the big stick...

killing fields

The Guardian’s Tom Phillips’ article “Venezuela Crisis Takes Deadly Toll on Buckling Health System” (January 06, 2019) is more good news for US psychopaths, such as Trump, Bolton and Pompeo. Children are dying in Venezuela. Sanctions are working!

Tom is becoming the Luke Harding of Venezuela. Luke…err, Tom blames all of Venezuela’s problems on president Nicolas Maduro. Tom has piled on, repeating the Washington Consensus vilifying Maduro……that is what “repeaters” do.

If Maduro is illegally and violently removed from office, what will come after? Probably chaos, since there is no united opposition. Chaos is what the US desires, because chaos gives the US an excuse for interventions. A dysfunctional opposition then gives the US the power to be the kingmaker. The US has a self-proclaimed “right” to intervene anywhere, anytime in Latin America, according to the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, and the 1904 “Big Stick” Roosevelt Corollary.

US doctrines do not become internationally laws, and instead usually violate international law. Doctrines are just a “wish-list” of US foreign policy. The main US foreign policy objective is to promote US corporate exploitation of foreign countries.

If the US gets its way in Venezuela, then Venezuela will be ruled by oligarchs, dictators or the military. The Venezuelan people overwhelmingly rejected the 40-years of oligarchy, when they elected Hugo Chavez in 1998. Chavez ran for election on a socialist platform. The US has been trying to overthrow Chavez’s socialist movement from the first moment Chavez took office.

In 2002 Bush backed a failed coup. Trump and his cronies have been planning another coup. This just in from Tom Phillips January 11th: Juan Guaido of the opposition is calling for an international intervention and a military coup. An illegal violent regime change is very likely soon.

After Chavez died of cancer at the age of 58 in 2013, his vice president Nicolás Maduro constitutionally assumed his office. Maduro has been struggling to continue Chavez’s socialist programs for the poor. Maduro is no Chavez, but he is trying to carry on Chavez’s legacy. Maduro was reelected to his second term in 2018.

Maduro faces many economic problems, much of them stem from the collapsing international oil price in 2015. There are good reasons to believe that the collapse in oil prices was a US-Saudi conspiracy, since the economic victims were Russia and Venezuela, two of the countries the US is trying to regime change. Oil is 95% of Venezuela’s revenue from exports, and 25% of its GDP.

The other major problem for Maduro is that the on top of collapsing oil prices the US imposed crushing economic sanctions. Tom’s article unwittingly exposes the lie that the sanctions were targeted, and not intended as collective punishment of the people. Children are dying! Instead of using dead children as propaganda props, economic sanctions should be immediately suspended, and foreign aid sent to save the lives of these innocent victims. Tom did not mention that in the article. All he had for the dead children was crocodile tears.

The US is stomping on Venezuela’s neck, trying to kill socialism. And vengefully killing Venezuelan kids. (Just a few weeks ago, Pompeo mocked Iran, saying “…if you want your people to eat”). The US is stomping its boot on the neck of socialism throughout Latin America, after years of a “pink tide” of elected progressive governments. It is working, as progressive governments in Latin America are becoming extinct.

Critics of Chavez and Maduro claim that socialism never works. It worked just fine under Chavez, as people were lifted out of poverty. Inequality declined dramatically. Critics blame Chavez and now Maduro for “overspending” on the poor.

As the US rebounds from one economic crisis to another, one bank bailout to the next, it is obvious to those that can see. Capitalism does not work. The US with its hyper-neoliberalism is 25th on the UN Human Development Index, adjusted for inequality. The US has its own healthcare crisis of 45,000 people dying every year because they cannot afford healthcare. Many of them children, Tom!

Sad how the critics never blame a country’s economic problems on over spending for US weapons, concentration of wealth in a few wealthy families, or austerity for the people because of crooked debt-imposed austerity by the IMF. The poor are expendable for oligarchs North and South. US healthcare and needed infrastructure suffer from overspending on the military and wars.

Socialism, even a democratic one is a dirty word to the US, because socialist governments use their country’s natural resources, and state-owned enterprises for the benefit of the people. US corporations want those resources, privatized state-owned enterprises, and to have poor people as a source of cheap labor. The driver of US foreign policy is what corporations want.

US foreign policy and US corporate exploitation in Latin America increases poverty there. The poor and indigenous people have their land stolen out from under them, and paramilitary death squads enforce their removal. Large land owners, resource corporations and monocrop plantations for export move in, often they are US corporations.

Unfair trade agreements allow the import of cheap US agricultural products. Cheap agricultural products, such as corn, is highly subsidized by US taxpayers, corporate welfare to agribusiness. Indegenous small farmers cannot compete with the dumped US imports. They are driven out of business and off their farms. With nowhere else to go, the poor and dispossessed migrate to the city where they are exploited as wage-slaves. Because the poor are vulnerable, they are easy targets for extortion from criminal gangs……while corrupt police look the other way.

Ironically, the poor fleeing for their lives, seeking protection and an opportunity to earn a subsistence wage head in the direction of their abuser……to the USA. That is why the US is experiencing a sharp increase in people from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador seeking political asylum.

Trump and his xenophobic racist supporters want the US to turn asylum seekers away. They want the US to be a “gated community”, as Trump put it. When other countries such as Venezuela want to be a “gated community” and keep out US corporations and unfair trade from exploiting them, then the US sends in the jackals.

In the old days the US “opened” foreign “gated communities” with gunboats, and admitted that the purpose was commercial interests. At one time or another, over the past 200 years the US has invaded almost every Latin American and Caribbean country; some of them multiple times. US invasions haven’t been for democracy. They have been for commercial reasons, and the source of wealth for those that became elite families.

Today foreign holdouts from the neoliberal Washington Consensus are “opened” by the CIA, Special Forces, mercenaries, terrorists, local collaborators, the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican Institute, and other government-private NGO’s. NGO’s do overtly what the CIA used to do covertly to sow discontent, opposition and violence.

The US uses psychological warfare and propaganda to “open” closed foreign countries. The US uses threats, bribes, political isolation, economic sanctions and the constant reminder that “all options are on the table”. The mainstream media, such as the Guardian, are complicit by keeping up a steady drumbeat of propaganda.

The US always presents its aggression as being out of concern for democracy, human rights, or because the US is being threatened by some small country, like Cuba, Bolivia, or Venezuela. For example, Pompeo just gave a delusional lying speech in Cairo that the US is a force for good, and he praised the bloody military-coup dictator Sisi. Mentioning commercial interests, greedy banks and the military-industrial-complex is considered uncouth, even though it is the truth behind US foreign policy.

The mainstream media is a vital player and collaborator in preparing the domestic audience for US wars of aggression, interventions, and regime changes. Mockingbirds, such as Tom Phillips, and a compliant media, are very useful idiots in advancing the US agenda. The mainstream media such as the Guardian creates a circus-like atmosphere of a crisis. They sell the public that “something has to be done”.

After a US invasion the mainstream media provides the cover story. When all the lies come out as they did about the Iraq War, then the media sticks its head in the sand and denies any responsibility. When the media acts as a propagandist for war, then they have blood on their hands too.

US imperialism, neocolonialism, resource exploitation, imposed austerity, unfair trade, and the US monopolizing of the international financial system has destroyed millions of people’s lives. Trump says he does not hate US victims. Like a lot of US Americans, he just does not care. The US has no empathy for its victims, but cries crocodile tears for the alleged victims of US enemies. It is the syndrome that Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky referred to as “Worthy and Unworthy Victims”.

As Paul Jay of The Real News Network put it, for Donald Trump, Chuck Schumer, and Tony Soprano, the US is like the mafia: “it’s not personal, it’s just business”.

The Guardian used to challenge the Washington Consensus. It used to inform, instead of misinform. As the Guardian was publishing the Snowden Files the GCHQ cracked down. They smashed the Guardian’s computers, as well as freedom of the press. The Guardian said it obliged as a symbolic act. The “symbolic act” was the Guardian caving in to the GCHQ. Afterwards there was an exodus of many courageous editors and real journalists from the Guardian.

Tom Phillips is the Guardian’s Latin America mockingbird for Washington’s neocons who are trying to destroy Venezuela, and stamp out socialism in Latin America. It is not a question of pro-Maduro or against-Maduro. It is about the integrity and professionalism of journalism.

Tom Phillips, Luke Harding and the Guardian are enablers of US regime change projects, from Russia, Iran, and North Korea to Venezuela. They have abandoned their responsibility to the public and freedom. Tom’s anti-Maduro articles are appearing almost daily. Here is another one on January 9th:“Venezuela’s Neighbours Turn Up Heat as Nicolás Maduro Begins Second Term”; (the Guardian left out the adjective “rightwing” in neighbours).

Anyway, in Tom’s “unfriendly neighbours” article he quotes generously from the rightwing Lima Group. The Lima Group was formed in 2017 for the specific purpose of ousting Maduro and socialism. Washington’s fingerprints are all over the Lima Group. As Tom repeated, the Lima Group voted on January 4th to put crushing regional sanctions on Venezuela……more children will die……and declared Maduro’s democratic election illegitimate.

Before the Lima Group voted, which the US is not a member of, the CIA directo…err, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave a video presentation to the group. Pompeo’s message of “carrots” for those voting correctly, and “sticks” for those voting incorrectly was clear. How shameful to see the US bully its tiny neighbors, and watch them humiliate themselves.

The Lima Group’s members are Argentina, Brazil, Canada (?), Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay and Peru. Most of the members of the Lima Group are disqualified from judging anybody else, because of their own miserable records on democracy and human rights. Most of the members of the group are rightwing governments. Leftwing governments were left out purposely, except by accident. Canada should not even be a member. The Lima Group is for the most part mafia states, and they are doing the enforcement work for their USA godfather.

The US has 79 military bases in Latin America. The supposed purpose of these US bases in Latin America is to counter the threats of:

Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia; the struggle against drug trafficking; regional and transnational criminal networks; the greater presence of China, Russia, and Iran in Latin America and the Caribbean; disaster response [remember the “aid” given Haiti after the earthquake – DWP]; as well as the role assigned to security forces in every country in terms of internal, regional, and international order.”

What a bunch of crapola. Tiny Cuba with 10 million people is a threat? Venezuela with a military budget of $6 billion is a threat? Bolivia with 11 million people, a military budget of $659 million, and its mild-mannered president Evo Morales, the first Indigenous Native president……he is a threat? The aid to Haiti that went into the Clinton Foundation, and never reached the people? Ridiculous!

As with all US foreign policy, the real reason for US military foreign bases and the raison is to promote the interests of US corporations. As General Smedley Butler said in his little classic, “War is a Racket”:

I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Bussiness, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.

I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903……Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints.”

In the 100 years since Butler’s book was written, nothing has changed about US foreign policy and US interventions. It is still a money-making racket for the rich, corporations, banks, oligarchs, and their servants.

The Lima Group, Tom Phillips, and the Guardian are the servants of warmongers that Butler wrote about. They scramble for the crumbs of war profiteers. They eat well enough, if they can stomach the taste of blood.

With the exception of Costa Rica’s center-left Carlos Alvarado Quesada and Mexico’s historically elected left-wing Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (known affectionately as AMLO), the members of the Lima Group are Washington stooges, right-wing governments, and dictatorships. Canada shouldn’t even be in the group, much less vote, because of its extensive, environmentally destructive, and exploitative mining activities in Latin America.

Mexico was the only country to vote not to go along with the Washington consensus of the Lima Group. He sided with the international principles of non-intervention, sovereignty, self-determination, and respect for the internal affairs of other countries.

Lopez Obrador is courageous. It is up to the Venezuelan people to determine their own destiny without illegal economic sanctions, threats and subversion by outsiders. Obrador also stood up to Trump on the humanitarian crisis that the US has created on the US southern border.

Obrador is calling on the US for “reparations” (i.e. US investment) to make amends for its neoliberal-neocon exploitation and invasions. US exploitation has been a driver of poverty in Central America. Obrador has hinted that if the US will not invest to create jobs in Central America, then he might turn to the Chinese. Obrador’s “bad behavior” is pushing the US envelope. We should all cheer and pray for him, because he is putting himself in the crosshairs of Washington.

As for Tom Phillips, his articles further shred his integrity and credibility. His article on “Venezuela’s neighbours” mostly just quoted the Lima Group. In other words, Tom is a stenographer, and the Guardian regurgitates it.

The US purposely creates chaos and crisis as an excuse for intervention. That is what the US is doing to Venezuela. US regime change artists and their mockingbirds in the media never consider what might come after. They really don’t care about the people, except as props for regime change. If and when Maduro’s socialist government falls, then Venezuela will be turned over to rightwing oligarchs, whom will do Washington’s bidding.
Venezuelans can then say “Hello” to neoliberalism, privatization, ExxonMobil, austerity, and neglected social programs. And, “Good-bye” to state-owned enterprises, universal healthcare, free education, and a voice speaking up for the poor.

David William Pear’s previous article about The Guardian’s coverage of Venezuela can be read here.

https://off-guardian.org/2019/01/22/guardian-reports-more-good-news-kids...

By Gus Leonisky at 23 Jan 2019 - 5:25am
Gus Leonisky's blog
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the US big dick..

https://www.voltairenet.org/article204753.html

http://yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/35415

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/12038

The terrible forthcoming destruction of the « Caribbean Basin »

by Thierry Meyssan

President Trump has announced the withdrawal of US combat troops from the « Greater Middle East », but the Pentagon is still pursuing the implementation of the Rumsfeld-Cebrowski plan. This time the aim is to destroy the States of the « Caribbean Basin ». This is nothing like the overthrow of pro-Soviet regimes, as in the 1970’s, but the destruction of all regional State structures, without consideration for friends or political enemies. Thierry Meyssan observes the preparations for this new series of wars.

In a series of previous articles, we presented the SouthCom plan to provoke wars between the Latin-American nations in order to destroy the structures of all the States in the « Caribbean Basin » [1].

Preparations for wars of this magnitude, intended to follow on from the conflicts in the « Greater Middle East » according to the Rumsfeld-Cebrowski strategy, requires a decade [2].

After the period of economic destabilisation [3] and that of military preparation, the actual operation should begin in the years to come by an attack on Venezuela by Brazil (supported by Israël), Colombia (an ally of the United States) and Guyana (in other words, the United Kingdom). It will be followed by others, beginning with Cuba and Nicaragua (the « troïka of tyranny » according to John Bolton).

However, the original plan may be modified, particularly because of the return of the imperial ambitions of the United Kingdom [4] which may influence the Pentagon.

https://www.voltairenet.org/article204656.html

Please remember that JFK was assassinated by his Secret Service. The reasons beyond this are many:

JFK and his Brother Robert were in favour of peace.

They wanted cooperation and dialogue — not empire building.

They tried to stamp out corruption and gangs

They were against the Vietnam war...

See:

Uncle George... and the JFK conspiracies...

By Gus Leonisky at 23 Jan 2019 - 5:48am
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the game is on...

Earlier this week, Venezuela’s National Assembly adopted a statement declaring Maduro usurped power and all the decisions made by him and the executive bodies were void. Maduro replied he would hold the National Assembly accountable for ridiculing the country’s constitution.

Juan Guaido, the president of the disempowered National Assembly took the oath of office as Interim President of Venezuela. Before the ceremony, Guaido claimed that 4 of the 23 Venezuelan states had joined the protests against the government.

"Barinas, Aragua, Bolivar and Nueva Esparta today have awakened in a single voice, rose and supported their legitimate National Assembly", he wrote on Twitter.

US President Donald Trump stated that Washington recognises Guaido as the legitimate head of the South American country.

"We continue to hold the illegitimate Maduro regime directly responsible for any threats it may pose to the safety of the Venezuelan people", Trump added.

https://sputniknews.com/latam/201901231071753846-venezuela-president/

By Gus Leonisky at 24 Jan 2019 - 4:55am
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zanzibar recognises clive palmer as legitimate australian PM...

The US President’s decision to recognize Venezuelan opposition figure Juan Guaido as the county’s “interim president” may set off a “possible civil war” in the oil-rich nation, WikiLeaks has warned.

Donald Trump’s move on recognizing Guaido as the “interim president” of Venezuela might prove disastrous for the country, which has endured years of instability, and spark an open full-blown conflict, the whistleblowing organization WikiLeaks tweeted.

It could lead to a “possible civil war in the country with the largest proven oil reserves,” it said.

Earlier on Wednesday, Trump made a statement berating Nicolas Maduro’s government as an “illegitimate regime.”

“Today, I am officially recognizing the President of the Venezuelan National Assembly, Juan Guaido, as the Interim President of Venezuela,” he said.

Top US officials have thrown their weight behind Guaido over the past few weeks, openly expressing support to him and urging President Maduro to step down, while calling upon the Venezuelan military to support the efforts to restore “democracy” in the country.

The US-backed Guaido, who leads the anti-Maduro protests, has declared himself interim president.

Venezuela has been hit by economic and social crises over the past few years, worsened by a decline in oil prices and pressure from the US. While the Maduro’s opponents blame the situation on the allegedly incompetent actions of the socialist government, it claims that the discontent has been deliberately stirred up by the US and other foreign powers.

https://www.rt.com/news/449541-wikileaks-venezuela-civil-war/

Yep... the USA are always mucking up legitimate governments they don't like with sanctions, economic hardships, diplomatic crapstick, lies, etc. Why not recognise that Hillary Clinton is the legitimate President of the USA because she won the most popular votes? And I heard on the grapevine that Zanzibar has recognised Clive Palmer as the defacto PM of Australia...

Read from top.

By Gus Leonisky at 24 Jan 2019 - 8:04am
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the upsidedown rainbow...

As general rule, it is very questionable for the U.S. government to throw its support behind an opposition leader during an internal political dispute like this. When this administration has flirted with the idea of backing a coup in Venezuela and the president has floated the possibility of invading the country, any overt U.S. interference in Venezuelan politics seems likely to do more harm than good. The U.S. should always be reluctant to take sides in any internal power struggle, and it should be especially cautious when it concerns a country whose people have strong anti-American sentiments. The side that the U.S. backs risks backlash from the population, and that risk is greater when the U.S. is backing a side that may not have the support of most of the people.

The best course of action for the U.S. in cases like this is to stay out of the dispute as much as possible until it has been resolved internally. Every time that the U.S. tries to interfere in Venezuela, it works to Maduro’s benefit, and this could end up having a similar effect. Trump has been taking the advice of reflexive hawks on Venezuela, and that has led him to make one blunder after another. This latest blunder could prove to be the worst yet.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/another-venezuela-blunder/

Read from top.

Here, considering that Trump's unilateral declaration can and will backfire, one should think that Trump is killing two birds at once. First, he makes the US hawks happy and second he reinforces Maduro's position with the majority of the people in Venezuela. The nest step is for China to buy plenty more oil from Venezuela and supply Venezuela with what they need in return. Easy. All is best in the best of the crap the US have been dishing out to people they don't like.

By Gus Leonisky at 24 Jan 2019 - 8:48am
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aussiedom joins the major turds...

Australia has recognised Juan Guaidó as interim president of Venezuela, joining the United States, Canada and Venezuela’s South American neighbours in rejecting incumbent Nicolás Maduro.

The statement from Australian foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, follows a threat from European leaders on Sunday to recognise Guaidó unless Maduro calls an election in the next eight days. The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, also urged countries to “pick a side” in the crisis.

Payne said on Monday that Australia “recognises and supports the president of the national assembly, Juan Guaidó, in assuming the position of interim president, in accordance with the Venezuelan constitution and until elections are held”.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/28/australia-recognises-juan-...

And Trim, Matthews Flinders' cat, decided to breed like rabbits and take over Aussieland...

List of criminal activities in Australia by order of importance — from top:

crims

I thereby declare that the legitimate government of the USA is Jill Stern.

Read from top.

By Gus Leonisky at 28 Jan 2019 - 5:23pm
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america is ruled by a criminal regime...

by Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

Venezuela, another criminal project masterminded by guess who? The United States of America, interfering yet again in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation

There is no doubt in anyone's mind that the USA considers Latin America as its back yard, feeling it has the God-given right to export its own warped vision of democracy, imposing it through repressive Fascist dictatorships, murder, abductions and criminal acts of subversion, terrorism, sabotage and disruption. This has happened time and again in numerous countries, Venezuela being the latest victim.

Read the Bullshit Media, and you will find references to the democratically elected President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, referred to simply as "Maduro", with word-tails attached to him such as "dictator", "despot", "autocrat", nobody yet having remembered to say that he lives in a "compound", whatever that is.

What you will not find is any reference to the tremendous social contribution made by Venezuela's PSUV (Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela, or United Socialist Party of Venezuela) firstly under Hugo Chavez and now, under Nicolás Maduro. To name just a few of its victories, extreme poverty has decreased by two thirds, GDP per capita has risen from 4,105 USD in 1999 to 12,500 USD in 2017, the literacy rate has risen from 91% to 97%... despite a difficult last few years caused by falling oil prices and subversion organized from abroad and implemented by the country's opposition. This is centered on Venezuela's upper middle class and elitists which does not favor the "Chavistas", the supporters of Caracas' social revolution, providing good public services funded by oil revenue where few had existed before. They, and their puppet masters, believe they have the right to the country's tremendous wealth (Venezuela has the highest proven oil reserves in the world).

They prefer privatized hospitals which people have to pay for instead of free healthcare, they prefer to keep the people ignorant so that they cannot read for themselves, they prefer a high infant mortality rate because basically they are a bunch of self-seeking, selfish, spiteful opportunists who collectively do not have an iota of humanity, decency or morals between them. In short, a bunch of traitors.

Now for the truth

What you will not find is any reference to the 150 meetings between the Opposition and the PSUV between May 2016 and January 2018 in the Dominican Republic, which ended with an agreement to hold early presidential elections, only for Rex Tillerson, ex-Secretary of State for the USA, allegedly to make a telephone call to Júlio Borges (ex-President of the National Assembly), from Colombia, telling the Opposition not to sign the agreement.

Washington's ethic: Heads I win, Tails you lose

Why? Because the USA knew the Opposition would lose, and therefore the right wing of the Opposition did not take part in the Presidential elections in Venezuela last May (other factions did), when Maduro won. The USA had other plans, because Washington follows a "Heads I win, tails you lose" ethic in international relations, and especially when it comes down to countries with massive oil resources. Washington wants to use traitors internally to channel the wealth outwards, not to use it for improved public services for the people.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is Venezuela in a nutshell.

The League of the Yapping Chihuahuas

Interestingly, one only has to see which countries jumped to Washington's order to recognize this new imposter who has declared himself President of Venezuela, claiming that he has the right to do so because President Maduro is absent (he is actually in the Presidential residence where he performs his duties as President), to see Washington's list of favorite yapping chihuahuas. Top of the list as usual was chief bedboy the United Kingdom, always ready to receive a pat on the head then get off on a mention of "special relationship", along with 12 Latin American assimilated nations, including the Fascist Bolsonaro of Brazil who declared that he would rather a son of his die in a car crash than be gay.

The argument used by Washington and its yapping chihuahuas is as usual, as ludicrous as it is pig-headed and vapid. They complain about an absence of democracy in Venezuela. How can educating people and improving literacy be anti-democratic? How can making an agreement with the Opposition be anti-democratic? Surely it is undemocratic to make an agreement then break it just because your bedmaster tells you to, surely it is undemocratic to recognize any Tom or Dick who suddenly decides to proclaim himself King of Saturn or President of Venezuela, interfering in an internal process in a sovereign nation, which is a criminal act of intrusion and illegal as per the UN Charter.

So, it is a lie to say all the Opposition did not participate in the election on May 20. It is also a lie to speak about electoral fraud because those who know the voting system in Venezuela are aware that the act of voting uses biometric parameters, so it is impossible to have electoral fraud. Two lies.

Anyone can declare they are President

So the bottom line is that the opposition knew it would lose the election and so most of it refused to take part, to then complain about fraud, declare themselves the rightful winners and lo and behold, two days after the US Vice President Pence stated that the Opposition should go ahead with its plans, the USA was behind them, Guaidó declared himself President, Trump recognized him and the yapping chihuahuas came scrambling along obediently.

This is making a mockery of international law. The people who are responsible for choosing their representatives are the Venezuelans, not Washington. The United States of America today proves that it is ruled by a criminal regime which pursues criminal policies. It is a pariah state, an insult to international law, and has "shame" written on every page referring to it in the annals of history. The history book will be very cruel to Washington when it reports its heinous and hideous acts from 1945 onwards. Its assimilated, controlled and obedient yapping chihuahuas will fare no better.

See more at http://www.pravdareport.com/opinion/columnists/25-01-2019/142200-venezue...

By Gus Leonisky at 28 Jan 2019 - 6:56pm
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a long and unbroken record of US aggression...

From

Philip Roddis

My previous post on Venezuela claimed media on both sides of the Atlantic to have a long and unbroken record of backing US aggression on the global south. Of scores of examples I might have given, I chose the Observer’s 2003 call for ‘decisive action’ against Iraq.

I stand by the general claim but it needs refinement. Today’s Observer runs an editorial on Why Venezuela needs consensus, not conflict. It opens with the image shown above, of an anti Maduro rally (or to be pedantically accurate, one in support of a Juan Guaidó “recognised” by the USA – dutifully followed by that long list of leaders beholden to Washington and Wall St. – as president). Note the absence of faces. So what? So former UK Ambassador Craig Murray, a man of proven courage and principle, posted a few days ago this picture:

It too has been widely circulated to show mass domestic opposition to Maduro. But, as I point out in my previous post, Murray wisely invites us to look closely at those it depicts. Do they seem ill fed and dressed in rags? Or are these the faces of those who have done very well from their country’s ruthless subordination to El Norte, via domestic comprador classes? The faces, in fact, of those who feel most threatened by the Chavismo project of social justice.

I mention this because corporate media – and, for reasons I’ll get to, liberal media in particular – avoid active whoppers when they can. Such lies have clear dangers. But the pictures above, or to be precise the contexts in which they are fed to us, underpin a passive lie. For one thing the second of them shows hands only, making it hard to assess – is someone at GMG shadowing Murray? – the socio-economic status of those present. For another, as the sole image in today’s editorial, it is one of many receiving far wider circulation in Western media than those showing support for Maduro. Upshot? We are subconsciously – and this is where propaganda operates – primed to see a nation united against its leader. Does it work? Check out the BTL comment, by liberal intelligentsia, below any Guardian opinion piece on Venezuela.{a href=”#1″>1

The two images exemplify a bigger lie – chain of lies in fact – implied by my claim, in that previous post, that corporate media have “abdicated a core duty in their refusal to explore motives that cast a very different light on Western interventions sold to us as humanitarian”.

I might add that, where such abdication provides ideological cover for military assaults of the kind seen in the middle east, those media are parties to what was defined at Nuremberg as “the supreme international crime” of the “initiation or waging of a war of aggression”. Yes, it’s that serious.

Meanwhile, back in Caracas, would we be quite so sure of Maduro as odious tyrant were we to encounter, on a daily basis, images and footage like this??

Moving on, the Observer editorial tells us in paragraph two that Maduro has “disastrously mismanaged” his country – and in paragraph three that Venuzeula “would be well rid of him” – while cautioning in paragraph four against “US intervention”. Two things about this. First is the mealy-mouthed mendacity of implying that Washington meddling is an imminent possibility, when it is a matter of historic record: on the continent as a whole (plus Central America) and in Venezuela specifically. From murderous and chaos inducing sanctions, to attempted coup on Chavez, El Norte’s inglorious record of installing abysmal regimes to further Wall Street ends is beyond dispute. As is liberal media’s double act of looking the other way, then shedding tears after the fact.

Which brings us to the second point, that hand-wringing and fence-sitting[2] are something of a habit at Guardian Media Group. On this I offer two insights by Noam Chomsky: this one …

The right wing claims the press has a liberal bias, and there’s some truth to that … liberal bias is important in a sophisticated system of propaganda. You don’t express the propaganda: that’s vulgar and easy to penetrate, you just presuppose it. And the presuppositions are instilled not by beating you over the head with them but by making them the foundation of discussion. You don’t accept them, you’re not in the discussion.

… and this, from Understanding Power

So when American dissidents criticize the atrocities of some enemy state like Cuba or Vietnam, it’s no secret what the effects of that criticism are going to be: it’s not going to have any effect whatsoever on the Cuban regime, for example, but certainly will help the torturers in Washington and Miami to keep inflicting their campaign of suffering on the Cuban population [i.e. through the US-led embargo]. Well, that is something I do not think a moral person would want to contribute to.

Hear hear.

One last point, for now. The opening paragraph of today’s Observer editorial tells us that:

Nicolás Maduro was re-elected Venezuela’s president last May by fraudulent means, as regional governments and independent observers noted at the time, and his leadership lacks legitimate authority. Maduro, in office if not in power since 2013, has proved himself an incompetent and unimpressive successor to the late socialist president, Hugo Chávez, on whose name and reputation he shamelessly trades.

Now you, your sceptical tendencies confirmed by the fact you give the likes of me time of day, will follow that embedded link. Others will not, and they outnumber you. Taking as read that the link is to evidence of Maduro’s lack of legitimacy, they’ll pass on the detour and stay with the main article, congratulating themselves at its close on being better informed through their diligence. Later, confronted by ‘Maduro apologists’, they’ll cite his lack of legitimacy as proven.

Not you though. You’ll follow through to see that the link is to another Observer editorial, from last May. Like me you’ll read it, and like me you’ll struggle to see a scintilla of real evidence for this putative lack of legitimacy. (For an example of that, Brits might look a little closer home, a few miles across la Manche, to be exact.)

And this – as I’ve commented more than once in the context of Russia, of Syria and of Ukraine – is another staple from the Guardian propaganda toolkit. By repeating unsubstantiated claims, then using them to lend credence to other unsubstantiated claims, our sincere but utterly wrong opinions are daily manufactured.

Till we decide we’ve had enough.

[1] Re BTL comment, let me single out that currently fashionable phrase, ‘whataboutery’. I’ve written before on ‘a stubbornly empiricist refusal to join the dots; to view each new situation as isolated and without precedent’. This tendency to view Syria as if Iraq and Libya hadn’t happened, Venezuela as if Chile and scores of other US coups hadn’t either, is reinforced by that ‘whataboutery’ response. Offensive and philistine, it gives those who deploy it immunity from any imperative to study patterns.
[2] Fence-sitting and having it both ways cascade through liberal media. As Guardian and Observer are vital to Chomsky’s “sophisticated system of propaganda”, so too are house leftists like Owen Jones and George Monbiot vital to the Guardian. Both damn Bashar Assad to Hell and back – and do the same with those experts, from Mother Agnes to Scott Ritter and Ted Postul, critical of Empire-serving claims against him – but preserve their reputations by winding up lamely opposed to military interventions they do so much to give cover to.

Philip Roddis

Scribbler for some sixty years, and for fifteen a photographer too, Philip Roddis began blogging in the early noughties by inflicting film reviews on an unsuspecting public. Soon he was doing the same with illustrated writings on wanderings in Asia and Africa. He writes “to help me think, and because I like to be read”, and finds photography's problem solving aspects "a break from those of writing, as well as an aid to writing and to reflective travel”.

https://off-guardian.org/2019/01/30/venezuela-a-study-in-opinion-manufac...

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By Gus Leonisky at 30 Jan 2019 - 3:35pm
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US philosophy: sanctions, blackmail and robbery...

From Kit Knightly

This website started as a way to air opinions that The Guardian would not allow in their comments section. Over time it evolved into fact-checking. Rarely has it been so simple. This is The Guardian’s latest story on the unfolding crisis in Venezuela, it is headlined:

Venezuela: Maduro accuses US of trying to ‘get hands on our oil’

That headline is technically true. Nicolas Maduro – the beseiged Venezuelan President and the MSM’s current “monster of the week” – did accuse the USA of wanting to control Venezuela’s vast crude oil deposits. He cited Iraq and Libya as recent examples of similar behaviour.

What The Guardian did NOT mention is that John Bolton, Donald Trump’s neocon National Security Advisor, admitted that Maduro was right. He told Fox Business that Venezuela’s oil was a big motivation for Trump’s admin:

We’re in conversation with major american companies now…I think we’re trying to get to the same end result here…it will make a BIG difference to the American economy if we could have American oil companies invest in, and produce, Venezuela’s oil capabilities.”

There you have it – straight from the Walrus’ mouth. The US is interested in Venezuela’s oil. He also refered to it as a “big business opportunity”. (Here is a second link to it, just in case Fox News decided to take the (embarrassing) admission off their website.)

This fact clashes with the false narrative The Guardian, and their co-conspirators in the media, are trying to push on their public. The state-sponsored narrative is that Maduro is lying or crazy. A paranoid dictator desperately clinging to power, and spinning fairy tales to defend himself.

John Bolton’s admission smashes that lie to pieces. So, of course, it is not mentioned.

The Guardian’s Latin America correspondent, Tom Phillips, an inveterate liar-by-omission, could easily have included this information. He chose not to, if paid propagandists can ever be said to have a choice in what they print.

https://off-guardian.org/2019/01/31/venezuela-guardian-sparing-neocon-bl...

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By Gus Leonisky at 1 Feb 2019 - 9:17am
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sanity in italy...

ROME (Sputnik) – Italian Deputy Foreign Minister Manlio Di Stefano said Italy has not recognized Venezuelan opposition leader and the head of the National Assembly, Juan Guaido, as the country’s interim president amid the escalating political crisis in the South American country.

"Italy does not recognize Guaido because we absolutely oppose the fact that a country or a group of third countries can determine internal policies of another country. This is called the principle of non-interference and has been recognized by the United Nations," Di Stefano, told the Tv2000 broadcaster on Thursday.

Di Stefano also emphasized the importance of avoiding the eruption of a military conflict, similar to the war in Libya, in Venezuela.

Meanwhile, Italy’s another Deputy Foreign Minister Guglielmo Picchi, wrote on Twitter on Thursday that his party believed the presidency of Maduro was coming to its end, calling for a new election to be held in Venezuela with the participation of independent observers.

https://sputniknews.com/latam/201902011072014281-italy-not-recognizing-g...

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By Gus Leonisky at 1 Feb 2019 - 5:00pm
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insanity due to the oily usa...

The United States has just imposed a series of sanctions on the PDVSA, the state company tasked with exploiting and selling the hydrocarbons belonging to Venezuela. According to the US Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, “the Maduro Regime” was making use of the PDVSA to “control, manipulate and rob the people of Venezuela”. ‎

When the US Treasury Secretary talks about “manipulating the people” he is referring to the fact that the Bolivarian Republic was redistributing the profits of PDVSA among the country’s poor. ‎ Under the new US sanctions, from now on, US companies will no longer be able to pay the constitutional authorities of the Bolivarian Republic for Venezuelan oil. Instead, payment must be made to the self-declared “Acting President” Juan Guaidó. ‎

A collateral effect of this measure is that CITGO, the US subsidiary of PDVSA, will not be able to pay off the loans that the Russian giant Rosneft had granted it. Due to this, Rosneft could seize the three refineries that CITGO operates in the United States as well as its oil pipelines in this country. But the Pentagon will surely be opposed for “reasons of national security”.

Since PDVSA was established in 1976, the personnel of this company have lived detached from the rest of the Venezuelan people, with their eyes firmly fixed ‎on Washington. They are completely against the Bolivarian Movement.

During the Presidency of Hugo Chávez, PDVSA slowed down its production but its profits increased. Although the Venezuelan state wanted to provide refineries with facilities to treat the shale oil that had just been discovered, it restrained its zeal in pursuing this activity: President Chavez feared that such initiative might provoke a US invasion. ‎

Under the Presidency of Nicolas Maduro, a series of scandals followed, crippling the PDVSA: the managing team siphoned off millions and transferred them to Andorra before the State managed to discover the financial manipulation and prosecute the criminals. Most of the PDVSA’s employees support the coup of Juan Guaidó and sabotage the work of PDVSA by not turning up at work. This has triggered a fall in production which was reduced to a fifth of its capacities.

Translation
Anoosha Boralessa

https://www.voltairenet.org/article204965.html

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By Gus Leonisky at 1 Feb 2019 - 5:08pm
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do cry for me, venezuela...

One thing's for sure... Venezuelan opposition leader and "head of the National Assembly", Juan Guaido, did not come with his idea of self-presidential proclamation by his little self... Without anyone from the big potomac sewer whispering in his ears to "do it, we'll support you", not in a willy-nilly round of smelly dead fish in Florida would this upstart pull this "clever" stunt.

The whole thing has been staged from Washington, with the blessings and coaching from the CIA and the BoltandNutsons shaking the Trump muppet via his dick(head). One can smell the preparation and the planning for the "coup" in the Pentagonial script department.

Who from the USA, did Venezuelan opposition leader and the head of the National Assembly, Juan Guaido, secretly meet — those men in black to tell him WHAT to do?

Not a hard thing to discover for any astute journalists who known the price of fish...

By Gus Leonisky at 1 Feb 2019 - 10:32pm
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a study in how to rob a country...

David William Pear is a progressive columnist writing on U.S. foreign policy, economic and political issues, human rights and social issues. David is a Senior Contributing Editor of The Greanville Post and a prior Senior Editor for OpEdNews for four years 2014 to 2018, and he is still a "Trusted Writer" for OpEdNews. David has been writing for The Real News Network for over 10 years, and has been a long-term financial supporter.

by David William Pear

What is happening to Venezuela is a coup d’état and it has nothing to do with democracy, human rights, free and fair elections or international law. The US and Canada represent the antithesis of those values; defying the United Nations Charter and international law by interfering in the internal affairs of Venezuela. Their hands are not clean, and their motives are not pure, because their foreign policy objectives everywhere are to promote the interests of their domestic corporations, oligarchs and war profiteers.

In 2017 the US and Canada formed a posse of vigilantes that they named the Lima Group. The gang members of the Lima Group are Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Saint Lucia. Mexico’s newly elected liberal government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has withdrawn from the Lima Group, saying that Mexico follows the principles of sovereignty, non-intervention, and self-determination in foreign policy. Viva AMLO!

The US, which is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, handpicked the gang members of the Lima Group. Most are rightwing governments, and politically dominated by business-centric oligarchs, and wealthy families just like those that are trying to take control in Venezuela. Fascism, supported by corporations, elites and imperialists are on the march. There is a new wave of anti-immigrant, xenophobic, evangelical, homophobic, and social conservatives gaining power in Latin America, as elsewhere.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, Idriss Jazairy specifically condemned the US and Canada for imposing economic sanctions on Venezuela. Jazairy stressed that the economic sanctions are immoral on humanitarian grounds, and they are an illegal attempt to overthrow the internationally recognized sovereign government of Venezuela. On January 31, 2019 the UN released a report that quoted him as saying:

I am especially concerned to hear reports that these sanctions are aimed at changing the government of Venezuela…Coercion, whether military or economic, must never be used to seek a change in government in a sovereign state. The use of sanctions by outside powers to overthrow an elected government is in violation of all norms of international law…Economic sanctions are effectively compounding the grave crisis affecting the Venezuelan economy, adding to the damage caused by hyperinflation and the fall in oil prices.”

Former UN Special Rapporteur Alfred de Zayas, who is also an international expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, said on his website on February 7th the following about the current situation in Venezuela:

Members of the United Nations are bound by the Charter, articles one and two of which affirm the right of all peoples to determine themselves, the sovereign equality of states, the prohibition of the use of force and of economic or political interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states…… the enormous suffering inflicted on the Venezuelan people by the United States is nothing less than appalling. The economic war against Venezuela, carried out not only by the United States, but also by the Grupo de Lima in clear violation of Chapter 4, Article 19 of the OAS Charter, the financial blockade and the sanctions have demonstrably caused hundreds of deaths directly related to the scarcity of food and medicines resulting from the blockade.”

Zayas also said that what the US, Canada and the mainstream media are doing to Venezuela reminds him of the deliberate disinformation campaign that led to the US, and the “coalitions of the willing” that included Canada anonymously, illegally invading Iraq in 2003, and their destruction of Libya in 2011.

In the case of Libya in 2011, the so-called “no-fly zone” authorized by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 was for the intended purpose of bringing about a ceasefire. It specifically forbade any “boots on the ground”, which the US is known to have violated.

The US, Canada and other NATO forces illegally exceeded their UN mandate, and used it as a cover to completely destroy Libya and regime change. It later was learned that the supposed Gadaffi genocide, which the no-fly zone was intended to stop, was a hoax. The point is that the US and its junior partners can never be trusted to tell the truth when a lie serves their purposes much better.

Whenever the US and its junior imperial partners resort to pleas of democracy and human rights, an ulterior motive should be assumed. For instance, the little the US and Canada care about democracy, human rights and free elections is shown by their long history of supporting non-democratic governments.

Canada has supported every US regime change project, and the overthrow of democratic governments, which did not conform to their mutual foreign policy objectives. Both countries’ foreign policies prefer corrupt business-centric rightwing repressive governments. Democracy and human rights conflict with the interests and profits of their exploitative and extractive corporations.

Both the US and Canada supported the apartheid government of South Africa right up until the very end; they support the apartheid government of Israel, which is the number one violator of human rights in the world today; and they both sell arms and support the most repressive government in the world, Saudi Arabia. Human rights have not been an issue.

The US overthrew the democratically elected Salvador Allende of Chile, with Canada’s support. Both countries supported the junta regime of Augusto Pinochet, whom was later arrested for crimes against humanity. Both the US and Canada supported the illegitimate coup governments of Haiti in 2004, and in Honduras in 2009. By some estimates, the US (and Canada) support 73% of the dictators in the world. Human rights have not been a concern.

The US and Canada have been trying to overthrow the democratically elected reformist government of Venezuela, known as the Bolivarian Revolution, since 1999. Hugo Chavez’s elections were all certified by the Carter Foundation, the OAS and other legitimate observers. Chavez was elected in free, fair and democratic elections, but that did not matter to the US and Canada. They wanted to overthrow him anyway. Human rights were not a concern.

Democracy, human rights, the right-to-protect, humanitarian interventions and all the other righteous soundbites are just talking points for the US and Canada. They are only used against governments that get in their way, and never used against corrupt business-friendly governments, no matter how criminal. Paul Jay, a Canadian, who is the editor-in-chief of The Real News Network says that he personally became aware in 2005 of Canada’s involvement in the conspiracy of regime change in Venezuela.

The hypocrisy of US concerns over human rights is on full display in a leaked US State Department memo from Brian Hook to then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. The memo is titled “Balancing Interests and Values”. The memo does not mince words about human rights concerns being only a tactic to use against adversaries:

America’s allies should be supported rather than badgered…. allies should be treated differently — and better — than adversaries….. We do not look to bolster America’s adversaries overseas; we look to pressure, compete with, and outmaneuver them….. pressing those regimes [adversaries] on human rights is one way to impose costs, apply counter-pressure, and regain the initiative from them strategically.”

Hook continues his memo by giving Tillerson a history lesson on the art of US hypocrisy from 1940 to 2017.

In other words, rightwing dictators, military juntas, ethnic cleansing, fraudulent elections, human rights violations, political prisoners, torture and murder should be treated differently — and better — with compliant allies. Even when adversaries are democratically elected, they should be roasted in order to “extract costs”, according to Hook….. but not because the US cares about people.

There is no serious doubt about the legitimacy of the more than a dozen elections in Venezuela between 1998 to 2013. That did not prevent the US and Canada from “extracting costs”, and trying to overthrow Hugo Chavez anyway. Given the examples of the US and Canada overthrowing the democratically elected governments in Chile, Haiti, Honduras, and Egypt, and their support for murderous rightwing coup-governments; the objections to Maduro are unbelievable.

In the past few years, there have been a half-dozen certified democratic elections in Venezuela. The real motives for opposing Maduro must be something else. It is obvious what that something else is. The real motives behind the US and Canada are Venezuela’s massive wealth in oil, gas, and other natural resources, such as gold, copper and coltan.

There are also tremendous profits to be had by bringing Venezuela into the Washington Consensus. US and Canadian banks profit from IMF and World Bank loans. The corrupt politicians and oligarchs steal the loans, and then it is the poor that have to repay them, through higher prices for life’s necessities, reduced wages and government-imposed austerity. The privatization of state-owned enterprises at corrupt fire-sale prices enrich oligarchs and corporations through rent-seeking, instead of adding any value.

The Washington Consensus also forces unequal trade agreements and currency devaluation on poor countries. The resulting lower prices are used to extract natural resources, monocrops and sweatshop produced products for export. Small farmers are driven off the land because they cannot compete with dumped US and Canadian tax-payer highly-subsidized agricultural products, such as corn and wheat. Those that suffer are the local farmers, the poor, landless and indigenous people, who go from subsistence, to poverty, to wage slavery.

The chaotic political situation in Venezuela has been purposely made worse by the US and Canada. Since Venezuela is “cursed” with natural resources, especially oil, its economy has historically gone from boom to bust depending on international commodity prices.

It was low oil prices, endemic poverty, gross inequality, and neoliberal economic policies that favored the rich in the 1990’s, which swept Chavez into power in the 1998 election. A majority of the Venezuelan people elected Hugo Chavez and his “Bolivarian Revolution” of rewriting the constitution, increasing participatory democracy, frequent elections, and implementing social programs for the poor. The Carter Center (as well as the OAS) certified the election, and praised Venezuela’s modern voting systems as one of the best in the world:

Venezuelans voted peacefully, but definitively for change. With more than 96 percent voting for the two candidates who promised to overhaul the system, Venezuelans carried out a peaceful revolution through the ballot box”, said Jimmy Carter’s Foundation upon Chavez’s victory.

The US opposed Chavez regardless of fair and democratic elections. A surprisingly honest 2005 article in the Professional Journal of the US Army explained why the US opposed Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution for economic and geopolitical reasons [Emphasis added]:

Since he was elected president in 1998, Chávez has transformed Venezuelan Government and society in what he has termed a Bolivarian revolution. Based on Chávez’s interpretation of the thinking of Venezuelan founding fathers Simón Bolívar and Simón Rodríguez, this revolution brings together a set of ideas that justifies a populist and sometimes authoritarian approach to government, the integration of the military into domestic politics, and a focus on using the state’s resources to serve the poor — the president’s main constituency.”

“Although the Bolivarian revolution is mostly oriented toward domestic politics, it also has an important foreign policy component. Bolivarian foreign policy seeks to defend the revolution in Venezuela; promote a sovereign, autonomous leadership role for Venezuela in Latin America; oppose globalization and neoliberal economic policies; and work toward the emergence of a multipolar world in which U.S. hegemony is checked. The revolution also opposes the war in Iraq and is skeptical of the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). The United States has worked fruitfully in the past with Venezuela when the country pursued an independent foreign policy, but the last three policies run directly contrary to U.S. foreign policy preferences and inevitably have generated friction between the two countries.”

Whether it is Chavez or Maduro, the US, Canada and the oligarchs in Venezuela have been trying to kill the Bolivarian Revolution from when it was an infant in the cradle.

The opposition with the support of imperialists have been trying to get rid of the Bolivarian Revolution with every means imaginable.

They have tried a US supported military coup against Hugo Chavez in 2002. It failed.
They tried strikes by the management of the Venezuelan oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela. It failed.
They tried a recall election in 2004. It failed.
Obama tried economic sanctions in 2015. It failed.
The US and Canada tried an economic blockade in 2017. It has failed, as of this article.
They tried to assassinate Maduro with a drone. It failed.

In 2018 the opposition boycotted the election. Maduro won by a landslide. He had invited the United Nations to be election observers, but the opposition kept the UN away. Other international observers certified the election. Now the opposition complains about the integrity of the election observers. The opposition is making a circus out of elections. The objections by the oligarchs, the US and Canada that the 2018 elections in Venezuela where fraudulent is itself a fraud. Their objectives are to knowingly “extract costs” that Venezuela can ill afford.

The US chose Canada to be the mouthpiece for the Lima Group, but the coup is being directed by imperial powers in Washington. Canadian politeness is not working, and its imperialism is out of the closet where it has been hiding. As Canadian historian Yves Engler puts it, the US carries the big stick in Latin America, and Canada comes along afterwards with the billy club. Engler is referring to Canadian peacekeeping missions, which he exposes as actually policing and counter insurgency missions. Yves Engler has written dozens of books and articles on Canadian imperialism.

Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau may be fooling some of the people, some of the time. But he is now under attack at home for corruption . His accusers say that he has obstructed justice in the world-wide corruption scandal involving the powerful international Canadian conglomerate SNC-Lavalin. SNC-Lavalin is a mining, energy and engineering company that is typical of the corrupt face of Canadian imperialism

Trudeau’s conspiracy with Trump to overthrow the internationally recognized government of Venezuela has unmasked Canada as a second-rate imperial power. Upon closer look, Canada has been protecting its oil and mining companies that have been raping Latin American countries, destroying their environment and poisoning their people for decades. Canadian imperialism has to obey its “deep state” too, as Canadian journalist Bruce Livesey puts it:

Those who believe the oil industry has become a deep state point to how the political elites, whether Liberal, Conservative or NDP — from Justin Trudeau to Stephen Harper to Rachel Notley — go to bat for the industry…”

Mining companies as well as oil and gas are a big part of Canada’s “deep state”. They control approximately 50 to 70% of the mines in Latin America, and they are not held accountable in Canadian courts for their destruction to the environment and harm to human beings in foreign countries. They dispossess the indigenous people and poor of their land. They hire goons to threaten, attack and murder those that try to form labor unions, journalists, and demonstrators against land confiscation and human rights abuses. Honduras is just one example of what happens when a democratically elected leader is overthrow by a US and Canadian-backed coup; Canadian mining companies move in. It is all exposed in the book “Ottawa and Empire: Canada and the Military Coup in Honduras”, by Tyler Shipley.

Dispossessing native people of their land and natural resources comes natural to Canada. After all, like the US it was a settler colonial outpost for the British Empire. Both the US and Canada committed genocide and ethnic cleansing of their mutual Indigenous People. They were even allies and coordinated the genocide. According to historian Andrew Graybill:

…the NorthWest Mounted Police were created and the Texas Rangers renewed and reorganized in the early 1870s specifically to address the pressing ‘native question’ confronting Texas and western Canada, among the few places where bison still roamed after 1870….. both Austin and Ottawa called on their rural police to manage indigenous populations facing societal collapse.…. by controlling or denying the Natives access to the bison.”

In other words, both the US and Canada collaborated in killing the buffalo to extinction. It was the coup de grâce for the starving “native question”.

Mining is one of Canada’s biggest and most powerful and politically influential industries. Canada has approximately 60% of all mining companies in the world. Canadian companies such as Ascendant Copper, Barrick Gold, Kinder Morgan, and TriMetals Mining have operations in Canada, Latin America and elsewhere. They are continuing the ethnic cleansing of the “native question” in Latin America, and at home. (See map and statistics of Canadian Mining in Latin America.)

Canadian mining and natural resource companies are heavy handed when it comes to First Nations at home. TransCanada Corporation recently was in the news because of its pipeline route, which they are trying to put through First Nation’s land in the Wet’suwet’en territory, in northern British Columbia. On a court order, a militarized unit of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police broke up a road blockade, which the tribal leaders had put up to keep the pipeline company out of their nation. The Mounties who lacked jurisdiction arrested 14 tribal leaders on their sovereign land.

During the reign of the British Empire, Canada helped the British put down slave rebellions in the Caribbean. Canada was involved in the slave trade, and slavery was legal in Canada until 1834. The products of slavery, such as cotton and sugar were used for trade and to industrialize Canada. When the British conquered New France, the 1760 declaration of surrender signed in Montreal specifically said:

The Negroes and panis [aborigines] of both sexes shall remain, in their quality of slaves, in the possession of the French and Canadians to whom they belong; they shall be at liberty to keep them in their service in the colony, or to sell them; and they may also continue to bring them up in the Roman Religion.”

In the 19th century Canadian banking and insurance companies, along with those of the British, monopolized finance in British controlled parts of Latin America. Canada is still financially powerful in the English-speaking Caribbean. For example, the Bank of Nova Scotia, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, and the Royal Bank of Canada, as well as Sun Life Financial are dominate in the Bahamas, Belize, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Jamaica, Turks and Caicos, and Trinidad. After the decline of the British Empire, Canada assumed its natural role as a second-rate imperial power and junior partner for US imperialism.

In the Lima Group, Canada is the US’s junior partner. The US has the leading role from behind the curtain. To prove it, right on cue at the January 4th meeting of the Lima Group, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pulled the curtain back in a video presentation to the group. Pompeo showed the members who they would have to answer to if they did not vote according to Washington’s wishes. The Lima group obeyed, and voted to politically isolate and economically blockade Venezuela, contrary to international law. Leaving nothing to chance, Pompeo again addressed the group from behind the video curtain at their February 4th meeting in Ottawa.

As Christopher Black wrote in New Eastern Outlook:

The United States is the principal actor in all this but it has beside it among other flunkey nations, perhaps the worst of them all, Canada, which has been an enthusiastic partner in crime of the United States since the end of the Second World War. We cannot forget its role in the aggression against North Korea, the Soviet Union, China, its secret role in the American aggression against Vietnam, against Iraq, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine, Haiti, Iran, and the past several years Venezuela.”

Black left out many other imperial crimes of the partners in Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Somalia, Sudan, the Congo, Palestine, Libya, Yemen, etc. The US and Canada are “always there for each other” and stand “shoulder to shoulder” in war and imperialism, to use Justin Trudeau’s own words. Even against Cuba!

The current Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland recently referred to Venezuela as being in “Canada’s backyard”. As the SNC-Lavalin case illustrates, the Canadian “backyard” of imperialism also extends to Africa, Asia, the Middle East and former Soviet Union republics, such as Ukraine.

This is not the 19th century. Central America, South America and the Caribbean Islands are not anybody’s back yard. It is insulting, degrading and shows a colonial mentality for the US and Canada to even think about having a backyard.

Hands Off Venezuela, Canada and US Go Home!

https://off-guardian.org/2019/02/14/hands-off-venezuela-canada-and-us-go...

First published by Greanville Post

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By Gus Leonisky at 15 Feb 2019 - 5:41am
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welcome to the empire

The situation in Venezuela is complicated. We know this. One Gus Leonisky could come in and rush to support Maduro like the John Pilger's, Russia, China and South Africa. On balance, one has to look at the facts and at least prevent another interference from the USA, whether the young Guaidó is good for the Venezuelan people or not.

Like in all its activities and choices of interfering with politics on the world scene, the US will support terrorism way ahead of socialism. This is a given. The US HATE socialism. They will even support dictators and tinpots ahead of socialism. At present, the USA has many countries under US sanctions. It’s like punishing people for being who they are because we don’t like them, whether that’s what they want or not.

Most of these sanctions are economically based to profit the USA. The USA hate competition, hate level playing fields and always endeavour to rot the core of true capitalism to achieve their own version of success in this field. It’s the Empire.

For example, the US could buy oil from Venezuela far cheaper and far more efficiently than having to pollute their own foreshores on the Atlantic coast with silly destructive unwanted incoming exploration. But this would help the Maduro government survive and continue its social programme of free education, free medical services and the likes. This is the same stuff that Syria's Al Assad has been hammered for since 2009 (since 1949 really) recently. Al Assad survived. Maduro is in a more precarious situation, as his is less obvious. He is painted by the Western media and Wikipedia as being possibly worse than Hitler.

In order to achieve “regime change”, the US will sponsor terrorists in many cases (see Contra affair in Nicaragua) like in Syria until the Rooskies came along. The USA will directly intervene, under false pretence of human rights (which the US are often flaunting within to achieve their own goals) such as in Libya and fabricate false reasons to invade Iraq. This is another given. Presently the USA are placing a lot of stress on Venezuela. The US do not like free education nor does it like free medical services. they hate socialism. Did I say this before?

So, Maduro is painted as ‘corrupt”, a state of affairs in which the USA is excellent as. My research/survey has come up with an astonishing figure: more than 40 per cent of Americans are corrupt. Tax evasion comes to the top of the list, dirty deals come second and then there is an array of fiddles — from sex scandals at all level of society, including church ministries, for favours and with underaged kids — to selling weapons on the “free market” that end up in the hands of loonies shooting schoolkids. Then there is the “drug problem”…

So should Maduro be “corrupt” he is in good company with the USA. But Maduro is not corrupt per se. He could be corrupt for using oil revenues to help pay for programs of free education and free medical services, instead of capitalising those revenues into private profits.

The recent cash for university places for duds is an example of corruption throughout the US, this one having been going on for yonks in various forms, but not exclusive to university placements. The US has corruption in its veins, at the political level in the Democrats and Republicans.

Both parties agree that “socialism” is evil, while both parties cannot see that capitalism is the sweet death of the planet through its degradation of nature and the warming of its atmosphere. We are preparing our comfortable death bed.

At this stage, young Guaidó does not seem to be a bad fellow… Okay. We can give him a good mark. But Guaidó is friendly with a character who seems to have been generous with his billions — the present President of Chile, who would be good friend with the USA administration, whichever it is, R or D, including Obama, at whose desk the President of Chile sat in the “presidential chair" — being the only world president daring to do so. Obama laughed it off.

Sebastián Piñera, the president of Chile, is a first class misogynist. He denigrates women. He made a lot of cash with various investments, including LAN and TV, etc. Nothing wrong with this, considering he placed his cash in various charitable trusts while he is president — probably with the intent to return to the cash when he is not president anymore.

Some criticism of Sebastián Piñera has been his close relationship with the ideas of Pinochet. Pinochet was a repressive dictator installed by the USA to get rid of the socialist government in Chile. We know the same shit just happened in Brazil.

In January 2018, Piñera unveiled his cabinet: his interior minister, Andrés Chadwick, was a vocal supporter of the Pinochet dictatorship, which had previously appointed him president of the Catholic University Students Federation. In 2012 Chadwick "expressed deep repentance" for this support, after discovering "over the years" serious human rights violations committed by the dictatorship, while still defending the regime on other grounds.

Andrés Chadwick and present justice minister Hernán Larraín were also major supporters of the secretive German enclave Colonia Dignidad, which was established by the fugitive Nazi officer and paedophile Paul Schäfer, in the early 60s. Colonia Dignidad was used by Pinochet's security officials to torture and murder opponents of the regime.

Other appointees with ties to the Pinochet includes mining minister Baldo Prokurica — a governor under the Pinochet dictatorship.

Do you see a pattern here? Sebastián Piñera could be a good guy as well but this could be an illusion like saying that Trump is a good guy. Trump is a smart fool with loony ideas which are becoming as devious as those of the previous US Dictatorship — the Clintons, the Bushes, the Obamas (quite well disguised behind a “yes we can” campaign, but "we won’t" result).

It is also hard to simplify the other countries of the Hispanic and Portuguese America. Colombia for example is a hub of illicit drug manufacture — annoying the USA for being so brazen, but its government is useful in its opposition to Venezuela’s Maduro while also waging a pseudo “war on drug” which was lost by the USA a long time ago. For example, since the invasion of Afghanistan by the US, this country has gone from strength to strength in heroin manufacture: about 1 per cent of the world supply during the Taliban regime to about 80 per cent by 2008. Now Afghanistan supplies nearly 99 per cent of the non-medicinal illicit heroin.
Officially, the illegal drug trade represents more than one per cent of the entire GDP of the planet. It is likely to be more than this. At this stage, it is likely that Venezuela is not involved in this trade on a significant scale.

In April 2012 The Economist described Piñera as an "inept politician" by both the opposition and his supporters. The Chilean government responded by stating that the comments were disrespectful, though Piñera's rants have been labelled "piñericosas" in Chile, akin to “Bushisms" in the United States. Remember Bushisms?

This does not mean that Piñera is no good. What is more of a worry is his leaning towards the Pinochet era. One has to realised too that, now in his second presidency, he would have been elected with the help of the USA to defeat the previous “lefty” government.

So Venezuela is in the jaws of the monster so to speak, but the monster is using various tricks to make us help the USA swallow yet another country.

Should we drop our trousers? Well, our own government has done this a long time ago. Strangely enough, our only Prime Minister who really lost his trousers and walked near naked in a famous hotel lobby, Malcolm Fraser, has, before he died, warned us about the USA and that we should cut the ties. Before him, Gough Whitlam did the same and got booted out by what some people see as a CIA plot (double cross).

Welcome to the Empire.

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By Gus Leonisky at 15 Mar 2019 - 9:17am
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lies, wars and the comic/tragic truth...

By Lee Camp

I was 23 when we invaded Iraq, and I wasn’t sure it was based on lies, but something deep down in me—just behind the spleen—told me it was based on lies. Kinda like if your blind date shows up and you notice he has a 2004 flip phone. It seems vaguely worrisome, and no explanation he can haltingly supply will put you at ease. Plus, anyone else who acts like it’s normal also becomes suspect.

The invasion of Iraq just felt like it was a lie to me. And it turned out that I was right, that it was a lie, and that the entirety of the mainstream media and our government were either wrong or lying and, most of the time, both.

Now our government and our media are trying their damnedest to lie us into another war, this one with Venezuela. They tell us the Venezuelan people are desperate for necessities like toothpaste, while independent journalists show piles of affordable toothpaste in Caracas.

And even if they didn’t have toothpaste, that hardly seems like a good reason for America to begin dropping our long-range bad decisions on the heads of innocent people. Turning a town into an impact crater for the sake of a battle to stop gingivitis seems a bit extreme.

The mainstream media and nearly the entirety of the U.S. government tell us Juan Guaido is the “interim president,” even though he was never elected to that position and the current president is still leading the Venezuelan government and military. So I guess this “interim” is the time between Guaido being a nobody and the time when he goes back to being nobody but now gets to tell women at parties, “You know, I used to be interim president.”

The mainstream media also inform us that the Venezuelan military set U.S. aid trucks on fire, when video shows opposition forces doing it. Furthermore, the idea of Venezuela taking “aid” from the country whose sanctions are crushing them would be like the Standing Rock Sioux accepting gift packages from the construction crews swiss-cheesing their land to lay down the Dakota Access pipeline. Unless the boxes are filled with industrial paper towels to help clean up oil spills, I fail to see how it would be beneficial. Sometimes you do indeed have to look a gift horse in the mouth (or should I say “gift dog”).

This is not the first time our government and our media have conspired to drag the American people into war with another country—or helped create a coup that will inevitably have disastrous results. So I thought this would be a prime moment to go through the top four greatest hits.

Number 4: The Spanish-American War

This is widely considered to be the birth of modern media propaganda, because it was the first war actually started by the media. Newspapers fabricated atrocities in the never-ending quest for more readers.

And as The New York Times noted, “[T]he sensationalistic reporting of the sinking of the American battleship Maine in Havana harbor on Feb. 15, 1898 … and all the other egregious reporting leading up to the Spanish-American War might have been considered merely cartoonish if it hadn’t led to a major international conflict.”

I think maybe The New York Times got that quote confused with its mission statement: “Cartoonishly dragging America into major international conflict since 1851!”

Number 3: The Vietnam War

Sure, most everyone knows the catastrophic Vietnam War was precipitated by the Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which U.S. naval vessels were fired upon by villainous North Vietnamese torpedo boats. Following that skirmish, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara recommended that President Johnson retaliate, and the full-force Vietnam War had begun. But most Americans still don’t know that there was no Gulf of Tonkin incident—unless you count U.S. naval ships literally firing their weapons at weather events they saw on the radar. The 2003 documentary “The Fog of War” finally revealed the truth. Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara confessed that the Gulf of Tonkin attack did not actually happen.

That’s right. It never happened. Much like leprechauns or dragons or Simon Cowell’s talent, it was a figment of our national imagination.

The lies of our government, followed by the fawning, credulous reporting from our media, led to the death of 58,000 U.S. service members and as many as 3.8 million Vietnamese.

The United States government has one of the most powerful Departments of Fabrication and Falsification ever assembled. It’s a modern marvel on par with the Great Pyramid of Giza and Rafael Nadal’s down-the-line running forehand.

Number 2: The Iraq War

Of course, there’s the most obvious lie about Iraq, i.e., that Saddam Hussein had so many weapons of mass destruction that he would often use one to scrub hard-to-reach places while in the tub. But that wasn’t the only falsehood manifested to bring about our complete annihilation of the sovereign nation Saddam ruled over. There were others, such as the idea that Saddam was connected to al-Qaida and perhaps played a role in the 9/11 attacks. William Safire at The New York Times, in May 2002, wrote, “Mohamed Atta, destined to be the leading Sept. 11 suicide hijacker, was reported last fall by Czech intelligence to have met at least once with Saddam Hussein’s espionage chief in the Iraqi Embassy.”

Yes, Safire was able to polish a load of bullshit so thoroughly it would sparkle like a sapphire. And that column is still up on the Times’ website, without a correction or retraction. I would say the Times is only useful for covering the bottom of a birdcage, but I’d fear the paper would lie your pet cockatoo into an ill-advised invasion, killing millions.

But the propaganda didn’t even stop there. There was also the anthrax attacks following 9/11. Anthrax was mailed to press outlets and the offices of politicians. To this day, many people still believe it had something to do with Iraq or al-Qaida because of award-winning national embarrassments like Brian Ross.

“Brian Ross at ABC News wrote ‘the anthrax in the tainted letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle was laced with bentonite’ and ‘bentonite is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program.’ ” As Salon so clearly put it, “All of those factual claims … were completely false, demonstrably and unquestionably so. … Yet neither ABC nor Ross have ever retracted, corrected, clarified, or explained these fraudulent reports.”

And, as you would expect, following that blatantly false reporting, Brian Ross did not lose his job. In fact, he wasn’t put out to pasture from ABC News until last year, when he “reported that fired national security adviser Michael Flynn was ready to testify that Trump told him to contact the Russians during the campaign.”

That report—much like the rumors of Brian Ross’s journalistic integrity—turned out to be absolutely false.

(In my professional opinion, anyone who had anything to do with the selling, perpetrating or planning of the Iraq War should never again hold a position higher than assistant trainee to the guy who picks up the shit of a dog that does not belong to anyone of any particular importance. If that position does not exist, we as a nation should create it just for this moment. Yet, despite my objections, Robert Mueller (head of the FBI at the time of the invasion and a big supporter of it) is leading the biggest investigation in the country. John Bolton, who advocated for the Iraq invasion as far back as the 1990s, is now national security adviser. Bill Kristol, who pushed for the war and said it would last two months, is now a regular panelist on MSNBC. And the list goes on.)

Unlike Defense Secretary McNamara, who admitted the Gulf of Tonkin incident never happened, we don’t have a smoking gun showing that the Bush administration created these lies to get us into Iraq. … Oh, wait! Turns out the paper shredder at the Bush Oval Office was on strike for a higher minimum wage in 2002, and in fact, we do have a memo written by Bush’s defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, a year before U.S. forces unleashed a reign of terror on the Iraqi people. His memo about war with Iraq stated, “How start? US discovers Saddam connection to Sept 11 or to anthrax attacks? Or maybe a dispute over WMD inspections?”

I’m not sure what’s more striking—that this memo exists, or that it sounds like the Bush boys planned a massive international battle the same way a broke 35-year-old maps out his bad novel that he’s sure is the ticket out of his mom’s basement.

“How start horrible bloody war? Maybe Saddam found to moonlight as porn star?”

Point is, multiple completely false stories laid the groundwork for an invasion of Iraq that left well over 1 million people dead.

Number 1: The Bombing of Syria

President Bashar Assad gassed his own people, thereby guaranteeing more American involvement—and he did it just days after Donald Trump had told the Pentagon to begin withdrawing troops from Syria. At least, that’s the story the corporate media repeated on-loop for at least a month, only pausing every 10 minutes to try desperately to get us all to buy more things with “baconator” in the name or to seek out a harder penis.

So we are expected to believe Assad did the one thing that would ensure more U.S. involvement just as he was about to win his war? It’s kinda like how, when I’m about to win a fistfight, I often poke myself repeatedly in the eye. You know—just to keep it exciting.

Famed journalists Seymour Hersh and Robert Fisk have done great work showing that the chemical attacks never happened, but there’s a new update. Just two weeks ago, a BBC producer came forward and said the Douma, Syria, chemical attack footage was staged.

His tweet said that after six months of investigations, he can prove that no fatalities occurred in the hospital. Yet our breathlessly inept mainstream American media, with little to no evidence, ran around saying, “There was a chemical attack! Those poor people! And they don’t have toothpaste, either! We must bomb them to help them!”

The overarching point here is that we’ve replaced our media with stenographers to the ruling elite long ago. The ruling class comes up with a lie to manufacture American consent for its all-American war crimes, and that lie is then sprayed like laminate all over average American citizens. This goes on until such time as any average citizens who question said lie is looked at like they have two heads, and one of them is covered in rat shit.

For the “journalists” who hose the lies across the country the best, awards and private jets and rooftop drinks with midlevel celebrities like Chuck Norris await them. Now we’re getting to the point where the actual rulers—the Trump administration, etc.—are not even hiding their corruption. John Bolton stated on Fox News that the ultimate goal is to steal Venezuela’s oil. But our media continue to tout the propaganda line. Even after Bolton said that, you won’t see Anderson Cooper or one of Fox News’ grand wizards saying, “Venezuela is undergoing a U.S.-backed coup because we’d like to steal their oil.” It’s truly dizzying that the corporate media preserve the propaganda even after the “leaders” have revealed their true sinister intentions.

On the inside of Wolf Blitzer’s eyelids, the phrase, “Must Defend the Matrix” blinks in red.

The propaganda line for Venezuela right now is, “We want to help the poor Venezuelans.” Well, if you want to help them, then keep America out of their face. Don’t force them to have anything to do with the country that came up with drive-through fried food served in a bucket and opioid nasal sprays. At no point does anyone look at the Donald Trump presidency and think, “Wow, that country really has things figured out. I hope they bring some of their great decision-making to our doorstep.”

If you think this column is important, please share it. Also, you can join Lee Camp’s free email newsletter here.

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/we-are-being-lied-into-war-again/

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By Gus Leonisky at 15 Mar 2019 - 10:49am
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passing spaniolita's baby to the chinese...

Trump To Central America: Go To Hell...

By ROD DREHER

This is bad. From USA Today:

EL PASO – Under a bridge connecting the U.S. with Mexico, dozens of migrant families cram into a makeshift camp set up by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The families are there because permanent processing facilities have run out of room.

Seven hundred miles east, busload after busload of weary, bedraggled migrants crowd into the Catholic Charities Humanitarian Respite Center in McAllen, Texas. Organizers there are used to handling 200 to 300 migrants a day. Lately, the migrants have been arriving at a clip of around 800 a day, overflowing the respite center and straining city resources.

“It’s staggering,” McAllen City Manager Roy Rodriguez said. “Really, we’ve never seen anything like this before.”

Along the Texas border with Mexico – from El Paso to Eagle Pass to the Rio Grande Valley – masses of migrants have been crossing the border in unprecedented numbers, overwhelming federal holding facilities and sending local leaders and volunteers scrambling to deal with the relentless waves of people.

This can’t go on. But how does this help?:

President Trump plans to slash hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to three Central American countries in retaliation for what he called their lack of help in reducing the flow of migrants to the U.S. border.

The move was one of Trump’s harshest yet as he escalates a confrontation with Mexico and Central America over a surge in irregular migration, largely involving children and families seeking asylum.

Trump has already warned that he could close the U.S.-Mexico border — or at least large stretches of it — in the coming week unless Mexico takes further steps to halt the northward flow of migrants.

The State Department said in a statement Saturday that it would be “ending . . . foreign assistance programs for the Northern Triangle” — a region encompassing El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The move would affect nearly $500 million in 2018 funds and millions more left over from the prior fiscal year. The money was destined for Central America but has not yet been spent.

As a former US ambassador to Honduras points out in the story, Trump seems to think (falsely) that US foreign aid is paid directly to those governments. Plus:

He also said Central American governments are not seeking to send their citizens to the United States. “To the contrary, they already cooperate with us in trying to deter migration. But they can’t prevent their citizens from leaving the country.”

Read the whole thing.

Seriously, how are those governments supposed to prevent their citizens from leaving? None of those countries border the US, by the way. They’re going to tell their citizens they aren’t free to leave for Mexico?

The US needs to change its asylum law now (and should have done when the GOP controlled both houses of Congress). That’s why these migrants are coming. Most of them are not breaking through barriers, but presenting themselves and claiming asylum. I can’t understand how cutting off all government aid to these three poor countries is supposed to make them cut off the caravans, given that they aren’t police states.

If you want to claim that there’s not a crisis at the border, nobody should take you seriously. Again: this can’t go on. Read the USA Today story. But I don’t understand how cutting off some of the poorest and most desperate people in this hemisphere is supposed to solve this problem. What does Trump want those governments to do, shoot people as they cross the border headed north?

You know who is going to step in and give aid to those countries? China. You watch.

But as far as I can tell, the Democrats don’t have any real plan either that does not include de facto open borders. Here’s CBS’s report below. Notice Beto O’Rourke’s remarks at the end. If that’s the line the Democrats take, they are going to fire up people on the other side. who believe that America has a right to control its borders.As frustrating as Trump’s actions are, there is no way that’s going to pass muster with most Americans.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/trump-to-central-america-...

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Spaniolita:

http://www.onlinearts.ro/portret/spaniolita-cu-trandafiri-roze-de-ion-vo...

By Gus Leonisky at 31 Mar 2019 - 1:04pm
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money tells you what to think...

Argentina’s peso and stock market sold off steeply Monday after the country’s center-right leader, President Mauricio Macri, performed poorly in primary elections.

Macri lost by a far greater margin than expected on Sunday, early official results showed, casting serious doubt over the incumbent’s reelection chances in October.

The main Argentine stock market plunged more than 30% on Monday, marking the second-biggest one day slump anywhere since 1950, Reuters reported.

Meanwhile, the peso closed 15% weaker at 53.5 per U.S. dollar. The currency had been trading at 45.25 on Friday.

The election result had earlier prompted Argentina’s euro-denominated bond to fall 11 cents lower, according to data reported by Reuters.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/12/argentina-election-macri-suffers-setback...

-----------------------------

Since taking office in December 2015, President Mauricio Macri created socio-economic crisis conditions by serving privileged interests exclusively at the expense of the public welfare.

He slashed social benefits at the behest of internal monied interests, Wall Street and the IMF. Real unemployment way exceeds the official 10% level. Underemployment affects most working Argentinians.

Inflation at over 50% destroyed purchasing power for most people. Most Argentinians are impoverished or bordering it.

Macri's force-fed neoliberal harshness worsened after getting June 2018 $57 billion in IMF financing - the largest amount ever by the notorious loan shark of last resort agency to any nation, what no responsible leader should have anything to do with.

Its predatory lending practices come with unacceptable strings, demanding privatization of state enterprises, mass layoffs, deregulation, deep social spending cuts, wage freezes or cuts, other corporate friendly policies, marginalizing trade unions, and harsh crackdowns on resisters.

It's all about letting bankers and other corporate predators strip mine countries of their material wealth and resources, shift them from public to private hands, crush democratic values, hollow out nations into backwaters, destroy middle class societies, and turn ordinary people able to find work into serfs earning poverty wages.

For nations getting into bed with the IMF, it's perpetual debt bondage, obligating them to go deeper into debt to service existing obligations - at the expense of eroding and eliminating vital public services.

Macri is widely despised for his economic strangulation policies, Argentina's contraction severest in over a decade, most people experiencing Depression conditions.

The country faces possible economic and financial meltdown, conditions exacerbated by growing global economic weakness. Its currency was in free-fall earlier, contributing greatly to eroding purchasing power.

Public anger over deplorable conditions showed up in Sunday's primary elections, Macri admitting he had a bad night.

Opposition candidate Alberto Fernandez and his running mate/former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner handed him a stunning defeat - suggesting he's unlikely to be reelected in October.

Fernandez/de Kirchner got 47.22% support from voters compared to 32.36% for Macri, a crushing defeat by any standard. Center-right Roberto Lavagna came in third with 8.39% support.

"We are here to create a new Argentina, not to continue the past model, but to end this time of lies and give a new horizon...Argentinians realized we are the change, not them," Fernandez told supporters in post-election remarks.

De Kirchner said "(w)e know of the difficult moment that the country is going through, of millions of Argentines who have lost their jobs."

"We have talked with so many. We know what it is. This gives us the responsibility that we have to reach everyone to give them absolute peace of mind."

Telesur explained that to win in October, "a candidate needs at least 45 percent of the vote or 40 percent and a difference of 10 percentage points over the second-place runner."

"If there's no clear winner, voters will return for a run-off on Nov. 24" between the top two vote-getting candidates.

With most Argentinians suffering greatly from economic harshness under the neoliberal/fascist Macri regime, a change of the guard is likely in October.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home - Stephen Lendman). Contact at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."

Читайте больше на http://www.pravdareport.com/world/142618-argentina/

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By Gus Leonisky at 16 Aug 2019 - 6:50am
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it's a big world out there...

Vote of the French Senate, Juan Guaido, opposition, refugees, economic situation, international law: on the occasion of his passage in Paris, Yvan Gil, Venezuelan Vice-Minister for Europe, granted an interview to RT France.

Following the French Senate's adoption of a resolution to increase sanctions against Nicolas Maduro's government on October 30, Yvan Gil, Venezuelan Vice-Minister for Europe, held an informal meeting on November 29, with the President of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Senate, Christian Cambon. During this visit to Paris, part of a European tour, Yvan Gil gave an interview to RT France.

From his point of view, if the French Senate voted this resolution, it is because of a deep misunderstanding of the situation in Venezuela. "The version of the Bolivarian government deserves to be heard in the French political circles," he pleaded in this regard. Regardless of Juan Guaido's opposition, Yvan Gil assures that Venezuela is currently experiencing "a situation of total peace in the streets and total political stability".

Same story about the finances of Venezuela, presented as a state in economic bankruptcy where lives a population that can not provide for its needs. Here again, the Deputy Minister wants to be very reassuring and optimistic. From his point of view, "the Venezuelan State is working fully".

"It is deplorable to see some European and French politicians follow instructions from Washington and the US government to attack the Bolivarian revolution," he said about the vote resolution of the French Senate.

Regarding the economic sanctions applied by the United States and its allies against his country, Yvan Gil prefers "to call them unilateral coercive measures" because, according to him, the only body empowered to legally apply sanctions is the UN Security Council. There is a world beyond the United States and Europe. A very big world...

Despite US hostility against the Venezuelan government, the deputy minister said that the economic situation is improving and that the country is moving towards "stability" thanks to "the full support of the Venezuelan people", the army, but also from all Venezuela's friends abroad.

"There is a world beyond the United States and Europe. A very big world. And we have the support of Russia, China, South Africa, India. In these countries we have met with positive markets and reciprocity," said the Venezuelan deputy minister.

"The good side of the sanctions is that they have allowed us to discover that another world exists, and to build relationships with this world that respects international law and diplomacy," he added.

This interview was also an opportunity to address the various issues related to Venezuela, including the recognition by the United States and the European Union of Juan Guaido as interim president since his self-proclamation in late January . While admitting that "each government is sovereign to recognise the instances it wishes to recognise", Yvan Gil recalls that "in the case of Venezuela, the only one able to recognise the government is the Venezuelan people" and that it elected on May 20, 2018 President Nicolas Maduro with almost 68% of the vote.

Interview conducted by Meriem Laribi

To know more about RT France: https://francais.rt.com/international/68435-venezuela-sanctions-nous-ont...

Translation by Jules Letambour...

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By Gus Leonisky at 1 Dec 2019 - 9:11pm
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a second freer option...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov hit back at threats from Washington over Moscow’s support for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, insisting Caracas and its neighbors deserve the option not to be US vassal states.

“I have heard the threats from Washington about punishing all those who work with Venezuela,” Lavrov confirmed during a press conference in Mexico City on Thursday. “But we are used to that. We are used to American officials saying that yes, Washington is still true to the Monroe Doctrine.”

Russia was merely offering Venezuela and its neighbors in the region a second option, beyond the status quo of subjugation to their northern neighbor, Lavrov suggested.

If the Latin American countries believe they are comfortable under the Monroe Doctrine, well, it’s up to them, but to me it would be humiliating.

“They can take any position on any international issue they want,” he continued, emphasizing that Russia was not forcing anyone’s hand in the region. The 1820s Monroe Doctrine posits that the US has dominion over the nations of the Western Hemisphere, and that any incursion by foreign powers is a hostile act.

https://www.rt.com/news/480273-monroe-doctrine-lavrov-venezuela/

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See also: http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/36047

By Gus Leonisky at 7 Feb 2020 - 1:40pm
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may the sanctioners die from the plague...

Amid crushing US sanctions and IMF rejection already making Venezuela’s struggle with Covid-19 difficult, Twitter now seems to have hobbled the country’s vice-president and head of its coronavirus response, Delcy Rodriguez.

Both the personal and the official Twitter account belonging to Rodriguez were “temporarily restricted” on Thursday over "unusual activity," with old tweets still visible to those who chose to view them, but no new tweets available after Wednesday.

Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza called it an “inhumane and reckless” gesture by Twitter, as Rodriguez leads the presidential commission handling the country’s coronavirus response, and this was depriving the Venezuelan people of the information necessary to handle the pandemic.

Earlier this week, Twitter expanded its definition of “harm” so it could censor content on the platform that “goes directly against guidance from authoritative sources of global and local public health information.”

While it is possible that the muzzling of Rodriguez is unrelated, it comes amid the aggressive US campaign to use the Covid-19 pandemic to further sanction countries that have defied Washington’s diktats in the past – notably Venezuela and Iran, both targeted for regime change.

One US State Department official was quoted earlier this month describing the campaign against the government of Nicolas Maduro as “maximum pressure March.”

Washington has been fully invested in overthrowing Maduro since January 2019, when it recognized opposition politician Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s “interim president.” A number of US allies also recognized Guaido, but he has been unable to gain any traction inside Venezuela itself.

Yet on Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund cited lack of “clarity on recognition” to deny Maduro’s plea for an emergency $5 billion loan to help tackle the coronavirus crisis. The IMF is “not in a position to consider” Venezuela’s request, President Kristalina Georgieva wrote back to Caracas.

The US has also gone after Iran, sanctioning a number of companies and individuals on Wednesday for oil trade that provides “revenue to the regime that it may use to fund terror and other destabilizing activities.”

Iran is just behind Italy and China in the total number of Covid-19 cases and deaths, reporting 18,407 and 1,284 respectively as of Thursday afternoon. The country’s medical system, already starved by years of US sanctions, has struggled to keep up with the influx of patients. The government in Tehran has appealed to the US for sanctions relief, to no avail. Maduro’s pleas to the White House to ease sanctions during the pandemic have likewise gone unanswered.

Interestingly, Rodriguez’s English-language account was still fully functional as of Thursday evening, suggesting that Twitter doesn’t mind her tweeting – so long as she doesn’t do it in a language Venezuelans needing information about the contagion might understand.

https://www.rt.com/news/483563-twitter-venezuela-coronavirus-sanctions/

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Reminds you of Madeleine Albright dealing with Iraq... 500,000 death from lack of medicines, embargoed by the said woman...

In 1996 Madeleine Albright said on national TV that 500,000 Iraqi children dead from sanctions was "worth it". A few months later she was confirmed by the US Senate as Secretary of State and nobody even questioned her about this statement. Transporting 500,000 first graders would take 6,667 school buses, making a line more than 50 miles long. Albright's father, Josef Korbel, was also the mentor of Condoleezza Rice.

Stupid people!

By Gus Leonisky at 20 Mar 2020 - 6:07pm
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the UK 1 billion heist...

I have the honour to address you to take the opportunity of denouncing the greatest robbery in the modern history of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, which was perpetrated, thus far, with total impunity, by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, in the midst of the worst pandemic that humanity has faced in the past 100 years.

For more than 20 years, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has had part of its gold reserves deposited at the Bank of England, as a guarantee to redeem promises to pay depositors and note holders, as well as a store of value and to support the value of our national currency. Nevertheless, in 2011, following the looting of Libyan gold reserves deposited at that very same British financial institution, the Venezuelan Government decided to repatriate a large part of the gold deposited at the Bank of England. Only a small part of those gold reserves, amounting today to over $1 billion, and which belong to the Venezuelan people, was left in the custody of the Bank of England, with the exclusive purpose of ensuring the proper conduct of the international financial operations of Venezuela.

Now, as we have previously denounced before the Security Council (see S/2019/117, S/PV.8476, S/PV.8506 and S/2020/337), since early 2019, the Bank of England has, in practice, stolen over $1 billion from Venezuela, as it has repeatedly refused to comply with the instructions provided by the account holder and owner of the gold reserves deposited at that financial institution – the Central Bank of Venezuela – to liquidate part of those resources, in order to use them for the procurement of basic goods and services to ensure the well-being of the Venezuelan people, including food, medicines and other essential supplies.

The Bank of England has argued, in writing, that, considering the decision of London’s Government not to recognize President Nicolás Maduro Moros as Head of State and Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and following consultations with the Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom, it has unilaterally and illegally decided to disown the authority of Mr. Calixto Ortega Sánchez, President of the Central Bank of Venezuela.

In doing so, the Bank of England has not only violated the sanctity of contracts and customary international law on the immunity from execution for the international reserves and assets of foreign central banks, but it has also proven to be neither a neutral nor a transparent financial institution, much less an independent or trustworthy one, thus destroying all the credibility that may have existed for it in the management of the resources of depositary countries.

Hence, the Venezuelan experience shall serve yet as another warning to all those nations who still have resources under the custody of the Bank of England, since, apparently, it is possible that, at any given point, it could simply go beyond its role as depositary of international reserves and, instead, refuse to comply with the instructions provided by national central banks, disown the authority of national Governments and/or account holders and consequently proceed with the looting of funds deposited in its vaults.

Throughout 2020, the entire world has been grappling with the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and its multiple and devastating effects. In our case, the impact of this global emergency is aggravated as a result of the application of a criminal policy of economic asphyxiation and maximum calculated cruelty. Mindful of this reality and the significant impact that the pandemic is likely to have in a nation that was already torn by the pernicious effect of unilateral coercive measures, coupled with the fact that the Venezuelan economy had already been experiencing a deep economic recession, with high levels of hyperinflation, since at least 2014 – that is, since even before the imposition of the so-called sanctions – the Secretary-General of the United Nations included our country in the Global Humanitarian Response Plan for COVID-19.

The economic, commercial and financial blockade that has been imposed against Venezuela impedes, among others, having regular access to the international financial system, to free trade and to basic needs for ensuring both the well-being and the right to life, health, food and development of our people. Consequently, thus far, it has been nearly impossible for our national Government to receive medical equipment assistance and procure medicines, personal protective equipment, vaccines and other supplies that are critical in the global fight against the novel coronavirus disease. As a result, the illegal application of “sanctions” in the midst of a pandemic is, without a doubt, undermining our national efforts and diminishing the prospects of successfully defeating COVID-19 at home, which, in the interconnected world in which we live, does nothing but heighten the risk for all of us.

In this connection, allow me to inform you that, since April 2020, the Central Bank of Venezuela has been engaged in conversations with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which agreed to receive funds aimed at procuring precisely those supplies, equipment and other humanitarian and medical assistance needed for the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. The Bank of England was advised of this agreement and was instructed to liquidate part of the gold reserves, release the funds from that sale and transfer them to UNDP. Yet again, the Bank of England denied access to Venezuelan gold reserves deposited at that financial institution and refused to comply with the instructions provided by the lawful account holder – the Central Bank of Venezuela – which resulted in the filing of a legal claim on 14 May 2020.

In light of the above, and aggravated by the fact that advantage is being taken of a pandemic that is currently affecting humanity as a whole, three things are now crystal clear: (a) that the Bank of England is, in practice, an executing arm of the colonial policy of looting and pillage of the British Government; (b) that the United Kingdom is openly engaged in the perpetration of an act of extermination, which amounts to a crime against humanity, as per the provisions of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, given that it is intentionally inflicting “conditions of life, inter alia the deprivation of access to food and medicine, calculated to bring about the destruction of part of a population”; and (c) that London’s Government could not care less about the so-called humanitarian situation in Venezuela, as its sole intention, behaving as English pirates did 200 years ago, is to seize the spoils of war, that being precisely the ultimate purpose of the unit clandestinely established at the United Kingdom Foreign Office for the “reconstruction” of our country, as denounced before this body on 20 May 2020.

Lastly, I respectfully request your good offices, in your capacity as President of the Security Council for the month of May 2020, to circulate the present letter among the Member States of the Council for their due information, and that it be issued as a document of the Council.

Samuel Moncada

https://www.voltairenet.org/article210060.html

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By Gus Leonisky at 3 Jun 2020 - 6:03pm
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from the disinformationer in chief...

I refer to the statement made by the Permanent Representative of the Venezuelan Mission to the United Nations, in the meeting of members of the Security Council to discuss the situation in Venezuela on 20 May 2020. I further refer to the letter sent from the same on 26 May 2020 to your Excellency as current President of the Security Council.

The claim that the United Kingdom, through its Venezuelan Reconstruction Unit or otherwise, had prior knowledge of the 3 May 2020 incident in which defector Venezuelan military representatives and independent security contractors entered Venezuela by speedboat is absolutely untrue.

The Venezuela Reconstruction Unit in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office was established in 2019 to coordinate the approach of the United Kingdom to the international response to the dire economic and humanitarian situation in Venezuela. The United Kingdom is committed to working with international partners to bring a peaceful end to the appalling crisis in Venezuela, and the Venezuela Reconstruction Unit is a reflection of that commitment.

The Unit has visited Venezuela twice, obtaining visas through the Embassy of the Maduro regime in London, in order to understand the challenges and determine how the United Kingdom might help. During the first visit, the Unit had diplomatic engagement with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Maduro regime. On both visits, United Kingdom Ambassador Andrew Soper spoke publicly about the Unit and its staff. The role of the Unit was further outlined by the Chargé d’Affaires of the United Kingdom in Caracas when summoned by the regime’s Foreign Minister on 14 May 2020. The Government of the United Kingdom, including the Venezuela Reconstruction Unit, had no prior knowledge of the 3 May 2020 incident in Venezuela, and was not attempting to secure “preferred status” for British businesses in the case of the overthrow of Nicolás Maduro.

With regard to the reference made to United Kingdom warships in the Caribbean, the United Kingdom has a permanent maritime presence in the North Atlantic to assure the security of our five Overseas Territories in the Caribbean and the broader region. HMS MEDWAY forms the basis of this year’s maritime presence, enhanced by RFA ARGUS’ deployment in April 2020 to provide further resilience in preparation for the annual hurricane season. This maritime presence is not part of a “covert assault” against Venezuela.

With regard to the letter sent to the Security Council on 26 May 2020 by the Permanent Representative of the Venezuelan Mission, I would like to reiterate, as has been stated previously to the Security Council, that the Bank of England is an independent public organization. As a matter of longstanding policy, Her Majesty’s Government does not intervene in private matters or any disputes that may arise therefrom. As an independent public organization, the Bank of England is not an “executing arm” of the Government of the United Kingdom.

Furthermore, with regard to the other allegations made, the Government of the United Kingdom has in no way divested Venezuelans of the financial means to overcome the humanitarian crisis. In fact, we are among top donors to United Nations and other humanitarian efforts in Venezuela, having recently committed $30 million for 2020–2022 to support Venezuelans in need both inside the country and in the region, building on $24 million of United Kingdom support provided in 2019, which is also supporting the COVID-19 response. We also deny the allegation that we are responsible for depriving the Venezuelan people of food and medicine. The only party responsible for the Venezuelan people’s years-long deprivation of food, medicine, and other basic goods and human rights is the Maduro regime, which has ruined Venezuela through its longstanding corruption, incompetence and mismanagement.

Jonathan Allen

Jonathan Allen is Diplomat and Spy Chief. Spokesperson for the British Presidency of the European Union during the second half of 2005. He created the United Kingdom War Propaganda Service, RICU, on the model of the IRD created in 1948 against the Soviets. He supervised for the MI 6 the attack of Burgas falsely attributed to Hezbollah. He became Director General of Intelligence (2016-17) and is now Deputy of the Permanent Representative of Her Majesty at the United Nations.
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By Gus Leonisky at 7 Jun 2020 - 8:35pm
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UK about to rob $1 billion from the venezuelan people...

What was a typical withdrawal request from a customer to a depository bank has turned into a political controversy, given that the government that owns the bank does not recognise the customer.

London’s High Court is scheduled to hear an unprecedented case on Monday regarding Venezuela’s attempts to extract its gold bullion from the Bank of England.

Venezuela’s central bank (BCV), controlled by the government of Nicolas Maduro, has around $1.8 billion worth of gold at the Bank of England. BCV has recently demanded that €930 million ($1.04bn) in gold be released to help Caracas fight the coronavirus outbreak.

The heavily-sanctioned Latin American country is among the 135 nations with beleaguered public health systems which are attempting to secure vital medical supplies under a major initiative led by the United Nations Development Programme.

BCV had wanted to transfer the proceeds from selling the gold directly to the UNDP to acquire medical equipment, medicines and foodstuffs, but the Bank of England “refused to confirm” that it would hand over the bullion, according to court documents filed last month. BCV in response launched legal action.

The UK government, which wholly controls the bank, does not recognise President Nicolas Maduro and backs the self-declared interim president, Juan Guaido. The UK-held assets of two dozen Venezuelan officials linked with Maduro, but not those of BCV, have been frozen.

The Bank of England denied a similar request for the withdrawal of gold in November 2018; at the time, a cabinet minister said that dealing with a customer’s request is up to the bank and not to the government.

Guaido, who appointed a parallel board of BCV directors, last month warned that the bank would effectively be “financing torture” in Venezuela if it honoured its obligations. His lawyers argue that a decision to release gold should be taken by Venezuela’s legislature rather than by the central bank. They also question whether the BCV board has a buyer lined up for the gold.

Lawyers representing BCV maintain that the request in question is meant to deal with a public health emergency and that the Bank of England’s lack of action is “putting lives at risk".

“Venezuela has been denied access to its resources during an international crisis,” said London-based lawyer Sarosh Zaiwalla. “In effect, the nation’s gold reserves in the BoE are being held hostage to political factors dictated by the foreign policy of the United States and certain of its allies.” The high court ruling is expected before the end of July.

https://sputniknews.com/latam/202006211079678272-bank-of-england-set-to-...

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By Gus Leonisky at 21 Jun 2020 - 8:29pm
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a thief with no mandate nor country is given the golden loot...

Caracas earlier filed a claim in a London court to force the Bank of England to transfer some $1.13 billion worth of its gold stored there for safekeeping before relations between Venezuela and the West deteriorated two years ago.

The UK has unequivocally recognised top Venezuelan opposition figure Juan Guaido as the president of the Latin American state, the British High Court said in a ruling on a case filed against the Bank of England regarding its handling of Caracas’ gold reserves. Guaido proclaimed himself an interim president of Venezuela in January 2019 with the claim receiving broad support from the US and other western countries, but failed to gain global recognition.

https://sputniknews.com/latam/202007021079774500-uk-unequivocally-recogn...

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By Gus Leonisky at 2 Jul 2020 - 8:46pm
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the death of the bank of england...

The standards are poor at the Bank of England these days, I don’t know why anyone would want to do business with them. George Galloway gives British banking, and justice, a triple-fail rating.

It used to be “a thing” when I was growing up. “As safe as the Bank of England” was the acme of trustworthiness and security. But as Venezuela – and any other Global South country foolish enough to entrust the British with their sovereign wealth just found out in the High Court in London – the Bank of England isn’t any longer safe at all.

Almost a billion dollars worth of Venzuelan gold bullion has just been stolen by the British government, theft has just been legalized, and the thieves didn’t even bother to wear a mask.

The gold was deposited in London by the then internationally recognized government of Venezuela. But the now internationally recognized government of Nicolas Maduro has been refused permission to have its value transferred to the United Nations in New York for work they wish the UN Development Program to conduct against the coronavirus pandemic.

Instead, a man off the street in Caracas by the name of Juan Guaido – who has not only never been elected to power in Venezuela, he’s no longer even elected as the leader of the opposition – is the legal owner of the gold, says Justice Alice-in-Wonderland. After all, words mean whatever the British government wants them to mean.

The elected president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, is recognized by the great majority of countries in the world. More importantly, his government is recognized at the United Nations. It is not true, as the British government told the High Court, that they “do not recognize” the Maduro government – they recognize it every day at the UN, in discussions in the canteen as well as in the chamber.

Moreover, it is the principle of British diplomacy that they “recognize” whomsoever is in effective control of a territory – whether they like them or not. Though, come to think of it, they did breach that “principle” once before – when they continued to recognize the Cambodian genocidal murderer Pol Pot and insist that Comrade Number 1 remains in his seat in New York long after he was actually overthrown and while the mountain of corpses in Cambodia were being counted.

By any standards, Maduro is in effective control of Venezuela and Juan Guaido is not. Maduro controls every square inch of Venezuela, is the elected president, is recognized by the United Nations and by most countries in the world. Guaido is not elected, is not recognized by the United Nations, nor by most countries in the world and doesn’t control one single inch of Venezuelan territory. But he is now the proud owner of the gold in the Bank of England. It makes the Great Train Robbery look like a mere bagatelle, Guaido makes the Thief of Baghdad look like an amateur. It is the greatest single act of theft ever to take place on British soil. And that’s saying something.

But away from the scene of the crime, away from Venezuela, British officials in their ivory tower should take note. It wasn’t just theft which took place in the Strand this week – it was murder. The murder of London’s reputation as a financial center you can trust.

Certainly, any sovereign government which has invested its sovereign wealth in London should examine their head if not the current state of their balance. This decision has given a green light to the Pirates of the Caribbean, and you could be next. Fall out with the British government and they can now hand all your country’s wealth they can grab, over to your opposition, however discredited.

Quite a day’s work in financial standards, a triple-A fail.

If I ever won the National Lottery (which I don’t enter) the last place on Earth that I would deposit my millions would be in London. Standards here just went down the rabbit-hole and will never re-emerge. The City of London has fallen.

When I was young I told my Irish grandfather that the teacher had told me that the British had an empire so vast that the Sun never set upon it. He answered “that’s because God would never trust the British in the dark.” I knew he was telling the truth. And now so does Venezuela.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/493718-uk-maduro-venezuela-gold/

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By Gus Leonisky at 6 Jul 2020 - 3:43pm
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corrupción en américa del sur ...

Venezuela's ongoing economic and political turmoil could result in the biggest displacement of people in the world in recent years. It is an issue that has repercussions for the whole region.

While many countries have acted to deter the migrants, Colombia has taken a step in a radically different direction, granting nearly a million undocumented Venezuelans the right to stay for 10 years.

BBC Monitoring's Luis Fajardo looks at how the situation compares with other migrant crises around the world and where it leaves a country already struggling with unemployment and the coronavirus pandemic.

Graphic design: Paul Brown

Video produced by Suniti Singh

See more:

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-latin-america-56091327

As it could be analysed (and properly informed from South American friends), corruption in Venezuela may be far less than in other South American countries that are ready to play the US game of domination/control/corruption for cash with the big stick (see from top). Colombia may be the most corrupt country in the American continent. But the US does not like socialism or anything like it. The US are even prepared to send terrorists to upset/change the "regime" in Venezuela.

By Gus Leonisky at 22 Feb 2021 - 4:43pm
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