The US and its allies have decided to throw their weight behind yet another coup attempt in Venezuela. As usual, they claim that their objectives are democracy, freedom. Nothing can be farther from the truth. Following presentation will expose the real motives and human consequences of this gambit. We'll start with a quick rundown of recent events. To fully understand those events, however, will require a history lesson, a background check on the key players. Following links, documentation, and updates can be found at stormcloudsgathering.com, 4th slash, Venezuela. On January 23, 2019, Venezuela's opposition leader Juan Guaidó declared himself acting president and called upon the armed forces to dissipate the government. Very few had ever heard of this man. He had never actually run for president. Guaidó is the head of Venezuela's national assembly, a position very similar to Speaker of the House. Within minutes of this declaration, US president Donald Trump took to Twitter and recognized Guaidó as interim president of Venezuela, writing off the administration of Nicolas Maduro as illegitimate. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, followed by urging Venezuela's military to restore democracy, affirming that the US would back Mr. Guaidó in his attempts to establish a government. They also promised $20 million in humanitarian aid. And to put this into context, Trump is on record saying he is not going to rule out a military option in Venezuela. This is roughly the equivalent of Nancy Pelosi or Mitch McConnell declaring themselves president, calling on the military to overthrow Trump and having China pledge to fund and assist the effort. Now, if you happen to be in the camp that wouldn't actually mind seeing Donald Trump forcibly removed from office, I would encourage you to imagine replacing Trump's name with Obama, Bush, Merkel, my clone. You know, there have been a lot of protests in France lately, and the yellow vast have demanded that Macron step down. I don't we restore democracy in Paris. If Donald Trump can decide on a win which leaders are legitimate and wish could be deposed by tweet, what kind of precedent does that set? And who's next? The grand irony here is that the exact same media outlets that blasted Trump as a quote, illegitimate president whose election is tainted by fraud are now calling his regime change ambitions in Venezuela, bold, not only have they refused to criticize the move, but in fact, they're hailing this as a quote, potential foreign policy victory and a political win at home. Let's get this straight. Trump is an illegitimate president who should be removed from office because of Russian interference, but you're perfectly comfortable with that same illegitimate president toppling foreign governments via Twitter. Though support for Guaido was quickly paraded by Washington's most dependable allies, and lauded by virtually every Western media outlet, the Venezuelan military responded by condemning the coup and reconfirmed their loyalty to Maduro. Russia, China, and Turkey also issued statements condemning US meddling and warned against further interference. By January 25th, reports were flowing in that as many as 400 Russian military contractors were already on the ground. That same day, Pompeo announced that Elliot Abrams, the man who oversaw regime change wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador, was deeply involved in the Iran-Contra scandal, and who was an architect of both the Iraq War and the 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela, which culminated in the kidnapping of Maduro's predecessor Yukushaves, would be put in charge of the effort to, quote, restore democracy and prosperity to their country. Right. So why do you suppose Washington really wants regime change in Venezuela? You'd have to be pretty naive to buy that democracy and prosperity, triple. The Trump administration, Slam's Maduro, is authoritarian. How cuddling up to Mohammed bin Salman, a mass murdering dictator known to dismember reporters he doesn't like. They talk about how the Venezuelan economy has enchambled, but by their own admission, US sanctions have played a significant role in creating that situation. Like the real motive has something to do with the fact that Venezuela is sitting on the world's largest proven oil reserves, and that Western oil companies were kicked out of the country. Hey, how about we ask Donald Trump? With respect to Libya, I'm interested in Libya if we take the oil. If we don't take the oil, no interest. We have to have, look, if we have wars, we have to win the war. What we do is we take over a country and then we hand the keys to people that don't like us. I'll tell you what, Iraq, 100 percent Iran takes over Iraq after we leave. And what really happens with Iraq is they want the oil fields. And I have an unvery good authority that Iran probably won't even be shooting a bullet because they're getting along with the Iraqi leaders better than we are. After all of those lives and after all of the money we spent, and if that's going to happen, we take the oil. Well, how do you think that would impact our relationship with other Arab countries if we go in and say, hey, we're taking the oil, or at least until we're paid back what we think we've spent? How do you think that would affect the Arab nations? Who cares? Who cares? Maduro's predecessor, Hugo Chavez, nationalized the oil industry and used the proceeds to fund his socialist vision for the country. Now you can make the case that his vision was flawed and horribly mismanaged. However, he had strong public support for this mandate. So much support in fact that when US-Bax coupplotters kidnapped Hugo Chavez in 2002, crowds took to the streets in mass and he was quickly reinstated, which brings us back to Wangwaido. There's not much information available on Mr. Guaidó, but if you look up the man who tapped and delete the opposition party, Boluntad Popular, you'll find Washington's fingerprints all over the place. Leo Polo Lopez, the founder of Boluntad Popular, orchestrated the protests in 2002 that led up to the kidnapping of Hugo Chavez. It's no secret that the US has been funding Boluntad Popular for years. In fact, you can still find documents on state.gov, which admits routing at least $5 million to quote support political competition building efforts. Nor is it a secret that US officials met with coupplotters in 2018. But if there were any doubt that Guaidó is Washington's puppet, Mike Pence's call the day before the coup assuring US support should lay that to rest. But Maduro was a bad leader. Compared to who? Which paragon of good governance will we refer to as the model? Trump? Theresa May? Angela Merkel? Macron? Take your time. Juan Guaidó never ran for the office he claimed, and the fact that he directly colluded with the foreign nation to overthrow the man who was elected president marks him as a traitor. Juan Guaidó is a puppet. He installed he will serve the interests of those who bought his ticket. Venezuela's oil industry will be privatized, and the profits will be sucked out of the country by Western corporations. Then as well as one of the three countries I call the troika of tyranny, it'll make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela. One could make the case that Maduro is incompetent. One could make the case that his economic theories are trash. The same could be said for the haircut since he was calling for his removal. But the reality of the matter is that unless you happen to be a Venezuelan citizen, how Venezuela is governed is actually none of your business. Even now things turned out in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine, you'd think people would get the hint. When it comes to spreading democracy, you suck. US regime change operations have left nothing but chaos, death, and destruction in their wink. If you want to make the world a better place, maybe, just maybe, you should start at home. Hi, my name's Aaron. I run SturmklausGathering.com. Now chances are, you didn't catch every single detail in the video you just washed. There's multiple levels of information, and I even slipped in a few corny jokes for those who were paying attention. So you might want to wash it again, press pause from time to time, and read what's on the screen. As usual, I encourage people to fact check everything. You'll find links and documentation, all from mainstream sources, www.sturmklausGathering.com, or it's slash Venezuela. I make these videos because I believe we each have a moral obligation to stand up and speak out against the wars of aggression. If you agree, accept to you to help this message spread. Now in the past, I would tell people to share, to like, comment, follow, subscribe, all that jazz. And this is still a starting point, but the playing field has changed. Social media companies have been cracking down anti-war voices have been censored. If we're going to make a difference in this next phase, we're going to have to get creative. To facilitate this, I've updated the Participate page on my website to include various ways of downloading and distributing content. All of our content is creative commons, no restrictions. To your free steel any of my ideas, slice and dice, put it in your own words, distribute with or without attribution. It's those of you who know the backstory. We're still here, farming, living off-grid and not the dull income. It's taken us over a year to recover from Hurricane Maria, but we've gotten every roof back on and pulling ourselves up. I also want to say thank you to everyone who supported our work over the years. For example, this is Hurricane Maria took our solar panels. I think so you guys, we were able to get a small replacement system, and enable us to charge our laptops and cell phones. That's why we're able to talk to you right now. This is a very small system. So on cloudy days, and we live in the rainforest, sometimes we have to ration electricity, and it's very hard to video edit. So we're trying to save up for a bigger system. If you'd like to help us with that, go to strongcloudsgathering.com forward slash donate.