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The First Steps In The Normalization Of Venezuela-Colombia Relations

On June 24, the candidate of the Historic Pact of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, officially became president-elect of the country. Among the political decisions that Petro promised to implement is the official reestablishment of diplomatic ties with the constitutional government of Venezuela, a link that was broken when Colombia, under former President Iván Duque, recognized the fake government of Juan Guaidó, a plan devised by Washington, and helped organize an invasion attempt, disguised as a “humanitarian intervention,” through the Colombia-Venezuela border in 2019. Consequently, President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela announced the end of relations with Colombia. After a lapse of three years, the relationship between the two countries has taken a new direction. Let’s examine some aspects that are already being worked on for mutual benefit.

Top Biden Official: US Would Have Overthrown Colombia’s New President

The top Latin America advisor for US President Joe Biden, Juan Sebastián González, threateningly said of Colombia’s new left-wing president: “40 years ago, the United States would have done everything possible to prevent the election of Gustavo Petro, and once in power it would have done almost everything possible to sabotage his government.” González is the Western hemisphere director for the US National Security Council (NSC). He previously worked in the State Department and NSC in the Barack Obama administration. González made these incendiary comments in Spanish in an interview with the Colombian media. Obliquely acknowledging the long history of US meddling in Latin America’s sovereign internal affairs, González added, “Those are the policies of the Cold War, that to a certain point today for some people are a justification from revisionist perspectives that characterize the policy of the United States in the context of a local manifestation of an empire.”

Venezuela To ‘Rebuild Fellowship’ With Petro Government In Colombia

Mexico City, Mexico – Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro celebrated the inauguration of Gustavo Petro as president of Colombia, with leaders pledging to rebuild the long but fraught relationship between the two Caribbean countries. “I extend my hand to the people of Colombia, to President Gustavo Petro, to rebuild fellowship on the basis of respect and love between peoples,” said Maduro on Sunday. For his part, Petro called for Latin American governments to leave aside their political differences and work toward regional integration. “It is time to leave behind the [political] blocs, the groups, and the ideological differences in order to work together. Let us understand once and for all that there is much more that unites us than what separates us and together we are stronger,” said Petro during his inaugural address to his country from Bogotá’s Bolívar Square.

Understanding Maduro’s Successful Socialist Economic Strategy

In its intensely biased coverage of Venezuela during the hard years of 2014-21 the mainstream media wheeled in every imaginable academic pundit to “demonstrate” that the country’s economic woes were the result of President Nicolas Maduro overseeing Venezuela’s slide “into authoritarianism and economic collapse” (the Guardian, January 24 2019) and not of cruel US sanctions. In 2019, the Economist for instance, in line with US policy, published a front cover with a clench-fisted Juan Guaido titled “the battle for Venezuela’s future,” positing “the world democracies are right to seek change.” Very rarely, if at all, the mainstream media or the activated pundits gave any significant weight to the well over 500 illegal and criminal unilateral coercive measures (aka sanctions) inflicted on Venezuela and its people by the US and its European and Latin American accomplices.

US Government Is World’s Worst Violator Of Freedom Of Press

The US government employs many strategies to try to justify its intervention in the internal affairs and violation of the sovereignty of foreign nations. Chief among these deceptive tactics is Washington’s weaponization of accusations that its adversaries violate the freedom of expression. This is quite ironic, given that the United States is the world’s leading violator of press freedoms, according to any consistent definition of the term. And unlike the countries that Washington claims supposedly repress the freedom of expression within their borders, US government censorship of independent media outlets and suppression of alternative voices is global, hurting people across the planet. The Joe Biden administration has in particular gone to great lengths to depict itself as a defender of civil liberties.

London Brazenly Steals Venezuelan Gold As US Hijacks Boeing 747

The President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, accused the United Kingdom on Wednesday, August 3, of stealing in a “brazen and outrageous” way the Venezuelan gold deposited in London, where a court announced last week that it would continue to retain the precious metal from Venezuela’s reserves. In a conference with entrepreneurs at the Teresa Carreño facilities in Caracas, the head of state stated that for Venezuela it is an operation of “kidnapping and theft” of the 31 tons of gold, valued at approximately 1,600 million euros. “Venezuela must know that it is an act of piracy and theft, and the whole world must know that there is no legal certainty in London or in the Bank of England, that at any moment the countries of the world can be robbed of their international reserves, their gold reserves,” he said.

Caracas Protests ‘Astonishing’ Ruling In Favor Of US-Backed Guaidó

Venezuelan authorities have blasted the latest court ruling in the struggle for control over 31 tonnes of gold stored in the Bank of England (BoE). On Friday, the High Court of England and Wales decided in favor of opposition politician Juan Guaidó and dismissed a new effort by the Venezuelan Central Bank (BCV) to regain control over the reserves worth an estimated US $1.7 billion. Caracas had brought to court the Venezuelan Supreme Court decrees stating that the parallel BCV board appointed by the US-backed opposition was illegal. However, judge Sara Cockerill decreed that the British Court could not recognize the rulings made by Venezuela’s highest judicial instance. Since late 2018, the Bank of England has refused BCV requests to repatriate the gold reserves.

¡Viva La Solidaridad! Latin America’s Left Leads The Way

Hundreds joined international guests, solidarity campaigners and elected representatives for ¡Viva la solidaridad! Latin America’s Left Leads the Way: a session organised by Labour Friends of Progressive Latin America as part of this year’s Arise Festival. Chairing the event, Arise’s Sam Browse went through examples of electoral successes and resilience in the face of aggression by the region’s left, and emphasised the importance of international co-operation amongst progressive forces: “those winning gains in the fight for a better future are an inspiration to us all”. Secretary of the Presidency in Honduras Rodolfo Pastor outlined how the country faced “a dark period of history” following the coup against elected President Manuel Zelaya in 2009, with those who took power implementing “repression to benefit a small elite at the expense of our natural resources and the rights of the majority”.

Venezuelan Lawyer Laila Tajeldine: Alex Saab, A Political Prisoner Of US Empire

More than two years have already passed since, on June 12, 2020, Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab was illegally kidnapped during a technical stopover in Cape Verde and taken to prison, without an arrest warrant. He would remain there until October 16, 2021, when he would be deported to the United States, despite the fact that the appeal against his extradition had not yet been concluded, and despite repeated protests from various international organizations against the arbitrary detention and torture that he has suffered. Blackmailed by the US government, the government of Cape Verde, already at the end of its legislative period, had remained deaf to the exhortations of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), of which the island is also a member, the American League for Human Rights, the American Association of Jurists, the Hadassah National Center of Canada, and the UN itself.

Venezuelan Cooperatives

Dario Azzellini tells Theresa Alt about Venezuelan cooperatives. The Chavez government supported the formation of cooperatives. Many formed; few really succeeded in operating cooperatively. Liberation theology also had been encouraging cooperatives. Other cooperatives arose when entrepreneurs and landowners left Venezuela and the workers took over. Later initiating cooperatives was given to the local-government communes. Local communes have played a more constructive role than central government. Recorded June 8, 2022.

John Bolton Admits Planning US Coups In Venezuela And Beyond

In an interview with Bolton published on July 12, CNN anchor Jake Tapper accused Trump of attempting a coup inside the United States, and asked Bolton about a Congressional investigation into violent protests held by Trump supporters on January 6, 2021. “One doesn’t have to be brilliant to attempt a coup,” Tapper said. Bolton replied, “I disagree with that, as somebody who has helped plan coups d’etat – not here, but, you know, other places. It takes a lot of work.” Tapper later asked, “I do want to ask a follow up. When we were talking about what is capable, or what you need to do to be able to plan a coup, and you cited your expertise having planned coups.” “I’m not going to get into the specifics, but uh…”, Bolton answered. “Successful coups?” Tapper asked. “Well, I wrote about Venezuela in the book. And it turned out not to be successful – not that we had all that much to do with it,” Bolton said.

Newsletter: Color Revolution Comes Home?

By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers for Popular Resistance. The United States has perfected the art of regime change operations. The US is the largest empire in world history with more than 1,000 military bases and troops operating throughout the world. In addition to military force, the US uses the soft power of regime change, often through 'Color Revolutions.' The US has been building its empire since the Civil War era, but it has been in the post-World War II-time period that it has perfected regime change operations.US military presence around the world Have the people of the United States been the victims of regime change operations at home? Have the wealthiest and the security state created a government that serves them, rather than the people? To answer these questions, we begin by examining how regime change works and then look at whether those ingredients are being used domestically.

Studying The Venezuelan Approach To Learning

The merits of the Bolivarian system are plain to see through the country having one of the highest educational progress rates in Latin America and a truly comprehensive system funded by the Venezuelan government led by the United Socialist Party of Venezuela. In order to understand the Venezuelan education system, it is necessary to examine both its foundations and the reality of education under the illegal US sanctions. In the decades preceding the successful election of Hugo Chavez, education in Venezuela was not prioritized. Governments effectively abandoned education in the rural and working-class areas for the exploitation of oil in the 1920s and later prioritized a neoliberal economic shift which saw government spending on education fall by 37 per cent between 1990-96 to only $118 dollars per capita.

Petro, Maduro And Iran – Regime Change En Route To Colombia?

Gustavo Petro’s victory in Sunday’s Colombian Presidential election, marking the first time Bogotá has elected a left-wing head of state, was not the only far-reaching geopolitical event to recently take place involving Latin America. A week prior to the former guerrilla fighter’s electoral success, President Nicolás Maduro of neighbouring Venezuela paid an official two day visit to Iran where he signed an official 20-year cooperation agreement with Iranian head of state Ayatollah Khameini – a deal intended to counter the wide-ranging US sanctions targeting both Caracas and Tehran. With one of Petro’s Presidential aims being to develop further relations with Venezuela however, his incoming Presidency has undoubtedly already been placed in the sights of the regime change lobby, wary that friendly relations between Bogota, Caracas and Tehran, will undermine US-NATO hegemony from South America all the way to the Middle East.

Venezuelan’s View: Petro Victory In Colombia, US Sanctions, Iran Pact

Multipolarista host Benjamin Norton speaks with Venezuelan journalist Jesús Rodríguez Espinoza, editor of independent news outlet the Orinoco Tribune, about the victory of left-wing candidate Gustavo Petro in Colombia’s presidential election, the easing of a few US sanctions, and Venezuela’s 20-year cooperation agreement with Iran.

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Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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