President Clutz Calls Venzuela an "Extraordinary national Security Threat"

[David Guyatt]

Really, who is Obama kidding? Do the Venzuelans have an aircraft carrier squadron parked in the Gulf of Mexico or something?

The US is becoming more bizarre by the day. It suggests that the whole government and US foreign policy is on the verge of collapse.

Maybe we should club together and buy Obama a fiddle to play and a book of matches to use to help it on its way?

How to Create an "Extraordinary National Security Threat"
Obama Channels His Inner Reagan on Venezuela

by MARK WEISBROT
On Monday, the White House took a new step toward the theater of the absurd by "declaring a national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by the situation in Venezuela," as President Barack Obama put it in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner.
It remains to be seen whether anyone in the White House press corps will have the courage to ask what in the world the nation's chief executive could mean by that. Is Venezuela financing a coming terrorist attack on U.S. territory? Planning an invasion? Building a nuclear weapon?
Who do they think they are kidding? Some may say that the language is just there because it is necessary under U.S. law in order to impose the latest round of sanctions on Venezuela. That is not much of a defense, telling the whole world the rule of law in the United States is something the president can use lies to get around whenever he finds it inconvenient.
That was the approach of President Ronald Reagan in 1985 when he made a similar declaration in order to impose sanctions including an economic embargo on Nicaragua. Like the White House today, he was trying to topple an elected government that Washington didn't like. He was able to use paramilitary and terrorist violence as well as an embargo in a successful effort to destroy the Nicaraguan economy and ultimately overturn its government. (The Sandinistas eventually returned to power in 2007 and are the governing party today.)
The world has moved forward, even though Washington has not. Venezuela today has very strong backing from its neighbors against what almost every government in the region sees as an attempt to destabilize the country.
"The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) reiterates its strong repudiation of the application of unilateral coercive measures that are contrary to international law," read a statement from every country in the hemisphere except for the U.S. and Canada on Feb. 11. They were responding to the U.S. sanctions against Venezuela that Obama signed into law in December.
Didn't read any of this in the English-language media? Well, you probably also didn't see the immediate reaction to yesterday's White House blunder from the head of the Union of South American Nations, which read, "UNASUR rejects any external or internal attempt at interference that seeks to disrupt the democratic process in Venezuela."
Washington was involved in the short-lived 2002 military coup in Venezuela; it "provided training, institution building and other support to individuals and organizations understood to be actively involved in the brief ouster" of President Hugo Chávez and his government, according to the U.S. State Department. The U.S. has not changed its policy toward Venezuela since then and has continued funding opposition groups in the country. So it is only natural that everyone familiar with this recent history, with the conflict between the U.S. and the region over the 2009 Honduran military coup and with the current sanctions will assume that Washington is involved in the ongoing efforts to topple what has been its No. 1 or 2 target for regime change for more than a decade.
The Venezuelan government has produced some credible evidence of a coup in the making: the recording of a former deputy minister of the interior reading what is obviously a communique to be issued after the military deposes the elected government, the confessions of some accused military officers and a recorded phone conversation between opposition leaders acknowledging that a coup is in the works.
Regardless of whether one thinks this evidence is sufficient (the U.S. press has not reported most of it), it is little wonder that the governments in the region are convinced. Efforts to overthrow the democratically elected government of Venezuela have been underway for most of the past 15 years. Why would it be any different now, when the economy is in recession and there was an effort to force out the government just last year? And has anyone ever seen an attempted ouster of a leftist government in Latin America that Washington had nothing to do with? Because I haven't.
In the major U.S. and international media, we see that Obama has taken a historic step by beginning the process of normalizing relations with Cuba. But among Latin American governments, the sliver of restored credibility that this move has won has been swiftly negated by the aggression toward Venezuela. You will be hard pressed to find a foreign minister or president from the region who believes that U.S. sanctions have anything to do with human rights or democracy. Look at Mexico, where human rights workers and journalists are regularly murdered, or Colombia, which has been a leader for years in the number of trade unionists killed. Nothing comparable to these human rights nightmares has happened in Venezuela in 16 years under Chávez current President Nicolás Maduro. Yet Mexico and Colombia have been among the largest recipients of U.S. aid in the region, including military and police funding and weapons.
The Obama administration is more isolated today in Latin America than even George W. Bush's administration was. Because of the wide gulf between the major international media and the thinking of regional governments, this is not obvious to those who are unfamiliar with the details of hemispheric relations. Look at who co-authored the legislation that imposed sanctions against Venezuela in December: soon-to-be indicted Sen. Robert Menendez and Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, both ardent defenders of the embargo against Cuba. Yet the administration proudly announced that its new sanctions "go beyond the requirements of this legislation."
The face of Washington in Latin America is one of extremism. Despite some changes in other areas of foreign policy (e.g., Obama's engagement with Iran), this face has not changed very much since Reagan warned usthat Nicaragua's Sandinistas were "just two days' driving time from Harlingen, Texas." He was ridiculed by Garry Trudeau in "Doonesbury" and other satirists. The Obama White House's Reagan redux should get the same treatment.
Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C. and president of Just Foreign Policy. He is also the author of the forthcoming book Failed: What the "Experts" Got Wrong About the Global Economy (Oxford University Press, 2015).

Counterpunch

[Magda Hassan]

It's quite bizarre and insane really.

::lilgreenman:: But then they've regarded tiny insignificant Cuba as the same threat for decades now. They've been trying and trying to get the people of Venezuela to rise up and overthrow their oppressive government but the best they can do is get a few disgruntled oligarchs and their spawn to run amok. The other 95% of the Venezuelan people are quite happy with their subsidised food, free housing and health clinics and generally being lifted out of the poverty that the ruling class has been content to leave them in for the last few centuries. They got tired of waiting for the trickle down to start.

[Paul Rigby]

Really, who is Obama kidding?

The Psaki tendency:

[video]https://youtu.be/frO1T3vZNrA[/video]

[Magda Hassan]

Hey, look, she can say all that with a straight face! Remarkable.

[Magda Hassan]

Thursday, March 12, 2015

The Venezuelan "Threat"

The Venezuelan "Threat"

We are being told by President Obama that Venezuela is a national security threat to the United States of America. Some say it is necessary for this to be claimed so that Obama can legally take punitive actions against Venezuelan officials. Pause for a moment and let the phrase sink in. "National security threat".


As you let this statement marinate in your mind, consider the abstract idea of working backwards to reach a conclusion. A child determines that vegetables are poisonous. The vegetables aren't poisonous because they are poisonous but because the child has decided that he or she does not want to eat the vegetables. A reason is needed to justify an action - in this case, the illogical idea that the vegetables are not to be eaten because, well, it doesn't matter why. So, the vegetables have conveniently become poisonous and the child screams to his or her mother that "They are poison! I will get sick and go to the hospital and turn purple and orange and green if I eat them!" Clearly, none of this is accurate, but a pretext is needed to justify the action of not eating the vegetables. Is this rational?


So it is with Venezuela. There is no national security threat to the United States. Period. As the child who claims the vegetables are poison, so President Obama has decided that the Bolivarian Republic is a national security threat to the United States to justify an escalation in what has become a perpetual war against the socialist revolution that began over a decade.


The ruling United States regime - backed in its mission against Venezuela by the nominal opposition party - has made various claims regarding Venezuela since "We don't like that the Revolution has been democratically elected for 15 years" is not the most politically tenable reason for claiming a national security threat.





Chief among the claims are that Venezuela has cracked down on dissent, imprisoned opposition leaders, allowed impunity for murderous national police and is engaged in corruption. While these questions have been refuted, it should be stated once again why they are not only incorrect but are hopelessly hypocritical - if they were correct - in light of United States' policy regarding Venezuela's neighbors.







First, the crack down on dissent is a very long running complaint lodged by the United States against Venezuela. Dating back to the mid-2000s when Venezuela did not renew a public airwave license to racist media outlets that peddled derogatory imagery and views, the accusation has been leveled that Venezuela is censoring the media and opposition views. Rarely mentioned by the mainstream media however is that these same stations - with their racist and violent programming - were never banned in Venezuela (despite some saying they should have been) nor were any of the program directors or company executives imprisoned for their legal, yet detestable, views. The outlets were simply not provided with an extension on having free public airwave space. Instead, the government made a decision to provide this public airwave concession to local community organizations. This, in the twisted logic of US imperialism is a "crack down on dissent".


Tied to the idea of a "crack down on dissent" is the claim of imprisonment of opposition leaders. This claim, while factually correct, leaves out the most salient point which is the fact that there are prisoners who are opposition leaders...who were involved in planning of violent protests that led to the deaths of over 40 people - the majority of whom were either pro-government civilians or national police who were killed, in part, by snipers. So it is factually correctly that opposition figures are in prison but it is mendaciously disingenuous to leave the discussion at that without clearly noting that any country would imprison a citizen who provoked, plotted and carried out numerous acts of violence including bombings while plotting a violent coup that included attacks on journalist. Ironic how the opposition backed by US propaganda and money claims to be repressed in the media and then proceeds to plot to violently attack the media. It should be noted as well that among those in prison include instigators of the 2002 coup against President Hugo Chavez at which time the media was shut down during the less-than-48 hours coup.


Regarding the claim of impunity for police responsible for civilian deaths during last year's protests, one would only need to go to Venezuela's prisons where police are currently imprisoned on suspicion of murder. Of course, this too is absent from the media's discussion of Venezuela. There are no claims that these police are political prisoners or jailed for their beliefs. Unlike the sanctified opposition who were responsible for crimes against the people's democracy and for the abovementioned violence and death, these police officials - who, it should be noted, were subjected to "protestor" abuse and violence - are unknown. But impunity there is not.


Regarding the last claim of corruption, there is undoubtedly corruption within the Venezuelan state - but unlike previous regimes that doubled down on corruption and spread the wealth with foreign allies, the current government under Nicolas Maduro has admitted that bureaucratic practices that lead to corruption and corruption itself are issues that are present and need to be rooted out. Note also that the actions that would be needed to root out the corruption in Venezuela - strongly tied to the remains of bourgeois capitalism - would involve steps that would engender further attacks on Venezuela for "repression of the opposition" and "crimes against free enterprise and freedom". For the United States - and indeed the West in general - the specter of "corruption" is a cudgel held over political opponents to justify rhetorical and physical attacks. Yet which state in the world is free of "corruption". "Corruption" is a term nebulously defined and present everywhere to varying degrees. While needing to be opposed, it is something that will never be defeated completely. One might as well call for a war to eradicate "sin".



All of this brings us to the issue of Western hypocrisy, a topic that could fill tomes. Without boring the reader with tomes, one needs merely to ask how Venezuela is castigated as a corrupt, freedom-repressing nation (both patently false) when neighbors such as Colombia has a slight issue with assassinations and Mexico to the north has been wracked with one massacre with impunity after the next. Yet somehow Colombia and Mexico are considered allies despite their glaring problems - problems that have been exacerbated directly by the respective governments.


But the "threat to national security" is Venezuela.


Perhaps Venezuela is a threat however. Perhaps. Indeed, Venezuela is a threat - not to the United States, but to United States influence and hegemony. Venezuela is a threat when the residents of the South Bronx receive affordable heating not from their own government but from humanitarian aid from Venezuela. When a small Black child in the Bronx goes to sleep with heat and is not shivering in their apartment, the Bolivarian Revolution can be thanked. President Obama? No thanks.



This is the threat that Venezuela poses to the United States. A threat that people will see a state based on the value of socialism providing for them when their own leaders fail. A threat that people will see socialism transforming people's lives in Venezuela and lifting the masses out of poverty. When people are forced into homelessness because of rents in New York City, the Venezuelan threat provides free homes to own for its people. Transformative, revolutionary socialism that does not bend a knee to the gringo imperialists. What is capitalism and American supremacy to the child crying in a homeless shelter? Venezuela is building new houses for its poor. And this is the threat.


The threat in Venezuela is the breaking of the stranglehold of the private elite that dictates to the masses what their dignity will be. The elites, with their allies in Miami and Washington dictating to the masses. "Your dignity? It does not exist." The deprecations of poverty are not seen. Out of sight, out of mind, out of media. But the Revolution changed that. This is the threat of Venezuela - the threat of exposure of injustice. But not mere exposure, but castigation and revolution. A true changing of power.


An impoverished man named Hugo Chavez of African and native ancestry upended Latin America and transformed the region and brought dignity and power to the people. It was a revolution so damnable to the powerful and Washington for it was democratic. It was voted on. The people willingly voted for Revolution and defended it with their arms. Washington could not say "They did not vote for it! We demand elections!" No, Venezuela has voted for 15 years for Revolution and this is impudence to the important people. And now, the bus driver-turned-President Nicolas Maduro leads the people. Impudence. The threat of impudence - or the triumph of a revolution of love and justice.




But this Revolution is not merely a hippie love-in where people hope for justice then sit back and drink their Cafe Americano. The Revolution, as it is driven by a society-state-military coalition - with each complementing the other, the societal dignity of the citizen as the motive force - does not see Revolution as reform or a pacifist attempt to moderate capitalism's excesses. While driven by a firm sense of love of one's fellow man and woman, it recognizes the relevance of power. Power never concedes anything without a struggle. Just as there was an initial struggle to wrest power from the traditional capitalist class, the struggle continues - both in continued seizure of power and defense of the power that has been seized.


As I have noted in previous blogs, the liberal and pacifist classes are scared of a power change undertaken by the masses - especially one in which the military is of the people and aligned with the demands of the people. For it is that the liberal class - which traditionally has not ruled the military - cannot accept that an armed force will defend the gains of the working class against the liberal class' traditional power. For the conservative class, the military has had a mixed legacy in Latin America - at times it has been the force controlling the working class, at other times the force that has guaranteed the working class' rights. Recall that Comrade Hugo Chavez was from the military and led a failed coup that ended up propelling him to national recognition and the presidency through the democratic vote.


And perhaps this too is the threat of Venezuela - the concrete establishment of a socialist society that boldly declares its independence and it not cowered into refusing legitimate means of power to defend the stated will of the people. The West allows reformism by its "lesser brothers" - as long as it is within the context of accepted Western norms. Reformism guided by the wise hand of progressive thinkers of the West that pontificate in classrooms and international conferences. But revolution? And revolution from the bottom up? And revolution when the bottom declares its power? Revolution where the people of the bottom - the "disposable" - do not simply ask for rights but they seize power? This is the threat.


As it was in Cuba, the mental ideology of revolution is as great, if not greater, than the revolution itself. Once a people have decolonized their minds, everything else will fall into place in time. Power may be re-seized, but the people, once liberated, will not return to subjugation under the heel of either bare-toothed imperialists or the paternalism of Western progressives and faux-allies. The fire of freedom will continue to burn.






Perhaps then, in a way, Venezuela is a threat.



The threat lives. The threat of freedom and justice.


Long live the Bolivarian Revolution!
Long live Venezuela!
Obama Yankee Go Home!

http://akahnnyc.blogspot.com.au/2015/03/...t.html?m=1

[Magda Hassan]

Really, who is Obama kidding?

The Psaki tendency:

[video]https://youtu.be/frO1T3vZNrA[/video]

Psaki must be Goebbel's love child. Actually I think even Goebbel would be too embarrassed to pull this one off.

[David Guyatt]

Hey, look, she can say all that with a straight face! Remarkable.

Just barely though. There was a point where she very nearly broke out in laughter it was so ridiculous.

[Magda Hassan]

Because ISIS

The war in Syria has attracted roughly 100 foreign fighters from the Caribbean who could easily make their way to the United States, said the top U.S. military commander for the southern hemisphere.


With little ability to track and monitor foreign fighters when they return, it would be relatively easy for those fighters to "walk" north to the U.S. border along the same networks used to traffic drugs and humans, according to Gen. John Kelly, commander of U.S. Southern Command.
"They don't have that ability to track these folks," Kelly said at a Pentagon briefing on Thursday.
Kelly said he worries whomever is radicalized enough to leave for Syria would return with greater terrorism skills and motivations.
"I would suspect they'll get good at, while they're in Syria, get good at killing and pick up some real job skills in terms of explosives and beheadings and things like that. And everyone's concerned, of course, if they come home. Because if they went over radicalized one would suspect they'll come home at least that radicalized."
There is no indication of any scheme to attack the United States he said, but Americans "take for granted" the nation's functioning legal system, agencies like the FBI and the layers of uncorrupt law enforcement that can monitor and track potential terrorists like in the United States. "A lot of these countries just don't have that."
Kelly said that some of the fighters are recruited and radicalized off the Internet but that there are "a couple of pretty radical mosques" in the region, as well.
"A hundred certainly doesn't seem like a lot, it's not, but the countries they come from have [a] total inability to deal with it," he said, naming Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, Surinam and Venezuela, in particular.
With little military threats to the United States in his region, Kelly is a frequent advocate for helping law enforcement attack the network and root causes of illegal drug and human trafficking into the United States. People, he said, travel freely and "simply walk across borders" in some cases where there is little to stop them.

"It's the old story of you gotta watch them," he said. "The CIA, FBI and people like that do a really good job tracking the networks, but you know it only takes look, there's a lot of people coming and going, it only takes one to cause you problems."
With those caveats, Kelly's concern does not reflect ISIS at the border' alarmism, rather he casts a watchful eye on the potential trouble of South American, Central American and Caribbean states in tracking returning fighters for themselves. The solution to preventing ISIS from coming through the southern hemisphere will require law enforcement and intelligence partnering with every state in the region, he said.
"The network that comes up through the isthmus and Mexico that carries anything and everything on it … the amount of movement is what I think overwhelms our ability and the sophistication of the network overwhelms our ability to stop everything," he said.
"I think if they get back to some of these countries that I've described, it's pretty easy for them to move around," he said.

http://www.defenseone.com/threats/2015/0...er/107421/

[David Guyatt]

In Venezuela, Who's Threatening Whom?

March 14, 2015

In Official Washington, the land of scary make-believe, there is much snorting disbelief about Venezuela's claim that the U.S. is encouraging a coup and much grave concern that Venezuela represents an "extraordinary threat" to U.S. national security, as President Obama says and Ted Snider analyzes.
By Ted Snider
On March 9, President Barack Obama signed an executive order "declaring a national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by the situation in Venezuela."
As laughable as that may sound Venezuela threatening the United States such a declaration is needed to start a sanctions program against Venezuela, a process that the United States also undertook against Iran and Syria. But at least in those cases the U.S. claimed however disingenuously that Iran and Syria were states with programs that were developing weapons of mass destruction.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. (Photo credit: Valter Campanato/ABr)

Claiming Venezuela is a security threat to America is more like President Ronald Reagan warning that Nicaragua in the 1980s was a threat to U.S. national security because it was "just two days' driving time from Harlingen, Texas."
But Obama is only being absurd if you just consider the first half of his conjunction: that Venezuela is an "extraordinary threat to the national security" of the United States. Of course it's not. But Obama is quite correct if you include the second half of the conjunction that Venezuela is an "extraordinary threat to the . . . foreign policy of the United States." Because Venezuela is such a threat if you understand U.S. foreign policy to be the maintenance of U.S. hegemony, especially over Latin America.
For generations, America simply has not tolerated threats to its hegemony, especially in its hemisphere. And as Venezuela's Cuban ally can attest, the United States rejects the existence of alternative political and economic systems that present competition to the preferred U.S. model for Latin America, in which American corporations are granted almost free reign over the region's resources.
Noam Chomsky has written about Cuba's threat to America being the threat of the "contagious example." Thus, U.S. plans for regime change in Cuba emerged quickly in the late 1950s, not because of communism or a Russian connection neither of those threats had emerged yet but because Castro's Cuba, like the Venezuela of Chavez and Maduro, provided an alternative model for development.
According to Chomsky, Fidel Castro represented a "successful defiance" of the United States that "challenged U.S. hegemony in Latin America." The fear was that the Cuban example could inspire other Latin American countries to assert independence from U.S. dominance.
Political writer Diana Johnstone has noted that, in order to protect its hegemony, America needs to sweep aside any "viable alternative" and that "the basic, intolerable alternative" is "a government of a sovereign state determined to control its own resources and markets."
That definition applies to Castro's Cuba and to Venezuela's experiment in participatory democracy in which some of the country's oil wealth has been spent to address social ills experienced by millions of Venezuelans such as poverty, hunger, illiteracy and disease.
The U.S. government views this sort of democratic nationalism as a dangerous challenge to Washington's preferred "free market" model. After all, truly democratic leaders are obliged to do what the majority of their people want. And, given the power to choose, the people will choose to keep the wealth from their nation's resources in the hands of their nation.
The Danger of Nationalism
If the democratic leader is also a nationalist, then he or she is likely to nationalize those resources, putting them out of the direct control of U.S. corporations. So, democratic nationalists have to go.
Under Hugo Chavez, Venezuela nationalized the electricity, telecommunications, steel and most importantly oil and natural gas industries that were largely in the hands of U.S. corporations. Much of the money then went toward food, health, education and other essential services for Venezuela's people.
What Chavez called the Bolivarian Revolution also involved providing discounted fuel to like-minded Latin American neighbors, contributing to the rise of other populist governments across the region. So the contagious Venezuelan example indeed did represent "an extraordinary threat" to U.S. foreign policy in Latin America, by offering a viable alternative for regional development.
Of course, the Obama administration didn't justify its sanctions by citing how Venezuela had diminished U.S. hegemony over the region. White House spokesman Josh Earnest stressed the "human rights" angle: "We are deeply concerned by the Venezuelan government's efforts to escalate intimidation of its political opponents."
While those claims about political intimidation have often been exaggerated as they reverberate through the U.S. propaganda megaphone, it's true that Venezuela does obstruct its political opponents when it appears they are organizing coups against the democratically elected government.
But even that resistance to unconstitutional "regime change" can be viewed as a threat to American foreign policy because Washington's goal for the past 13 years has been to remove the governments of Hugo Chavez and Nicolás Maduro, one way or another.
Naturally, the U.S. government and mainstream U.S. media reject the suggestion that a coup was in the offing. "We've seen many times that the Venezuelan government tries to distract from its own actions by blaming the United States or other members of the international community for events inside Venezuela," the White House's Earnest said.
Or, as State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki declared on Feb. 13, in rejecting Maduro's claims about having disrupted a coup: "These latest accusations, like all previous such accusations, are ludicrous. As a matter of longstanding policy, the United States does not support political transitions by non-constitutional means."
That statement prompted a rare gasp of disbelief from at least one member of the Washington press corps, Associated Press correspondent Matthew Lee, who said: "Sorry. The U.S. has whoa, whoa, whoa the U.S. has a longstanding practice of not promoting What did you say? How longstanding is that? I would in particular in South and Latin America, that is not a longstanding practice."
The denials by Earnest and Psaki are particularly stunning because it's been well established that the U.S. government funded leaders and organizations that briefly pulled off a coup against President Chavez in 2002. An investigation by the UK Observer cited officials of the Organization of American States and other diplomatic sources saying the U.S. government was not only aware of the coup, but sanctioned it.
Some of the coup leaders visited Washington for several months prior to the coup, including Pedro Carmona, who became the coup President, and Vice Admiral Carlos Molina, who said, "We felt we were acting with U.S. support."
Who's Threatening Whom?
So, it is Venezuela, not America, that should be calling the other an extraordinary threat to its national security. And that threat has not stopped. The U.S. government has gone on funding opposition groups in Venezuela. According to economist and writer Marc Weisbrot, U.S. funding of those groups in Venezuela since 2000 has reached $90 million.
That interference also didn't stop after the election of President Obama though he promised to break with George W. Bush's interventionist policies. Instead, there has been more continuity than change in the imperious way the U.S. government deals with Latin America.
In 2009, Honduras' democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya was removed in a coup that was dressed up as a constitutional procedure, a maneuver that was supported by Obama's Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
After Zelaya's ouster, the Obama administration recognized the coup regime over the objections of Latin American governments and international organizations. The administration never fully suspended aid to the coup regime, never recalled the U.S. ambassador, and never even officially called it a coup.
But U.S. diplomats privately recognized that the removal of Zelaya was a coup, according todiplomatic cables from the embassy in Honduras that were among the U.S. government documents leaked by Pvt. Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning and published by WikiLeaks.
"There is no doubt that the military, Supreme Court and National Congress conspired on June 28 [2009] in what constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup," one Embassy cable said. "There is … no doubt from our perspective that [interim president] Roberto Micheletti's assumption of power was illegitimate."
Similarly, in Paraguay, when President Fernando Lugo was forced from power in 2012, the Obama administration again cooperated with the coup makers by refusing to call the coup a coup though U.S. diplomats knew that it was.
Another U.S. Embassy cable, published by WikiLeaks, reported that Lugo's right-wing political opponents had set as their goal to "Capitalize on any Lugo missteps" and to "impeach Lugo and assure their own political supremacy." The cable noted that to achieve their goal, they were ready to "legally" impeach Lugo "even if on spurious grounds."
Again, the Obama administration acquiesced in this illegal coup disguised as a constitutional procedure.
Another Coup?
Now, the Obama administration is mocking claims by Maduro that he confronted a coup attempt last month which he claimed had U.S. backing. Venezuelan National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello has also claimed that officials at the Canadian and British embassies had links to the failed coup. In response, Maduro demanded that the United States shrink its embassy staff by 80 percent.
To back their case, Venezuelan officials have produced significant evidence, including a recording of a communique to be issued after the Maduro government was removed from power, confessions by military officials, and a recorded phone conversation between opposition leaders discussing the coup.
According to Venezuelan officials, the day before the planned coup, Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma and opposition leaders Leopoldo Lopez and Maria Corina Machado signed a National Transition Agreement, and weapons were found in the office of the opposition party.
Lucas Koerner of Venezuelanalysis.com adds that the aircraft to be used as part of the failed coup had links to the notorious American security firm Academi (formerly Blackwater). And it has been reported that a number of the coup leaders obtained U.S. visas from the American embassy to facilitate escape should the coup fail.
The planned coup apparently had many steps. One was to create unrest in the streets, with the turmoil made worse by coup plotters attacking marchers to cause panic. The plans were an echo of a June 2013 document entitled "Strategic Venezuelan Plan" that laid out a strategy for destabilizing Venezuela and paving the way for Maduro's removal in 2013.
The plan was authored by former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's Democratic Internationalism Foundation, the First Columbian Think Tank, the U.S. consulting firm FTI Consulting, the Director of USAID for Latin America, and leaders of the Venezuelan opposition, including Maria Corina Machado.
Writer Eva Golinger quoted the document as calling for "the accelerated deterioration of the government, facilitating an opposition victory" in December 2013 elections, "but if it could be done beforehand, that would be even better." Golinger cited as the plan's goal to "create situations of crisis in the streets that will facilitate U.S. intervention, as well as NATO forces, with the support of the Colombian government."
Given America's history of intervention in Venezuela and the rest of Latin America, Obama's assertion that Venezuela is an "extraordinary threat" to America's security is indeed a brazen one. Unless the threat to which Obama is referring is the extraordinary occurrence of a Latin American country stopping a threat from the United States.
Ted Snider has a graduate degree in philosophy and writes on analyzing patterns in U.S. foreign policy and history.

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