Washington’s favorite Venezuelan opposition leader exposes links with Colombian paramilitary and narco networks

While the US and its allies glorify Leopoldo López as a new MLK, the US-backed Venezuelan opposition collaborates with Colombia’s narco-affiliated, death squad-sponsoring former President Álvaro Uribe.

by Ben Norton

Part 3 - Leopoldo López plots Venezuela coups with support from US and Colombia

While Juan Guaidó was selected as interim president because of his former position in the opposition-controlled National Assembly, he was little more than a stand-in for the Venezuelan right-wing’s kingmaker: Leopoldo López Mendoza, scion of one of Venezuela’s most influential oligarchic clans.

Since leftist leader Hugo Chávez won his first presidential election in 1998, López has reigned over an extremist right-wing hellbent on removing him from power. López has helped oversee numerous violent coup attempts in Venezuela, and was a leading force behind the bloody “guarimba” barricades that paralyzed the country.

In April 2002, when the military briefly overthrew President Chávez, López was mayor of the affluent Chacao municipality in Caracas. López directly assisted the coup by leading a mob that surrounded the house of a government minister, brutalized the top-level official in the street, then kidnapped him. Latin America expert Greg Grandin described López years later as “a thug. Ted Cruz with a mob.”

Flush with US financial support, López helped found the Voluntad Popular (Popular Will) party that became a vehicle for Guaidó’s bid for regime change.

Venezuelan political analyst Diego Sequera explained to The Grayzone, “Leopoldo López is the only Venezuelan that actually the US government really cares about; everyone else is just prop; it’s just like secondary characters.”

In May 2020, a group of mercenaries backed by a US firm linked to the Donald Trump administration tried to invade Venezuela, with the goal of overthrowing the government of President Nicolás Maduro.

The Wall Street Journal later revealed that López was the mastermind of the comically botched military invasion. In a June 26 article titled “Venezuelan Opposition Guru Led Planning to Topple Maduro,” the newspaper disclosed that López “was behind a months-long effort to contract mercenaries to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro,” and had “considered at least six proposals from private security contractors to carry out military incursions to spur a rebellion in Venezuela’s armed forces and topple” the Chavista government.

López collaborated with allies of Guaidó and fellow members of their Popular Will party. They ended up deciding to contract the Florida-based mercenary firm Silvercorp USA, planning the invasion with Jordan Goudreau, a US Army veteran, and Clíver Alcalá, a former Venezuelan general who defected to Colombia.

López’s allies then introduced Goudreau and Alcalá to right-wing Venezuelan opposition leaders in numerous meetings in the Colombian capital Bogotá, seeking millions of dollars of financing for the operation, the Wall Street Journal reported.

These mercenaries trained dozens of fighters, mostly Venezuelan defectors, in camps in northeastern Colombia. Then on May 3 they launched the attack from Colombian territory.

The US government denied involvement in the attempted May 2020 invasion. But the former US Special Operations officer who helped plan the coup attempt, Jordan Goudreau, has said in a breach-of-contract lawsuit that he met with two administration officials at the Trump National Doral Miami golf resort to discuss the plot, and was assured that he had the White House’s support.

Two former US soldiers participated in the failed invasion, and are currently being imprisoned in Caracas.

The Wall Street Journal made it clear that López has pushed for the most extreme, violent strategies to overthrow the government. “López expressed the view that negotiations and the electoral route would take too much time,” it reported.

Juan Forero, the Journal’s South America bureau chief and a staunch supporter of Venezuela’s right-wing opposition, noted on Twitter that “Leopoldo Lopez’s party was key in selling Trump on plan to back Guaidó.”

Source, links:

https://thegrayzone.com/2020/12/26/leopoldo-lopez-venezuela-colombia-drugs/

[1][2][4][5][6][7]

Comments

Why the 2026 Iran War is the Death of Israel, Trump & the American Empire

Double Down News For decades, the Western war machine assumed its high-tech hegemony was untouchable. Not anymore... Related: Five reasons a war with Iran will mark the final fall of US empire

George Soros tried to get rid of Yanis Varoufakis because the neoliberal regime could not handle Greece and Ukraine simultaneously

globinfo freexchange In a recent interview at the Greek channel, Crete TV, the former Greek Minister of Finance, Yanis Varoufakis, made some interesting revelations. Among other things, he actually confirmed what the blog thought until now to be an exaggerated far-right conspiracy theory. He essentially confirmed that George Soros intervenes directly to political leaderships, substituting political institutions in Europe and elsewhere. Varoufakis said that, on June, 2015, George Soros tried to contact Alexis Tsipras via his own ‘channels’. In the interview, Varoufakis claims that he had no idea what Soros wanted to talk about. As Varoufakis also writes in his book Adults in the Room: My Battle with Europe's Deep Establishment, for years he has been falsely portrayed by the pro-troika establishment and the anti-Semitic Right as Soros’s stooge in Greece. Yet, Soros’s message to the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, came as a perverse vindication. ‘ Fire...

An example of how the banking cartels control countries

the Greek case by SCH If we take a look at the Greek legislation, we can understand why the country is totally controlled by big private banks. According to the legislation concerning operating rules of the Primary Dealers selected in order to provide specialised services in the government securities market , one can read that: From article 1, paragraph1: as Primary Dealers are appointed institutions authorised as credit institutions or investment firms in a country which is a member of the European Union or authorised as such in another jurisdiction by a regulatory authority which, in the opinion of the Minister of Finance and the Governor of the Bank of Greece (hereinafter “the Competent Authorities”), imposes an adequate supervisory/investor protection regime . Primary Dealers are selected in order to provide specialised services in the government securities market, i.e., to participate in the syndications and auctions of Greek government securities in the primary mark...

Όσοι περνάν των χώρα της απόγνωσης παθαίνουν αμνησία ...

globinfo freexchange Δανειστήκαμε αυτή τη φράση από ένα παλιό κομμάτι της Ελληνικής ροκ μπάντας "Τρύπες", για να περιγράψουμε με λίγα λόγια αυτό που φαίνεται να έχει πάθει η Ελληνική κοινωνία. Πώς είναι δυνατόν μια ολόκληρη κοινωνία να έχει ξεχάσει ποιοι τη χρεοκόπησαν; Ποιοι έστησαν το άθλιο σύστημα των κρατικοδίαιτων 'ημέτερων' και της οικογενειοκρατίας; Ποιοι έσωσαν τις τράπεζες με πακτωλό δισεκατομμυρίων σε βάρος της μεσαίας τάξης; Ποιοι έκαναν τη μίζα και το ρουσφέτι επάγγελμα; Πώς είναι δυνατόν αυτή η κοινωνία να ετοιμάζεται να ξαναφέρει στην εξουσία ένα κομμάτι αυτού του άθλιου πολιτικού κατεστημένου, με την επιστροφή μάλιστα του αμετανόητα νεοφιλελεύθερου Κυριάκου Μητσοτάκη και της ομάδας του; Η απόγνωση που έφεραν εννέα χρόνια βάρβαρων νεοφιλελεύθερων πολιτικών και σκληρής λιτότητας και που ανάγκασε τη χώρα να διαβεί τον εφιαλτικό μονόδρομο της μόνιμης χρεοκοπίας, πρέπει να έπαιξε σημαντικό ρόλο. Διότι ως γνωστόν, η απελπισία...

Προβλέψεις ...

GR elections Update (15/9): Αναθεωρημένες προβλέψεις (μετά το δεύτερο debate): ΣΥΡΙΖΑ 28-30% ΛΑΕ + ΣΧΕΔΙΟ Β' κ.λ.π. 20-23% ΝΔ 11-13% ΧΑ 6-8% ΚΚΕ 5-5,5% ΕΝΩΣΗ ΚΕΝΤΡΩΩΝ 2,5-3% ΠΟΤΑΜΙ 2,5-3,5% ΠΑΣΟΚ + ΔΗΜΑΡ 3-4% ΑΝΕΛ 2,5-3,5% Update (11/9): Αναθεωρημένες προβλέψεις (μετά το πρώτο debate): ΣΥΡΙΖΑ 25-28% ΛΑΕ + ΣΧΕΔΙΟ Β' κ.λ.π. 20-23% ΝΔ 11-13% ΧΑ 6-8% ΚΚΕ 5-5,5% ΕΝΩΣΗ ΚΕΝΤΡΩΩΝ 3,5-4% ΠΟΤΑΜΙ 2,5-3,5% ΠΑΣΟΚ + ΔΗΜΑΡ 3-4% ΑΝΕΛ 2,5-3,5% Update (04/9): Αναθεωρημένες προβλέψεις: ΣΥΡΙΖΑ 23-25% ΛΑΕ + ΣΧΕΔΙΟ Β' κ.λ.π. 20-23% ΝΔ 12-15% ΧΑ 6-8% ΚΚΕ 5-5,5% ΕΝΩΣΗ ΚΕΝΤΡΩΩΝ 3,5-4% ΠΟΤΑΜΙ 2,5-3,5% ΠΑΣΟΚ 3-4% ΑΝΕΛ 2,5-3,5% Update (29/8): Αναθεωρημένες προβλέψεις: ΣΥΡΙΖΑ 23-25% ΛΑΕ + ΣΧΕΔΙΟ Β' κ.λ.π. 20-23% ΝΔ 12-15% ΧΑ 6-8% ΚΚΕ 5-5,5% ΕΝΩΣΗ ΚΕΝΤΡΩΩΝ 4-4,5% ΠΟΤΑΜΙ 4-4,5% ΠΑΣΟΚ 3-4% ΑΝΕΛ 2,5-3,5% Update : Αναθεωρημένες προβλέψεις: ΣΥΡΙΖΑ 26-27% ...

Trump PANICS As US Bases BURN & GROUND INVASION PLANNED!!

Secular Talk

Zionists pushed Trump into the war with Iran but this was not the primary reason for this catastrophic decision

by system failure It is widely reported by various analysts that Trump's catastrophic decision to start a war with Iran, came as a result of the pressure from Netanyahu regime and the Zionist lobby in US. While we can't ignore the strong influence of the Zionist factor on Trump and its significant role on dragging him into such a catastrophe, this was probably not the primary reason for the latest US-Iran war. One has to look first at Venezuela and the unprecedented and rather bizarre operation there to remove Nicolas Maduro from power, in order to understand the deeper reasoning behind such a risky decision by Trump against Iran. The uniqueness of the operation in Venezuela by the US imperialist beast, has to do not only with the blatant violation of international law with almost zero pretexts, but also with the fact that the rest of the Maduro administration was left untouched and permitted to remain in power. This shows that the primary goal of this operation was ...

The dominant elite ready to break the "social contract"

Hyper-automation will allow the super-rich to “get rid” of the rest by system failure Since the French revolution and the new form of the urban states-democracies, the ruling class had to make the so-called "social contract" with the majority. From the moment that the dominant urban class took the power from feudalism and monarchy, should had to find a way to protect the means of production and the labor force. Therefore, the ethnic consciousness in each state served to bound the majority in order to shape national armies to protect the ruling class interests. In exchange, the ruling urban class had given the so-called social state, labor rights, etc., through the nation-state as a carrier and guarantor for all these benefits for the middle and lower classes. Since then, there have been a lot of battles and the majority managed to conquer some benefits. At the start of 20th century, the technology progress had brought the mass production. Western s...

How Western societies lost their faith in Vision

Why people don't rise up massively today? Why there are no real revolutions? How we tolerate all things that have been imposed to us? These questions come up in people's minds more and more often today in Greece and abroad, due to the economic crisis. Some theories are circulated as an answer, among these, explanations which include, for example, the psychosynthesis of modern Greeks, but the truth is that there is something more fundamental behind this passive behaviour and concerns not only Greece, but the entire Western world. by system failure Prior to the beginning of the 20th century, Friedrich Nietzsche declares God's death and Western world will put all its hopes in science. Laplace's Determinism leads to the almighty man, who through science, can find all the answers for the world. Technology, which naturally comes from scientific discoveries, promises prosperity and a better life for the majority. Science becomes the central "pylon...

America's 250th birthday: The most divided yet?

Liu Xin America is turning 250 years old, but this is no ordinary birthday celebration. National pride has hit a 25-year low, two rival celebrations are splitting the country, and the political and economic landscape is more fractured than ever. In this episode of Pointcast, host Liu Xin sits down with Ben Norton, Editor-in-Chief of Geopolitical Economy Report @GeopoliticalEconomyReport, to unpack what's really going on beneath the surface of America's semiquincentennial.

the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens

Search This Blog