Sunday, February 24, 2019

What's next for the regime changers?

Opposition leader Juan Guaidó — who had secretly gone across the border into Colombia to lead the aid effort, running the risk of being barred from reentry or arrested upon return — was scheduled to meet with regional leaders including Vice President Pence in Bogota on Monday.

In a tweet late Saturday, Guaidó suggested that he would entertain more radical solutions to try to oust Maduro.

  WaPo
But he has to wait to get his instructions tomorrow.
Guaidó’s comments suggested the opposition’s limitations after a plan they had hoped would cause deep fissures in Maduro’s military structure instead produced only a few cracks.

[...]

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Twitter denounced the trucks of aid apparently set ablaze by Maduro’s forces as “sickening.”

“What kind of a sick tyrant stops food from getting to hungry people?” Pompeo tweeted.
For American audiences. And cover for British, Canadians, Colombians, and any others who want to be on America's side.
The opposition, meanwhile, said one of its leaders — Freddy Superlano — had been poisoned with a drug called “burundanga” in the Colombian border city of Cúcuta and remained hospitalized. Superlano’s assistant had died of the same poison. The opposition called for an investigation into the poisonings, while making no claims on who the culprits were.

[...]

Yet in a way, Saturday was always meant to be as much about provocation as about the aid itself.
You think?
The attempt to move humanitarian aid into Venezuela, opposition leaders hoped, would prompt members of the Venezuelan armed forces to defy Maduro by refusing to carry out orders to block delivery of aid to fellow countrymen in desperate need of food and medicine. The plan worked, to a degree: Roughly 60 members of Maduro’s military and security forces abandoned posts, denounced him and sought refuge with the opposition on Colombian soil.

But as night fell, there was no massive shipment of food and medicine headed to Venezuela’s neediest. One truckload of aid made its way into Venezuela from Brazil and several others inched across the Colombian border into Venezuela before being blocked by government forces.

[...]

Although organizers initially said they would create a human chain to hand boxes of humanitarian aid person to person across the bridge, the trucks were never unloaded. They fled the Bolívar bridge in the midafternoon as it became clear the Venezuelan guards would not yield.
Why don't aid organizations and the UN complain? Because they know what's going on. The question to ask defenders of the "aid" theory is why not provide aid through proper channels, i.e. aid organizations?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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