Caracas mayor alleges US, Colombia plot to assassinate Venezuelan president
Source: Colombia Reports/El Espectador
Caracas mayor alleges US, Colombia plot to assassinate Venezuelan president
May 28, 2014 posted by Tim Hinchliffe
The mayor of Venezuela’s capitol has accused Colombia and the US of conspiring to stage a coup to assassinate the Venezuelan president, Colombian newspaper El Espectador reported on Wednesday.
Caracas Mayor Jorge Rodriguez claimed to have evidence of the coup and assassination plans from intercepted emails allegedly sent between Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, among others, and the US’s newly-appointed ambassador to Colombia, Kevin Whitaker.
“We announce (…) that there is a complex plan aimed at ending the peace in this country, including, in the first place, the assassination attempt (…) from Venezuela’s right-wing attempt to assassinate President Nicolas Maduro along with a military coup in development, which has fortunately been disabled,” said Rodriguez.
~snip~
The Venezuelan mayor said that the protests were just one phase of an “ongoing coup” aimed at destabilizing the region and eliminating President Maduro, so that foreign intervention could be imposed.
~snip~
The alleged email went on to read, “We have a stronger checkbook than the regime, for to break the international security ring that they themselves had created.”
Read more: http://colombiareports.co/caracas-mayor-alleges-us-colombia-plot-assassinate-venezuelan-president/
= new reply since forum marked as read
in the Americas, and also its "forward operating station" from which the gov't can move in any direction when the mood strikes Washington.
[center]
Rumsfeld[/center]
Many current Latin American leaders have had horrendous trouble with US diplomats. Venezuela is not the only one. You do recall the coup against Hugo Chavez, of course. The ambassador at the time was the ultra-slimy Charles Shapiro, who galloped to throw his spindly little arms around the bogus coup President Carmona, who immediately voided the Constitution, the Legislature, the Supreme Court, and sent out soldiers to arrest and imprison all of Hugo Chavez' cabinet members, who went into hiding.
Charles Shapiro also threw a special soiree for a few of his favorite Venezuelan oligarchs, and invited a Venezuelan comedian who brought a puppet and mocked Hugo Chavez.
[center]
[/center]
What more could a country ask of a "diplomat," anyway?
[center]
The form on the left is Charles Shapiro
~ ~ ~[/center]
Here's one example of what they've been dealing with, and having to either accept or send back to the U.S., and deal with US contempt, of course:
March 12, 2008
Recruiting Spies in the Peace Corps
Washington’s blunder in Bolivia strains relations with the Morales government
By Jean Friedman-Rudovsky (La Paz, Bolivia)
In February, allegations surfaced that the U.S. embassy in La Paz, located in western Bolivia, has been asking Peace Corps volunteers and Fulbright scholars to provide intelligence information to the U.S. embassy about foreign nationals in Bolivia.
“It flies in the face of what the Fulbright program is all about,” says John Alexander van Schaick, 23, a Fulbright scholar from Rutgers University, who says that last year, an embassy official instructed him to report on Venezuelans and Cubans living and working in Bolivia. “We’re supposed to be here to help with mutual understanding, not intelligence operations.”
~snip~
Anatomy of a scandal
On Nov. 5, 2007, van Schaick entered the U.S. embassy in La Paz for a routine orientation in preparation for his year-long fellowship in Bolivia. After meeting with various cultural affairs officials, the 2006 Rutgers grad met with Assistant Regional Security Adviser Vincent Cooper.
“He said that he was going to give me a ‘scaled-down’ version of the normal briefing given to U.S. embassy employees,” says van Schaick. According to the scholar, Cooper explained that although Fulbright participants are not U.S. government employees, the embassy likes to keep them “under its wing.”
The meeting consisted mainly of helpful tips for the newcomer—heed caution while on public transportation, steer clear of street protests and respond appropriately in medical emergencies. “But the part that made my ears perk up was when he casually said, ‘Alex, if, when you are out in the field, should you encounter any Venezuelans or Cubans like field workers or doctors,’ that I should report to the U.S. embassy with their names and where they live,” van Schaick explains.
His experience wasn’t an isolated incident. On July 29, 2007, Cooper visited a group of 30 Peace Corps trainees in Bolivia to give a security talk that included similar instructions, this time with respect to Cubans.
More:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3562 /
It goes on and on. And on. That's the way it works now. That's the pattern.
Another US Ambassador, William Brownfield, angered the Venezuelan people attending their children's Little League baseball game so much when he showed up, unannounced at their game, butting into the day's events, handing around baseballs and gloves, etc., etc. and making sure they knew it was from the U.S. (taxpayers) that they ran to
their motorcycles and grabbed some items from local groceries and followed Brownfield's limo as he tried to tear off back to the embassy, giving him a good egging on his way out. Here's a DU post from the time:
U.S. ambassador's car pelted in Venezuela
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Supporters of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez pelted the U.S. ambassador's car with fruit, vegetables, and eggs on Friday, and a group of motorcyclists chased his convoy for miles, at times pounding on the cars, a U.S. Embassy official said. No one was hurt.
Embassy spokesman Brian Penn said Venezuelan police escorts did not intervene as the car Ambassador William Brownfield was riding in was pounded on by protesters and hit by produce.
"We're being attacked by groups of motorcyclists while we're traveling in an embassy car," Penn told The Associated Press by cellphone shortly before the motorcycles stopped chasing the four-car convoy.
"It's a very violent demonstration by a small group of people who appear to be organized by the mayor's office," Penn said.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2214440
[center]
Brownfield
The view from Ambassador Brownfield's limo[/center]
And Brownfield went directly to Colombia, the worst human rights abuser in the Americas, and beloved of the U.S.
Some US Americans might claim to see a resemblance to the visit by Vice President Richard M. Nixon to Caracas in 1957:
[center]
[/center]
