Protests in Venezuela Definitely Financed by Washington - Russian Observer

CARACAS (Sputnik) - The protests in Caracas after Sunday's presidential election are definitely financed by the United States, which has its own interests in Venezuela and sponsors the country's opposition, a member of the delegation of Russian observers, who is also the Russian parliament's lower house member, Alexey Volotskov, told Sputnik.
"Of course, this is definitely funding from abroad, and such radical views of young, hooligan-minded people who may be looking for economic gain in this matter — to take some property, break something and steal, probably all this is multiplied," Volotskov said.
"Today, from the windows of our hotel, we saw how protesters caught up with a policeman on a motorcycle, knocked him down, took the motorcycle, and rode away on it. This once again proves that there is also a property and economic component here, that is, people in these riots are trying to find some kind of economic use for themselves. Robbery and banditry, multiplied by support, slogans and financing — there is nothing to hide — of the American state, which has its own interests here and finances both the opposition and the riots that we are currently witnessing, being in Venezuela, in Caracas," the Russian lawmaker and observer added.
Manifestations of extremism in Venezuela after the elections are a staged action and are not capable of influencing the electoral process, Volotskov added.
On Sunday, presidential election was held in Venezuela, and the current head of state, Nicolas Maduro, won them. After that, protests began in Caracas on Monday with clashes between the police and protesters. The Venezuelan government said that a number of countries had interfered in the elections and in the people's right to self-determination.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240730/protests-in-venezuela-definitely-financed-by-washington---russian-observer-1119560904.html

 

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SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has responded to Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro’s challenge to a fight over fraud accusations from Musk, saying he was ready to accept it.

The South American nation’s leader, who just won his third term in presidential elections, accused Musk on Monday of trying to disrupt peace and stability in the country, calling the businessman his “new archenemy.” 

Maduro was responding to Musk’s claims of “major election fraud” by challenging the billionaire to a fight, during an address he made on national television.

On Wednesday, when entrepreneur Mario Nawfal asked in a post on X (formerly Twitter): “Who had a Maduro vs Elon Fight on their 2024 Bingo Card?” Musk replied simply writing “I accept.”

 

Elon has accepted the challenge from former President Maduro to a fight. pic.twitter.com/aISSGZuNOu

— Wall Street Silver (@WallStreetSilv) July 31, 2024

In a second reply, the X owner claimed that Maduro “will chicken out.”

Nawfal further released a new post, stating that “Elon’s accepted Maduro’s challenge to fight… WHO WOULD WIN?”

Musk responded once again, writing: “If I win, he resigns as dictator of Venezuela. If he wins, I give him a free ride to Mars.”

WHO WOULD WIN?Elon’s accepted Maduro’s challenge to fight… Who wins?

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) July 31, 2024

The SpaceX chief executive has a history of provoking public figures into fighting. The tech billionaire has long claimed he could win in a fight against the founder of Facebook, fellow tycoon Mark Zuckerberg.

The spat between Musk and Venezuelan leader followed the businessman’s posts on the results of the South American country’s presidential elections. The National Electoral Council (CNE) of Venezuela on Sunday declared Maduro the winner of the election, announcing that with 80% of ballots counted, he had secured more than 51% of the vote, compared to 44% for his main rival, Edmundo Gonzales.

Maduro will be serving a third consecutive six-year term, having first taken office in 2013 following the death of President Hugo Chavez. In his victory speech, he mocked the opposition, which, he said, “cries fraud” at every election. The Venezuelan president said his reelection would bring peace and stability.

https://www.rt.com/news/601928-musk-venezuela-maduro-fight/

 

MARS?... THIS REMINDS US OF CHAVEZ:

chavez on mars...

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT IS — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

On Monday, the National Electoral Council of Venezuela announced that incumbent President Nicolas Maduro had won reelection. The opposition disputed the result and received significant public support from Western countries.

The United States hoped to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro by supporting a coup. It failed because the people of Venezuela support Maduro and the Bolivarian revolution, researcher and geopolitical analyst Christopher Helali told Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Wednesday.

 

“Of course, we’ve seen this playbook before… not only in Latin America, we’ve seen it in Eastern Europe, we’ve seen it in the Caucasus in Georgia, we’ve seen it all throughout Central Asia,” Helali explained. “Anywhere the United States feels that its interests are threatened, or that a country doesn’t kowtow to Washington or Brussels.”

 

On Monday and Tuesday, supporters of the opposition started violent riots in the streets, utilizing Molotov cocktails and firearms to fight police. By Wednesday, the government had regained control and tens of thousands of Venezuelans from across the country traveled to the capital Caracas, and took to the streets supporting Maduro. The President joined them in what appeared to be a jubilant and peaceful celebration.

 

Tens of thousands of Venezuelans are now marching through Caracas in support of the Maduro government

Another massive rally that will be completely ignored mainstream media & mainstream Twitter: pic.twitter.com/EPvOGWbiM6

— Wyatt Reed (@wyattreed13) July 31, 2024

“Like Cassius Clay”
— Maduro showed off his boxing technique a while ago.

Is Elon training? LMAO pic.twitter.com/AtihnkwxBP

— Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo) July 31, 2024

“[The West] already were giving people the heads up that there was going to be chaos and disorder if President Maduro was reelected. And, lo and behold, it happened. They said it. It happened,” he explained. “They’re trying to spin it as a crackdown by the government, but that’s not the case. In fact, the government is trying to maintain peace and order. It’s the opposition that wants disorder and chaos, [which is] just the recipe for the US to come in and gobble up all of Venezuela’s oil and natural resources and begin plundering the country like they did before Hugo Chavez’s time.”

 

While the United States has a long history of successfully supporting coups in other countries, it has had a string of failures that raise the question of whether it is as effective as it used to be.

 

“You’re seeing that if a county is isolated and it remains isolated, it is weak and it’s ripe for the US and its proxies to come in and dismember it. We remember what happened with Chile in the 1970s,” Helali began. “Now you’re see that these multilateral relations, this emerging multipolar world, it’s strengthening those countries that are most under threat, that are most under assault, that are the most sanctioned, so it provides for greater stability and ultimately each of these color revolutions in most of these countries have failed because [the governments] have the support of the people. They have the support of the everyday working class.”

 

Helali noted that they may not have the support of “the elite” in the countries who have “dreams of plundering the countries once more with the help of the West.” However, the working class is “fighting to defend their sovereignty and their territorial integrity and their own mode of development and prosperity outside of Western imperialism.”

Ultimately, the people decided that they were “not going to allow some gringos from the north to come and take [Venezuela] and plunder it,”Helali said.

The United States has been trying to overthrow the democratically elected government of Venezuela since Hugo Chavez’s time and the leader of the opposition, Maria Corina Machado, was arrested for taking payments from the US-funded Non-Governmental Organization National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in the early 2000s and met with then-US President George W Bush in 2005.

Diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks revealed that the meeting was primarily designed to strengthen the opposition and anger then-Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

“Opponents of President Chavez greeted the May 31 meeting with high fives for poking Chavez in the eye, and momentarily put aside differences, reveling in having one of their own being received at such a high level,” the diplomatic cable read.

“On balance, in our judgment, the attention the White House meeting brought Sumate [the Venezuelan NGO founded by Machado] has been exceptional. It is important now to let the organization ride this surge largely on its own. A continuing, too evident, public identification with the U.S. could now be counterproductive. At the same time, however, we need to ensure that Sumate has the resources it needs to exploit this new vantage point it enjoys.”

As was the case during the Cold War, the United States remains desperate to stop socialist countries from succeeding, particularly in the Western hemisphere, because they fear success could cause it to spread.

“Why does America fear little Venezuela? Because they know that if Venezuela becomes a shining beacon, an example, it will be another pink tide across Latin America. They don’t want that. They don’t want the Venezuelan people to stand up and that’s the real point of this. It’s the Monroe Doctrine continued on. This is the United State’s hemisphere and nobody can go beyond that," Helali explained.

 

 

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240801/the-us-failed-to-coup-maduro-because-he-has-the-respect-of-the-people-1119590032.html

  

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The Western media obscure the 930 sanctions against Venezuela to blame the “crisis” and the exoduses on the revolution. The Washington Post admits that these sanctions have caused “an economic contraction three times greater than the Great Depression in the USA”. And that Washington is currently applying illegal unilateral sanctions against a third of the world's countries, including 60% of the poorest nations. These US sanctions, first applied in 2005 to overthrow the government of Hugo Chávez, define the Venezuelan economy.

https://www.legrandsoir.info/pourquoi-l-extreme-droite-mondiale-reve-de-revanche-au-venezuela.html

 

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WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The United States has determined it will recognize opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez the winner of the Venezuelan presidential election, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a press release. 

"Given the overwhelming evidence, it is clear to the United States and, most importantly, to the Venezuelan people that Edmundo González Urrutia won the most votes in Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election,"Blinken said in the release on Thursday. 

Blinken called on the Venezuelan parties to begin discussions on a peaceful transition of power in accordance with Venezuelan electoral law. 

Moreover, Blinken also said that the United States rejects Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s "unsubstantiated" allegations against opposition leaders, including González and María Corina Machado.

Machado co-founded the Venezuelan Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) Sumate which received significant financial support from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). In 2005, she traveled to the White House to meet then-US President George W Bush, a meeting that was described in classified diplomatic cables as "poking [then Venezuelan President Hugo] Chavez in the eye,"

In 2014, she took a diplomatic position with the government of Panama, which gave her the ability to speak at the Organization of American States (OAS). She used that platform to publicly call for foreign intervention in Venezuela. She has since been banned from running for office.

Earlier this week, Maduro said Gonzalez and Machado must face justice. 

On Thursday, RT journalist Fiorella Isabel reported that a draft resolution for the US House of Representatives was being floated around Washington looking for co-signers. That draft calls for more sanctions on Venezuela and would recognize González as the legitimate president of Venezuela.

 

She added that the draft was authored by Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) and Mario Díaz-Balart (R-FL).

BREAKING from an email I received:

There’s a draft resolution that’s seeking co-sponsors in US Congress & explicitly rejects Maduro & names Edmundo Gonzales Urrutia as President-elect of Venezuela, calling for the "imposition of new sanctions" against Caracas & its allies. pic.twitter.com/q1Upzdy3xH

— Fiorella Isabel (@FiorellaIsabelM) August 1, 2024

In 2019, the US officially recognized Juan Guaido as the interim President of Venezuela. He was eventually removed as the leader of the opposition from his own party and currently lives in Miami, Florida.

The National Electoral Council declared Maduro president-elect for 2025-2031 after the presidential elections were held in Venezuela on July 28. The Electoral Council said Maduro won 51% of the vote. 

Protests broke out the day after the election, leading to clashes between the police and protesters in Caracas. Protesters threw stones and Molotov cocktails at law enforcement officers. According to the Prosecutor General's Office, 77 law enforcement officers were injured; more than 1,000 people were detained on charges of destruction of state infrastructure, incitement of hatred and terrorism. 

The Venezuelan government said a number of countries interfered in the elections and the people's right to self-determination.

 

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... AND DONALD TRUMP WON IN 2020.....

 

 

 

Venezuela is ready to cooperate with BRICS countries on oil and gas fields, President Nicolás Maduro said.

Venezuela is betting on the BRICS nations for investment in its oil, gas and metals industries, President Nicolas Maduro has said.

"BRICS has a portfolio of opportunities in trade, and Venezuela is ready to be part of it. BRICS is a huge market for national producers," Maduro told journalists at a press conference on Friday. "Therefore, we strongly urge Venezuelan exporters to work in this direction. We have bet on BRICS."

He said that the biggest investments in Venezuela's crucial hydrocarbons sector were no longer from the hostile US, but from members of the group of emerging economies — especially Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

"The largest investments we have in oil and gas come from the BRICS, and if these people in the north and their partners in the world make the mistake of their lives, then those oil and gas blocks that were already signed will go to our allies of the BRICS," Maduro noted.

READ MORE: https://sputnikglobe.com/20240803/brics-offers-major-trade-opportunities-for-venezuelan-oil-and-gas---maduro-1119621100.html

 

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhsqYwIbaQI

Venezuela's Shocking Transformation: BRICS Unleashing Unprecedented Changes! | Alex Krainer

 

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Corporate Coup assassination excerpt: Venezuela’s Maduro on John Bolton’s plot to kill him

BY ANYA PARAMPIL

Following the attempt on President Donald Trump’s life, Anya Parampil offers a detailed look back at the failed assassination of Venezuela’s President, Nicolas Maduro, and Washington’s role in the plot, in her new book, “Corporate Coup: Venezuela and the End of US Empire.”

 

Editor’s note: Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro reacted to the July 13, 2024 attempt on Donald Trump’s life at a Pennsylvania rally by declaring, “I want, on behalf of all of Venezuela and our people, to reject, repudiate the attack against former President Donald Trump.” It was a magnanimous gesture from a leader who personally blamed Trump’s former National Security Advisor, John Bolton, for orchestrating the drone assassination attempt that nearly claimed his own life at an August 2018 military rally in Caracas. 

In the following excerpt from her new book, Corporate Coup, Anya Parampil describes how Trump suggested interest in a deal with Venezuela while Bolton and a clique of neoconservatives were plotting regime change against the country’s socialist-oriented government, and who later sought to topple Trump’s own government. Maduro has since revealed that Trump had arranged a meeting with him, but that Bolton and then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sabotaged it. “If we had met, Trump and I would have understood each other – we would even have become friends,” Maduro stated this February. “[Bolton & Pompeo] led Trump to a failure. False advisors!”

The excerpt that follows helps set the stage for a potential second Trump administration, and its inevitable battle with the Beltway foreign policy establishment that seems determined to destroy him – if it can not co-opt or overwhelm the president first.  

Get a copy of Anya Parampil’s book, Corporate Coup: Venezuela and the End of US Empire, here.

“As somebody who has helped plan coups d’état—not here, but you know, other places—it takes a lot of work.”

John Bolton uttered these words during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper in July 2022,1nearly three years following his departure from the Trump White House. When Tapper followed up with a request for details of the US official’s apparently criminal past, Bolton replied: “Well, I wrote about Venezuela in [my memoir] and it turned out not to be successful.”

For Venezuelans, Bolton’s confession underscored his already transparent role in directing Washington’s failed coup in Caracas—and the infamously incompetent military putsch that eventually came with it.

From the outset of Guaidó’s self-declared presidency, Bolton acted as his most enthusiastic cheerleader inside the White House. Days after the Trump administration’s January 2019 recognition of Guaidó, Bolton appeared on Fox Business to articulate the stakes of Washington’s new Venezuela policy.

“It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela,” the veteran US official declared.2 In just a few words, Bolton shattered the myth that Washington’s preoccupation with Venezuela was rooted in an abstract moral commitment to ideals like freedom and democracy.

According to Bolton, Trump was always skeptical of Guaidó’s ability to dislodge Maduro, whom the US president considered “too smart and too tough” to fall. In his memoir, Bolton disclosed that Trump instead expressed a desire to meet with Maduro directly and “resolve our problems with Venezuela” on multiple occasions. He further revealed that the president did not even want to issue the initial White House statement in support of Guaidó under his own name, only caving after Vice President Pence held a phone conversation with the unknown Venezuelan politician on the eve of his self-directed “swearing in” ceremony.

Bolton happened to be on hand for that discussion. He later recounted how “after the call, I leaned over Pence’s desk to shake hands, saying, ‘This is a historic moment.'” Yet even months before Guaidó’s unexpected rise, Bolton stood accused of meddling in Venezuela’s internal affairs.

READ MORE: https://thegrayzone.com/2024/07/16/corporate-coup-assassination-venezuelas-maduro-boltons-plot/

 

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Washington’s web of lies is backfiring over Venezuela

Even if Maduro stole the election, no one would believe the US anyway

 

BY Bradley Blankenship

 

The 2024 presidential election in Venezuela, held on July 28, has stirred international concern – much like the preceding elections in the Caribbean state. A clear divide has emerged, with the United States and its allies supporting the opposition, while countries in the emerging multipolar world order are backing President Nicolas Maduro.

In much the same way that the US and its allies have disputed the legitimacy of Maduro’s presidency since the 2018 election, spurring an artificial “presidential crisis” with former opposition leader Juan Guaido recognized by Washington as the “legitimate” president, the West is doing this again with former diplomat Edmundo Gonzalez.

The opposition has released copies of official tally sheets collected by poll watchers from most of the nation’s polling centers. The sheets show an apparent landslide victory of 80% for Gonzalez, a claim that is now being widely circulated and amplified by the Western press.

Meanwhile, the results released by the National Electoral Council showed a narrow victory for Maduro with 52%, resulting in opposition protests. The Venezuelan government has criminalized such demonstrations and moved to stamp down opposition leaders.

Given the state of the Venezuelan economy and widespread poverty, it is not outside the realm of basic reason that Maduro could have actually lost. Researchers, including Steve Levitsky, an expert on democracy at Harvard University, have also noted how improbable the official results are. He told the New York Times that this recent vote is “one of the most egregious electoral frauds in modern Latin American history.”

But others disagree. Denis Rogatyuk, a reporter with El Ciudadano who covered the election for the independent media platform, told RT: “The days preceding the election showed a monumental advantage that Nicolas Maduro and the PSUV had over the opposition in terms of manpower and the sheer strength of its electoral mobilization.”

“The closing rallies for President Maduro drew in crowds six to seven times larger than those of Gonzalez and Machado. And the second bulletin released by the CNE on August 2nd, showing 6,408,844 votes for Maduro, aligns perfectly with this notion, and the fact that the combined membership of the PSUV and its allied parties is just over 6 million as well,” he concluded. 

However, the more interesting dynamic with regard to the situation in Venezuela is the fact that the US is failing to garner the requisite support needed to apply the pressure it wants on Caracas. It shows a dwindling of American soft power in what was once considered the empire’s backyard.

For example, the situation in Bolivia in 2019, in which former President Evo Morales was forced to resign in the wake of widespread pressure from the police and military after international interference, has clearly left a sour taste in Latin Americans’ collective mouths.

The three most prominent countries in the region – Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia – have not condemned Maduro. In fact, the Organization of American States (OAS), which had previously passed a resolution against Morales in 2019, failed to pass a resolution over the situation in Venezuela. While 17 members voted to condemn Maduro, 11 abstained – including Brazil and Colombia – and five delegations, including Mexico, skipped the session altogether. The OAS needed 18 votes to pass it.

Even the European Union has failed to muster support after Hungary blocked a joint statement by the bloc that would have cited “flaws and irregularities” in the election, forcing EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell to publish it in a personal capacity.

What we see here is a classic case of the boy who cried wolf. The US has continually cried wolf over alleged breakdowns of democracy in Latin America, using its soft power to thwart independent governments through international forums and mafia diplomacy. It has spawned coup after coup, leaving nothing but destruction and destitution in its wake. People in the hemisphere – and indeed the world – are sick of injustice and maltreatment.

This time, Washington may have actually been right. It could be the case that Maduro lost in this election. It could also not be the case, and that is well-established by the fact that the US and its henchmen are pathological liars. In any case, wherever objective truth may lie, no one believes Uncle Sam’s claims anymore, evidently because he has abused his power for too long in his cynical pursuit of domination.

https://www.rt.com/news/602392-venezuela-election-maduro-us/

 

SEE ALSO: https://www.rt.com/news/602367-maduro-bans-x-musk-spat/

 

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Venezuela: letter to ARTE about the documentary “Maduro, from socialism to dictatorship”

 

Bolivarian Solidarity
Your “documentary” “Maduro from socialism to dictatorship” is a pure propaganda tool organized around the “testimonies” of members of the far-right opposition exclusively, of a renegade general who took refuge in Colombia at the time when this was led by Ivan Duque who never missed an opportunity to create problems for his neighbor, with whom he shares 2000 km of border, hostile declarations from ambassadors of countries of the European Union whose we know the position towards Venezuela (let's not forget that the father of Leopoldo Lopez, who is fleeing Venezuelan justice after having committed various offenses in the country including that of inciting violence, is a European deputy!) and representatives of the United States whose Objectivity is more than open to question.

These individuals repeat over and over key words like “dictatorship” “repression” “international isolation” “crossing the desert” none of which correspond to reality and, naturally, Cuba!

Not a word of the damage caused to the country by US sanctions, of the difficulty for the Venezuelan Government to obtain spare parts for its infrastructure, of food and medicine for its population, not a word of the kidnapping by the States -United by a Venezuelan diplomat responsible for providing food to his country (a terrorist activity if ever there was one!) of the impossibility of selling Venezuelan oil on the international market and so on.

Not a word either about how President Nicolas Maduro put an end to the “garimbas” of 2017: the convening of a Constituent Assembly! Have you ever seen a dictator call a Constituent Assembly? Venezuela is really a strange dictatorship in which the President of the Republic, to resolve any problem, appeals to the Constitution and consults the people by referendum and where it is the municipalities which, through an election, choose the projects priorities that they want to achieve in their territory. Since the Bolivarian Revolution came to power, there have been 31 elections in Venezuela, all of which took place in the presence of international observers who all testified to the transparency of the process, and the government party won 29 of them.

Speaking of elections, do you really not know what the Carter Center, when it was still led by former President of the United States Jimmy Carter, said about the Venezuelan electoral system? He simply said that the Venezuelan electoral system was the best in the world.

You quote the words of the presidents of the United States when they slander Nicolas Maduro or his country, but when one of them praises the Venezuelan electoral system, you prefer to quote this puppet of the United States of Juan Guaido who proclaimed himself “interim president” of Venezuela without having been elected by anyone.

This “documentary” is a shame, the individuals who made it do not deserve the name of journalists.

for Bolivarian Solidarity
President Françoise Lopez

Bolivarian Solidarity
solidamlatcuba@orange.fr

https://www.legrandsoir.info/venezuela-lettre-a-arte-a-propos-du-documentaire-maduro-du-socialisme-a-la-dictature.html

 

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American officials have offered to drop “narco-terrorism” charges against Nicolas Maduro if the Venezuelan president transfers power to his political opponents, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

Maduro defeated Western-backed opposition figure Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia by 51.2% to 44.2% in a presidential election last month, securing himself a third term in office. Gonzalez’s supporters, however, claim that the vote was rigged, and the US officially recognized Gonzalez as Venezuela’s president-elect earlier this month.

According to the Wall Street Journal’s sources, Washington is now attempting to persuade Maduro to cede power to Gonzalez. In secret talks with confidants of Maduro, the White House has offered to pardon the Venezuelan president and his allies, who are currently wanted in the US on drug charges.

American officials are also trying to enlist Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia – whose leftist governments are seen as sympathetic to Caracas – to convince Maduro to accept the deal, the newspaper reported. Meanwhile, Gonzalez’s allies have also offered security guarantees to Maduro if he were to step down.

The US Justice Department unsealed indictments against Maduro and more than a dozen Venezuelan political and military leaders in 2020, accusing them of “narco-terrorism,” and implicating them in a plot to “flood the United States with cocaine.” The State Department announced a $15 million reward for information leading to the arrest of the Venezuelan leader, and rewards of up to $10 million for each of his co-defendants.

The charges against Maduro came after previous attempts to dislodge him from power failed. Economic sanctions and veiled threats of military intervention from Washington were insufficient to break Maduro’s grip on power in 2018, while the US’ recognition of opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s ‘interim president’ in 2019 amounted to little more than a symbolic gesture, with Guaido currently living in exile in Miami.

With the Venezuelan military and security forces still loyal to Maduro, the WSJ’s sources conceded that the amnesty deal is unlikely to succeed. A similar deal was offered to Maduro during secret talks in Qatar last year, they said, adding that the Venezuelan leader refused to discuss any arrangement that would involve him leaving office.

Maduro’s inauguration is scheduled for January. US officials involved in the secret talks told the WSJ that they hope to strike a deal before then, while the newspaper described the potential return of Donald Trump to the White House as a point of leverage that the US holds over Maduro.

Whereas Trump imposed heavy sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry and backed Guaido, President Joe Biden temporarily lifted these penalties last year. However, the WSJ’s sources believe that “Maduro mistrusts Washington, no matter who inhabits the White House.”

Maduro said at the beginning of this month that he is willing to restart sanctions-relief and prisoner-exchange talks with the US, on the condition that Washington “should stay out of Venezuela’s internal affairs.”

 

https://www.rt.com/news/602457-us-maduro-amnesty-deal/

 

 

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BY John Miles

 

The United States has taken a keen interest in the results of another foreign election, with observers noting Venezuela possesses the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves.

Venezuela’s Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ), the highest court in the country, is examining the results of the country’s most recent presidential election as opposition leaders and their foreign backers allege fraud.

The country’s National Electoral Council (CNE), the government body responsible for managing elections in Venezuela, has submitted records to the court in an attempt to resolve the ongoing dispute. The TSJ has noted its legal authority on the matter, noting that its decision will be final and binding. But the opposition has refused to take part in the process, drawing criticism over its failure to present requested evidence to the court.

“No Venezuelan party that alleges to have 40 percent more votes than President Maduro (as the opposition claims) would hesitate to present the evidence to the National Electoral Council (CNE),” said Venezuelan constitutional expert Dr. Olga Alvarez in response to the development. “Whoever cries election fraud must irrefutably prove it, the onus is on them not on the CNE to prove there wasn’t.”

Political activist and independent journalist Niko House joined Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program Monday to discuss the issue with host Wilmer Leon.

“She’s been operating as a foreign agent on behalf of the United States. The CIA literally writes her a paycheck,” alleged House, speaking of Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.

“You would never see Joe Biden put in a request to audit and verify the results of the election,” he noted. “I think that speaks to the accountability and the integrity of Nicolas Maduro, which I feel like is a very important component here.”

House also noted Venezuela's robust electoral system, which includes multiple “checks and balances” and allows the opposition to monitor the counting of votes at electoral precincts.

“The most simplistic explanation is the oil, right?” House said of the United States’ interest in the election. The US and several of its allies have expressed concern over Maduro’s victory, echoing opposition claims of a fraudulent election.

The opposition has produced records it claims point to a victory for opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez, although the records have not been independently verified as accurate or authentic. Western media outlets have uncritically repeated the opposition’s claims, with outlets like The New York Times play....

 

READ MORE:

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240813/the-cia-writes-her-paycheck-venezuelas-us-backed-opposition-flounders-1119745145.html

 

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Over 30 million cyber attacks per minute since July 28    Originally published: Orinoco Tribune

 

Venezuelan platforms have experienced over 30 million cyberattacks per minute without a break since July 28. This was reported by Venezuelan Minister of Science and Technology Gabriela Jiménez this Monday, August 12, at the National and State Security Council held by President Nicolás Maduro.

Presenting a full report of the ongoing cyberattacks Venezuela has received since the presidential elections, Minister Jiménez said that 25 institutions have been affected by cyberattacks and 40 are being investigated.

“Among the cyberattacks, we can see that 65% were the denial of service type, affecting the servers of state institutions and international links,” she added, explaining that this affects the servers. Meanwhile, 17% of the attacks are related to the theft of information associated with emails containing malicious software, route hijacking, DNS expansion, and misconfiguration of state pages and portals.

She added that over the weekend, CANTV’s IP addresses were hijacked to cause the servers to crash. CANTV is the biggest telecom corporation in Venezuela and is state-owned.

All platforms have been attacked

“All state platforms have been attacked in multiple ways,” said Minister Jiménez when presenting the report. She highlighted that among the affected systems, the National Placement System (SNI) received four million attacks per hour. The SNI is the placement platform for new students in Venezuelan universities.

During her speech, Jiménez explained that renowned international cybersecurity platforms such as NETSCOUT report that the Venezuelan State has been one of the countries most affected by cyberattacks between July and August. These events are recorded on international cybersecurity platforms such as NETSCOUT and Kaspersky, which showed an increase in data traffic to Venezuela the day after the elections, leading Venezuela to be the most attacked country in Latin America between July and August.

In this regard, she said that the volume, level of sophistication, incidence, and duration of the attacks demonstrate a great technological and financial capacity.

Most cyberattacks come from the United States

Regarding the origin of the attacks, Minister Jiménez said that 98% come from farm services with desktop computers and less than 2% from mobile technology platforms.

Jiménez also said in her report that when analyzing the source of the attacks against platforms in Venezuela, the first country from which they were launched was the United States.

“In addition to these attacks, this has been simultaneously linked to the use of social media platforms where they generate trends of media cyberattacks,” she said, adding that although “90% of the attacks have not been successful, they nevertheless generate climates of fear,” highlighting that these affect Venezuelans’ psyche and create a negative perspective against the country.

The report concluded by recommending the creation of a National Cyber ​​Security Council to strengthen technological platforms.

 

https://mronline.org/2024/08/14/over-30-million-cyber-attacks-per-minute-since-july-28/

 

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BY Rachel Marsden

 

US meddling has ensured Maduro stays in power
Washington demands proof that the Venezuelan president really won the election – why should he bother?

 

The West wants recently re-elected Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to prove that he actually won. He doesn’t have to prove anything; endless Western interventionist shenanigans in Venezuelan domestic affairs have virtually guaranteed that to be the case. 

“If Maduro insists on saying he has won and does not want to understand that, for the international community, without verification, there is no assumption of results, Venezuela could enter a serious crisis – we are all trying to prevent this from happening,” saidEuropean Union chief diplomat Josep Borrell. The US State Department, meanwhile, said that the international community was running out of patience in waiting for the electoral proof. They’re all demanding answers now, as in-country opposition protests persist. Or what? You’ll threaten to regime change Maduro? You’ll rally government-linked NGO fronts against him? You’ll send some proxies over to do your dirty work for you? You’ll name some random dude as your chosen president and demand that your allies around the world treat him like he’s the real leader of the country? 

All these things have been tried already. And the very fact that they have is precisely why it’s virtually impossible for the West to mount a credible case against Maduro. There has been enough blatantly overt foreign intervention to plant reasonable doubt in the minds of a critical mass of Venezuelans about the motives and connections of any opposition. 

Even if they don’t particularly like Maduro, let’s face it – what’s even more off-putting is foreigners mucking around and telling them what to do. It’s like when you’re dating a bit of a douchebag and your friends and family keep telling you to dump him. Who do they think they are? You’ll dump him on your own terms when you’re good and ready. 

If Maduro is going to face off against opposition protests, he needs to do it alone for the sake of all involved. Because any foreign involvement – rhetorical, military, economic, or otherwise – is just going to lead to a result that lacks any credibility in the eyes of Venezuelans.

It’s not like anyone in Washington would give a toss about Venezuela if it wasn’t a target for resource plundering. It’s all so predictable. Since Maduro hasn’t made that plundering sufficiently Western-friendly, they’d like to replace him with someone who would.

Oh, and spare me the human rights and economic suffering arguments. If that was the real concern, then there are a lot of other countries without resources that Washington could obsess about “saving”. If they really cared about the people, they wouldn’t impose endless sanctions in an attempt to make the average Venezuelan so desperate as to resort to regime change.  

It was thanks to former US President Donald Trump – whose theme song for his former TV show, The Apprentice, had just a single word in its chorus: “money” –  that the intentions were laid bare. Trump says that he hates foreign wars. He loves other countries’ resources though. Which is why he pulled US troops out of Syria while still maintaining enough of a presence to keep the oil. Trump said recently in an interview with Elon Musk on the X Platform that he was miffed about Biden lifting sanctions on the Nord Stream pipeline of cheap Russian gas into Europe because the Trump administration had plans to make a fortune for the US selling gas to Europe instead. 

Trump’s former National Security Advisor John Bolton wrote in his memoir, “The Room Where It Happened”, that Trump told him to “get it done,” referring to ousting Maduro, adding that it was the fifth time that he had asked for it — like a butler who hadn’t yet brought him his Diet Coke. The US “should take the oil in Venezuela after ousting Maduro,” Trump said, according to Bolton.

Over the course of Trump’s term, the administration had a bounty of up to $15 million placed on Maduro for “narco-terrorism, conspiracy to import cocaine, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices” – a profile far more aligned with FARC actors in US-allied Colombia, which also hosted the handpicked fake “President” named by the West, Juan Guaido, and his acolytes.

Colombia was also the launching pad for mercenaries plotting incursions into Venezuela during the Trump administration. One of them was an ex-Venezuelan generalwho also supplied the FARC with weapons. Just last month, a former US Green Beret, Jordan Goudreau, owner of a Florida-based private security outfit called Silvercorp USA, was federally charged with violating US arms control laws for allegedly bringing American weapons to Colombia to stage a mercenary incursion to oust Maduro in 2020 — a plan called “Operation Guideon”, which ultimately failed and landed him in a Venezuelan prison. Surely it’s just a coincidence that he also accompanied Trump’s longtime bodyguard, Keith Schiller, to a meeting with Guaido’s reps in Miami, according to the Associated Press. If he had been successful at regime change and not an embarrassment for the US and tied to Trump’s mandate, would the Biden administration have charged him?

Earlier this month, Erik Prince, the founder of the former US private military contractor Blackwater and an overt Trump supporter, popped up in a video on the X Platform with an intro that looks like the product of about five minutes of Duolingo Spanish. Sitting in front of a cross and sporting a shirt emblazoned with “Venezuelan Resistance”, with Venezuela pictured in red crosshairs, Prince said that the opposition’s “friends from the North” were “coming soon.” That’s great for low-cost personal branding and buzz; not so great for actual covert action. But it’s just more evidence that Venezuela has become a trendy backdrop for neocon interventionist tourism in the same way that influencers flock to Dubai for bikini shots.

Team Biden doesn’t seem any less determined than Trump was to oust Maduro – the offer of the cash reward for his capture is still posted on the State Department’s website – but since every trick has seemingly already been tried unsuccessfully, they seem to be at a loss for options. The White House even had to deny reports of an offer not to pursue Maduro criminally for those “narco-terrorism” charges if he just quietly bails out of power. Even if there was any truth to it, outright public blackmail or bribery by the White House of a non-bootlicking president of a resource-rich country probably wouldn’t be a great look.

Thanks to Washington and its allies, it’s now virtually impossible to ascertain what’s really going on in Venezuela, or how much of the opposition to Maduro is organic. Why would Maduro even bother trying to prove anything to his Western critics, on demand? As if there’s anything that he could provide to them to which they’d just say, “Yeah, ok. Fair enough. Carry on, then.” If anything, the West has guaranteed Maduro a longevity that he may not have enjoyed had they not muddied the waters so badly for the average Venezuelan voter under the eyes of the entire world.

 

https://www.rt.com/news/603658-maduro-venezuela-us-meddling/

 

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SEE ALSO: 

wankerings at the white house about venezuelan oil.....

Venezuelan security forces have surrounded the Argentine embassy in the capital Caracas, which is sheltering six Venezuelan political figures opposed to President Nicolás Maduro.

Members of the Venezuelan opposition posted images and videos of officers from the country’s intelligence service forming a perimeter around the embassy complex.

Opposition figures inside the building said they were under "siege" by Mr Maduro's regime.

The embassy, as well as Argentine interests in Venezuela, have been represented by Brazil since diplomatic relations between Argentina and Venezuela broke down over the summer due to the outcome of Venezuela's presidential election.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c207958pp9qo

 

SEE ALSO: https://www.voltairenet.org/article221176.html

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.