The New Contras

Submitted by gjohnsit on Tue, 04/16/2019 - 1:28pm

I like to read Bloomberg. It offers such interesting opinions for why we can't possibly tax the rich or regulate corporations, while lamenting the mysterious and unsolvable tragedy of wealth inequality.
However, Bloomberg also publishes enlightening articles such as this one.

With U.S. diplomats pulled out of Caracas and Venezuela barely functioning amid power cuts and hyperinflation, Bogotá has become a proxy battleground for the conflict building on Colombia’s eastern border... And those fit young men in crew cuts drinking beer at the Hotel Dann Carlton? Mercenaries and ex-Venezuelan officers plotting their next move.
...
Then there are the ex-Venezuelan military who camp in Bogotá to plot coups d’état....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.

Back in February, President Maduro specifically said that Washington is using "dirty dollars, bled from the U.S. empire" to train 734 mercenaries in neighboring Colombia to carry out a coup.
Maduro also accused Washington of hiring Colombian mafia to assassinate him. This was scoffed at.

Critics argue that the 56-year-old’s claim is a red-herring tactic to rally up support in Venezuela amid mass protests against his socialist government

Right. All those mercenaries in Colombia don't have anything to do with us. Just like with the Contras when Elliott Abrams worked in the Reagan Administration.
Nor did these mercenaries have anything to do with the U.S. "aid" back in March. Yet there was this Bloomberg article.

Late last month, as U.S. officials joined Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido near a bridge in Colombia to send desperately needed aid to the masses and challenge the rule of Nicolas Maduro, some 200 exiled soldiers were checking their weapons and planning to clear the way for the convoy.
Led by retired General Cliver Alcala, who has been living in Colombia, they were going to drive back the Venezuelan national guardsmen blocking the aid on the other side. The plan was stopped by the Colombian government, which learned of it late and feared violent clashes at a highly public event it promised would be peaceful.

Funny how U.S. efforts and an ex-military mercenary force, that looks and acts suspiciously like the Contras that Elliot Abrams funded, seem to have so much in common. I'm sure it's just a coincidence.

Speaking of coincidences, the Bloomberg article had this interesting tidbit:

Before his 2018 poisoning in England caused a major blowup with Russia, Sergei Skripal, a former double agent working for MI6, was sent to help the Colombians figure out what to do about the growing Russian presence.

That's a lot of "coincidences".

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Comments

Submitted by bobswern on Tue, 04/16/2019 - 2:10pm

A truly fascinating (and somewhat "balanced") article...

...especially towards the end of the piece; but, unsurprisingly, also full of neoliberal spin throughout. I especially "liked" the closing couple of 'graphs...

...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. But there’s fear that some are spies and many others hotheads; authorities have caught and deported a handful of alleged Maduro-sent infiltrators. The influx poses challenges the Colombian government is only starting to grasp.

“We as a country hadn’t thought about how we were going to handle the people coming into the country on the 23rd,” says Major Victor Guerra of the Customs Police. “We weren’t prepared with any protocol. We’re in the process of creating a system to tell us whether they’re entering the country for the reasons they said or for other reasons and, most importantly, who they really are.” If the refugees cause more problems, Bogotá will have a ready word when it rounds up its “usual suspects”: Venezuelans.

—

"Freedom is something that dies unless it's used." --Hunter S. Thompson

Submitted by gjohnsit on Tue, 04/16/2019 - 2:30pm

More info on the New Contras

@bobswern where is all this money coming from?

Venezuelan Communications Minister Jorge Rodriguez presented what he claimed to be evidence of “ultra-right plans to promote regime change.” According to Rodriguez, Venezuelan intelligence services uncovered plans to contract mercenaries from Colombia and Central America and bring them into Venezuela to execute targeted killings and acts of sabotage, adding that “at least half” of the armed groups managed to make their way into Venezuelan territory and are currently being sought.
...Juan Guaido’s chief of staff, Roberto Marrero, was arrested on Thursday, accused of leading a “terrorist cell.” Rodriguez claimed that Marrero was the link to to the hiring of Central American mercenaries.
Rodriguez went on to reveal screen captures of Marrero’s phone purportedly showing Whatsapp group conversations featuring Marrero, Guaido, Leopoldo Lopez, currently under house arrest after being convicted for inciting violence in the 2014 street protests, among other opposition figures. Rodriguez pledged that more evidence will be divulged in the coming days.

The screen captures also revealed details of alleged bank accounts through which payments to the paramilitary groups were supposed to be made. One of them was in Banesco’s Panama branch.
...
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro likewise divulged that a Colombian paramilitary leader, Wilfrido Torres Gomez, alias “Neco,” was captured in Carabobo State on Saturday. Jorge Rodriguez later claimed on Twitter that Torres was involved in the alleged opposition plans.

US authorities reacted to Marrero’s arrest by imposing sanctions against three major Venezuelan public banks on Friday.