= new reply since forum marked as read
... by Rubyshoo 
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100219255372
I find it weird that a totalitarian gov't would allow opposition "exiles" to vote in the elections from offshore in S Fla and Texas.
Or, rather, I find it weird that some think this is what a totalitarian gov't would do. 
It's just weird.
What a demonstration of totalitarianism it is to allow the RW extremist opposition to vote in the elections from another country where they reside.
There's many other democracies that have residency requirements to vote in elections.
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Just saw this thread for the first time a few minutes ago. History repeats continually.
I saw everything thrown at Maduro on this thread n' thrown at Chavez from the very first of his Presidency. Right-wing oligarchs posturing as progressives banged and hammered away here 24/7 for years, coming and going, some rapidly, some actually hanging on for years, including Venezuelan offspring whose oligarchic parents moved into their 2nd homes in Florida, just as Cuban "exiles" did, thinking the US would overthrow the leftist governments and they'd all slither scurry back and regain control over massively poor populations.
The one thing Monroe Doctrine fans in the US refuse to do is simply start thinking about things seriously, to really listen to what they hear and what they read. That would clear up so many of their delusions, and lower their tempers concerning their determination to continue the Cold War, regardless of the facts.
What on earth was behind the crowds pouring into the streets in Caracas in 1958 during Eisenhower's Vice President Richard M Nixon's visit to Venezuela, do you think? The large picture weekly magazines Life and Look as well as all the news magazines like Time and Newsweek were screaming about those by God Commies going after poor Nixon and nearly killing him! Daily newspapers everywhere featured front page giant photos of his limo with broken windows and people surrounding the poor Vice President. People shouted, "Yankee Go Home."
My, oh, my! So many hot-tempered Latin American Commies! That's what it was! Shoulda dropped a bomb on them, right?
Even Peru?
So many either don't know, don't care to know, or know and lie, or know and openly support a US backed military junta - or ... stand up for Latin American and Caribbean sovereignty and against the US's continued interference in their elections.
Great post. 
We see how good Democrats seriously and rightly reject Heritage Foundation policies - especially Project 2025.
Project 2025 isn't just a plan for America, it's a plan for the Americas.
So, why do some celebrate elections that reject said project, but denounce Latin American elections that similarly reject Heritage backed candidates who would enable Project 2025?
EU left wins - celebrated
French left wins - celebrated
UK left wins - celebrated
Venezuela left wins - OH NO. Fake elections. Not acceptable
Latin American left wins not acceptable. Hispanic votes are not reliable.
What could it be? Hmmm.
The American Heritage roots have dug deep.
After all, who doesn't know that Washington actually owns all of the Western Hemisphere, except for Canada, anyway?
It is "our" God-given right to control all those governments from Washington and Wall Street!
We owe them everything for providing Larry Klayman and Ken Starr, they pretended.
How does a pocket of putrescence like them ever even happen?
I truly hope people will start thinking a little more deeply about what has been driving US foreign policy.
Thank you.
The US Congress is still funding Venezuelan oligarchy darling, Maria Corina Machado all these years later.
🎼 🎶🎵 Still funded after all these years 🎶🎵🎵
Chavez-years Machado:
Chavez’s US-funded rivals in the dock
A Venezuelan opposition figure who was received by US President George Bush is to go on trial with three colleagues, accused of conspiring to change the government using US funds.
7 Jul 2005
Judge Norma Sandoval ruled on Thursday that Maria Corina Machado and three other members of her Sumate group – which helped organise a referendum against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez nearly a year ago – are being charged with “conspiracy to change Venezuela’s republican system”.
. . .
US funding
Venezuela’s government said the meeting showed Sumate was an “agency” of the Bush administration, which Chavez accuses of plotting to topple or kill him.
Sumate says it received a $31,000 grant from the Na.r acy worldwide. Sumate leaders say they used the funds to organise courses for voters about their electoral rights.
Chavez says the National Endowment for Democracy is a front for the CIA, spearheading US efforts to end his rule over the world’s fifth largest oil exporter.
The US government and leaders of the National Endowment for Democracy deny his accusation.
More:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2005/7/7/chavezs-us-funded-rivals-in-the-dock
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Some information on the N.E.D.
(It's a good topic for you to research, yourself)
Trojan Horse: The National Endowment for Democracy
How many Americans could identify the National Endowment for Democracy? An organization which often does exactly the opposite of what its name implies. The NED was set up in the early 1980s under President Reagan in the wake of all the negative revelations about the CIA in the second half of the 1970s. The latter was a remarkable period. Spurred by Watergate – the Church committee of the Senate, the Pike committee of the House, and the Rockefeller Commission, created by the president, were all busy investigating the CIA. Seemingly every other day there was a new headline about the discovery of some awful thing, even criminal conduct, the CIA had been mixed up in for years. The Agency was getting an exceedingly bad name, and it was causing the powers-that-be much embarrassment.
Something had to be done. What was done was not to stop doing these awful things. Of course not. What was done was to shift many of these awful things to a new organization, with a nice sounding name – The National Endowment for Democracy. The idea was that the NED would do somewhat overtly what the CIA had been doing covertly for decades, and thus, hopefully, eliminate the stigma associated with CIA covert activities.
It was a masterpiece. Of politics, of public relations, and of cynicism.
Thus it was that in 1983, the National Endowment for Democracy was set up to “support democratic institutions throughout the world through private, nongovernmental efforts”. Notice the “nongovernmental” – part of the image, part of the myth. In actuality, virtually every penny of its funding comes from the federal government, as is clearly indicated in the financial statement in each issue of its annual report. NED likes to refer to itself as an NGO (Non-governmental organization) because this helps to maintain a certain credibility abroad that an official US government agency might not have. But NGO is the wrong category. NED is a GO.
“We should not have to do this kind of work covertly,” said Carl Gershman in 1986, while he was president of the Endowment. “It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the C.I.A. We saw that in the 60’s, and that’s why it has been discontinued. We have not had the capability of doing this, and that’s why the endowment was created.”
More:
https://williamblum.org/chapters/rogue-state/trojan-horse-the-national-endowment-for-democracy
Inside Operation Gideon, a Coup Gone Very Wrong
Why did three American ex-Special Forces soldiers try to overthrow the Venezuelan government?
BY KEVIN T. DUGAN
DEC 6, 2020 9:00 AM
. . .
The story of the failed coup is one of a plan so inept it makes John F. Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs fiasco 59 years earlier look sophisticated. Among the supplies brought were a high-end BB gun and a Kindle e-reader, according to photographs taken after the raid, and the two Americans, former Staff Sgt. Luke Denman and Sgt. Airan Berry, hardly spoke Spanish. Not only had the Maduro regime infiltrated Operation Gideon with informants, the secret plan was no secret at all: It was openly discussed on Venezuelan television, and its existence had already been reported in an article by the Associated Press. Goudreau himself provided a comment.
Operation Gideon’s failure isn’t in dispute. What’s less clear, however, is how it came to be. Those who supposedly knew about it — intelligence operators, political and military wanna-bes, secretive Trumpworld associates — have distanced themselves from it, unsurprisingly, as it resulted in the imprisonment of two former U.S. soldiers, the deaths of an unknown number of Venezuelans, and a consolidation of power by the Maduro regime.
. . .
Goudreau is also more inconsistent than his detractors have painted him: The 44-year-old calls himself a mere “kid” unfamiliar with business, while insisting he’s the mastermind behind the operation; he defends an allegedly cartel-linked Venezuelan general as having “a good heart,” while railing against other politicians for unspecified corruption; he insists that Operation Gideon was an honest attempt to liberate the Venezuelan people, while decrying the regime-change politics that led to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. In part because of his alleged betrayal by the Trump administration, at several points during our conversation Goudreau compares himself to Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, the latter of whom he calls a “hero.”
Yet, despite his engineering of a foreign coup, Goudreau is still a free man. Federal law-enforcement agencies have arrested others allegedly involved in the plot, but the Justice Department has not filed an indictment against him. His surfacing comes as he sues one of his financial backers for breach of contract, claiming he’d been told the planning was done with the personal knowledge of President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, and that Juan Guaidó, Maduro’s U.S.-backed challenger, had supported Goudreau’s plan to invade Venezuela through to the end — all claims that have been disputed.
. . .
In 2018, Maduro won a sham election, emboldening a new political adversary in his opponent Juan Guaidó, whom the U.S. and 49 other countries recognize as the true leader of Venezuela. At the time, there was a widespread belief in Washington, D.C., that Maduro’s administration was on the verge of toppling and the Venezuelan “armed forces would flip and go right over to Guaidó,” says Michael Shifter, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump reportedly asked his advisers why the U.S. couldn’t just invade the country. In his tell-all memoir, former National Security Adviser John Bolton — a Venezuela hawk who supported increasing sanctions on the country —
claims that Trump told advisers that it would be “cool” to invade.
. . .
And then there was ousting the president, which Goudreau claims he found out about from Donald Trump’s former personal bodyguard Keith Schiller. (Four lawyers who have represented Schiller didn’t respond to requests for comment on his behalf, and the White House didn’t return an email seeking comment.) “He was introduced [to] me by somebody else who had worked with me and saw what I was capable of,” Goudreau says. From there, the 133-page lawsuit Goudreau filed against Rendon in November explains his version of how he got involved: In May 2019, Schiller’s consulting company sought to hire Goudreau to help overthrow Maduro and made representations that this plan had the Trump administration’s backing. Goudreau then went to Bogotá, Colombia, to meet with exiled leaders of the Venezuelan military, including Gen. Cliver Alcala, a military official now in U.S. custody for drug trafficking, a charge he’s denied. (He is currently awaiting trial.) Goudreau says he made further inroads with the Trump administration by meeting with Drew Horn, an aide to Pence around this time, and Travis Lucas, whose lobbying firm has worked on behalf of the Trump administration. He also met with various financiers, including Roen Kraft, heir to the cheese fortune, and claims in the suit that Kraft had briefly discussed the coup plan with Pence at an event. Though attempts to reach Kraft through his family’s company were unsuccessful, he told the AP that he had discussed funding humanitarian aid, but after Goudreau maintained it would be a military operation, Kraft declined to fund it. By the fall, he was out.
Trump and Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó (left) at the White House in February 2020. EVAN VUCCI/AP
. . .
Although the Trump administration has used sanctions and support for political opponents to pressure Maduro to step down, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said there was no “direct” U.S. involvement in the attempted coup. Guaidó has denied any personal connection to the botched invasion. Lucas says any claims his company had any knowledge of the coup, or played any role in it, “are completely false.” Schiller has previously denied involvement.
. . .
By September, the plot was taking shape. “I learned at this point that there was a specific plan to overthrow Maduro, put Guaidó into power, and take back the country,” says Mattos. He realized something was off almost immediately. One of the revolutionaries showed him pictures Goudreau had posted of himself sitting in his car and working security at a Trump rally as proof of his bona fides.
. . .
“The execution stuff? That’s very possible,” Goudreau says. “But would it alarm you to know that we basically executed a whole bunch of people in Iraq? If I was in that [situation] I probably would have shot everybody, too. That’s war. Look, the Geneva Convention doesn’t cover fucking enemy insurgents.”
. . .
“Had we succeeded, you really think that the Guaidó administration would have said, ‘That’s not us, we want nothing to do with this’? Do you think that Donald Trump would have said, ‘That wasn’t us’? Every motherfucker that I talked to would have said, ‘That was us! U.S.A., baby!’ They would have taken credit for all of it. And if you say it’s not true, you’re pretty naive.”
More:
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/venezuela-operation-gideon-coup-jordan-goudreau-1098590/
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It's so clear there are a lot of arrogant, indifferent, and ignorant people who have never had a clue about what is involved in sanctioning a country. They always assume the elected, progressive government just can't handle things and blows up the economy. They may never be moved to feel the need to find out what it's all about, and why it is ever used, and what happens when it IS used. They scratch their backsides, roll over, and go back to sleep, and awaken to another day of ignorance.
That wouldn't be a problem if they didn't insist on arguing with people who DO KNOW and insist the onwho who do are simply unpatriotic. They've been doing it over 100 years, for certain, in this country. They appear to pass on that same willful ignorance to their children and their whole lineage remains arrogant and ignorant, too. And completely, wildly wrong, with stupid, silly, uninformed children if the kids don't ever question things.