Canada. O Canada.

In his presentation of evidence of the plot coup the government claims to have foiled, the president of the National Assembly Diosdado Cabello included the Canadian and U.K. governments in the plot.

According to Telesur, Cabello said “that members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and members of the U.K. diplomatic core in Venezuela, had been involved in [the] plans, including seeking information on airport capacity in case of emergencies.”

Cabello did not explain, if indeed Canadian and U.K. diplomats asked for such information, why that would constitute evidence that they have links to a coup plot.

It is not the first time Canada has been accused of conspiring against the Venezuelan government.

I came across this open forum commenting on the Telesur news clip. It is interesting in that it illustrates some the most common conspiracy theory supporting arguments.

For example, the “historic corroboration” argument -they did it before, they are doing it now, they will do it again in the future-: “Yet since our government was involved in helping oust a democratically elected leader in Haiti, logic demands that this is not an impossibility.”

There are also good examples of the “evidence by association” with another conspiracy theory: “We know that Saudi Arabia is actually manipulating oil prices to hurt Russia so that’s totally credible.”

Some of the commentators however also ask for evidence: “I’d like to see the evidence also;” “I would like to see more information on this;” “Cough up some evidence the rest of the world can verify.”

Some also appeal to a common sense explanation to counter the conspiracy theory: the information supposedly gathered by Canadian officials “would be needed to evacuate Canadian expats, nothing else;” “If there were indeed Canadian agents (RCMP or otherwise) in-country who were quietly gathering info about airport capacities, it is entirely likely that it was in the context of developing a contingency plan to quickly evacuate Canadian expatriates and diplomatic staff from the country”

Finally, in an interesting twist, this blog is quoted in the discussion as supporting the argument that the Venezuelan government is delusional and paranoid. I protest.