With a campaign of intrigue on social media launched on September 16, the US businessman and founder of the infamous mercenary company Blackwater, Erik Prince, promoted a plan to raise funds to prepare an eventual armed invasion of Venezuela and the overthrow of its authorities. Although Prince has not fully claimed responsibility for the campaign, he has been one of its most prominent spokespersons.
The Venezuelan minister for interior, justice and peace, Diosdado Cabello, emphasized that behind the entire mercenary operation reported on Saturday is the ultra-right-winger María Corina Machado*. Machado is also fighting with the fugitive from justice, Leopoldo López**, said Cabello, for control of the money of the new mercenary operation against Venezuela.
In a special interview with the Telesur channel, Cabello said on Saturday, September 14, “They call it the ‘liberation of Venezuela;’ they are fighting over who controls it.”
Far-right Venezuelans based in the United States have launched a campaign named “Ya Casi Venezuela” (“we are almost ready, Venezuela”) where they announced that the mercenary tycoon Erik Prince will begin a massive fundraising effort to collect US 600 million dollars to organize a mercenary operation to assassinate Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and other high-ranked Chavista leaders.
Prince’s operation, according to many analysts, is directly linked with the new mercenary plot unveiled in Venezuela where US and Spanish intelligence operatives have been captured.
Erik Prince’s full interview on Ya Casi Venezuela is here. He says that they’ve currently raised $100 million.More notes are at the bottom of the next page.
An op-ed published by Military.com called for the US military to restart the draft amid a recruiting crisis resulting from decades of endless wars in the Middle East and Africa and skyrocketing veteran suicide rates.