A Journal of People report
Venezuela is now a hot “chip” of imperialism’s geostrategic map. The mainstream media with its motive and purpose are presenting many interesting reports and analyses – a few of which are part of imperialist disinformation campaign while the rest carry some salt of truth.
The New York Times in a news analysis said:
“During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump often complained about how President Barack Obama drew red lines that he never enforced, and how a diminished America let Russia walk into Syria unchallenged, something he said would not happen if the Russian leader respected the United States president.
“Now, in Venezuela, President Trump is facing his own red-line moment — again, with Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.”
The “Trump-Putin’s ‘red-line moment’” headlined news analysis referred to the Trump administration’s escalated warnings about “Russian intervention” in Venezuela, U.S. recognition of Juan Guaidó, the imperialist proxy, as Venezuela’s rightful president, and Trump’s national security adviser John R. Bolton’s claim on arrival of roughly 100 Russian military “advisers” in Venezuela.
The Washington, April 1, 2019 datelined analysis raised two questions:
“Would Venezuela be the place where Mr. Trump, who has often seemed willing to tolerate Mr. Putin’s most audacious provocations, finally draws his own red line? And, if so, does he have a plan to enforce it?”
The analysis by David E. Sanger noted:
“Mr. Bolton, not Mr. Trump himself, made the announcement, with its echoes of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, the first time the United States issued similar warnings telling foreign powers not to intervene in the Western Hemisphere.”
It said:
“Yet, Mr. Maduro is digging in”.
It added:
“Mr. Putin may well see an opportunity to replay Syria in Venezuela, propping up another leader that many American officials said had to go — Mr. Maduro instead of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, this time — and frustrating Washington’s regional goals.”
The reality the U.S. is facing has been told in this way. The description of the reality goes further as the analysis said:
Mr. Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “have all embraced the administration’s year-old national security strategy, which recognizes that a resumption of great-power competition, not terrorism, is the primary challenge facing the United States today. Mr. Trump’s former aides say, however, that he never read the full national security strategy, and they note that when he does talk about it, he almost never discusses Russia’s behavior.”
Thus a reality being faced by imperialism surfaces.
Ethan Bronner and Ezra Fieser in an interesting story describe Bogotá, a place now close connected to many developments and would-be developments in Venezuela.
Their story – “Mercenaries, Spies, and Double Agents Gather En Masse in Bogotá” – said: “In the Casablanca of the Andes, seemingly everyone’s plotting — or counterplotting — for control of neighboring Venezuela.”
The April 16, 2019 datelined Bloomberg Businessweek story sketches a Bogotá scene: Small families loiter on the sidewalks outside the high-end eateries and upscale boutiques of Bogotá’s northern neighborhoods, taking handouts; along the honking avenues farther south, young men push cartloads of candy or shoulder food-delivery backpacks; all are Venezuelan refugees into this damp, sprawling city high in the Andes.
The story goes further:
“Geopolitical crises tend to create unexpected centers of refuge and espionage. During the Cold War, it was West Berlin; in the buildup to the Iraq War, the Jordanian capital of Amman. Now the world’s attention has shifted to Venezuela, a nation … atop the world’s largest known oil reserves. The Trump administration, invoking the Monroe Doctrine claim of U.S. primacy in the Western Hemisphere, says the departure of its president, Nicolás Maduro, is nonnegotiable.”
It adds:
“Bogotá has become a proxy battleground for the conflict building on Colombia’s eastern border. … Mercenaries and ex-Venezuelan officers plotting their next move.”
The story tells:
“Flights into Colombia are full. Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, along with congressional Democrats Representative Eliot Engel of New York and Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, have all recently led delegations here. … The U.S. isn’t yielding the playing field: Its Bogotá mission, one of the largest in the world, has 3,000 employees.”
So, the city is hot as the story says:
“Some say Bogotá feels like Casablanca during World War II. As in the 1942 Humphrey Bogart classic about life and death in the wartime city, refugees are rushing in and upending the social order. In the film, a leading Amsterdam banker has to work as the pastry chef at Rick’s Café Américain, and his father as a bellboy. Here there are Venezuelan judges driving Ubers, their bank accounts and homes seized by the regime.
“Of course, Casablanca — both the historic place and Hollywood’s version — was a place refugees hoped to get out of, seeking passage to Lisbon and then New York. For some Venezuelans, Bogotá is also a stop on the way to somewhere else — Brazil, Chile, Peru. But for many others it’s a comfortable place to make a new life. One with no plans to leave is Humberto Calderón, 77, a gruff former energy minister and OPEC president who’s the representative to Colombia from the Guaidó “administration,” Venezuela’s parallel ruling structure, which has international backing but no actual authority. He’s had the job for a few months and works out of the same building where he lives.”
Calderón took control of the official embassy, when Colombia recognized Guaidó as Venezuela’s president and revoked diplomatic status for Maduro’s representatives.
These are few of the scenes, imperialist intervention produces.
And, there are other elements. The story tells:
“Then there are the ex-Venezuelan military who camp in Bogotá to plot coups d’état. One lives elsewhere in Colombia and comes to the city often to meet with fellow dissident officers. … The Colombians bar him and the others from keeping arms (though they do anyway).
“Another former Venezuelan soldier, Carlos Guillen, says he’s proud of his anti-Maduro activities and won’t hide behind anonymity. A recent arrival in Bogotá, he suggests meeting at a working-class cafe in a barrio south of downtown. As soon as the interview begins, he asks to move to a different section of the city; he fears he’s being watched. He speaks of collaborators inside the headquarters of Venezuela’s security services in Caracas and shows videos of the building’s interior — they need the layout for the planned invasion. He says he’s ordering spying equipment from the U.S. — pens that record video, eyeglasses with cameras — which he’ll send on to his colleagues in Caracas.”
These are few of the proxy soldiers.
There is another fact as the story says:
“The Colombian authorities despise Maduro and are eager to see him driven from power. But the presence of armed agents makes them nervous. They don’t mean to be inhospitable, but they worry about Bogotá’s growing reputation as the center of anti-Venezuelan plotting. On Feb. 23, when international aid was blocked by Maduro’s militias, more than 1,000 Venezuelan National Guardsmen slipped across seeking asylum. The Colombians want to accommodate them, putting them up at a hotel replete with a palm-lined pool near the border while considering granting them entry.”
This intervention-story will develop as imperialism has not given up its intervention plan for Venezuela. There are signs that the United States is making preparations for a military operation against Venezuela.
Journal of People 