The crisis in Central America continues to escalate. Last week, President Maduro of Venezuela released a Facebook video warning that leaders of the US empire were conspiring “to get their hands on our oil – just like they did in Iraq and in Libya.” The US can’t accuse Venezuela of accumulating weapons of mass destruction, as they said about Saddam Hussein in Iraq, but instead they are behind a fake news campaign to try and justify intervening in Venezuela which has the world’s largest oil reserves, Maduro stated.

Maduro warned“If the US intends to intervene against us they will get a Vietnam worse than they could have imagined. We do not allow violence. We are a peaceful people…. I ask that Venezuela be respected and I ask for the support of the people of the US so there isn’t a new Vietnam, least of all here in our America.”

Whilst it still seems such a war can be avoided, the right-wing governments of Colombia and Brazil would be prepared to be part of a US-led coalition against Maduro.

For those of us old enough to remember the long bloody war in Vietnam, it was alarming to see that John Bolton, the US National Security Adviser, was photographed holding a legal pad with the words ‘5,000 troops to Colombia’ which made us all fear that Trump is actually considering the option. But 5,000 would not be enough as we all remember that the invasion of Panama required 27,000 US soldiers.

There has clearly been US backing for the street protests organized to try and drive Maduro out of office and bring an end to the socialist administration started by Hugo Chavez in 1998. Since the assembly member Juan Guaido announced he was in effect the real president of Venezuela he has had backing not just from the US, but the UK, France, Spain, Colombia, Canada, Australia, Brazil and the European Parliament.

Guaido is clearly no more than a puppet of Donald Trump and could easily be the key player in a coup to overthrow the democratically elected regime. Last week, Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodriguez accused America of conspiring to topple her president in order to seize the country’s oil reserves. She announced that their response would be “Get your Yankee hands off the oil industry.”

Given the number of European countries lining up behind Trump’s plot, it was good to see the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn coming out strongly against the call for sanctions: “We oppose outside interference in Venezuela… there needs to be a dialogue and a negotiated settlement to overcome the crisis.”…..more here