The U.S. government said about 20,000 Cuban troops and agents have
been working in Venezuela to prop up Maduro’s government, a figure
disputed by Cuba.
In February, Navy Adm. Craig S. Faller, commander of U.S. Southern Command, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that Maduro, fearing for his own safety, has “completely surround[ed]” himself with Cuban security.
“I think it’s a good sense of where the loyalty of the Venezuelan
people are, that his immediate security force is made up of Cubans,”
Faller told the committee.
In January, the White House announced billions of dollars in crippling new sanctions
against Maduro and the country’s state-owned oil monopoly PDVSA, less
than a week after Trump first acknowledged Guaido as Venezuela’s
legitimate leader.[Actually, it's legitimate US-installed dictator]
The White House has long linked Venezuela’s fortunes to Cuba. At a major foreign policy address earlier this year, Trump declared: “When
Venezuela is free, and Cuba is free, and Nicaragua is free, this will
become the first free hemisphere in all of human history.” [No, it will become the first hemisphere under US dictatorship.]
Trump continued, as the crowd roared: “The days of socialism and communism are numbered not only in Venezuela, but in Nicaragua and Cuba as well.
[But the days under dictatorship of US bankers are just getting
started.] Do we love Cuba? Do we love Nicaragua? Great countries. Great
potential.”
The U.S. and about 50 other nations have taken the position
that Maduro’s re-election last year was marred by fraud and he is not
the legitimate president of Venezuela, a once prosperous nation
that has the world’s largest proven oil reserves. [US bankers have
desperately been trying to overthrow and/or starve Venezuelans to death
for almost 20 years].
In January, the administration took the unusual step of recognizing Guaido, the opposition leader of the National Assembly, as interim president. It also imposed punishing sanctions on the country’s oil sector, deepening the country’s economic crisis.
Despite these and other measures, Maduro, the hand-picked successor to Chavez, has retained his hold on the country and the support of the security services.
That support had seemed to crack Tuesday with the launch of what the opposition was calling “Operation Freedom,” which began with the early-morning release of a short video of Guaido and Lopez alongside a few dozen national guardsmen urging people to “take to the streets.”
In a video broadcast live on telecasts across the world,
an armored vehicle could be seen driving over the center of a road,
hitting a crowd of demonstrators loyal to Guaido who were purportedly
throwing rocks at security forces. Dozens of injuries have been
reported.
“What we are seeing today in Venezuela is the will of the people to
peacefully change the course of their country from one of despair to one of freedom and democracy,” Pompeo tweeted in an early reaction. “The U.S. stands with them.“ [Pompeo doesn’t even “stand with” Americans who voted to “change the course of their country” in 2016. We voted to end US foreign aggression, but of course we’ve been ignored.]
“We’ve been working with the embassy staff ever since the coup began. As they started to reduce the staff we’ve had some educational events here then we finally made a decision that we should be there. And they said to us you are welcome, you are there with our permission.” Gold told me over the phone Monday night from the embassy.
Maduro’s diplomatic officials were all expected to be out of the embassy by April 24th and
the activists were prepared for a confrontation, “That was what they
said to the diplomatic officials, we assumed it would apply to us and we were prepared to have them come in. It’s my understanding that it did apply to us but we had a huge turnout of people that showed up to lend their support and lend their bodies. And after that they decided not to show.”
Eliot Abrams, Trumps Venezuelan regime change point man called the sit in a “violation of law“, when asked about Abrams comments Gold called out his hypocrisy,
“Well what a farce that Eliot Abrams would tell us that we’re breaking
the law, he’s a convicted criminal and has been involved in war crimes.
If Eliot Abrams did say that he is in fact entirely wrong. We are completely within our legal rights, we are here legally with permission from the Venezuelan government. Under the Vienna convention even if two countries lose diplomatic relations the embassy remains the property of that government, so for the secret service or US police would in fact be illegal.”
Article 22 of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Treaties states, “The premises of the mission shall be inviolable. The agents of the receiving State may not enter them, except with the consent of the head of the mission.”
The tense scene in D.C.’s tony Georgetown neighborhood played out as Maduro’s [so-called] socialist government faced perhaps its biggest challenge yet, with [US stooge] Guaido calling for a military uprising — and the Trump administration voicing support from afar.
Amid clashes on the streets of Caracas and global uncertainty over how
the escalating challenge to Maduro’s grip on power would resolve,
dramatic footage from Venezuela’s capital showed a military armored
vehicle plowing into a crowd of protesters.
“Today is the day the Venezuelans are taking over the country,” one pro-Guaido protester, Giuliano Gandullia, 40, who was born in Venezuela, told Fox News outside the embassy.
Two Code Pink protesters standing at the door of the embassy on
Tuesday held a sign that said: “Hands off Venezuela.” Another sign
hanging from the building read: “Nicolas Maduro is the president.”
“The Venezuela coup attempt is the Trump administration
trying to overthrow the government of Nicolás Maduro in order to steal
Venezuelan oil,” Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin tweeted Tuesday. [I hope she said something similiar in Feb. 2015 when Obama tried to assassinate Maduro.]
Meanwhile, pro-Guaido protesters came to confront the Code
Pink activists, holding signs like “Venezuela wants Democracy, not
another Cuba.” In interviews, these protesters emphasized that they are from Venezuela – unlike many of the Code Pink protesters.
“Those people right there, they’re not Venezuelan. They don’t have a
passport. They don’t have our IDs,” said 32-year-old Clemente Pinate,
who said he is from the country and came to the United States when he
was 12.
“They are communists, socialists with Maduro,” he added. “I’m anti-Maduro. And I’m here representing my people.”
The Guaido protesters called on Code Pink to the leave the embassy, which was officially closed by Maduro earlier this year.
“We’re here today to denounce the trespassing of Code Pink,” said
Carla Bustillos, 39. “This is a property of the people of Venezuela.
It’s an asset of the nation, and the nation is now facing a transition, a transition to democracy.” [Wrong, pal. A transition to certain bankers.]
Since the debacle of 2002, Chávez’s natural enemies at home and in Washington have not relaxed their crusade against him. Opponents have been trying to unseat him through a recall referendum, a drive that is funded in part, if not in full, by, yes, [US group] The National Endowment for Democracy. NED gave a grant of $53,400 to an organization called Sœmate, which appears to be running the referendum campaign. The NED grant document, after castigating Chávez
for polarizing Venezuelan society, specifies that Sœmate will “Develop a
net of volunteers and [apartidistas] trained to work in elections and
in a referendum … [and] promote popular support for the referendum.””
Comment: The main focus of the Endless Unwinnable War Industry is US taxpayers. They need us to be enslaved from birth.
The “peace” movement was loud and strong until Nov. 2008. It abruptly ended when Obama was elected. During his 8 years Obama transformed the Democrat Party into the home of the Endless US Taxpayer Funded Foreign War Industry.
He remade government into something about which everything was said to
be “classified.” Should a rube dare ask a question about why this was
happening, the rube was told, “That information is classified, national
security, you hick.” This must be one those “US values” we hear about that you have to share if you don’t want to be executed or bombed by the US.
“When the Pentagon delegates the economic headquarters of the countries it wishes to destroyto the US Department of the Treasury (USDT), all members of the European Union and NATO are obliged to apply US sanctions.
This transformation of the rules of the game, without equivalent since the end of the Second World War, immediately forced all actors to rethink their strategy, and therefore all the plans for alliance upon which they were based. Those who turn up late will pay for it.
Thus the United States have just decided to lay economic siege to Venezuela [3], Cuba [4] and Nicaragua [5]. In order to mask real killing wars, these actions are presented by the media apparatus as « sanctions », without giving us any idea of what law Washington is basing them on.
They are deployed with explicit reference to the « Monroe Doctrine » of 1823, according to which no foreign power shall intervene on the American continent, while in exchange, the United States will refrain from intervening in Western Europe.
Only China, which felt targeted, pointed out that the Americas are not the private property of the United States.
However, everyone is aware that this doctrine has evolved rapidly to
justify Yankee imperialism in the South of the continent (the «
Roosevelt Corollary »).
The Syrians, who have just won an eight-year
military war against NATO’s jihadist mercenaries, are destabilised by
this economic war, which imposes strict rationing of electricity, gas
and oil, and provokes the closing of factories which had only just been reopened. At best, they can be relieved that the Empire did not inflict these two forms of war at the same time.
The multiplication of theatres of war – and therefore of the pretended « sanctions » – began to cause serious problems for the allies of the United State, including the European Union. The EU did not appreciate the threats of seizure aimed at companies which had invested in Cuba, and, remembering the actions engaged to forbid them access to the Iranian market,
reacted by threatening in their turn to seize the Arbitration Committee
of the World Trade Organization (WTO). And yet, as we shall see, this
revolt by the European Union is doomed to failure, since it was anticipated 25 years ago by Washington [ie, US permanent political class].
The European Union – trapped
[Bush #1] Anticipating the current reaction of the European
Union, worried about not being able to trade with whomever it saw fit, the administration of Bush senior elaborated the « Wolfowitz Doctrine », which was concerned with making sure that the Western and Central Europeans would never have an independent defence system, but only a system which was autonomous [9]. This is why Washington castrated the European Union at its birth by imposing a clauseto be inserted in the Treaty of Maastricht – the suzerainty of NATO. I am writing here about the European Union, not the Common Market.
We should remember the total support offered by the European Union to all of the Pentagon’s adventures, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen. In all these cases, without exception, the EU marched along in step with its suzerain, NATO.
This vassal condition is in fact the only reason that the Western European Union (WEU) was dissolved, and it is also why President Trump gave up the idea of dissolving the Atlantic Alliance’s permanent military organisation – without NATO, the European Union would gain its independence, since it is only to NATO – and not the United States – that these treaties refer.
Of course, the treaties stipulate that all this must be implemented in conformity with the United Nations Charter. But,
for example, on March 2019, the United States questioned the
resolutions it had approved concerning the sovereignty of Golan. Without
warning, they changed their minds, provoking the de facto collapse of International Law [10]
Another example – the United States this week took position in Libya for General Khalifa Haftar, with whom President Trump shared a telephone call to assure his support against the government created by the UNO [11], and we are now seeing members of the European Union, one by one, following his lead.
Whether they like it or not, they are today co-responsible for Washington’s wars, including for example the famine in Yemen,
consecutive to the military operations by the Saudi Coalition and to US
sanctions. They now have to choose either to assume these crimes and
participate in them, or to leave the European treaties.
Globalisation is finished
International commerce is beginning to decline. This is not a passing crisis, but a deep-rooted phenomenon. The process of globalisation which defined the world from the dissolution of the USSR to the mid-term elections of 2018 is now ended. It is no longer possible to export freely all over the world.
In these conditions, debates on the respective advantages of free-exchange and protectionism are no longer pertinent, because we are no longer at peace and we no longer have a choice.
In the same way, the construction of the European Union, which was imagined at a time when the world was divided into two irreconcilable blocs,is
today completely inadapted. If they want to avoid being dragged by the
United States into conflicts which are not their own, its members will
have to free themselves from the European treaties and the integrated
command of NATO.
Therefore it is completely off-subject to look at the European elections as opposing progressives and nationalists [12]. This is not the point at all.The
progressives affirm their desire to build a world governed by
International Law, which their godfather, the United States wants to
eradicate, while certain nationalists, like the Poland of Andrzej Duda,
are preparing to serve the United States against their partners in the
European Union.
The Clinton narrative, which is the official line of the Democratic Party,is a monumental lie.
Responsibility for Clinton’s defeat in the 2016 elections is attributed
entirely to the operations of Russian bots and “Guccifer 2.0,” the
persona of the individual who supposedly hacked Democratic Party emails.
Her campaign, Clinton writes, was the “target of a Russian plot,” directed by President Vladimir Putin, who “seeks to weaken our country.”
In her column, Clinton goes on to call for an alliance between the Democratic Party and the Republicans.
The situation calls for “clear-eyed patriotism, not reflexive
partisanship,” she writes. She urges Republicans to work with Democrats in an intensified campaign against Russia—with or without the Trump administration. She writes: “It’s up to members of both parties to see where that road map [provided by the Mueller report] leads—to the eventual filing of articles of impeachment, or not. Either way, the nation’s interests will be best served by putting party and political considerations aside and being deliberate, fair and fearless.”
Inextricably connected to the conflicts over foreign policy
is the escalation of the attack on democratic rights within the United
States. Reprising the ravings of Dies,social discontent is attributed to the nefarious efforts of Russia to “sow discord” within the United States.
The September 11 attacks—a terrorist atrocity that killed nearly 3,000 people—were followed by the Patriot Act, the Homeland Security Department, the Northern Command, domestic spying, Guantanamo Bay, the institution of torture and drone assassinations as government policy, and other crimes. The campaign of the Democrats over the Russian “attack”—a lie fashioned from whole cloth—has been accompanied by far-reaching moves to censor the internet under the guise of combating “fake news.”
The conflict between the Democrats and the Trump administration is a conflict between two reactionary factions of the ruling class. All those political organizations and groups that are seeking to direct social opposition behind the Democratic Party are playing the most criminal role.They
are no less terrified than Trump and the Democrats of the development
of a genuine socialist movement of the working class, which will oppose
American capitalism and its wars….
In the early 1950s, Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy led the anti-Soviet campaign, alleging that Russian spies occupied top positions in the government, in universities, in Hollywood
and even in the military. According to McCarthy, “a conspiracy so
immense and an infamy so black as to dwarf any previous venture in the
history of man” implicated not only the Soviet Union but was also
responsible for the “loss of China” in the 1949 Chinese Revolution.
(continuing): “was heavily influenced by John Stormer’s book None Dare Call It Treason. “Will America continue to aid the communist enemy,”
Stormer asked, “to disarm in the face of danger, to bow before
communist dictators in every corner of the earth? The decision is
yours.”
Unfortunately, this fabricated bubble burst badly when Mueller’s two year investigation could not conclusively say that Trump colluded with Putin to win the 2016 election.
The corporate
mainstream media news will do its best to push the candidacy of Biden
with the message that only he can beat Trump in 2020.
The two year campaign by the intelligence agencies against Trump will be continued by pushing Hillary’s shape-shifter Joe Biden. This is how the “security surveillance state” will respond to the former “Goldwater Girl’s” statement that Mueller documented a serious crime against all Americans.
“Hillary is a delusional psychotic and needs to be locked in psychiatric hospital to snap out of it.
In 2017 a book was published by NYT journalists (as I
euphemistically call them) about Hillary campaign and defeat after
Russia-gate allegation by CIA were made public in January 2017 and
believed by MSM like divine truth.
Hillary ignored them alland
trusted 100 million dollar FB acquired massive electoral/personal data
based supercomputer simulations of electoral patterns that assured
Clinton 90%+ chance to win presidency.
Comment: All homeless foreigners from violent cultures who
take one step onto US soil receive immediate gifts of all expenses paid
lives via US taxpayers. The US military is
happy to use heavy weapons to defend borders all over the world but has
no interest in providing the same service to the US Homeland. “Deadly force” wouldn’t be needed and wouldn’t
be an issue if the US simply had very high, thick walls. But the US
doesn’t exist to the US political class and its donors. They’re
adamant on open borders for the constant pool of essentially slave-wage,
non-English speaking workers they provide. As the US political class
engineers the merger of Latin America with the former US, effectively genocide of the US,
overwhelmed local and state governments require more money to take care
of the flood of homeless people from violent cultures. Financially
stressed public schools encounter new expenses that can only be met by
diverting funds carefully budgeted for the needs of children already
here.
But,
for example, on March 2019, the United States questioned the
resolutions it had approved concerning the sovereignty of Golan. Without
warning, they changed their minds, provoking the de facto collapse of International Law [
