{"id":350962,"date":"2018-03-06T05:51:59","date_gmt":"2018-03-06T04:51:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/still-meddling-in-venezuela\/"},"modified":"2018-03-06T05:51:59","modified_gmt":"2018-03-06T04:51:59","slug":"still-meddling-in-venezuela","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/still-meddling-in-venezuela\/","title":{"rendered":"Still Meddling in Venezuela"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<div id=\"attachment_100004\" style=\"max-width: 520px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-100004\" src=\"https:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2018\/02\/Screen-Shot-2018-02-22-at-4.35.11-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"510\" height=\"340\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo by Joka Madruga | <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/\">CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>In recent weeks, the Trump administration has stepped up its\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/cepr.net\/publications\/op-eds-columns\/trump-doubles-down-on-sanctions-and-regime-change-for-venezuela\">efforts\u00a0<\/a>at \u201cregime change\u201d in Venezuela. In the past, Trump himself has even\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/indepth\/opinion\/talk-military-intervention-venezuela-absurd-180220074231779.html\">mentioned\u00a0<\/a>military action as a possible option, but the most recent moves appear more likely to be implemented, and some are already operational. According to sources with knowledge of the matter, the leading opposition contender for Venezuela\u2019s upcoming presidential election, Henri Falc\u00f3n, was told by US officials that the Trump administration would consider financial sanctions against him if he entered the presidential race. (The US State Department did not return requests for comment.) The US\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.state.gov\/r\/pa\/prs\/ps\/2018\/02\/278847.htm\">has backed<\/a>\u00a0the main opposition coalition decision to boycott the election.<\/p>\n<p>Falc\u00f3n is a former governor and retired military officer. He is leading in the latest polls, and according to the most reliable opposition\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/cepr.net\/images\/documents\/venezuela-this-week-feb-26-2018.pdf\">pollster<\/a>, Datanalisis, would defeat Maduro in the election by a margin of nearly 7 percentage points.<\/p>\n<p>Why would the Trump administration want to prevent an opposition leader who could possibly win the presidency in Venezuela from running in this election? There is no way to know for sure, but high-level sources from inside the administration have stated that Florida Senator Marco Rubio is determining US policy toward Venezuela. Rubio is a hard-liner who does not seem interested in an electoral or negotiated solution to Venezuela\u2019s political crisis. On February 9, he appeared to&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2018\/03\/05\/still-meddling-in-venezuela\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Photo by Joka Madruga | CC BY 2.0 In recent weeks, the Trump administration has stepped up its\u00a0efforts\u00a0at \u201cregime change\u201d in Venezuela. In the past, Trump himself has even\u00a0mentioned\u00a0military action as a possible option, but the most recent moves appear more likely to be implemented, and some are already operational. According to sources with knowledge [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-350962","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350962\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}