Leaked: USA’s Feb 2018 Plan for Coup in Venezuela
Eric Zuesse
Admiral KW Tidd, of US South Command, the author of the leaked memo
A detailed plan from “UNITED STATES SOUTHERN COMMAND” dated “23 FEBRUARY 2018” was issued with the title “PLAN TO OVERTHROW THE VENEZUELAN DICTATORSHIP ‘MASTERSTROKE’” and is here presented complete.
This document was personally signed by Admiral Kurt W. Tidd, who was the Commander (the chief), at SOUTHCOM, and he was thus the top U.S. military official handling Venezuela. But this was far more than just a military plan. It was comprehensive — directing military, diplomatic, and propaganda, policies — regarding the Trump Administration’s planned “Overthrow” of Venezuela’s Government. His plan has since guided the Administration’s entire operation, including “the capacities of the psychological war,” regarding Venezuela.
It instructed SOUTHCOM:
Encouraging popular dissatisfaction by increasing scarcity and rise in price of the foodstuffs, medicines and other essential goods for the inhabitants. Making more harrowing and painful the scarcities of the main basic merchandises.” …
intensifying the undercapitalization of the country, the leaking out of foreign currency and the deterioration of its monetary base, bringing about the application of new inflationary measures.” …
Fully obstruct imports, and at the same time discouraging potential foreign investors in order to make the situation more critical for the population.” …
compelling him to fall into mistakes that generate greater distrust and rejection domestically” …
To besiege him, to ridicule him and to pose him as symbol of awkwardness and incompetence. To expose him as a puppet of Cuba.” …
Appealing to domestic allies as well as other people inserted from abroad in the national scenario in order to generate protests, riots and insecurity, plunders, thefts, assaults and highjacking of vessels as well as other means of transportation, with the intention of deserting this country in crisis through all borderlands and other possible ways, jeopardizing in such a way the National Security of neighboring frontier nations. Causing victims and holding the Government responsible for them. Magnifying, in front of the world, the humanitarian crisis in which the country has been submitted to.”
Structuring a plan to get the profuse desertion of the most qualified professionals from the country, in order ‘to leave it with no professionals at all’, which will aggravate even more the internal situation and along these lines putting the blame on of Government.”
the presence of combat units from the United States of America and the other named countries, under the command of a Joint General Staff led by the USA.”
It was posted online at the Voltairenet site, and was first copied to a web archive on 14 May 2018. So, it has been online since at least that date. However, because the photo in it of the document wasn’t made available via software which includes the individual symbols, but presented only the full visual image of the paper document, it still hasn’t yet gone viral on the Web.
Here, therefore, is the first appearance, on the Web, of the full document, that’s manually copied, character-by-character, so that each phrase in this document becomes, for the first time, web-searchable, and thereby conveniently available for journalists and historians to quote from.
This prophetic document — the source for what has happened afterward in and to Venezuela — might therefore finally receive the public attention that it so clearly merits.
The document starts with propaganda against Venezuela’s existing Government (and it totally ignores the extent to which the pre-existing U.S. economic sanctions against Venezuela had actually caused these problems), and it then proceeds to present the U.S. plan to overthrow the ‘dictatorship’. (Tidd refers to Maduro only as “the Dictator,” except at the very start and very end.
At the end, he commands “the denouncement toward Maduro’s regimen” and he also uses the phrase “the enemy” to refer to him — as if there had been the U.S. Constitutionally required authorization, by the U.S. Congress, of this “war.” The close urges “the dispatch of a UNO military force for the imposition of peace, once Nicolas Maduro’s corrupt dictatorship is defeated.” The U.N. is militarily to “impose” “peace,” after the U.S. and its allies have conquered Venezuela.)
Although Tidd placed 100% of the blame for Venezuela’s problems upon Maduro, and ignored the crucial extent to which U.S. economic sanctions had caused them, his plan emphasized that the U.S. must actively make things even worse for the Venezuelan public than America’s economic sanctions had yet done.
His coup-plan is loaded with such statements, and, in fact, opens with one: “Encouraging popular dissatisfaction by increasing scarcity and rise in price of the foodstuffs, medicines and other essential goods for the inhabitants. Making more harrowing and painful the scarcities of the main basic merchandises.”
So: he wasn’t naive. America’s induced suffering upon Venezuelans was part of his plan for Venezuelans, in order to get them to do what the U.S. regime wants them to do — overthrow Maduro. Furthermore, the United States Government has had extensive successes in previous such operations. One example is that this was how Chile’s Salvador Allende was brought down in 1973 (at a time when the U.S. Government’s claims to have done it for ‘national security’ reasons had much more credibility than its current excuse of helping the Venezuelan people does, because the supposedly ideological Cold War was still on).
The only excuse that the perpetrators can come up with, this time around, is “to put an end to the Venezuelan nightmare and the awakening of theirs beloved nation at a luminous dawn, in which the vision of fortune, true peace and tranquility predominate for their fellow citizens.” Impoverish the nation, in order to help Venezuelans attain “true peace and tranquility.” That’s the plan.
Here is the document’s entire text:
SOUTHCOM
TOP SECRET
23 FEB 2018
PLAN TO OVERTHROW THE VENEZUELAN DICTATORSHIP “MASTERSTROKE”
UNITED STATES SOUTHERN COMMAND 23 FEBRUARY 2018
TOP SECRET/20180223
CURRENT SITUATION
The Venezuelan Chavista dictatorship staggers as a result of its frequent internal problems; there is a great shortage of foodstuffs, an exhaustion of the sources of foreign currency and a rampant corruption. The international support, won with petrodollars, becomes scarcer each time and the purchasing power of its national currency is in a constant downfall.
Such scenario is not supposed to change, but the Venezuelan present-day leaders, as they usually do, in their despair to preserve their power, are capable to appeal to new populist measures that perpetuate their positions of privilege; the only mechanism that sustains them obstinate to the struggle to hold on their positions.
Maduro’s corrupt regimen will collapse but regrettably, the divided opposing forces, legitimate defenders of democracy and the well-being of their people, do not have power enough to put an end to the Venezuelan nightmare and the awakening of theirs beloved nation at a luminous dawn, in which the vision of fortune, true peace and tranquility predominate for their fellow citizens.
The internal disputes, the supreme particular likings, the corruption similar to the one of their rivals, as well as the scarcity of rooting, do not grant them the opportunity to make the most of this situation and to give the necessary step to overturn the state of penury and precariousness in which the pressure group, that exercises the leftist dictatorship, has submerged the country. We are at the presence of an unprecedented criminal action in Latin America.
This affects the entire region, there is no respect to international right and local political alternatives are unacceptable.
Democracy spreads out in America, continent in which radical populism was intended to take over. Argentina, Ecuador and Brazil are examples of it. The rebirth of democracy has the support of the most valuable determinations, and the conditions in the regions run in its favour.
It is the time for the United States to prove, with concrete actions, that they are implicated in that process, where overthrowing Venezuelan dictatorship will surely mean a continental turning point.
It is the first opportunity of the Trump Administration to bring forward the vision in reference to security and democracy. Showing its active commitment is crucial, not only for the administration, but also for the continent and for the world.
The time has come to
Step to speed up the definite overthrow of Chavismo and the expulsion of its representative:
Undermining the decadent popular support to Government.
- Encouraging popular dissatisfaction by increasing scarcity and rise in price of the foodstuffs, medicines and other essential goods for the inhabitants. Making more harrowing and painful the scarcities of the main basic merchandises.
Securing the the present-day dictator’s irreversible deterioration
- Developing actions to encourage the egocentrism and the verbal incontinence of the Dictator, compelling him to fall into mistakes that generate greater distrust and rejection domestically, while continuing to minimize the international significance of his public figure.
- To beseige him, to ridicule him and to pose him as symbol of awkwardness and incompetence. To expose him as a puppet of Cuba. Exacerbating the division among members of the governing group. Revealing the differences in his living conditions with respect to those of his followers, at the same time to incite them to keep on increasing those divergences. Highlighting examples as the ones of Rafael Ramirez from PDVSA and Nelson Mercengtes from gthe BCV.
- Making his government unsustainable, forcing him to claudication, to negotiate or to run away, as other close collaborators have done.
- Making provisions for a back or escaping door, in case he finally chooses to look for a safe port out of his country.
Increasing the internal instability to a critical level.
- Intensifying the undercapitalizatioin of the country, the leaking out of foreign currency and the deterioration of its monetary base, bringing about the application of new inflationary measures that increase its deterioration and that simultaneously provoke the citizens with less access — who support the present-day rulers — and those who are best positioned, to see their social status threatened or affected. Establishing that the use of bitcoin, Petro, is a key element in the deterioration of the economy, which is an unconstitutional and illegal manipulation of the national currency, useable for money laundering.
- Fully obstructing imports, and at the same time, discouraging potential foreign investors in order to contribute to make more critical the situation of the population — mainly in the sphere of oil, essential for any attempt of recuperation of the national economy.
- Appealing to domestic allies as well as other people inserted from abroad in the national scenario in order to generate protests, riots and insecurity, plunders, thefts, assaults and highjacking of vessels as well as other means of transportation, with the intention of deserting this country in crisis through all borderlands and other possible ways, jeopardizing in such a way the National Security of neighboring frontier nations. Causing victims and holding the Government responsible for them. Magnifying, in front of the world, the humanitarian crisis in which the country has been submitted to.
- Making use of the generalized corruption and the originating profits from their operations with prohibited drugs, to do away with their image in front of the world and their domestic followers.
- Promoting fatigue inside the members of the PSUV, inciting the annoyance and nonconformity among themselves, for them to break noisily away from the line of the Government; for them to refuse the measures and restrictions which also affect them, inciting the rising of internal politic factions, which divides it in its schism, making it as weak as the the opposition is. Creating frictions between the PSUV and “Somos Venezuela”.
- Structuring a plan to get the profuse desertion of the most qualified professionals from the country, in order “to leave it with no professionals at all”, which will aggravate even more the internal situation and along these lines putting the blame on of Government.
Using the army officers as an alternative of definite solution.
- Continuing hardening the conditions inside the Armed Forces to carry out a coup d’etat before concluding 2018, if the crisis does not make the dictatorship to collapse or the dictator does not decide to move aside.
- Continuing setting fire to the common frontier with Colombia. Multiplying the traffic of fuel and other goods. The movement of paramilitaries, armed raids and drug trafficking. Provoking armed incidents with the Venezuelan frontier security forces.
- Recruiting paramilitaries mainly in the campsites of refugees in Cucuta, La Guajira and the north of Santander, areas largely populated by Colombian citizens who emigrated to Venezuela and now return, run away from the regimen to intensify the destabilizing activities in the common frontier between both countries. Making use of the empty space left by the FARC, the belligerency of the ELN and the activities in the area of the Gulf Clan.
- Preparing the involvement of allied forces in support of the Venezuelan army officers or to control the internal crisis, in the event they delay too much in taking the initiative.
- Establishing a speedy time line that prevents the Dictator to continue winning control on the internal scenario. If it’s necessary, act before the elections stipulated for next April.
- Getting the support of the allied authorities of friendly countries (Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Panama and Guyana).
- Organizing the provisioning, relief of troops, medical and logistic support from Panama. Making good use of the facilities of electronic surveillance and signals intelligence, the hospitals and its deployed endowments in Danen, the equipped airdromes for the Colombian Plan, as well as the landing fields of the old-time military bases of Howard and Albrook, as well as the one belonging to “Rio Halo”. In addition, the Humanitarian Regional Center of the United Nations, designed for situations of catastrophes and humanitarian emergency, which has an aerial landing field and its own warehouses.
- Moving on the basification of combat airplanes and choppers, armored conveyances, intelligence positions, and special military and logistics units (police and military district attorneys and prisons).
- Developing the military operation under international flag, patronized by the Conference of American Armies, under the protection of the OAS and the supervision, in the legal and media context, of the Secretary General Luis Almagro. Declaring the necessity that the continental commandment be strengthened to act, using the instrument of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, in order to avoid the democratic rupture.
- Binding Brazil, Argentina, Colombia and Panama to the contribution of greater number of troops, to make use of their geographic proximity and experience in operations in forest regions. Strengthening their international condition with the presence of combat units from the United States of America and the other named countries, under the command of a Joint General Staff led by the USA.
- Using the facilities at Panamanian territory for the rear guard and the capacities of Argentina for the securing of the ports and the maritime positions.
- Leaning on Brazil and Guyana to make use of the migratory situation that we intend to encourage in the border with Guyana.
- Coordinating the support to Colombia, Brazil, Guyana, Aruba, Curacao, Trinidad and Tabago and other States in front of the flow of Venezuelan immigrants in the event of the crisis. Promoting international participation in this effort, as part of the multilateral operation with contribution of the States, Non-Profit Organizations and international bodies. Supplying the adequate logistic, intelligence, surveillance and control support.
- Anticipating, specially, the most vulnerable points in Arauca, Puerto Carreno and Ininda, Maicao, Barranquilla and Sincelejo, in Colombia, and Roramia, Manaos and Boa Vista, in Brazil.
Information Strategie
- Silencing the symbolic presence of Chavez-representative of unit and popular support-, and in the other way around, keeping the harassment to the Dictator as the only responsible of the crisis in which he has submerged the nation.
- Holding the Dictator and his closer followers responsible, in the first place, for the prevailing crisis due to his inability to find the way out that the Venezuelans are in need of.
- Intensifying the media denouncement about the cubanization of Venezuela.
- Outstandingly intensifying the denouncement toward Maduro’s regimen, considering him:
- A criminal
- A illegitimate
- A thief of the wealth of the Venezuelan people
- Someone who plunders the national treasury to carry out his evasion
- Highlighting the incompetence of the mechanisms of integration created by the regimens of Cuba and Venezuela, specially the ALBA and PETROCARIBE, in order to tackle the situation of the country and their inability to find solutions to the problems that the citizens are facing.
- Increasing, inside the country and through the mass media established abroad, the dissemination of designed messages based on testimonies and publications originated in the country, making use of all the possible capacities, including the social networks.
- Claiming, through that mass media, the need to put an end to this situation because of its unsustainable essence.
- Justifying and assuring through violent means the international backup to the deposal of the dictatorship, displaying an extensive dissemination, inside the country and to the entire world, through all the open means and the capacities of the psychological war of the US ARMY.
- Assuring that the disclosed images and reports of the military actions are approved by the General Staff to prevent their manipulation and use by the enemy.
- The United States should entirely back up the OAS, strengthening the image of the OAS and other multilateral institutions for the inter-American system, as instruments for the solution to the regional problems.
- Promoting the request of the the dispatch of a UNO military force for the imposition of peace, once Nicolas Maduro’s corrupt dictatorship is defeated.
[signature]
K.W. TIDD
Admiral, USN
COMMANDER
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I think most if not all the content of this repost from The Voltaire Network reflects what the USA has been doing in Venezuela for at least 20 years. It suckered me because I thought it may have been mangled by machine translation.
On further consideration I think it is the sort of document is planted to discredit the sites that republish it.
Why is this obvious fake still up? It detracts from the credibility of offGuardian reporting.
For anyone who has spent even a modicum of time and energy reading declassified Western military and state intelligence files, one gets a feel for their linguistic form and structure and this ‘secret’ document is sadly lacking in authenticity.
Couple this with the fact that it is not an original document but a scanned/photographed mock up and the provenance of the document becomes even more suspect.
I have no idea why this document would be created apart from to embarrass or discredit someone or some organisation which gives it validation or it could be a misguided attempt by a possibly Spanish speaking anti-imperialist to create a fake document to highlight the blatant American source of the coup attempts (if I’m being charitable).
At the very least, judging by many of the comments, there is something not quite right about this document and rather than getting into an endless Majestic 12 style debate, I would just quietly ignore the whole thing and focus on the kind of stories that can be verified such as the recent article on the FAIR website which makes the point that zero percent of the entire political spectrum of the American MSM has produced any articles or debates that do not back regime change in Venezuela.
https://fair.org/home/zero-percent-of-elite-commentators-oppose-regime-change-in-venezuela/
THIS SEEMS TO BE A TRANSLATION OF A TRANSLATION… Strange that it was published without checking previous postings om the internet. Have a look at this:
“Far more blatant and frightening is the Plan to Overthrow the Venezuelan Dictatorship – Masterstroke, dated February 23, 2018. Masterstroke was leaked on the website Voltairenet.org and picked up by Stella Calloni in the reliable and respected Resumen Latinoamericano. Although Masterstroke is unverified, the contents as reported by Calloni are entirely consistent with U.S. policy and pronouncements…”
https://consortiumnews.com/2018/05/18/us-not-sitting-idly-by-on-eve-of-venezuelan-election/ May 2018
and https://www.voltairenet.org/article201100.html February 2018
Hopefully, the spreading of copies of copies, or translations of translations, will cease.
If as some people here suspect that the document was written by someone with a Slavic background, perhaps someone from the Serbian colour revolution school that is active in LA colour revolutions stitched this together. The style of writing leaves clues as to who wrote this, much like the Steele document leaves clues it was put together by someone who had worked in Russian intelligence.
Why does this document read as though it was machine translated badly from another language? Spanish?
Admiral who signed document is now a director of tax-exempt Olmsted Foundation that apparently gives hundreds of thousands of dollars of “charitable grants” to Pentagon’s Departments of Army, Navy and Air Force: http://www.olmstedfoundation.org/officers-and-directors/kurt-tidd
America became a disease. There’s no saying what they’ll do to us if we get to elect Jeremy Corbyn.
So an unelected US military official is mandated to overthrow an elected government, however unpopular it might becon Capitol Hill.
Just why does that military man not simply scrawl ‘Venezuela represents no threat to US National Security and, so help me God, any criminal liar on Capitol Hill who says otherwise is defrauding the American people and wasting their tax paymrnts on behaviour that is unprincipled, unnecessary and downright Unamerican!’?
It would of course be imperative to leak that and make Capitol Hill prove otherwise.
We all know the number of bombs dropped on USA by Venezuela: ZERO, ZIP, BUBKES!
There are no naval destroyers from Venezuela parked in the Gulf of Mexico, nor up the Eastern Seaboard.
Tanks are not stationed where the Mexican Wall should be built, are they?
Venezuela is not a cyberwarfare danger either, nor do they have satellite space weapons to obliterate US satellite capacity.
People have got to start calling these Americans what they are: CRIMINALS, GANGSTERS and LOWLIFE.
Nothing more telling of the decrepitude of a regime than when the KWTidds in power so blatantly demonstrate that they have not a clue what they’re talking about.
To the somebody who disapproved: maybe I should have explained that bitcoin and Petro have strictly nothing to do with each other.
Others have pointed out it shows obvious signs of fakery, but how can you possibly write an article about a leaked document without stating how it was leaked, at least allegedly. No matter the alleged source we always have to be extremely skeptical but for goodness sake at least say how it was allegedly leaked. Editors, aren’t you concerned about credibility?
flaxgirl is concerned about credibility. Hmm..
On another note, this coup is so blatant, but entirely the norm for the allies of evil–U.S., Britain, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. We have watched Israel’s regime massacre palestinians in ‘broad daylight’ for years on end. Even a former President of the U.S. regime called the U.S. the most warmongering(“warlike”) nation on earth. And of course England can obviously poison people and blame it on Russia. The KSA’s monarchical crimes are endless. It’s hard to see a hopeful future for the rest of the world so long as the allies continue their crimes abroad. Revolution, and I do mean violent revolution, is inevitable, in my view.
From Wiki: Tidd holds a master’s degree in political science from the University of Bordeaux, France, earned as an Olmsted Foundation Scholar. He is a graduate of the Armed Forces Staff College, and was a Federal Executive Fellow at the Atlantic Council of the United States. He is a French linguist and a subspecialist in Strategic Planning and Europe/Russia area studies….
Perhaps he spent too long in France?
This text was written by a native speaker of a Slavic language (not French or Spanish, as speculated above), judging by the nature of the grammatical errors (mixing up of definite, indefinite and nul articles – read it out loud and you’ve got cod-Russian in a bad spy film). Oh – and the date uses the British convention. Obvious before you get to the end of the first paragraph.
I’ve sussed it…Melania! 🙂 Well if Ivanka can get in on the act, why not Melania too?
The Russians are reported to have harnessed Belugas “to spy on “ Norway, bearing a tag identifying the “equipment” as belonging to St Petersburg, (in English, presumably to avoid detection)? And this coup plan, so cleverly constructed to appear to be written by a native Slav speaker can only mean the Russians had nothing to do with either (Belugas are resident in the St Lawrence River) This suggest that the swallowing or pretence thereof , of one American false flag stunt after another by the MSM has led to overconfidence.
Anybody can put a harness on a trained beluga. Next:
The thought has just occurred to me: the tag “Equipment from St Petersburg” found on the beluga is not a reference to the city in Russia; it’s referring to the city in the state of Florida.
Hmmm … dated 23 February 2018, some time before 4 March 2018 when u-know-wot happened in Salisbury.
Strategie is not an English word. It’s probably like all propaganda – 50% true, 50% lie.
And what do you know about Slavic languages, you are even less credible than the article!
Ah, the warmongers are at it again. They just can’t sit still for a moment. Are we running out of countries to invade or disrupt or Impose “OUR” government into:?
Yeah I know I’m ignorant of the “demand for democracy” but can’t you guys give it rest?
The many negations of the reality of this document would be funny, but the intervention of the US is a reality. That the admiral is a French liguist lead to believe to the reality of the document. The UK is the neighbor of France and both languages are not isolated to have a purity as some woud like to think. A language is vivid, not static and changes with the time. To have a definitely right way to put the order of the words depends of the subtleties the writer wants to put in his text. The word processors are also not the best counselors for a text. The text is already almost one year in use and a until now there is no official negative reaction about the reality of the document.
What is anyhow without any doubt, is the US intervention in Venezuela to impose politics which suits Mr Trump and his “entourage”, not that of the elected people in Venezuela.
I see the General is willing to go so far as causing president Maduro leg cramps; what a masterstroke!
“…forcing him to claudication…”
I agree that this does not remotely sound like the language of an American general. “The supreme particular likings”? Preposterous!
He is an Admirable, not a Generality!
Thx. But with no plausible connection here, in this context it does not matter?
It was a joke. Nevermind.
Surprising how little of this kind of thing gets into this site. Editorial nous. Someone went to a lot of trouble in this case but not nearly enough. It is scarily believable on the surface, to the point I forwarded the link to a friend who is a general equivalent in a different branch, before I read it.
No need to recant. I put some genuine links below. Searching Wikileaks database will reveal more. I found quite a few just by searching ‘Wikileaks Venezuela’. The information is verifiable, just not from this ‘document’. Eric is normally so fastidious about his sources. Still, we are all human. Best forgive and forget this one.
Admirals don’t do any actual work. The real work is done by private contractors like McKinsey & Company, who hire lots of economists and social science PhD’s. It appear the lead writer on the project may, just may, have injected a bit of humor. More likely the hyperbole is unwitting.
With a document like this, who needs a spell-checker?
https://youtu.be/KqkTXLqX3Dk
Interesting. Just one question…did crack “investigative historian” Zuesse track down the source of this epic leak and verify the authenticity of the documents, or did he simply assume they were the genuine article? One thing is for sure, these are definitely not WikiLeaks calibre documents sourced directly from the USG. Anyone with access to basic word processing software could have produced these…and what kind of leaker quietly dumps extremely potent files related to an ongoing high-profile geopolitical issue to an obscure site like Voltaire.net and just leaves them there? Nah, I am extremely sceptical to say the least. As someone already pointed out the language is stilted and unnatural sounding too.
Whatever the case, it;s not like anyone who’s been paying attention to the flailing of the moribund empire is surprised that Guido Who? and his increasingly slapstick coup attempt(s) are bought and paid for by CIA, Inc. It’s not like they are trying to hide it or anything, first Bolton and now Pompeo are all over the MSM taking credit for it. Of course it’s all about “helping the Venezuelan people” free themselves from the vicious, but very, very clever, dictator Maduro who lets opposition party clowns, who denounce him regularly in the harshest of terms, operate with impunity and allows ordinary people to shout their political grievances at each other in the streets. That’s just a crafty way to cover up the fact that he’s a murderous tyrant whose gallows have the quickest trapdoor in the southern hemisphere.
Everyone in the media and in government offices across the west knows that this coup is being run out of Washington, DC and that it is as criminal as the Iraq invasion of 2003. The real story that everyone ignores is that 1) the media is openly partisan and all but openly corrupt, 2) that blatant contradictions like the “literally Hitler” anti-Trumpers who CARE SO DEEPLY about human dignity that a few crude words directed at “trannies” causes howls of offended outrage…yet they approvingly support his fomenting civil war in Venezuela, his waging genocidal war against Yemen (and economic warfare against a long list of countries), his crawling into bed with a bone sawing Wahhabi lunatic and a near-fascist Jewish supremacist psychopath…and who can forget his noble “presidential” Tomahawking of Syria. Dismembering people with high explosives, bonesaws and bullets is fine, starving them is cool, ditto destroying their countries…but HOW DARE YOU talk about them in a disrespectful way…how DARE you! And, 3) that these things, i.e. ruling class sociopathy and cynicism, insane levels of hypocrisy, the lonely death of democracy and the end of the Enlightenment era in which reason and rational thought acted as a primary guide to discovering truth, are happening completely unnoticed by most people as if nothing at all is odd or amiss. Surely this is a most remarkable, and ominous, regression? In 2003 it was still “we will never be fooled by the media again!”, and in 2010 poor old Julian Assange was still saying he believed speaking truth to power will unite people in opposing war and other gross abuses of political power. In 2019 it is clear that those in power are sociopathic thieves, swindlers, liars and killers lacking in even basic humanity. This is personified in the case of Julian Assange who was thrown under the bus as a warning to anyone who thinks truth and virtue will protect them if they choose to pick a fight with the empire and the global system of social control it operates. He is being treated worse than an accused serial killer and is facing a kangaroo court and the horror show abyss of the Colorado Memory Hole. It is quite remarkable how bleak things presently are. History shows that people with immense power only give it up when their hand is forced or they are killed. (Perhaps this is where Chavez, Maduro and the Bolivarians fu**ed up…they let the Venezuelan oligarchs and rent cartels keep much of their power, leaving an opening for collusion with the Obama and Trump administrations who helped them tank the economy and wage covert war against the government).
Meanwhile back in the Anglosphere and the EU it is almost like people collectively are in denial about a whole host of gloomy realities and are afraid to even acknowledge to themselves what we are most likely living through right now: the beginning of an era that will be marked by massive violence, death and upheaval and, quite possibly, the collapse of civilizations. Get out of the cities while you still can…lol.
I agree with most of your commentary. I won’t share this unauthenticated document. But “basic humanity” is exactly what we see routinely from thugs in power, and it is not necessarily a positive thing. Humanity is the human species that exhibits behavior from virtuous to wicked, and everything in between. Perhaps what these power mongers lack is ethics.
That’s a very good point, thank you.
You’re welcome. Thank you.
I discovered this document late on May 1st, when Guaido’s coup-attempt was in progress, and I was so flabbergasted that a document which had been around since at least May 2018 and which had been ignored for all this time, could have so accurately described news-events since that time. On May 2nd, when I had just submitted the article to Off-Guardian, reader-comments raised questions immediately about the document’s authenticity, so I sent the article to John Helmer for his opinion on it, and he quickly expressed the view that no one in Tidd’s rank would write like this. I then promptly did some web-searching for examples of Tidd’s writing and speaking, and concluded that Helmer is probably right. I sent him this:
—
Re: ?authenticity of https://www.voltairenet.org/article201100.html ?
Because of https://off-guardian.org/2019/05/02/leaked-usas-feb-2018-plan-for-coup-in-venezuela/ etc., I’m getting questions of the document’s authenticity. It’s not written at all in Tidd’s style. Did Stella Calloni https://www.voltairenet.org/article201159.html and http://www.resumenlatinoamericano.org/2018/05/09/el-golpe-maestro-de-estados-unidos-contra-venezuela-documento-del-comando-sur/
deceive us? She presented a photo of this alleged document, which photo was of a paper document typed in very bad English but was alleged to have been written in English written by a highly literate man, Tidd. See his spontaneous testimony at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-114shrg24274/pdf/CHRG-114shrg24274.pdf
If it’s fraudulent, I need to know. What is Stella Calloni’s email? Do you know?
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The elderly Argentinian Stella Calloni is a trusted source for Thierry Meyssan, and I’ve never yet found any article from Meyssan to be untrustworthy. Calloni is also a hero to Argentina’s anti-fascists and a highly respected journalist there. For example, see this: https://www.ecured.cu/Stella_Calloni
Perhaps she didn’t want to expose her own source who had supplied to her such a document as this, and so changed its language (and back again) in order to hide its leaker’s identity. I would have retracted this article, except that its seemingly accurate and detailed description of future events has, thus far, persuaded me not to. Sources of a leak such as this, normally hide. Consider Assange, etc. The apparent prescience of this document outweighs for me other considerations, but my judgment could be wrong here. I feel that each individual should make the decision what to think of it. Different people will come to different conclusions about it. For me, only if someone can point out some major events described in this document which never happened will I request its retraction, but I’m not yet aware of any such.
I wrote to Meyssan for Calloni’s email-address, and he hasn’t answered. Probably he never will.
For me, the document’s apparent prescience is its authentication. But that’s all.
Meyssan very very seldom makes mistakes, but when he does he’s not really prone to amending his words. And, that’s correct, he never replies anymore.
Your suggestion of the possibility the document may have been translated from and back to English makes sense- hide the source but result in bad English. The formatting would not be affected by translation, and seems professional.
At the very least, do some serious background checking on the provenance of the document. It doesn’t help – can only hurt – the fine OffGuardian without iron-clad verification.
I was amused that OffG’s previous two tweets contain the phrases “coup against the English language” and “linguistic gymnastics” …which certainly apply to this pseudo-document. Take it down.
Disagree. Leave it up, with maybe a few caveats. Aside from the obvious “linguistics gymnastics”, the US plans are perfectly clear. Will be interesting to see how this plays out.
US plans for Venezuela have been clear for years: accompanied by authentic Wikileaks cables. No need to peddle the fake stuff.
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/WikiLeaks-Cable-Reveals-US-Oil-Interests-in-Venezuela-20170802-0034.html
https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/venezuela-wikileaks-shows-us-use-ngos-cover-intervention
off-guardian.com needs to remove this article based on an obviously fake document, and concentrate on publishing the mass of evidence for US involvement in the region – the sanctions regime, USAID support for the opposition, etc…
US Admirals do not use the term “Information Strategie”.
Honestly, we do not need to peddle false evidence to prove beyond doubt that the US government is attempting to remove Maduro. Lies and spin are the tools of the US government, we are better than that.
As I said, “For me, the document’s apparent prescience is its authentication. But that’s all.” You ignore its prescience. What explanation do you have for a detailed description of U.S. actions toward Venezuela having been published no later than May 2018 and being apparently accurate up to the present time (over a year later), other than that this document in some form existed by no later than May 2018? Are you saying that such a person who might have leaked it to Calloni shouldn’t have feared for his/her life? Look at Assange and his sources. Prescience which is in such detail as this, doesn’t come from fantasy or from lies. Prescience — if this document’s described U.S. actions are 100% accurate or anything close to that — is its authentication, the best authentication that is possible.
I don’t understand the downvotes: but I agree with other commenters that the prose is incredible suspect. Unless Tidd is illiterate, which is entirely possible. Otherwise, I would be very wary of this documents authenticity – reflexive downvoters or not. SOUTHCOM may be psycopaths, and illiterate, but they do have access to spellcheckers.
Bad translation from another language (like Spanish or Hebrew)?
Google translate or transcribed by a chimp of unknown nationality. Someone just posted Tidd’s CV – he can definitely spell. And so can his secretary.
Up and down votes should not be permitted and I NEVER use them on principle. They ‘will’ be abused. They are like… electronic voting machines. If you want to be able to control an outcome…
I would say the document is an obvious fake. It certainly was not written by a native speaker of English. If we simply have a quick look at page one, it is littered with intermediate-level mistakes (“capable to” instead of “able to”; “power enough” instead of “enough power”; frequent errors with articles a/an/the) as well as gibberish like “…the supreme particular likings, the corruption similar to the one of their rivals, as well as the scarcity of rooting…”.
If I were OffG, I would take this article down.
Zeusse is clearly a fraud, with an agenda, it’s clear as daylight in every article he publishes, and this brings the true nature of OffGuardian into serious question. Why is a supposedly anti establishment website publishing the works of a fraud who is blatantly pushing the agenda of the enemy of humanity? Controlled opposition makes too much sense, I’m afraid. It’s the Guardian wearing ripped jeans, as opposed to Freedlands ill-fitting Asda suit
This plan has nothing to do with democracy. Certainly not for Venezuela, neither for the US. It is more like a plan for dictators. It was not the intention to vote for Mr. Trump because he should have war plans for Venezuela. Is it not?
Now that the US have incredible trouble with the “opioid crisis”, Venezuela, Cube, Iran, Russia, China are good diversions to hide for the US and the world public, the nightmare of the limitless greed and total absurdity of the capitalist world with the drug overdoses. Not only death by toxicity but also by asphyxiation.
Count how many hospitals there are in the US and then multiply this with the minimum number of the daily death victims by overdose and you will have a staggering number of victims. Choking is now the ultimate fate for the majority of the death in the US. This is something infinitely more worse than Maduro and all the efforts should go to heal the US in the first place, instead of Venezuela.
Spot on Jim
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37486540-dopesick
The language in this document bothers me. The notion that an educated US admiral would produce such prose seems unlikely. I looked online for something written by the admiral to make a comparison. The only text I could find was a transcript of a statement he made to Congress: https://defenseoversight.wola.org/primarydocs/160310_southcom_posture.pdf. Speaking and writing are not the same, but if Tidd is the author of this document, it would mean that he writes far worse than he speaks, which is unlikely. Moreover, it is almost certain that Tidd had written his statement and simply read it. The textual evidence makes me think that the author of the document is not the same person as the author of the statement to Congress.
Wikipedia_ “Tidd holds a master’s degree in political science from the University of Bordeaux, France, earned as an Olmsted Foundation Scholar. He is a graduate of the Armed Forces Staff College, and was a Federal Executive Fellow at the Atlantic Council of the United States. He is a French linguist and a subspecialist in Strategic Planning and Europe/Russia area studies.” In my opinion, this document seems to be more of French than English origin. Could that explain it? There are words used here that any word processor would suggest correcting, though…
All it really explains is whoever created the “document” had read the same wiki entry as you have quoted, and used French words, like “Strategie” in a failed attempt to add some legitimacy to the fake.
The Olmsted Scholar Foundation supports US service personnel in studies abroad. To gain a place on the program you need to have “Demonstrated scholastic achievement “.
http://www.olmstedfoundation.org/what-we-do/eligibility-requirements
The fake document contains incredibly poor grammer: “Using the army officers as an alternative of definite solution” for example, and archaic language like “regimen” – hardly the writing of a multilingual graduate.
Compare this transcript of his 2017 speech to the Foundation to the fake document:
https://www.southcom.mil/Media/Speeches-Transcripts/Article/1347999/adm-tidd-prepared-remarks-olmsted-foundation/
Note the correct use of “regime” in this passage of the speech.
“After a challenging decade, anti-American regimes are on the decline. The continued assault on democracy in Venezuela has unified like-minded nations in defense of our shared values.”
Also look at the use of the Oxford comma in the speech, while the fake document repeatedly omits the comma:
From the first paragraph of the fake document:
“The Venezuelan Chavista dictatorship staggers as a result of its frequent internal problems; there is a great shortage of foodstuffs, an exhaustion of the sources of foreign currency and a rampant corruption.”
From the transcript:
“Like the spread of illicit networks, the threat of violent extremism, and the impact of natural disasters.”
Not surprising in the least! No doubt this will now become the “big story” all over American MSM and at last the American public will now become clearly informed regarding the absolute criminal and psychopathic nature of our leadership class – finally! Oh – wait – no – I’m just waking up – I guess I was just dreaming!
What will really happen is that no MSM in the U.S. will mention this document in any way shape or form, while Facebook and Twitter will insure that anyone who does share this information will be banned for violating “community standards,” and of course Google will bury any “search” attempts behind a virtual wall of protective algorithms.
What MSM here in the U.S. will cover instead are of course the vapid and meaningless forms of political bickering and theatre that provide the illusion of “difference” between our criminal war-parties, along with whatever blatant lies about the situation in Venezuela the CIA has managed to cook up since yesterday. This Orwellian propagandist’s wet dream is simply called – “daily life” – here in America.
I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but the language seems somehow stilted, bizarre. There are strange turns of phrase uncommon in US English. I’m wondering if it was written in a different language, then translated (human or machine makes little difference), which makes it kind of dubious. Not that it is not representative of US intentions most everywhere, and there it is, in black and white. Disgusting that there are people like this still at large. But not surprising.
Agreed. The language (for example: “keeping the harassment to the Dictator as the only responsible of the crisis in which he has submerged the nation”) is not believable as coming from a native English speaker.
Unless anyone can come up with evidence to show Kidd usually writes this way, the conclusion must be that he did not write the document.
Maduro is right about the American Government; it’s out of control. Incredibly the Democrats support Trump on this issue along with so called ‘progressive liberals’ all over the World. I guess it’s similar to New Labour enthusiastically bombing Baghdad and is a reminder of how rightwing these ‘liberals’ really are. “Maduro must go; never mind the dead bodies piling up in town”.
Maduro came out with a gem yesterday — he remarked that “If Guaido wants to be the President all he has to do is win an election”.
Regardless of the provenance of this document its a well proven blueprint for destabilizing and so taking over a country. What went wrong with the attempted coup is that the puerps missed out a step — typically what you do is engineer a populist uprising that results in a chaotic interim government. You then hold elections, elections that are set up so the correct person or persons not only win but assume a mantle of legitimacy. Trying to directly insert your puppet won’t normally work, it will just get everyone’s backs up. The blueprint’s also getting a bit time worn — quite apart from all the pontifications and cliches that we have to put up from our leaders and the media if you’re on the receiving end you can pretty much plan your response based on the timetable of actions taken against your country.
The question that’s bugging me is where’s the United Nations? I know there’s no point in bothering the Security Council, its veto power ensures that nothing gets done, but this direct threat to sovereign nations and the unilateral abrogation of carefully thought out treaties deserves some comment (especially as in the past the UN has given cover to the US to do its imperialist thing).
This is sort of like when you’ve been farting for days and finally – “This is the shit!”
Change the names and dates and it sounds eerily like a plan used by despotic, power hungry empire builders for millennia.