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Colombians Question Deployment Of US Security Forces

Colombian soldiers and military brass have been implicated in a string of human rights violations in recent weeks. On May 1, Semana magazine reported that the Colombian military illegally used U.S. military aid to spy on journalists and human rights defenders, including U.S. citizens. On June 4, Colombian armed forces carried out forced eradication of illicit crops and injured six farmers. On June 25, seven soldiers confessed to gang-raping a 13-year-old Emberá girl in Northern Colombia. Yet the United States is only deepening its relationship with the Colombian military. On May 28, the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) announced the deployment of the U.S. Security Force Assistance Brigade (SFAB) to Colombia to advise and train Colombian units in anti-narcotic missions. Colombians have spoken out against the security agreement, and the U.S. role in the country’s militarized drug policy.

Blockbuster Oil Bribery Scandal Exposes Corrupt Double-Dealing Of Guaidó ‘Attorney General’

Below the radar of US media, a district court in Florida tossed out a multibillion-dollar bribery case in March 2018 thanks to testimony delivered by a former member of the shadow administration of Venezuelan coup leader Juan Guaidó. That ex-official, Jose Ignacio Hernandez, served as attorney general in the US-backed Guaidó junta until July of this year. As this investigation will reveal, Hernandez’s testimony was bought and paid for by foreign oil giants with an interest in defrauding Venezuela’s state petroleum company out of billions of dollars. These corporate titans, which included some of the world’s largest oil companies, bribed corrupt officials within Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), the state-run Venezuelan oil company, to rig contracts in their favor.

Trump Tells Florida Crowd ‘Something Will Happen In Venezuela’ Soon

On a trip to COVID-19 riddled Florida this weekend, President Donald Trump not-so-cryptically revealed that he had something big planned for Venezuela during a meeting with leaders of the U.S. military’s Southern Command. “Something will happen with Venezuela. That’s all I can tell you,” he said, before adding that Washington would be “very much involved” in what he was referencing. Biden has also taken a hard line on Venezuela and is attempting to out-hawk Trump on the issue. “It’s time for free and fair elections so that the Venezuelan people can turn the page on the corrupt and repressive Maduro regime,” he said, adding that, “Trump talks tough on Venezuela, but admires thugs and dictators like Nicolas Maduro."

CoronaShock And Socialism

CoronaShock is a term that refers to how a virus struck the world with such gripping force; it refers to how the social order in the bourgeois state crumbled, while the social order in the socialist parts of the world appeared more resilient. This is the third in a multiple-part series of studies on CoronaShock. It is based on research by Ana Maldonado (Frente Francisco de Miranda, Venezuela), Manolo de los Santos (researcher with Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research), Subin Dennis (researcher with Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research), and Vijay Prashad (director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research). Friedrich Engels once said: ‘Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism’. What does ‘regression into barbarism’ mean to our lofty European civilisation? Until now, we have all probably read and repeated these words thoughtlessly, without suspecting their fearsome seriousness.

VenezolanosConBiden And MAGAzuela: Two Sides Of The Same Coin

The Biden campaign held an online event on Wednesday, July 8 pitched as the former Vice President’s “vision for Venezuela and Venezuelans in the U.S.” Spoiler alert: his vision for Venezuela barely differs from President Trump. This event, which didn’t merit an appearance from Biden himself, was aimed at getting Venezuelan-Americans to volunteer for “Uncle Joe”, as Representative Darren Soto (D-Fl) called him. It was an hour and a half of shilling for votes and influence, and it demonstrated that when it comes to Venezuela, policies of regime change, sanctions and a refusal to engage in dialogue unite VenezolanosConBiden (the group hosting the event) with MAGAzuela (the term for Trump-supporting Venezuelans).

The New Pirates Of Ancient Albion

The English High Court ruled earlier this month that the virtual and self-proclaimed “interim president” (Washington’s puppet) Juan Guaido and not the Venezuelan state should administer the 31 tonnes of gold reserves stored in the UK (1). This debacle proves that national and international law are no longer worth a dime, and represents a contemporary act of stale piracy by ancient Albion (2). The trial in England for Venezuela's blocked assets began in London on June 22 and concerned US $1.3 billion of state property. For decades, successive governments, even before Chavez, used the country’s gold bars in the Bank of England's underground vaults in international financial transactions. Twenty percent of the world's gold is kept in these vaults, in what is a legacy to colonial-time dynamics.

The Impact Of The Economic War On Venezuela

It would be impossible to count each and every one of the ways in which the war on Venezuela declared by imperialism has harmed the country.  The aggressions that we, the Venezuelans, have experienced since 1999 have been not only economic; they have been psychological as well.  There is no way to measure the consequences of the hate planted by the anti-democratic opposition, with its anti-socialist propaganda; it has extended to the point of burning people alive for being Chavistas.  The outrage felt by the Venezuelan people when they see those who have sold out their native land while calling themselves Venezuelan is also immeasurable. Having said all that, but focusing on the economic effects, we have brought up to date the calculations made in March 2019.  Up to that point the economic war had caused losses that totaled $125,000,000,000. (125 billion dollars.)

Why The United States Is Criminally Attacking Venezuela’s Gasoline Supply

According to a report issued by the United States Department of Agriculture, the US government is attacking the gasoline supply to Venezuelan aiming at its agricultural sector and so attacking food production, which would lead to the total collapse of the Venezuelan population under the guise of illegal sanctions. In the report, written on April 5 of this year, analyzed by the agricultural engineer Clara Sánchez and quoted by the investigative website “La Tabla”, the US predicts a serious decrease in Venezuelan production of most of the basic food items, shortage of agricultural inputs, quality seeds, fertilizers and an inability to grant credits. “Without fuel you can not make the tractors work,” she wrote.

Guaido Representative Threatens FBI Investigation Into Journalists

Vanessa Neumann, the U.K. ambassador of self-declared President of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó, claims that she is working closely with the FBI in an investigation exposing a “transnational criminal network” of journalists, including John McEvoy, Pablo Navarette, independent outlet Venezuelanalysis and former MintPress News contributor Camila Escalante. From the Twitter account of her communications firm, Asymmetrica, Neumann said that the four sources were involved in a “criminal conspiracy” supporting Venezuelan vice-president Delcy Rodriguez. “There is a price on your head” she informed them, “welcome to the rule of law, guys.” Neumann was tweeting from an organizational account because earlier she tweeted “death to Maduro!” from her personal account.

UK Denies Venezuela Access To Its Gold For Food And Medicine

The United Kingdom's High Court Thursday decided that opposition lawmaker Juan Guaido can access 31 tons of Venezuelan gold held in the Bank of England, which prevents President Nicolas Maduro's administration from using those resources to fight the pandemic. The ruling about this monetary reserve valued at over US $ 1 billion occurs after months of disputes between Venezuela and the Bank of England, which denied the constitutionally constituted government access to its own resources On May 14, the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) sued the Bank of England to obtain and sell the Venezuelan gold bars. The South American country intends to sell the resources to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and so gain food and medicine needed amid pandemic.

Trump Used Looted Venezuelan Public Money To Build Border Wall

Since the United States initiated a coup attempt against Venezuela’s elected leftist government in January 2019, up to $24 billion worth of Venezuelan public assets have been seized by foreign countries, primarily by Washington and member states of the European Union. President Donald Trump’s administration has used at least $601 million of that looted Venezuelan money to fund construction of its border wall with Mexico, according to government documents first reviewed by Univision. During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump insisted countless times that he would “make Mexico pay” to build a gargantuan wall covering all of the roughly 2,000 miles (3,145 kilometers) of its northern border.

Manitos Children’s Fund To Support Venezuelan Children Despite Sanctions

Manitos Children’s Fund grows out of the decades old Latin America solidarity movement which has worked to change US policies toward Latin America for over 60 years. Because of our history we are most focused on the effects of sanctions on the children of Latin America, with Venezuela being the most targeted by illegal sanctions currently. Democratic and Republican administrations have both issued sanctions against the democratically-elected government of Venezuela, but since taking office in 2017, President Trump has ratcheted up the pain factor with an aggressive attack on the Venezuelan economy. In August 2019, President Trump issued an Executive Order imposing a full economic blockade on Venezuela. It is not government officials who suffer when the US imposes illegal sanctions! It is children.

Trump’s Second Thoughts On Juan Guaido Are Not Enough

After nearly a year and a half of all-out efforts at regime change in Venezuela which took a major toll on the Venezuelan people, Donald Trump now tells the world he was never big on the strategy in the first place. On Friday, the U.S. president appeared to shove the blame onto advisers, and added “I think that I wasn’t necessarily in favor” of the policy of recognizing Juan Guaidó as president, but “I was OK with it.” Trump’s statements made it seem as if Guaidó’s only sin was that he did not manage to seize power. This might-makes-right mindset belies what is happening on the ground in Venezuela which is much more complicated than just one leader’s approval rating. It also ignores the horrendous suffering of the Venezuelan people due to crippling sanctions imposed in August 2019, the result of a foreign policy decision that Trump now brushes off as a simple mistake.

Bolton Weaves A Tall Tale In His Venezuela Chapter

From the first paragraph of “Venezuela Libre”, the ninth chapter of John Bolton’s upcoming book, The Room Where It Happened, it is obvious that the tale Bolton spins is full of fabrications, half-truths, propaganda and the occasional kernel of truth. The chapter is a 35-page screed in which the infamous warmonger places blame for the Trump administration’s disastrous Venezuela policy on everyone from Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, to State Department bureaucrats and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and, of course, President Trump. The criticism also extends to opposition figure Juan Guaidó and Colombian President Ivan Duque. Exempt from criticism are the policy’s two architects: Mauricio Claver-Carone (handpicked by Bolton as the National Security Council’s Senior Director for the Western Hemisphere) and Bolton himself.

Venezuela Sues The United Kingdom Over Frozen Gold

In January 2019, the Bank of England froze over $1.2 billion worth of Venezuela’s gold, refusing to release it to the democratically elected government and contributing to the deadly economic crisis caused by the Trump administration’s ongoing regime change efforts. Now Venezuela is suing the Bank of England and the trial is happening this week! The Venezuelan government isn’t even asking that the money be returned to them. Instead, they want the funds transferred to the United Nations Development Program so that this UN agency can buy food and medicine on behalf of the country to help it weather the COVID-19 pandemic. The Trump administration has been working since 2017 to get other countries to join its cruel sanctions. The United Kingdom was one of the first countries to heed the call, disregarding the unconscionable cost to human life and Venezuela’s economy.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

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.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

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.