas. In fact, he tweeted video showing himself clad in a helmet and gas mask, surrounded by masked and armed elements that had shut down a highway that were engaging in a violent clash with the police. Alluding to his participation in Generation 2007, he proclaimed, “I remember in 2007, we proclaimed, ‘Students!’ Now, we shout, ‘Resistance! Resistance!’” <p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Guaidó has deleted the tweet, demonstrating apparent concern for his image as a champion of democracy.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">On February 12, 2014, during the height of that year’s guarimbas, Guaidó joined Lopez on stage at a rally of Popular Will and Justice First. During a lengthy diatribe against the government, Lopez urged the crowd to march to the office of Attorney General Luisa Ortega Diaz. Soon after, Diaz’s office came under attack by armed gangs who attempted to burn it to the ground. She denounced what she called “planned and premeditated violence.”<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Leopoldo Lopez | Juan Guaido<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Guaido alongside Lopez at the fateful February 12, 2014 rally. Photo | PanAm Post]<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">In a televised appearance in 2016, Guaidó dismissed deaths resulting from guayas – a guarimba tactic involving stretching steel wire across a roadway in order to injure or kill motorcyclists – as a “myth.” His comments whitewashed a deadly tactic that had killed unarmed civilians like Santiago Pedroza and decapitated a man named Elvis Durán, among many others.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">This callous disregard for human life would define his Popular Will party in the eyes of much of the public, including many opponents of Maduro.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Cracking down on Popular Will <p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">As violence and political polarization escalated across the country, the government began to act against the Popular Will leaders who helped stoke it.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Freddy Guevara, the National Assembly Vice-President and second in command of Popular Will, was a principal leader in the 2017 street riots. Facing a trial for his role in the violence, Guevara took shelter in the Chilean embassy, where he remains.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Lester Toledo, a Popular Will legislator from the state of Zulia, was wanted by Venezuelan government in September 2016 on charges of financing terrorism and plotting assassinations. The plans were said to be made with former Colombian President Álavaro Uribe. Toledo escaped Venezuela and went on several speaking tours withHuman Rights Watch, the US government-backed Freedom House, the Spanish Congress and European Parliament.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Carlos Graffe, another Otpor-trained Generation 2007 member who led Popular Will, was arrested in July 2017. According to police, he was in possession of a bag filled with nails, C4 explosives and a detonator. He was released on December 27, 2017.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Leopoldo Lopez, the longtime Popular Will leader, is today under house arrest, accused of a key role in deaths of 13 people during the guarimbas in 2014. Amnesty International lauded Lopez as a “prisoner of conscience” and slammed his transfer from prison to house as “not good enough.” Meanwhile, family members of guarimba victims introduced a petition for more charges against Lopez.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Yon Goicoechea, the Koch Brothers posterboy and US-backed founder of Justice First, was arrested in 2016 by security forces who claimed they found a kilo of explosives in his vehicle. In a New York Times op-ed, Goicoechea protested the charges as “trumped-up” and claimed he had been imprisoned simply for his “dream of a democratic society, free of Communism.” He was freed in November 2017.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">View image on Twitter<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">@YonGoicoechea<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;"> Hoy, en Caricuao. Llevo 15 años trabajando con @jguaido. Confío en él. Conozco la constancia y la inteligencia con la que se ha construido a sí mismo. Está haciendo las cosas con bondad, pero sin ingenuidad. Hay una posibilidad abierta hacia la libertad<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">5:10 PM - Jan 19, 2019<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">136 people are talking about this<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">David Smolansky, also a member of the original Otpor-trained Generation 2007, became Venezuela’s youngest-ever mayor when he was elected in 2013 in the affluent suburb of El Hatillo. But he was stripped of his position and sentenced to 15 months in prison by the Supreme Court after it found him culpable of stirring the violent guarimbas.  <p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Facing arrest, Smolansky shaved his beard, donned sunglasses and slipped into Brazil disguised as a priest with a bible in hand and rosary around his neck. He now lives in Washington, DC, where he was handpicked by Secretary of the Organization of American States Luis Almagro to lead the working group on the Venezuelan migrant and refugee crisis.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">This July 26, Smolansky held what he called a “cordial reunion” with Elliot Abrams, the convicted Iran-Contra felon installed by Trump as special US envoy to Venezuela. Abrams is notorious for overseeing the US covert policy of arming right-wing death squads during the 1980’s in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. His lead role in the Venezuelan coup has stoked fears that another blood-drenched proxy war might be on the way.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">David Smolansky<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">@dsmolansky<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;"> Cordial reunión en la ONU con Elliott Abrams, enviado especial del gobierno de EEUU para Venezuela. Reiteramos que la prioridad para el gobierno interino que preside @jguaido es la asistencia humanitaria para millones de venezolanos que sufren de la falta de comida y medicinas.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">10:46 AM - Jan 26, 2019<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">2,619 people are talking about this<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Four days earlier, Machado rumbled another violent threat against Maduro, declaring that if he “wants to save his life, he should understand that his time is up.”<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">A pawn in their game<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">The collapse of Popular Will under the weight of the violent campaign of destabilization it ran alienated large sectors of the public and wound much of its leadership up in exile or in custody. Guaidó had remained a relatively minor figure, having spent most of his nine-year career in the National Assembly as an alternate deputy. Hailing from one of Venezuela’s least populous states, Guaidó came in second place during the 2015 parliamentary elections, winning just 26% of votes cast in order to secure his place in the National Assembly. Indeed, his bottom may have been better known than his face.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Guaidó is known as the president of the opposition-dominated National Assembly, but he was never elected to the position. The four opposition parties that comprised the Assembly’s Democratic Unity Table had decided to establish a rotating presidency. Popular Will’s turn was on the way, but its founder, Lopez, was under house arrest. Meanwhile, his second-in-charge, Guevara, had taken refuge in the Chilean embassy. A figure named Juan Andrés Mejía would have been next in line but reasons that are only now clear, Juan Guaido was selected.   <p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">“There is a class reasoning that explains Guaidó’s rise,” Sequera, the Venezuelan analyst, observed. “Mejía is high class, studied at one of the most expensive private universities in Venezuela, and could not be easily marketed to the public the way Guaidó could. For one, Guaidó has common mestizo features like most Venezuelans do, and seems like more like a man of the people. Also, he had not been overexposed in the media, so he could be built up into pretty much anything.”<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">In December 2018, Guaidó sneaked across the border and junketed to Washington, Colombia and Brazil to coordinate the plan to hold mass demonstrations during the inauguration of President Maduro. The night before Maduro’s swearing-in ceremony, both Vice President Mike Pence and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland called Guaidó to affirm their support.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">A week later, Sen. Marco Rubio, Sen. Rick Scott and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart – all lawmakers from the Florida base of the right-wing Cuban exile lobby – joined President Trump and Vice President Pence at the White House. At their request, Trump agreed that if Guaidó declared himself president, he would back him.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met personally with Guaidó on January 10, according to the Wall Street Journal. However, Pompeo could not pronounce Guaidó’s name when he mentioned him in a press briefing on January 25, referring to him as “Juan Guido.”<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;"> Embedded video<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Dan Cohen<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">@dancohen3000<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;"> Secretary of State Mike Pompeo just called the figure Washington is attempting to install as Venezuelan President "Juan Guido" - as in the racist term for Italians. America's top diplomat didn't even bother to learn how to pronounce his puppet's name.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">1:58 PM - Jan 25, 2019<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">By January 11, Guaidó’s Wikipedia page had been edited 37 times, highlighting the struggle to shape the image of a previously anonymous figure who was now a tableau for Washington’s regime change ambitions. In the end, editorial oversight of his page was handed over to Wikipedia’s elite council of “librarians,” who pronounced him the “contested” president of Venezuela.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Guaidó might have been an obscure figure, but his combination of radicalism and opportunism satisfied Washington’s needs. “That internal piece was missing,” a Trump administration said of Guaidó. “He was the piece we needed for our strategy to be coherent and complete.”<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">“For the first time,” Brownfield, the former American ambassador to Venezuela, gushed to the New York Times, “you have an opposition leader who is clearly signaling to the armed forces and to law enforcement that he wants to keep them on the side of the angels and with the good guys.”<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">But Guaidó’s Popular Will party formed the shock troops of the guarimbas that caused the deaths of police officers and common citizens alike. He had even boasted of his own participation in street riots. And now, to win the hearts and minds of the military and police, Guaido had to erase this blood-soaked history.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">On January 21, a day before the coup began in earnest, Guaidó’s wife delivered a video address calling on the military to rise up against Maduro. Her performance was wooden and uninspiring, underscoring the her husband’s limited political prospects.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">At a press conference before supporters four days later, Guaidó announced his solution to the crisis: “Authorize a humanitarian intervention!”<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">While he waits on direct assistance, Guaidó remains what he has always been – a pet project of cynical outside forces. “It doesn’t matter if he crashes and burns after all these misadventures,” Sequera said of the coup figurehead. “To the Americans, he is expendable.”<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Top Photo | Venezuela’s self-declared interim leader Juan Guaido, center, greets supporters after a rally at a public plaza in Las Mercedes neighborhood of Caracas, Venezuela, Jan. 26, 2019. Fernando Llano | AP]<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Dan Cohen is a journalist and filmmaker. He has produced widely distributed video reports and print dispatches from across Israel-Palestine. Dan is a correspondent at RT America and tweets at @DanCohen3000.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Max Blumenthal is the founder and editor of GrayzoneProject.com, the co-host of the podcast Moderate Rebels, the author of several books and producer of full-length documentaries including the recently released Killing Gaza. Follow him on Twitter at @MaxBlumenthal.<p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;"><p source="Source" sans="Sans" pro="Pro" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;">Source | GrayZone Project</div><div></div>guk'Maduro would beat Jesus': Venezuelans lament rigged system as election loomsMany fear dirty tricks will keep the unpopular president in power, but the opposition is urging people not to boycott Sunday’s vote
John Otis in Caracas
 @JohnOtisSat 19 May 2018 02.30 EDT Last modified on Sat 19 May 2018 02.31 EDT This article is over 8 months oldShares769 Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro is seeking another’s term, despite leading the country into an economic crisis.  Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro is seeking another’s term, despite leading the country into an economic crisis. Photograph: Ariana Cubillos/APAfter denouncing Venezuela’s food shortages and hyperinflation in a speech ahead of Sunday’s presidential election, the opposition candidate, Henrí Falcón, sat in his campaign bus, sucking a throat lozenge – and chewing over his predicament.
Falcón ought to be the favorite. He’s up against Nicolás Maduro, the deeply unpopular and increasingly authoritarian president who is seeking another six-year term despite leading this oil-rich nation into its worst economic crisis in decades.
Yet Falcón is the underdog.
He’s resigned to the usual dirty tricks from the ruling Socialist Party, including the use of state food hand-outs to lure hungry people into voting for Maduro.
But what most infuriates him is friendly fire: Venezuela’s largest opposition parties are denouncing Falcón as a stooge for participating in an election they say will be a sham – and which they have vowed to boycott.
“This makes it a lot more complicated,” Falcón admits. “But we are going to take risks and follow the democratic path. Now is not the time for politicians to go into hiding.”

Venezuela election: Maduro 'ready for battle' as voters vow to flee if he wins Read moreFalcón has been buoyed by polls that show him either ahead or within striking distance of Maduro. He also points to research showing that even on an unfair electoral playing field, it’s almost always better to participate than to stand down.
A 2009 study by the Brookings Institution of more than 100 electoral boycotts – from Afghanistan to Iraq to Peru – found that their goal of rendering elections illegitimate in the eyes of the world was rarely achieved. Instead, they left the boycotting parties in an even weaker state.
Javier Corrales, a Venezuela expert at Amherst College, says that Sunday’s election presents an extremely rare opportunity for voters to remove an autocrat through peaceful means. Surrendering to Maduro, he says, “is the biggest mistake I’ve seen the opposition make in a decade.”
 Henrí Falcón, the Venezuelan opposition presidential candidate, at a rally.Facebook Twitter Pinterest Henrí Falcón, the Venezuelan opposition presidential candidate, at a rally. Photograph: Federico Parra/AFP/Getty ImagesThe leaders of the largest of the 20-some parties that make up the opposition coalition claim that electoral conditions are so grossly weighted in Maduro’s favor that voting on Sunday would be pointless.
Most electoral officials are Maduro loyalists who, in past elections, have turned a blind eye to vote tampering and the last-minute relocation of polling places in opposition strongholds.
The government controls most TV and radio stations which transmit a constant stream of of pro-Maduro propaganda. It is also fomenting the notion that the ballot is not secret and that people who vote for the opposition will lose government jobs, public housing, and vital food handouts.
Quick guideWhy is Venezuela in crisis?
Show“It matters little whether this threat is real or perceived. Most people can’t afford to risk their paltry food rations to in order find out,” wrote the Caracas political blogger Emiliana Duarte. Maduro’s re-election pitch “pretty much comes down to ‘vote for me if you want food, starve if you want to make a point’”, she said.
At a campaign rally in the western city of Barquisimeto, Maduro put it this way: “The Fatherland protects you and gives you everything. And you must give the Fatherland political power.”
But just to make sure, the government has banned the two most popular opposition politicians – Leopoldo López who is under house arrest for inciting violence and Henrique Capriles who faces trumped-up corruption charges – from running.
Those allowed on the ballot are two lesser-known figures: Falcón and televangelist Javier Bertucci, who is attracting big crowds by turning his campaign events into makeshift soup kitchens.
Carlos González, an anti-government activist who heads a Venezuelan business association, says the name on the ballot doesn’t matter: “Jesus Christ could be the candidate and Maduro would still prevail because the system is set up for him to win,” he says.
The opposition has taken this argument overseas, convincing the United States, the European Union and several Latin American countries to denounce the balloting as a sham.

Venezuela on the brink: a journey through a country in crisis Read more“Yes, Venezuelans want to vote. But we don’t want to legitimize the Maduro regime and the misery that he has brought to the country,” said Negal Morales, an opposition lawmaker. “To vote would be to take part in a farce.”
Some critics contend that the boycott came about after the opposition was outmaneuvered by government negotiators. In discussions over electoral conditions, the opposition drew a line in the sand, demanding a neutral electoral tribunal, a postponement of the balloting until October, and the presence of international observers. After months of talks, the government conceded almost nothing.
According to one observer, that left the opposition feeling obliged to save face by making good on its threat to sit out the election.
“Maduro wants people to abstain,” Francisco Rodríguez, Falcón’s chief policy advisor, said. “He wants nobody to come out to vote because that’s the only election he can win. And the opposition fell into that trap.”jon otis on scene?="The Making of Leopoldo López: A Closer Look at the Democratic Bona Fides of the Rock Star of Venezuela’s Opposition." That’s the headline to a new investigation into Venezuela’s most prominent opposition leader who has been jailed since February 2014. President Nicolás Maduro dismisses him as a criminal. But López’s supporters call him a political prisoner and accuse Maduro of silencing a dissenting voice. We speak with Roberto Lovato about his new piece in Foreign Policy. Lovato is a writer and visiting scholar at the UC Berkeley Center for Latino Policy Research.  <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/27/the-making-of-leopoldo-lopez-democratic-venezuela-opposition/" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/27/the-making-of-leopoldo-lopez-democratic-venezuela-opposition/</a><a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2015/8/5/the_making_of_leopoldo_lopez_an" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">http://www.democracynow.org/2015/8/5/the_making_of_leopoldo_lopez_an</a>Carmona, dad signed, but denied....FP
<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Leopoldo López was born in 1971 to one of Venezuela’s most elite families, a direct descendent of both 19th-century revolutionary leader Simón Bolivar and Venezuela’s first president, Cristóbal Mendoza. His mother, Antonieta Mendoza de López, is a top executive at the Cisneros Group, a global media conglomerate. His father, Leopoldo López Gil, is a restaurateur and businessman who sits on the editorial board of <em style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">El Nacional.<p style="margin: 0px auto 25px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 2.05rem; vertical-align: baseline; width: 615.047px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“I belong to one percent of the privileged people,” López said as a teenager, long before the Occupy movement popularized the term, during an interview with a student newspaper at the Hun School of Princeton, an elite private boarding school in New Jersey. It was at Hun, whose alumni roster includes Saudi princes, the child of a U.S. president, and the child of a Fortune 500 CEO, that López said he experienced “an awakening of the responsibility I have towards the people of my country.”<p style="margin: 0px auto 25px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 2.05rem; vertical-align: baseline; width: 615.047px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">López went on from Hun to Kenyon College, a liberal arts college in Ohio, where he developed relationships that would serve him to this day. It was a former classmate and political consultant, Rob Gluck, who led the effort to set up Friends of a Free Venezuela, the media-centered advocacy group behind a high-profile U.S. campaign for López’s release. As a testament to the “powerful impact [López] has had on people,” Gluck, a spokesperson for the group, told me, “within days of the arrest, really within hours,” friends from Kenyon in influential positions in journalism, communications, advocacy, and government were “emailing, connecting, volunteering, [and] asking what could we do.”Some of these classmates went on to found the Free Leopoldo campaign, a well-connected advocacy group that has run a vibrant PR and social media campaign on López’s behalf. Among the Kenyon classmates helping to power Free Leopoldo in the United States is Republican Party operative Leonardo Alcivar, who ran communications strategies for the Romney campaign and the 2004 Republican National Convention and now works at a communications firm that advises companies on their online strategy. No other element of the Venezuelan opposition has anything resembling the U.S. media operation that López has through Free Leopoldo.<p style="margin: 0px auto 25px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 2.05rem; vertical-align: baseline; width: 615.047px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Gluck is himself also a former Republican strategist who worked on Lamar Alexander’s presidential campaign and the successful campaign to recall California Governor Gray Davis, which resulted in the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger. He is currently a managing partner at High Lantern Group, a Pasadena-based communications strategy firm. He said López has “always been progressive,” and if measured on the U.S. political spectrum, he’d be “left of center.” Gluck runs Friends of a Free Venezuela pro bono — “personal time, passion, and connections” drive the work, he said — but his communications firm has also been retained by López’s family, he said, to “get the message out about [López’s] situation.”<p style="margin: 0px auto 25px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 2.05rem; vertical-align: baseline; width: 615.047px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">After Kenyon, López went to Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he met another influential figure who would become a key supporter — Venezuelan national Pedro Burelli, a former JP Morgan executive and pre-Chávez-era member of the board of directors of PDVSA, Venezuela’s national petroleum firm, which controls the world’s largest crude reserves. The two first met, Burelli said, during a recruiting trip at Harvard while Burelli was still at JP Morgan. “Someone called my attention to this young Venezuelan who was at the Kennedy School where I had graduated many years before,” said Burelli, who is now a corporate consultant with B+V Advisors, “and I connected him.” López went to work at PDVSA in 1996 and stayed there as an analyst for three years during Burelli’s tenure on PDVSA’s board. In 1998, López’s mother joined PDVSA as well, as vice president of corporate affairs.<p style="margin: 0px auto 25px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 2.05rem; vertical-align: baseline; width: 615.047px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Burelli considers himself a “very good friend” of López, and said he has provided informal advice to the opposition leader through his many contentious political transitions, from López’s time at PDVSA to the most recent clashes with the Maduro government. Burelli explained that while he was at PDVSA, López helped found a group called Primero Justicia — which led, in 2000, to the formation of an opposition party of the same name. In 1998, a comptroller general investigation found that López’s mother had channeled $120,000 in corporate donations from PDVSA to Primero Justicia while she and López were at the firm, in violation of anti-corruption laws. López’s attorneys point out that Primero Justicia was a nonprofit at the time, not yet a party, and López never stood trial on the charges. But the comptroller general nevertheless barred López from holding office from 2008 until 2014.<p style="margin: 0px auto 25px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 2.05rem; vertical-align: baseline; width: 615.047px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">López left Primero Justicia in 2007 over disputes with other party members and then leapt from one political party to another, leading up to his quixotic run for president in 2012 on the ticket of his current party, Voluntad Popular. He was also, during these years, playing a pivotal role in Venezuela’s rising student opposition movement. A leaked State Department cable from 2007 reads, in part, “the young, dynamic opposition mayor of Chacao Municipality in Caracas, Leopoldo Lopez, addressed students during early demonstrations in his jurisdiction, and he is actively advising them behind-the-scenes”; another describes López as “the best channel to the student movement.” Some JAVU leaders, including one mentioned in the cables, went on to become active in Voluntad Popular, the party that fueled López’s rise to national prominence....==