Venezuela 2002=Chile 1973

I have a couple of friends from Venezuela, and suffice to say that their take over time is that Chavez apparently burned all his bridges readily on his own -- though doubtless some spook types knew how to use that to their advantage.

US govt officials accuse this president of being firends with both sadam hussein and fidel castro - two men of similar political views I''m sure, and venezuelan president was one of few leaders to say after sept 11 that US should consider what were the policies that led to it being under attack. Venezuela also controlling large chunk of non-arab oil, essential in US govt's plans to not be held hostage by iran/iraq/saudi oil embargo.

http://pilger.carlton.com/print/98841

He is just a bit too too concerned to demonstrate that his analysis of what's wrong been with the world since the 60s is thus confirmed in toto as per usual. Suppose someone was turning over the following worry in their mind: "But look at Chile now. Democracy is returned and the dictators are toppled: Pinochet's respectability is crumbling , and lawyers are preparing to bring Kissinger to book... Yes yes what happened in 1973 was horrible, but who's to say that it won't prove in the long run a better route to the humbling (and communal policing) of US misbehaviour in Latin America?" They would be baffled at best (certainly not speedily persuaded) by Pilger's automatic assumptions about outcomes.

On another note, Chavez is no Allende much less a Castro and more akin to the Christian-dem wing of the Sandanistas.

On another note -- anyone who asked yr. posed question about Chile would bea FUCKING IDIOT as there is no way that even the middle-of-road mainstream of the U.S. has claimed Chile wasn't that bad all-in-all. Many people dead, institution of dictatorship, and economic ruin ANYWAY = bad things. Restitution, as you well know, especially in more limited "bring the perps to justice" sense, does not perform resurrection.

since venezuela now is NOT chile 30 years ago, why on earth hook the story on the similarity? my point is that the neophyte will tend to look at chile NOW not chile then and say, what's the point being made? i am not pretending my posed question is smart or deep, i am trying to imagine a naive poorly informed outsider such as has been created by pilger's idea of the monolithic us/uk media => who does pilger imagine he speaking to/writing for? (possibly i am over- imagining the degree of nondiscussion and soft-shoeing round chile in the us media, which i after all don't see that much of; if i am over-reaching in my assumption that such a neophyte, informed only by the us mainstream, would have a rather too rosy view of the disaster of latin america under US hegemony, i think i know who i wd blame my assumptions on

erm i don't think anything achieves resurrection

At any rate, I'd love to be the fly on the wall at the next OPEC meeting, when Chavez hobnobs with the various sheikhs and whatnot.

The main problem is rilly more that ppl. who know about Chile *at all* are a limited audience for an article like this.

(geoff this report was 1.oo gmt)

the presedential address was done from within the palace, and then all the national tv has been showing is a repeat of his address and the celebrations...it's a bit bloody weird

Chavez won a landslide victory in a democratic election.

King George seized power in a coup after losing an election.

PM - Monday, April 15, 2002 6:45

To the oil-rich South American nation of Venezuela, and its on-again, off-again coup.

Rumours in the capital Caracas say it is on again because President Hugo Chavez has not been seen or heard of since his triumphant return to his official residence early yesterday morning.

He was to address the nation in the evening but failed to appear, and the country remains in chaos.

Not helping matters are the wild rumours that President Chavez has been kidnapped by dissident military officers.

the full audio story is: http://www.abc.net.au/pm/2002/04/15/20020415pm08.asx

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/16/international/americas/16DIPL.html

"human rights," we love em

"A member of the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s brutal secret police who’s been accused of murder taught for more than a decade at the Pentagon’s premier university, despite repeated complaints by his colleagues about his past.

Jaime Garcia Covarrubias is charged in criminal court in Santiago with being the mastermind in the execution-style slayings of seven people in 1973, according to court documents. McClatchy also interviewed an accuser who identified Garcia Covarrubias as the person who sexually tortured him.

Despite knowing of the allegations, State and Defense department officials allowed Garcia Covarrubias to retain his visa and continue working at a school affiliated with the National Defense University until last year.

Human rights groups also question the school’s selection of a second professor, Colombia’s former top military commander.

Some Latin America experts said the hirings by the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies reflected a continuing inclination by the U.S government to overlook human rights violations in Latin America, especially in countries where it funded efforts to quash leftists."

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2015/03/12/259553/chilean-accused-of-murder-torture.html

[Thread] There is a coup d'etat attempt underway here in Venezuela 🇻🇪, fueled by tons of fake news.

In this thread, I'll debunk some of the most egregious and viral fake stories circulating.

Add your own in the replies.

— Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) July 29, 2024

You can tell a lot about a movement's values from what they destroy. When the Right riots (anywhere) they burn institutions that serve the people, religious buildings that aren't their own, union halls and community centers where worker power and real democracy are nurtured. https://t.co/wOKrZnQEYv

— Tovarisch (@nwbtcw) July 30, 2024

This is a much better thread:

Since the international "left" is so convinced Venezuela is not a dictatorship and the voice of the people is being heard with these elections, here's a thread:

✨poor/indigenous/racialized people protesting/voting against the Maduro government in the last 48 hours✨

— Andrea Paola Hernández (@andreapaolahg_) July 30, 2024

Maduro has lost Chavista strongholds. It’s not the upper middle class on the streets.

The Venezuelans I know who've moved in the last five to six years are former Chavistas pretty embittered and fed up with Maduro -- a sense of having lost their patience.

100%

Massive expansion in the gaps between rich and poor, trickle-down economics, huge disparities caused by Dollarisarion, crackdowns on the left, erosion of workers’ rights, etc, even before you get to the theft of the election.

Miami's full of Venezuelans and their stories vary. You've got the middle-class ones who fled in the early/mid '00s to an increasingly proletarian base in the last decade. I'd shudder to put them in the same room.

i love mcleod's consistent refusal to identify the source of anything

Thanks SV, I wanted other views on what has been going on.

https://x.com/GMomurder who I think is a Chinese Venezuelan communist, has been posting / retweeting a bunch of useful stuff recently.

Grand, have given it a follow.

Pretty good piece and thread.

I wrote about Venezuela’s election for @NewLeftReview Sidecar. Brief 🧵with the main takeaway:

“A careful consideration of the evidence suggests the election results are not just difficult but impossible to believe.”https://t.co/nGfLhd93AL 1/

— Gabriel Hetland (@GabrielHetland) August 21, 2024

Not too surprising given the world we live in but its still worthy of note how this pardon is being given for a political figure convicted of drug trafficking, while another is facing invasion because of alledged drug trafficking.

https://apnews.com/article/honduras-trump-hernandez-pardon-drugs-e858428426bcae1df8eef3341e2fcd20

Yeah but one is cocaine which fuels his sons and members of the administration, a good white collar drug

It appears the bombing of Caracas has begun

https://www.reddit.com/r/vzla/comments/1q2na6z/megathread_bombardeo_en_fuerte_tiuna/

Reported by the times now

Wouldn’t take one reddit post as evidence of anything at all but this has been confirmed by actual credible sources (of which the NYT is clearly not one either).

https://bsky.app/profile/justinling.ca/post/3mbishvct622c

https://f24.my/BeIV

(Can’t really comment on the credibility of France 24 but at least it’s not American.)

CBS the first major to acknowledge it's a US attack

Full thread on the Polymarket user who bet big on Venezuela regime change before Jan 31
https://bsky.app/profile/bluser12.bsky.social/post/3mbiwc7s2yk2k

So sick. Hope they lose big on betting on Maduro out by the end of the month (not that I love him either).

The United States of America has successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country. This operation was done in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement. Details to follow. There will be a News Conference today at 11 A.M., at Mar-a-Lago. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP

Truth social post apparently

People are talking about Palestine accelerating all this but idk I see this as a 'headline TV' action akin to the bombing of Iran last year (which ofc has come about from Palestine so a link). Can see 'swift' actions in Mexico, and from there confidence will be built as the violence (already turned on Americans via ICE) can potentially build to a small/swift invasion of Cuba. From there you can see the piss weak response of European leaders to all this ao far meaning the invasion of Greenland becomes a reality.

What could accelerate things is a rapidly deteriorating picture economically, or a run on the stock market due to AI tanking. Republicans will lose more elections too so..

as with all the Project 2025 bullshit, they're running on a 'move quickly & break things' ethos, and as shown with the DOGE operations this shit doesn't always go to plan

I saw the Danish prime minister saying that if there's an invasion of Greenland, this would signal the end of NATO... and I think there's a bunch of people in the Maga world that would like nothing better (as would Putin)

side note, but i still think the doge operations were a success, from their perspective - they came in, destroyed everything, took a bunch of confidential information, fired a bunch of people, and left federal employees, programs, and the people who depend on them more demoralized than ever before

the only thing they didn't succeed at was the stuff they were lying about from the beginning, like running things more efficiently

build to a small/swift invasion of Cuba.

second time’s the charm!

I think Mexico would be a lot tougher, not least if the Mexican government objected to military action. That was supposedly Trump’s first plan but the US really needs to keep Mexico onside, at least to some extent, to stem the flow of migrants and accept deportees. A lot of the deterrence, capture and detention of US-bound migrants takes place in Mexico. Lose that cooperation and it’s a lot more difficult. The economic impact would also be substantial.

Cuba would be much more difficult than the Maduro incursion - as I can’t see them being satisfied with removing Diaz-Canel and leaving everything else in place. The Cuban army has been prepping for guerrilla warfare for decades. I can imagine Rubio understanding that his window of opportunity is closing and pushing for it anyway, though. Might be more of a hard sell for Trump.

Mexico would be a few more bombings, but yeah all this is ofc speculative riffing online, but I am not sure that many ppl foresaw the actions of the last week

(I also forgot the Nigerian bombings)

in recent months Sheinbaum had a 70% approval rating and maybe they can get away with killing Cubans in Venezuela but if they start bombing Mexico there is a good chance they will be killing US citizens.

I know it's dumb to assume anything is off the table with these guys, but I've assumed that if they did anything in Mexico it would "targeted hits" against alleged cartel honchos, that kind of thing. Not, like, overthrowing the government.

I think they’d need to do a deal with Sheinbaum and that seems unlikely, though a lot of unlikely things have happened this week.

idk how much point there would be in blowing up a few random drug labs (vs coordinating with Mexico to raid them) but there probably wasn’t much point in blowing up some fields in Nigeria and that didn’t stop them.

it's all about showing absolute impunity like some insecure playground bully

also - the tractor trailer that has some coke-filled melons beneath the avocados... I mean, we still need the avocados, right?

There's this word floating around: affordability

One of the conspiracy theories I've seen floating around that sounds ridiculous on first blush but that I wouldn't necessarily put past this administration is that Maduro will get a deal for charges to be dropped for admitting to a role in stealing the 2020 election.

funny, I did see a bunch of armed, bearded men in fatigues at my polling spot that year, didn't think much of it at the time

I've assumed that if they did anything in Mexico it would "targeted hits" against alleged cartel honchos, that kind of thing

Cartel hit squad vs. Trump's security team. Who ya got?

also - the tractor trailer that has some coke-filled melons beneath the avocados... I mean, we still need the avocados, right?

Millennials are already spending half a mortgage payment on avocado toast, they can't take any more of this.

No war for guacamole

Someone was posting Delcy didn't betray Maduro and the only suggestions she did are coming from CIA or Trump sources so it's divide and diminish psyop nonsense. Apparently she's a Bolivarian Revolution stalwart during which her dad was killed and Maduro's son was at her swearing in ceremony. There is so much bullshit flying about whenever the US goes rogue that it's hard to believe anything at times.

Also apparently Machado is offering her nobel prize to Trump, lool

she's fucked off a lot of opposition ppl from the business community in Venezuela by pushing for sanctions all the time and is such a grasping desperado, can't imagine anyone really likes her

well somebody betrayed Maduro because his Cuban bodyguards were apparently left to twist in the wind with nobody backing them up.

It is kind of grimly hilarious that Machado seemed so clearly to be hand-crafted to take the reins and then Trump just kicked her to the curb "like a dog"

I can't stop thinking about what kind of operation kills 20-30 bodyguards. Must have been a fuckin bloodbath!

yeah I think someone from his inner circle got very rich this week

Delcy is absolutely not a revolutionary stalwart. Her father was - though as one of the opposition guys being called Stalin Gonzalez shows, it doesn’t always get passed down through the generations.

The most charitable reading of her is ‘pragmatic economic reformer who has liberalised the Venezuelan economy’. The less charitable reading is ‘kleptocrat’. Part of Machado’s problem is that the government has basically already privatised a lot of the stuff she was claiming she could offer the US.

almost amusing when grasping grifters get…
¡OUTGRIFTED!

jk i dont know her deal

I think one of Machado's friends was on newsnight last night (sat across from Corbyn) and saying Maduro was a fugitive from justice, and where was he a fugitive from justice? "in the US"

Hilarious shit.

Hannity: Did you at any point offered to give him the Nobel peace prize?

Machado: It hasn’t happened yet. We want to give it to him. Share it with him. pic.twitter.com/fIGSbnjshc

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 6, 2026

Great work, Nobel Prize Committee.

the ignoble prize is a non-transferable asset and you cannot barter it with rogue states, lol

don't know if this has been posted: https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-423-some-topical-material?

“TV cosplay resource imperialism”. everything these guys do is fake

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

Venezuela’s rulers have deployed armed militias to patrol streets, operate checkpoints and check people’s phones in a crackdown to consolidate authority after the US attack on Caracas.

Paramilitary groups known as colectivos criss-crossed the capital with motorbikes and assault rifles on Tuesday in a show of force to stifle any dissent or perception of a power vacuum.

To be fair, if Trump WERE running the country he would be fine with all of that.

The best motorbikes

he wishes he could do it here!

Dream job pic.twitter.com/LmhO8INoa2

— Groo the Blunderer (@Dystopiantics) January 6, 2026

love to see it kind of repression

it's wild how there are no more boats to being blown up, I guess the drug war is over and solved

Maduro was a one-man cartel

Those are our drugs now

my fave conspiracy theory on the US raid was that there was no internal betrayal within the inner court of Maduro or even a firefight. Maduro was threatened into giving himself up and did so with some fake pyrotechnics from the Delta Force *invaders* to make it look good. All the reports about the Cuban bodyguards remains getting sent in home in small boxes is the Cubans playing along with this op after getting similar threats and coercion from the US towards them and it makes the risk averse US military look badass on the world stage when all they've just literally done is a bit of Sunday larping.

not sure what be Cubans would play along, they’re used to 60 years of threats from us

“that the”

hmm maybe, but they are they are weaker than they've ever been right now because of the energy and food crisis. They've never dealt with the senile boy-king factor before, well of course Biden was a senile cunt as well, but he just slept and dribbled over himself mostly.

apparently on the morning of the raid there a was a US press release stating that Delcy had fled to Moscow and worded like they were expecting a regime collapse, but was then rapidly forgotten about as events unfolded.

in Venezuela the army and militias have thousands of the Russian shoulder held MANPADS (lol!!) which apparently would make a US helicopter invasion without suffering massive casualties an absolute impossibility, because helicopters are piss easy to shoot down. Which adds weight to the idea that this was some theatre

yeah, no doubt there is some element of wrestling kayfabe or turning an unexpected outcome into an “actually, we meant to do that”

Pressure is building in Venezuela.

Unlike China, the USA cannot fully supply Venezuela with the goods it needs. America lacks the production capacity and the supply networks required to support the entire country.

The key issue is thay even with American sanctions in place, Venezuela under Maduro was still able to trade with China.

They exchanged oil for products, medicines, and other essential goods on a barter basis. After relations with China broke down, inflation exploded. It reached 649.5 percent by March 2026. The International Monetary Fund expects it to go above 682 percent by the end of the year.
Right now Venezuelas oil money is being sent to a special account controlled by the US Treasury.

Remember that the United States has also essentially seized Venezuelas gold reserves. These moves are speeding up the collapse of the national currency. The situation is spiraling out of control.

what source xyzz? horrifying

It's commentary on twitter. Its from an account that usually reposts stuff that's fine, but I wanted to verify if this is right. Not seen any other reporting on the current situation in Venezuela..

thx yeah i def don’t have basis to know. those types of things seem very foreseeable. i cannot imagine any of trump’s thirsty goons have an ounce of foresight, or the most basic local knowledge, or neurons and synapses to put any of it together.

I feel I’m going crazy that VZN’s oil money is in a slush fund in the UAE that the Trump regime controls

it's a pretty radical de-nationalization, wild shit