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Venezuela

Alex Saab’s Diplomatic Immunity Ruling Freezes His Court Case

The trial against the Venezuelan diplomat, Alex Saab, in the Court of the US Southern District of Florida, was suspended due to the ongoing appeal for his diplomatic status. The appeal was filed in April of 2021, reported FuserNews. The current complaint in regards to the recognition of his diplomatic status, which would confer immunity for Ambassador Saab, has been fought in the Court of Appeals of the Eleventh Circuit of Atlanta, Georgia, since April 1, 2021 when the defense team requested that the court “annul the order conferring the status of fugitive.”

Nick Estes In Conversation With Jorge Arreaza

Jorge Arreaza is the Minister of Industries and National Production in Venezuela. Red Nation Podcast co-host Nick Estes spoke to him in Caracas in late November 2021.

The Cuban Guaidó Wannabe

Cuban opponent of the system, Yunior García Aguilera, has announced a “strategic alliance” of opposition forces in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. This “alliance” of activists “confronting the same dictatorship” could help “change the reality in Cuba”, he declared in a report published by the Europa Press news agency on Saturday. After meeting with representatives of Spain’s fascist Vox party and the post-Franco Popular Party (PP), the co-founder of the “Archipelago” platform, who landed in Madrid on November 18, also met late last week with right-wing opposition politician Leopoldo Lopez, who fled Venezuelan justice to Spain a year ago. The connection with López, responsible for numerous deaths at roadblocks, the so-called guarimbas, in Venezuela in 2014, would allow “to better understand the play” that García “wanted to stage in Cuba,” the Cuban portal Cubadebate commented on Sunday.

Interview: Wife Of Venezuelan Diplomat ‘Kidnapped’ By The US

On Wednesday, November 24, MintPress News Editor in Chief Mnar Adley sat down to speak with Camila Saab, the wife of imprisoned Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab. Saab was on a diplomatic mission to Iran in June 2020, where he was tasked with securing deals for food, medicine and personal protective equipment. His plane stopped off in Cabo Verde — a group of islands off the west coast of Africa — for a routine refueling. He would never finish his journey, as, on orders from the United States government, local authorities stormed the vehicle, forcing him off the plane — an event that would begin his 18-month detention. “I never imagined that Cabo Verde was going to kidnap a diplomat,” said the Italian-born former model and mother of two.

Venezuela’s Socialists Win Elections In Landslide

After years of boycotting previous votes, Venezuela’s right-wing opposition parties agreed to participate in these elections, through a series of negotiations that were held in Mexico and sponsored by Norway and the Netherlands. A delegation of US National Lawyers Guild members traveled to Venezuela to monitor the elections, visiting 12 voting sites in Caracas and other states. They reported, “We observed a balanced and transparent voting process which voters expressed confidence in.” “From a technical point of view, we observed an electoral system that was fundamentally transparent and facilitated by a workforce (poll workers, coordinators, table presidents) with strong technical competence regarding the functioning of the machines and the integrated election systems,” the National Lawyers Guild members wrote.

Jorge Arreaza On Venezuela Recovering From Sanctions

UN Special Rapporteurs estimate that 100,000 people have died in Venezuela in the last decade because of the lack of medicine brought on by U.S. sanctions. Nearly 60% of those deaths took place under the Trump administration after Washington escalated its economic warfare on the Bolivarian state. During the Trump era, Jorge Arreaza served as Venezuela’s foreign minister and spent years building diplomatic ties with other nations amid Washington’s aggressive hybrid war. “After 22 years of revolution, we have had to deal with President Clinton, President Bush, President Obama, President Trump, and President Biden. And there are no major differences between them because it is not a matter of who is in the Oval Office; it is a matter of who really controls the decisions in the United States,” Arreaza told MintPress.

Five Reasons Why The Left Won In Venezuela

For the first time in four years, every major opposition party in Venezuela participated in elections. For the fifth time in four years, the left won in a landslide. Voters elected 23 governors, 335 mayors, 253 state legislators and 2,471 municipal councilors. The governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) won at least 19 of 23 governorships (one race remains too close to call) and the Caracas mayoralty in the November 21 “mega-elections.” Of the 335 mayoral races, the vote count has been completed in 322 of them, with PSUV and its coalition taking 205, opposition coalitions 96 and other parties 21. Over 70,000 candidates ran for these 3,082 offices, and 90% of the vote was counted and verified within hours of polls closing.

Venezuela: Chavismo Wins Governorships In 20 Of 23 States

Venezuela's National Electoral Council (CNE) President Pedro Calzadilla reported a 41.80 percent turnout in Sunday's Subnational elections. Having counted 90.21 percent of the ballots cast in the elections, Calzadilla reaffirmed that the elections took place in a peaceful environment. The United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) candidates hold leads in 20 out of 23 states for the governor's race. Meanwhile, the opposition coalition United Democratic Table (MUD) candidates secured a lead in the Cojedes and Zulia states. Neighbors Force (FV) party secured the other governor post for opposition sectors in the Nueva Esparta State. "Nothing disturbed the electoral process ... International observers move freely throughout the country to verify the electoral process... It is a victory for the humble people, the noble people of Venezuela, who have endured a brutal war," President Nicolas Maduro stressed.

Washington Maintains Seditious Agenda Against Venezuela

The government of the United States ratified its seditious policy against Venezuela by continuing to recognize former deputy Juan Guaidó as the interim president of Venezuela. On Tuesday, November 16, the Undersecretary of State for the Western Hemisphere, Brian Nichols, confirmed that the US still recognizes former deputy Juan Guaidó “and his government.” The statement was made during Nichols’ appearance before the Foreign Subcommittee of the Chamber of Deputies, in which Nichols was asked whether the US administration plans to recognize the President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro.

Briefing: Venezuelan Elections November 2021

Venezuela goes to the polls again on  N21ovember in ‘mega elections.’ The dialogue that began in late summer between the Venezuelan government and sections of the hard right-wing opposition had been going well, with some definite outcomes. These include the decision by some right-wing opposition parties that have boycotted elections for years to take part in the elections. But the US’s illegal extradition from Cape Verde of Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab, who was en-route to Iran to broker a trade deal to bring fuel, food and medicines to Venezuela, has threatened to sabotage both the talks, as the US did before in 2018 and 2019, and the elections. The regional and municipal elections being contested on 21 November are for the posts of state governors, mayors, regional legislators and local councilors, totaling 3,082 elected positions.

Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela As Existential Threats To The US

One of the extreme ironies of the latest attack by the settler-colonial regime of the United States against the national democratic project of Nicaragua is that in Nicaragua, the second poorest nation in the Americas, universal healthcare and education are guaranteed to the population as a human right, while in the U.S. those kinds of basic human rights are distant dreams. The day after the so-called progressive block of legislators in the U.S. House of Representatives surrendered to President Joe Biden and the right-wing corporate wing of the party on the Build Back Better legislation that offered some minor and temporary relief for workers and the poor, many of those same “progressives” voted for the RENACER Act .

Newly Released Documents Expose US Meddling In Venezuelan Elections

America’s interference in the electoral process in Venezuela is laid bare in a series of files that reveal how Washington provided significant investment to train political activists in campaigning effectively online. Documents released to researchers under the US Freedom of Information Act have revealed how US intelligence fronts weaponized social media to promote Venezuela’s right-wing opposition, and assist their election to parliament, thus laying the foundations for Washington’s appointment of Juan Guaido as the country’s leader in January 2019. The files indicate that in October 2013, seven months after the death of popular socialist President Hugo Chavez, the National Democratic Institute (NDI), a US intelligence front that funds and supports political parties abroad, was provided almost $300,000 by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) – a US government agency avowedly created to do overtly what the CIA had previously done covertly – for a program titled ‘Venezuela: Improved Training and Communications Skills for Political Activists’.

US ‘Justice’ Dismisses 7 Of 8 Charges Against Venezuelan Diplomat Alex Saab

On Monday, November 1, the US Department of Justice dismissed seven charges of money laundering against Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab, leaving only one charge of conspiracy to commit that crime. The motion was presented by the prosecutor Kurt Lunkenheimer, the day a hearing was scheduled in which the eight charges were to be read to Saab, a procedure that was postponed to next November 15, reported  EFE news agency. The request was issued because the prosecution could not find sufficient evidence to prove the accusations, as Saab’s defense team had argued. The decision aligns with the fact that the Swiss Prosecutor’s Office dismissed its own investigation early this year for lack of evidence to support Washington’s fabricated case.

Protest In Miami In Support Of Alex Saab

Members of the Bolivarian Circle in Miami and Trokia Kollective chant “free Alex Saab” outside Miami’s Clyde Atkins Courthouse on Monday, Nov 1st - the day originally scheduled for Venezuelan Diplomat Alex Saab’s arraignment. Despite the disappointing delay of his arraignment to November 15th, his supporters are energized as they stand witness outside Ambassador Saab’s prison, the Miami Federal Detention Center (FDC). They are resolute in their commitment to Diplomat Saab for breaking through the crippling illegal U.S. unilateral economic sanctions imposed on the people of Venezuela. Reportedly, the arraignment was postponed at the request of one of his lawyers, Henry Bell, since Diplomat Saab is “quarantined” from meeting with them in person.

US Policy Toward Venezuela Was Never About Promoting Democracy

Last year, then Special Representative Elliott Abrams declared that the Trump Administration was “working hard” to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Now Abrams (currently a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations), together with the Biden Administration, is urging the Venezuelan opposition to participate in the upcoming state and local elections this November. Washington’s recent backpedaling, however, does not mean they’ve given up on intervening in Venezuela’s internal affairs. Not surprisingly, Washington has pressured Venezuela’s rightist opposition—led by self-proclaimed president Juan Guaidó and opposition leader Leopoldo López—to abandon their three-year policy of boycotting elections, which they claim are rigged. Electoral participation is a hard pill for both politicians to swallow because it shatters the illusion, nurtured by many in Washington, that Guaidó is the rightful president and that he is just days or weeks from occupying the presidential palace.

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Online donations are back! 

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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