March 29, 2022

MAGA, the CIA, and Silvercorp: The Bizarre Backstory of the World's Most Disastrous Coup

Last year, an invasion of Venezuela led by U.S. mercenaries played out as farce and ended in disaster. New interviews reveal the backstory was even more bizarre than previously thought.

By Ben Makuch
October 26, 2021, 11:34am

The red minivan sped down the highway, baking under the Caribbean sun. In the middle row, gazing out onto a sandy field blemished with thick patches of yellowed grass and puddles filled with trash, sat Roberto. He had traveled down this familiar road many times on the way to the compound.

Almost two years earlier, he had been only a few miles away on the beach in Riohacha, a main town in the department of La Guajira, the northernmost and one of the remotest parts of Colombia, doing paramilitary training at ungodly morning hours with several other ex-Venezuelan soldiers. They were preparing for one thing: a coup d’etat against the Nicolas Maduro government in nearby Venezuela.

. . .

Since the conquistadors began ransacking parts of Latin America in the 15th century, the region has been well acquainted with roving bands of foreign mercenaries: mostly white men sent to squeeze the land of any and all valuables, then install local leaders willing to facilitate the plunder of resources on the cheap. That process was essential to the merciless colonization of the Americas, and in 2020, mercenary schemers from the global north were at it again in Venezuela.

The U.S. government has made no secret of its designs on Venezuela in the years since Hugo Chávez came to power, and his taste for socialism made the country a pariah to American lawmakers. President George W. Bush and Chávez infamously hated each other, which partly played into why Venezuela became less friendly to Western oil conglomerates looking for cheaper petroleum goods closer than the Middle East. There was also the matter of a coup attempt on Chávez in 2002; suspected American involvement caused the Venezuelan leader to cry foul over U.S. meddling. (It did come out two years later that the CIA knew about the plot.) With President Trump's election in 2016 and a return to hard-line Republican diplomacy, it became obvious that the most powerful war machine in history, the American military, was being considered for action in Venezuela.

More:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkpex7/maga-the-cia-and-silvercorp-the-bizarre-backstory-of-the-worlds-most-disastrous-coup

March 17, 2022

Scientists discover beautiful new rainbow-colored fish lurking among 'twilight reefs'

By Harry Baker published about 9 hours ago

The newly named wrasse was previously mislabeled as another species.



The male rose-veiled fairy wrasse (Cirrhilabrus finifenmaa) displaying its rainbow hues. (Image credit: Yi-Kai Tea/California Academy of Sciences)

Researchers have described a stunning multicolored wrasse in the Maldives as a newfound species, after the fish spent decades being misidentified as a closely related species. The rainbow-colored fish lives among unusually deep coral reefs known as "twilight reefs."

The newly described species, which has been named the rose-veiled fairy wrasse (Cirrhilabrus finifenmaa), resembles the red velvet fairy wrasse (Cirrhilabrus rubrisquamis), which is found across the western Indian Ocean. Both species live on mesophotic coral reefs, which grow much deeper than most tropical coral reefs — between 100 and 490 feet (30 and 149 meters) below the ocean’s surface, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Scientists collected the first C. finifenmaa specimen in 1990, but its similarity to C. rubrisquamis meant that experts didn't recognize the fish as a distinct species.

Recently, after noticing this mistake, another group of researchers collected specimens of C. finifenmaa from the twilight reefs surrounding the Maldives. When they compared the new specimens to C. rubrisquamis wrasses, they found that C. finifenmaa females (which are mainly red, pink and blue) were a close match to C. rubrisquamis. However, C. finifenmaa males were not; their scales featured more orange and yellow hues. The researchers also found that C. finifenmaa has a different number of scales in certain body regions and taller dorsal spines than its look-alike cousin. DNA analysis confirmed that these two species were genetically distinct.

In addition, the study revealed that C. finifenmaa has a much smaller geographic range than C. rubrisquamis, which will inform conservation efforts to protect the species.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/rainbow-fish-discovered-among-twilight-reefs

March 14, 2022

Totalitarianism in Colombia Part 1: the coffee corporatists

by Adriaan Alsema March 29, 2021

No coffee farmer in Colombia is allowed to export coffee without paying the mighty coffee federation, historically one of the main promoters of fascist economics.

Coffee federation Fedecafe was founded in 1927, inspired by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s “corporatism” model, which rejected free market capitalism and the central planning of the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin.

The holy trinity
“Corporatism” was originally invented by the Catholic Church in the late 19th Century to counter capitalism with a neo-feudal economic model that sought to maintain a medieval class system.

Mussolini adopted the idea to create corporations that controlled the different sectors of the economy in coordination with the State and the Catholic Church.

More:
https://colombiareports.com/the-role-of-fascism-in-colombia-part-1-the-coffee-corporatists/

March 8, 2022

The US Blockade of Cuba Must End

BY
PERRY BLANKSON

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the US blockade of Cuba, a collective punishment of the Cuban people for their independence from US control. The blockade needs to end.



People walk along a street under a Cuban flag, in Havana, on October 14, 2021. (Photo by Yamil Lage / AFP via Getty Images)

For sixty years, the US empire has waged a relentless economic war against the Republic of Cuba. This comes in the form of the imposition of unilateral sanctions, which to date have cost the island nation more than $130 billion.

The US sanctions, or the “blockade,” touch every part of Cuban life. They restrict access to medicine, food, building supplies, and, crucially, materials for vaccine development, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. The sanctions are also designed to smother Cuba’s economy by restricting travel and prohibiting businesses from trading with Cuba if they also wish to trade with America. What justification does the United States give for this inhumane blockade?

In the face of widespread Cuban support for Fidel Castro and the Revolution in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the US State Department admitted that the only way to undermine the regime was to foster internal dissent by imposing economic hardship on the Cuban population. According to a now-infamous internal memo written by Lester D. Mallory, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, in 1960:

The majority of Cubans support Castro . . . . The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship . . . every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba . . . a line of action which . . . makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.

More:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2022/03/us-control-cuba-blockade-must-end-sixty-years

March 8, 2022

Venezuela's Maduro says work agenda agreed with U.S. delegation

By Reuters
|March 7, 2022, at 11:17 p.m.

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro on Monday said he agreed an agenda for future talks with a U.S. delegation that he met on Saturday, the first high-level meeting between the two countries in years.

Officials from the two countries discussed easing oil sanctions on the South American country but made little progress towards reaching a deal, five sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Sunday, part of U.S. efforts to separate Russia from one of its key allies.

"Last Saturday night a delegation from the government of the United States of America arrived in Venezuela, I received it here at the presidential palace," Maduro said in a broadcast on state media.

. . .

Earlier, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the purpose of the trip was to discuss a number of issues, including "energy security" and the cases of nine U.S. citizens who are in prison in Venezuela.

More:
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2022-03-07/venezuelas-maduro-says-work-agenda-agreed-with-u-s-delegation

~ ~ ~

Article concerning the 9 mercenaries in prison in Venezuela, during Trump's occupation of the White House:

Venezuela: 2 US 'mercenaries' arrested in anti-Maduro raid
Source: Associated Press


Scott Smith and Joshua Goodman, Associated Press
Updated 5:57 pm CDT, Monday, May 4, 2020

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan authorities say they’ve detained two U.S. citizens accused of involvement in a deadly beach invasion aimed at arresting socialist leader Nicolás Maduro and have mobilized more than 25,000 troops to hunt for other rebels operating in the country.

Venezuelan state television didn't identify the Americans, but Florida-based ex-Green Beret Jordan Goudreau said Monday that he was working with the two men in a mission launched a day earlier aimed at “liberating” Venezuela. Goudreau has claimed responsibility for Sunday's operation, which Venezuelan authorities say left eight people dead.

He identified two former U.S. veterans taken into Venezuelan custody as Luke Denman and Aaron Berry. The two served in Iraq and Afghanistan with him in the U.S. military, Goudreau said.

A Venezuelan also detained, identified as Josnars Adolfo Baduel, says in a video played on state TV that two U.S. citizens were among those nabbed. Baduel is shown speaking to a security force officer in a video posted on the Twitter account of powerful socialist party leader Diosdado Cabello.

Read more: https://www.chron.com/news/article/Opposition-leader-denies-ties-to-Venezuela-15245727.php





More information on thread posted in LBN in 2020:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142486635