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Federal investigators say they found the DNA of a decorated former U.S. Green Beret on some of the 60 automatic weapons he allegedly smuggled from Florida to South America as part of a failed 2020 coup attempt against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
The plot, exposed by The Associated Press two days before the incursion, was carried out by a ragtag group of Venezuelan army deserters whom Goudreau allegedly helped arm and train in neighboring Colombia. Goudreau later claimed responsibility for the putsch, but said he was acting in concert with the Venezuelan opposition to protect democracy. He also said he was in touch with then-President Donald Trump’s administration, which made no secret of its desire to see Maduro gone, even though there’s no evidence U.S. officials blessed the invasion.
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To be clear this is the 2020 US-backed attempted coup in Venezuela, not the 2024 not-yet-confirmed US-backed attempted coup in Venezuela, right?
The US and attempted coups in central/South America. Name a more iconic duo.
the US and dropping bombs for Democracy of course.
Seriously they’ve been doing this shit for like 200 years when does it stop???
when america has destroyed everything not america
This is one of the previous coups, I think number 13 or 14, but it might be 12
I think the current thing is quite likely an organic uprising. Things have been very very broken in Venezuela for a while now and the people there aren’t happy. Lots of people have been fleeing to Colombia for a while now and there are solid signs the election results were made up.
Being blasted with American sanctions does not help the economy. What a surprise people are not happy.
So it’s 2020 and the US is still using special forces to carry out coups and arming rebel militias around the world, often to mediocre results and incredibly hard consequences, such as runaway rebel militias and an absolute mistrust of the US as a partner.
Yeah good job US. It would be worrying if the CIA & co were not so famously demonstratedly laughably incompetent. Stop orchestrating coups and arming militias. It will never work out the way you expect. It’s so ridiculous. One would think that after some 50 years of failure in the middle east and south america a country would learn what not to do, but here we are. I guess some countries take a little while more to learn.
Even in failure the US has still succeeded, every country in the Global South has seen what happens when you try to do something like land reform or expand the welfare state or nationalize the country’s resources. It acts as a deterrent to countries daring to think they can develop themselves and not serve the US as sources of cheap resource extraction and highly exploitable labor.
not failure. the chaos and destruction is a desireable outcome.
as long as we don’t get to be free.
100%. People only think them failures or the CIA as incompetent as they presume the CIAs illegal actions, in those instances, to have been done in good faith, despite the contradiction.
As always, the intended outcome was access to that particular country’s resources, for a very small group of wildly wealthy people, at regime-change prices.
When it comes to that, the CIA are amazing at what they do.
But that’s a failure in and of itself. A prosperous country produces more, therefore has more goods and services to trade, therefore presents itself as a source for wealth for everyone involved than an ailing country.
This is mere short sightedness. A country that’s destabilized like this requires foreign help, is often sanctioned, its people will eventually seek asilum elsewhere and it produces very little. If the point is to generate wealth, this is the opposite of what should be done.
If the point is to generate wealth, this is the opposite of what should be done.
the point is to make the american hegemony look good and this helps; especially when cia et. al. fucks it up because people will see that’s the point; it’s a a bit like russian defenestration: everyone knows it’s them so it’s better that they make it obvious for the world to see.
I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying. However, I think the reason it’s not sitting right with you is your assumption of good faith on their part.
What if they never cared if the country is more profitable generally and they just wanted to rip them off as much as possible before they realise what’s going on?
To me, their actions make far more sense if I presume that was what they really intended to do. More so, any assumption of good faith, as you point out, makes their behaviour seem, at best, bizzare.
So the point is not wealth but spite ? You don’t have to act in good faith to cooperate with others. Like i said, in trade, a prosperous peer is worth more and generates more wealth than an ailing one.
This is not an argument on good faith, it’s self interest and selfishness. It’s right there on game theory and pretty much the entire course of biological history and evolution. One might profit from destroying and seizing the resources of a peer, but in most cases that profit is inferior to quid pro quo cooperation.
To me this is just acting deranged and nonsensical. Just being belligerent for the sake of cruelty and destruction. It’s more believable to me that its motivations are about projection of power and hegemony like other commenters have pointed out.
I don’t think I explained it very well.
They dont look to own the country when they overthrow it. Thats old school colonialism. Its expensive to maintain and people will dislike you for it. Neo colonialism has them pay for their colonisation from the start.
It’ll be for access to specific resources. Say they had, oh I dunno, oil. You install a puppet government thats 100% dependent on you, who knows they’ll be killed if they lost US backing, and you force them sell you their oil fields for a fraction of their worth.
Then, any revolution or even democratic vote that tries to take them back, despite how wrong and unlawfully they were obtained, would be seen as breaking international law and have them cut off from the rest of the world. Cuba was and still is meant as a warning to the rest of the Americas.
You don’t need the rest of the country to be prosperous for that. In fact, that would just push up the labour costs.
Okay i understand your point. Thank you for explaining it in a different way.
I hate to tell you this, but we were doing that shit as far back as Tripoli
Anyone remember that time the CIA faked a vampire attack as a psyop in the Philippines?
I don’t. Tell me more, please
In the 1950s in the Philippines the CIA was conducting operations against a militant group called the Huks. The CIA operatives spread rumors that manananggal (basically the local mythological equivalent of a vampire) was attacking people, particularly in the area of one mountain village. Then they located a Huk patrol, stealth-killed one guy, punctured his neck to create the appearance of “bite marks”, drained all his blood, and threw him back on the road where they had jumped him.
Thank you for this, I had no idea! It’s bizarre
Color me fucking surprised!
Was this coup attempt 13 or 14?
What the fuck, Biden?
The planning for this started under Trump.
Yes, clearly based on the timing. But the CIA is under the full control of the executive branch and Biden could have dismantled South American operations in day one with an email.
The article makes no mention of the CIA. The plotters were not only non-governmental but also violated US law (not that the CIA hasn’t done that before). They were in contact with the “Trump administration,” but that could be anyone. Given Trump’s distrust of the intelligence services, I suspect any operations would have side stepped them.
I suggest you read a history book or three about the history of the CIA in South America. It’s not like the actions are taken by feds with badges in suits with American flag pins, they always just financially and physically empower some fringe rebel group that will accomplish what the CIA wants.
I’m well aware of the history of covert CIA involvement in Latin America, at least in broad strokes. But you’re still making assumptions to get to “why didn’t Biden immediately shut this down?” Just apply Occam’s Razor, he couldn’t shut it down because the Trump administration used unofficial side channels.
This isn’t really occam’s razor, it’s conspiracy. Occam’s razor would give the answer, “because he didn’t want to”, not something that gives you more assumptions. That’s the opposite of occam’s razor.
Okay, what requires more assumptions:
Biden goes along with a hair brained Trump era plan with a nebulous link to the Trump administration. News media sources have found no link to any official agency, but fortunately we have social media to discover a link (based on nothing). Biden then goes on to prosecute the perpetrators for weapons smuggling. None of the perpetrators complains about a deal being broken.
OR
This only had links to political figures in the Trump administration, but not anyone in the intelligence services. Those figures are long gone. No one bothered to tell Biden on the way out the door. Biden is prosecuting the perpetrators of an operation he allowed for fun and they’re happy to stay quiet while they get imprisoned for running weapons.
If the organization isn’t under control of the democratically elected president, then the whole thing should be burned down, defunded, and the gang members incarcerated.
All it said is that this group that was not part of the US government was in touch with someone in the Trump administration. That could be literally anyone, likely some Trump sycophant. The Trump administration leaves, attempts a coup on the US presidency on the way out, and now whoever was in contact is probably gone. Then the incoming Biden administration doesn’t even know this bullshit is going on, let alone who’s supposed to be contacted to call this thing quits. Now that same administration is prosecuting them for running weapons.
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Ah! The CIA… up to its usual skullduggery.
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