May 10, 2020

AP sources: Guaido allies to pay selves $5K in Venezuela budget with $100 bonus for health care work

JOSHUA GOODMAN
The Associated Press
APR 23, 2020 5:19 PM

MIAMI — Opposition lawmakers in Venezuela quietly agreed to pay themselves $5,000 a month when they approved special $100 bonuses for doctors and nurses battling the coronavirus — a large payout for a nation where most workers are scraping by on a few dollars a month, according to people involved in the process.

The payout, which has not been previously reported, was contained in legislation passed last week by the National Assembly setting up an $80 million “Liberation Fund” made up of Venezuelan assets seized by the Trump administration as part of its sanctions campaign to remove socialist leader Nicolas Maduro.

The legislation was touted as a hallmark achievement for Juan Guaido, the 36-year-old congressional leader recognized as Venezuela’s rightful president by the U.S. and nearly 60 other nations, but who has struggled to exert real power. For this first time since invoking the constitution to proclaim himself as acting president, he would have access to some of the billions of dollars in Venezuelan assets frozen abroad.

But the details have been shrouded in secrecy. The text of the new measure — which implements a general law passed in February creating the fund — hasn’t been made public.

More:
https://www.post-gazette.com/news/world/2020/04/23/Venezuela-lawmakers-Juan-Guaido-Nicolas-Maduro-health-care-workers-coronavirus/stories/202004230152

May 10, 2020

For anyone who hasn't read this article, you'll find yourself reading background which helps

explain the deep bench of young right-wing Venezuelan US-approved guys waiting for their turns to be trotted out as the next President of Venezuela.

Anyone who's been seriously following events will recall some of these characters from previous years, and some of the info. offered. It's all very worthwhile.

I had never seen this Tweet when I read the article the first time, and it's very amusing:




The Making of Juan Guaidó: How the US regime change laboratory created Venezuela’s coup leader

Juan Guaidó is the product of a decade-long project overseen by Washington’s elite regime change trainers. While posing as a champion of democracy, he has spent years at the forefront of a violent campaign of destabilization.
By Dan Cohen and Max Blumenthal

~ snip ~

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.

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.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met personally withGuaidó 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.”

https://twitter.com/dancohen3000/status/1088919163022819329
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.

More:
https://thegrayzone.com/2019/01/29/the-making-of-juan-guaido-how-the-us-regime-change-laboratory-created-venezuelas-coup-leader/

May 10, 2020

Made invisible by pandemic, mass killing of Colombia's social leaders continues

by Adriaan Alsema May 10, 2020

The United Nations said Saturday that the coronavirus pandemic didn’t stop the assassinations of Colombia’s social leaders and demobilized FARC members, it just made them invisible.

In a press statement, the UN’s observers of Colombia’s peace process condemned the assassination of FARC member Wilder Daniel Marin in Bello, just outside Medellin on Thursday, stressing 24 demobilized guerrillas have been assassinated so far this year.

The lockdown ordered by President Ivan Duque also did not stop the assassinations of human rights defenders and the community leaders, and the violence imposed on rural communities.

In the context of COVID-19, violence in conflict-affected territories has continued. Since the beginning of the national quarantine, six ex-combatants have been killed and at least 32 social leaders have been assassinated, as registered by national sources.

United Nations Verification Mission

More:
https://colombiareports.com/made-invisible-by-pandemic-mass-killing-of-colombias-social-leaders-continues/

May 10, 2020

In Groundbreaking Find, Three Kinds of Early Humans Unearthed Living Together in South Africa

The different hominid species, possibly including the oldest-known Homo erectus, existed in the region’s hills and caves



The Drimolen excavations and excavated fossils. (Andy Herries)

By Brian Handwerk
SMITHSONIANMAG.COM
APRIL 2, 2020

Scientists studying the roots of humanity’s family tree have found several branches entangled in and around a South African cave.

Two million years ago, three different early humans—Australopithecus, Paranthropus, and the earliest-known Homo erectus—appear to have lived at the same time in the same place, near the Drimolen Paleocave System. How much these different species interacted remains unknown. But their contemporaneous existence suggests our ancient relations were quite diverse during a key transitional period of African prehistory that saw the last days of Australopithecus and the dawn of H. erectus’s nearly two-million-year run.

“We know that the old idea, that when one species occurs another goes extinct and you don’t have much overlap, that’s just not the case,” says study coauthor Andy Herries, a paleoanthropologist at La Trobe University in Australia.



Homo erectus cranium with stylized projection of the outline of the rest of the skull. (Andy Herries, Jesse Martin and Renaud Joannes-Boyau)

Three Species, One Place

Australopithecus africanus is the most primitive of this trio. The lineage dates to 3.3 million years ago and combines human features with ape-like attributes including long, tree climbing-arms. Despite these intermediate features, Australopithecus’s exact relation to modern humans remains unknown. The species is thought to have died out around 2 million years ago.

More:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/homo-erectus-australopithecus-saranthropus-south-africa-180974571/

May 10, 2020

Venezuelan coup document reveals extent of Guaido involvement

SUNDAY, MAY 10, 2020

DETAILS of the US mercenary bid to invade Venezuela have emerged after a copy of a 41-page contract was leaked to the Washington Post this weekend.

Washington-backed usurper Juan Guaido was named as commander-in-chief of the operation and, according the document, he was to provide a $10 million (£8m) bond to the Silvercorp private security firm, to be be paid back depending on its success.

The document reveals a list of individuals and organisations deemed legitimate targets under the terms of the agreement, including President Nicolas Maduro and constituent assembly president Diosdado Cabellero.

Also included were the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) and the Middle Eastern Islamist militant group Hezbollah, which US Vice-President Mike Pence bizarrely insists operates terrorist cells in Venezuela.

More:
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/venezuelan-coup-document-reveals-extent-guaido-involvementf

~ ~ ~



Guaidó and the Failed Military Operation against Venezuela: A Story of Betrayal and Financial Corruption
May 5, 2020 Patricio Zamorano



By Patricio Zamorano
From Washington DC

Now that we have had a few days to study the failed, illegal paramilitary incursion by a group of American and Venezuelan mercenaries into Venezuela, some key details have emerged in this incredible story. They reveal the internal dynamics of the fractured, demoralized, and financially corrupt nature of the hardline sectors of the opposition. Much of the information was provided by the former U.S. soldier Jordan Goudreau, hired for “Operation Gideon” by Juan Guaidó himself along with advisors Sergio Vergara, Juan José Rendón, and with the advice of attorney Manuel Retureta, all of whom signed the service plan to launch the paramilitary operation (called “General Services Agreement”).

A dozen paramilitaries were captured from Sunday May 3 to Monday May 4 in the coastal area of La Guaira and Chuao[1] with the help of fishermen. They include deserters from Venezuela’s armed forces and police, along with former U.S. soldiers. Eight of the mercenaries were killed by the country’s security forces.[2]

The trove of evidence makes it impossible for Guaidó and his advisors to deny their involvement in the contract for services. Not only are copies of the 8-pages General Services Agreement circulating on the internet, also included in this article,,[3] there is also a recording of their phone conversation while they were signing it.[4]



Mercenaries captured in Chuao (Photo-credit: Government of Venezuela).
A multi-million dollar contract

U.S. mercenary Jordan Goudreau, owner of Florida Silvercorp USA Inc, which has been around for two years, is revealing all the inside information for the simple reason that Guaidó never paid the agreed upon fee, including a retainer of US$1.5 million. He claims that he only received US$50,000[5] through Rendón.

A native Canadian, Goudreau is a U.S. Army combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. According to his simple website that centers around his personal image, Jordan Goudreau “has also planned and led international security teams for the President of the United States as well as the Secretary of Defense.”[6] According to a profile AP wrote about him,[7] that claim seems to be an exaggeration of his friendly relationship with Keith Schiller, who served as chief of security and bodyguard to Trump. Several interviews conducted by AP of people close to the mercenary suggest that Goudreau is politically naive, impulsive, and harbors delusions of grandeur.

More:
http://www.coha.org/guaido-and-the-failed-military-operation-against-venezuela-a-story-of-betrayal-and-financial-corruption/

May 8, 2020

Latin America's Plans to Tax the Rich

BY BRENDAN O’BOYLE | MAY 7, 2020
Across the region, progressive tax reforms are gaining traction thanks to the pandemic.

In Latin America’s nascent debate over how to pay for its pandemic response, one idea is gaining traction: Tax the rich.

Since March, debates over new tax measures targeting the ultra-wealthy and high earners have begun in at least nine countries across the region, as lawmakers and governments try to figure out how to fill the massive fiscal holes created by the coronavirus.

“We’ve taken on a massive debt to face this crisis, and we’re going to have to pay for that somehow,” Samuel Pérez Álvarez, a Guatemalan congressman, told AQ. “It’s not going to be the middle or lower classes.”

Pérez and his colleagues from the Semilla party presented a bill in Congress this month to increase the income tax rate on the top 0.1% of earners in response to the crisis. As the pandemic squeezes governments of cash, plans for redistributing wealth have sprung up elsewhere, including in Argentina, Peru and Brazil – and not for the first time.

More:
https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/latin-americas-plans-to-tax-the-rich/

May 6, 2020

Brazil using coronavirus to cover up assaults on Amazon, warn activists

Fears Jair Bolsonaro’s ‘land grabbers decree’ may be pushed forwards after new rule allows land-grabbing on indigenous reserves

Dom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro

Wed 6 May 2020 08.24 EDT

As the coronavirus pandemic eats its way into the Amazon, raising fears of a genocide of its vulnerable indigenous tribes, the government of the far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, and its supporters are dismantling rules shielding protected reserves. Key environment officials have been sacked, and environmentalists and indigenous leaders fear the pandemic is being used as a smokescreen for a new assault on the rainforest.

They say a presidential decree awaiting congressional approval and new rules at the indigenous agency Funai effectively legalise land grabbing in protected forests and indigenous reserves.

“The indigenous peoples are alone and we have to fight against the virus, the loggers and the wildcat miners. We don’t know which is worse,” said Alessandra Munduruku, an indigenous leader from Pará state.

Bolsonaro, notorious for racist remarks about indigenous people and a nationalist argument in favour of developing the Amazon, is popular among farmers, wildcat miners, loggers and land grabbers. He said the Yanomami indigenous reserve – Brazil’s largest – was too big and attacked environment agencies for fining people for environmental crimes.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/06/brazil-using-coronavirus-to-cover-up-assaults-on-amazon-warn-activists

May 6, 2020

The Dumbest Aspects of the Apparent Coup Attempt in Venezuela

MAY 5, 2020
By Matt Stieb

First there was “stupid Watergate,” such an evocative phrase that it was applied both to the Trump camp’s entanglements with Russia and the president’s attempts to leverage aid in Ukraine that eventually led to impeachment. Now, the Trump era has brought us stupid Bay of Pigs: On Monday, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro announced that two Americans were among a group of 13 people arrested for what he described as an attempted coup to overthrow his regime.

. . .

They tweeted about the raid while it was in process

It should go without saying that if you’re involved in an alleged attempt to overthrow a government already prepared for interference from a well-funded opposition leader, you should keep it offline. But Silvercorp, the private contractor employing the pair of mercenaries, tweeted about the operation on Sunday while it was still in motion:

. . .

Silvercorp appears to have provided security at Trump events

The Trump administration — gung-ho for the removal of Maduro during a power struggle last year led by opposition leader Juan Guaidó — may not be thrilled to learn that Silvercorp apparently did security for the president’s rallies in 2018. Though the photo has been taken down, Vice News grabbed a screenshot of an Instagram post showing what appears to be the backstage at Trump’s October 2018 rally in Charlotte, with the caption “Protecting our Greatest Assets.” The Associated Press has also confirmed that the company’s head Jordan Goudreau accompanied the president’s longtime bodyguard Keith Schiller to a meeting with Guaido’s representatives in May 2019 in Miami. While the president frequently employs private security at his events, on Tuesday he denied any involvement with the plot.

. . .

Denman and Berry apparently brought an Airsoft gun on the raid

As any friend of a kid who lived in the woods knows, Airsoft guns hurt. But they would not be effective weapons for a group of 62 to overthrow a president leading a standing army of over 340,000. According to the investigative site Bellingcat, the cache of weapons that Venezuelan authorities seized from the Americans contained an Airsoft rifle, which are reserved in military settings for training, as they cannot kill a person. (Of the group of 62 mercenaries, the Venezuelan government claimed eight were killed.)

. . .

The Silvercorp founder confirmed his involvement, and said his planning was inspired by Alexander the Great

Rather than keep a low PR presence as news of the botched and legally spurious act emanated throughout the world, Jordan Goudreau — who won the Bronze Star on three occasions while serving in Iraq — tweeted about the raid and spoke with an exiled Venezuelan journalist, claiming responsibility for orchestrating the attack. When asked why he would hurl his forces onto the heavily fortified coastline outside Caracas, Goudreau said he was inspired by Alexander the Great, who “struck deep into the heart of the enemy” at the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 B.C.

More:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/05/dumbest-aspects-of-the-mercenary-coup-plot-in-venezuela.html

Also posted in Editorials and other articles:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016254753

May 3, 2020

Chinese group skirts US sanctions to help Cuba

Chinese alumni who studied in Cuba raise US$19,823 to buy PPE and medical supplies to help the island nation
By DAVE MAKICHUK
MAY 4, 2020

Draconian US sanctions couldn’t stop Chinese alumni from helping the Cuban people fight the Covid-19 virus, The Global Times reported on Sunday.

A total of 286 Chinese donors raised more than 140,000 yuan (US$19,823), purchased 420 pieces of medical protective outfits and 38,750 masks and sent the medical supplies to Cuba successfully with the help of the Cuban embassy in China, Chen Ke, who initiated the donation campaign, told the Global Times.

Donors are mostly Chinese students who had studied in Cuba from 2006 to 2016 under Cuban government scholarships, said Chen, a 30-year-old from Southwest China’s Guizhou Province, who spent five years in Havana learning Spanish from 2009.

After the fundraiser was launched at the end of March, Chen was worried if the supplies could be delivered to Cuba smoothly due to existing US sanctions, the report said.

More:
https://asiatimes.com/2020/05/chinese-group-skirts-us-sanctions-to-help-cuba/

May 3, 2020

Venezuela says it foiled attack by boat on main port city

Updated 11:27 am CDT, Sunday, May 3, 2020



Photo: Matias Delacroix, AP
Security forces patrol in the port city of La Guaira, Venezuela, Sunday, May 3, 2020. Interior Nestor Reverol said on state television that security forces overcame before dawn Sunday an armed maritime incursion with speedboats from neighboring Colombia in which several attackers were killed and others detained.


CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan officials said they foiled an early morning attempt by a group of armed men to invade the country by boat on Sunday, killing eight attackers and arresting two more.

Socialist party chief Diosdado Cabello said that two of the attackers were being interrogated by authorities. Cabello said it was carried out by neighboring Colombia with United States backing in a plot to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro. Both countries have repeatedly denied earlier Venezuelan allegations of backing for military plots against the socialist government.

“Those who assume they can attack the institutional framework in Venezuela will have to assume the consequences of their action," said Cabello, adding that one of the detained claimed to be an agent of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Authorities said they found Peruvian documents, high-caliber weapons, satellite phones, uniforms and helmets adorned with the U.S. flag.

More:
https://www.chron.com/news/article/Venezuela-says-it-foiled-attack-by-boat-from-15243261.php

Also posted in LBN:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142485582