Showing posts with label Venezuela. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Venezuela. Show all posts

Sunday, September 8, 2019

Venezuelan Usurper Guaido to be Charged with High Treason?


Global Research, September 08, 2019

Nicolas Maduro is Venezuela’s democratically elected and reelected president — an indisputable hard truth Trump regime hardliners want erased. The Bolivarian Republic’s electoral process is “the best in the world,” Jimmy Carter earlier explained.
It’s scrupulously open, free and fair, affirmed by independent monitors every time elections are held — polar opposite the money controlled US system. One party with two right wings wins every time, what political dirty business as usual is all about — fake democracy, never the real thing, a notion the US ruling class abhors.
If voting changed anything in the US it would be banned. The nation’s founders created a system to be run exclusively of, by, and for its “rich, well-born and able,” John Adams explained.
Alexis de Tocqueville was wrong. Hypocrisy, not democracy, defines how America is governed – an increasingly totalitarian plutocracy, oligarchy and kleptocracy.
Rule of the people always meant its privileged class. The Constitution’s general welfare clause (Article I, section 8) applies to them exclusively — at the expense of most others.
Democracy in America is fake, elections farcical when held. The world’s richest nation doesn’t give a hoot about its ordinary people, exploiting them for profit.
The supreme law of the land deters no US president or sitting government from doing whatever they please, inventing reasons as justification. Ordinary people have no say over how the country is run — for powerful interests at their expense.
Venezuelans have the real thing — democracy the way it should be, a model for other nations to emulate. It’s why dark US forces want it eliminated, plotting for tyrannical pro-Western puppet rule to replace it.
Guaido is the latest in a long line of US-designated puppets, a usurper in waiting if Trump regime hardliners prevail over Bolivarian equity and justice.
Most Venezuelan resources are used for social benefits — a system Republicans and undemocratic Dems want eliminated.
Planned long in advance by his US handlers, Guaido, a political nobody artificially elevated to prominence illegally, self-declared himself interim Venezuelan president last January.
Nothing in Venezuela’s Constitution permits it. Article 233 was illegally used, stating the following:
“The President of the Republic shall become permanently unavailable to serve by reason of any of the following events: death; resignation; removal from office by decision of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice; permanent physical or mental disability certified by a medical board designated by the Supreme Tribunal of Justice with the approval of the National Assembly; abandonment of his position, duly declared by the National Assembly; and recall by popular vote.”
“When an elected President becomes permanently unavailable to serve prior to his inauguration, a new election by universal suffrage and direct ballot shall be held within 30 consecutive days. Pending election and inauguration of the new President, the President of the National Assembly shall take charge of the Presidency of the Republic.”
Nothing stated above applies to Maduro, his legitimacy as Venezuela’s president affirmed judicially. The Trump regime’s attempt to replace him constitutes a flagrant breach of international and US constitutional law.
No nation may legally interfere in the internal affairs of others, how the US operates worldwide, seeking control over other countries, their resources and populations — what the scourge of imperialism is all about.
Most world community nations reject Guaido’s illegal power grab, his coup attempt supported by right-wing Latin American and European regimes, as well as several others — pressured, bullied, and/or bribed to go along with the flagrant breach of international and Venezuelan constitutional law.
Over eight months since Guaido’s unlawful self-declaration, Maduro remains Venezuela’s legitimately elected president.
Until now, his government failed to hold Guaido accountable for sedition and treason, the highest of high crimes against the state.
On Friday, Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek Saab said the following:
“We have initiated an investigation (into) an illegal negotiation behind the country’s back (by Guaido) that intends to withdraw the historical claim our country has on the territory of Essequibo. The facts imply a crime of treason.”
Preceding his remarks, Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez accused Guaido of being part of a “criminal organization” — aiming to hand Bolivarian territory and resources to foreign corporations, including ExxonMobil.
In April, Guaido’s parliamentary immunity was lifted. He faces various charges, including “usurping the functions of the president.”
On Thursday, Maduro asked prosecutors to charge him with treason, urging “(t)he Public Ministry and the Attorney General’s Office have to act expeditiously because pretending to deliver the Essequibo is a crime of treason to the Fatherland.”
Maduro urged Venezuelans to defend the nation’s “legitimate and non-renounceable” territorial rights over the Essequibo region.
Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino defended his country’s claim to the territory, saying:
“The Sun of Venezuela is born in the Essequibo.”
The territory is located in southeastern Venezuela. It’s rich in oil and other natural resources. It links the Caribbean Sea with the Orinoco River.
Venezuelan authorities have audio recordings between illegitimate Guaido envoy to Britain Vanessa Neumann and his “outside advisor” Manuel Avendano to “deliver the Essequibo” to ExxonMobil and other corporate interests, Rodriguez saying:
“The criminal organization headed by Juan Guaido had initiated concrete actions to illegally appropriate Venezuela’s assets, financial resources, Venezuelan gold, Venezuelan debt, to enrich themselves and to serve transnational interests.”
It’s Venezuelan territory. In 1899, a US/UK grand theft scheme handed it to Guyana.
In 1966, weeks before country became independent from Britain, the Treaty of Geneva stipulated that Venezuela, the UK, and then-British Guiana would resolve Venezuela’s claim that the “Arbitral Award of 1899 about the frontier between British Guyana and Venezuela is null and void.”
What’s likely next? Will Guaido be formally charged with treason, arrested, jailed and prosecuted?
He was guilty of the highest of high political crimes against the state by illegally self-declaring himself interim president in January — attempting to illegally usurp power in cahoots with the Trump regime.
Accountability for his criminal actions is long overdue!
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.



https://www.globalresearch.ca/venezuelan-usurper-guaido-charged-high-treason/5688425


JUST NEWS published this article following the Creative Commons rule. If you don't want your article to appear in this blog email me and I will remove it asap.

Friday, September 6, 2019

Venezuela prosecutors probe opposition leader Juan Guaido for ‘high treason’



© Reuters / CARLOS GARCIA RAWLINS

A criminal investigation has been launched into Venezeulan opposition leader Juan Guaido and several key advisers after the government led by President Nicolas Maduro accused them of acts of treason.

Venezuelan Prosecutor general Tarek Saab announced the move on Friday. Guaido was allegedly involved in negotiating away Venezuela’s “historical claim” to the territory of Esequibo, which is formally under the administration of Guyana.
On Thursday, Vice President Delcy Rodriguez offered evidence in the form of phone records in which adviser Manuel Avendaño  allegedly discussed with Venezuelan- American diplomat Vanessa Neumann relinquishing claims to the Esequibo region.
“The criminal organization headed by Juan Guaidó had initiated concrete actions to illegally appropriate Venezuela's assets, financial resources, Venezuelan gold, Venezuelan debt, to enrich themselves and to serve transnational interests,” Rodriguez said.
ALSO ON RT.COMOnce more with feeling? US holds ‘secret’ talks with Venezuela officials
A vestige of South America’s colonial history, the dispute over Esequibo is long in the making, dating back centuries to squabbling between the Spanish, Dutch, and eventually British Empires. In the 20th century Venezuela and Guyana have been trying to settle the matter through UN.  More recently, however, conflict over the territory has been tied to natural resources, eyed by companies like ExxonMobile.  Last year, a standoff broke out between the Venezuelan Navy and vessels of the energy firm searching for oil in the region with Guyana’s permission, forcing the surveyors to turn back.
https://www.rt.com/news/468196-guaido-accused-treason-venezuela/

JUST NEWS published this article following the Creative Commons rule. If you don't want your article to appear in this blog email me and I will remove it asap.

Friday, August 23, 2019

US Navy “Ready” to “Restore Democracy” in Venezuela through Military Means?



Statement of US Southern Command Admiral Craig Faller


Global Research, August 23, 2019

20 August 2019

“I’m not going to detail what we’re planning and what we’re doing, but we’re ready to implement policy decisions, and we’re ready to act … 
The United States Navy is the most powerful navy in the world.  …
If there is a political decision to deploy the Navy, I am confident that we will be able to do whatever is necessary, …
The two-week maritime operation off the coast of Brazil, involving more than 3,300 military personnel, “sends a message to Maduro and other partners that don’t share the same values,  …
Naval exercises send a message to the world of what democracies that work together can do across a range of complex threats,”
US Southern Command chief Admiral Craig Faller
***
Below are excerpts from the Al Arabiya report
His remarks [Faller] came just weeks after President Donald Trump said he was considering a “blockade or quarantine” of the Latin American country.
Trump subsequently intensified sanctions on Venezuela this month, ordering a freeze on all government assets in the United States and barred transactions with its authorities.
Faller said US sanctions against Maduro’s socialist regime were working and that the Venezuelan leader was isolated.
“The US government focus continues to be to place focused and targeted pressure on an illegitimate regime to ensure there’s a transition to a legitimate, democratic government,” Faller said.
“Part of that focus is to ensure that the right humanitarian assistance is allowed to get to the people who need it,” he added.
Asked how he thought Maduro would react to the exercises, Faller said:
“I don’t know how Maduro looks at anything.”
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Featured image: U.S. Navy Adm. Craig Faller, U.S. Southern Command commander, speaks to 12th Air Force (Air Force Southern) Airmen at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., Jan. 9, 2019. U.S. Southern Command is responsible for all Department of Defense security cooperation in the 45 nations and territories of Caribbean and Central and South America. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Angela Ruiz)



https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-navy-ready-to-restore-democracy-in-venezuela-through-military-means/5686890

JUST NEWS published this article following the Creative Commons rule. If you don't want your article to appear in this blog email me and I will remove it asap.

Monday, August 12, 2019

Adding Context to ‘News’ About Venezuela




Global Research, August 12, 2019

This past week’s meeting of the U.S.-and-Canada-created anti-Venezuela Lima Group of nations failed to achieve the U.S. regime’s intention of organizing a coalition of its members to participate in a U.S.-led invasion to overthrow Venezuela’s Government and install Trump’s choice, the self-styled ‘interim President’ of Venezuela, Juan Guaido, to rule there. Although 100 nations had been invited, only 60 attended, and the U.S. regime wasn’t able to obtain even one ally for an invasion. John Bolton (U.S. National Security Advisor) and Wilbur Ross (U.S. Secretary of ‘Commerce’ — mainly U.S. oil companies) represented U.S. President Trump at the meeting, which started on August 5th. The meeting ended with no official announcement. It was a humiliating defeat for the U.S. regime.
Below is a report about this meeting, by Agence France-Presse, a typical U.S.-allied ‘news’-medium. The italicized additions in brackets in and near the article’s end are essential historical context; it’s taken from Wikipedia’s article International sanctions during the Venezuelan crisis”, and thus also isn’t from me. This way, the reader will be able to see what the ‘news’-report here leaves out, which is essential background in order for readers to know the reality that stands behind this particular ‘news’ report. The minor typos in the original report are also left unchanged; the entire article is unchanged, except that I boldface the passages toward the end, which passages are subsequently contextualized immediately below them. Afterward, I shall add my own comments, in order to provide a fuller context.
***
See this and this.
US warns off Venezuela’s supporters as Lima meeting opens
Date created: Tuesday 6 August 2019,  06/08/2019 – 20:07
AFP, Lima (AFP): Washington warned third parties on Tuesday to avoid doing business with the Venezuelan regime of Nicolas Maduro, as delegates from some 60 countries met in Lima to discuss ways of ending the crisis in South American nation.
The warning came one day after President Donald Trump ordered a freeze on all Venezuelan government assets in the United States and barred transactions with its authorities.
“We are sending a signal to third parties that want to do business with the Maduro regime: proceed with extreme caution,” said Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton, speaking in Lima.
“There is no need to risk your business interests with the United States for the purposes of profiting from a corrupt and dying regime.”
The Trump administration is determined to force Maduro from power and support opposition leader Juan Guaido’s plans to form a transitional government and set up new elections.
The sanctions drew an angry response from Caracas, which denounced the US move as “another serious aggression by the Trump administration through arbitrary economic terrorism against the Venezuelan people.”
Crisis-wracked Venezuela has been mired in a political impasse since January when Guaido, speaker of the Natinal Assembly, proclaimed himself acting president, quickly receiving the support of more than 50 countries.
Tuesday’s meeting was called by the Lima Group, which includes a dozen Latin American countries and Canada, most of which support Guaido.
The Lima meeting comes as representatives of Maduro and Guaido are involved in “continuous” negotiations mediated by Norway.
The first round of talks were in Oslo in May, and three further rounds have taken place in Barbados.
Caracas claims the US sanctions show that Washington and its allies are “committed to the failure of the political dialogue” because “they fear the results and benefits.”
Bolton, who is in the US delegation alongside Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, said Maduro was “not serious” about talks.
He said Trump’s move “authorizes the US government to identify, target and impose sanctions on any persons who continue to provide support” Maduro’s “illegitimate regime.”
He said it would “deny Maduro access to the global financial system and to further isolate him internationally.”
Venezuela’s opposition considers Maduro a usurper over his re-election last year in a poll widely viewed as rigged.
They want him to stand down so new elections can be held — but Maduro, with support from the country’s powerful military, refuses to go.
Maduro says the talks must lead to “democratic coexistence” and an end to what he describes as an attempted US-orchestrated “coup.”
But on Tuesday the White House was emphatic: the “dictatorship must end for Venezuela to have a stable, democratic, and prosperous future.”
The United States would “use every appropriate tool to end Maduro’s hold on Venezuela,” White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement.
Oil-rich but cash-poor Venezuela has been in a deep recession for five years.
[“President Barack Obama signed the Venezuela Defense of Human Rights and Civil Society Act of 2014, a U.S. Act imposing sanctions on Venezuelan individuals held responsible by the United States for human rights violations during the 2014 Venezuelan protests, in December of that year.[13][14] It “requires the President to impose sanctions” on those “responsible for significant acts of violence or serious human rights abuses associated with February 2014 protests or, more broadly, against anyone who has directed or ordered the arrest or prosecution of a person primarily because of the person’s legitimate exercise of freedom of expression or assembly”.[8]”]
Food and medicine shortages are routine, and public services are progressively failing.
[“As the humanitarian crisis deepened and expanded, the Trump administration levied more serious economic sanctions against Venezuela on 28 January [2019], and “Maduro accused the US of plunging Venezuelan citizens further into economic crisis.”[3] Rafael Uzcátegui, director of PROVEA, added that “sanctions against PDVSA are likely to yield stronger and more direct economic consequences, and that “[w]e should remember that 70 to 80 percent of Venezuela’s food is imported, and there’s barely any medicine production in the country.”[3]”]
***
My Comments
The U.S. regime’s sanctions against Venezuelans were aimed at producing such distress amongst the population so as to cause them not to vote for Maduro. It didn’t work. The sanctions had the intended effect of distressing Venezuelans, but this deprivation drove so many of the most anti-Maduro Venezuelans to leave the country so that the sanctions failed to force the expected “regime change.”
It drove too many of his enemies out. The U.S. regime is therefore trying even-stronger measures to grab the country. Trump is dictating to Venezuela that “the dictatorship must end.” He has even chosen the person, Guaido, who is to replace the current nationally elected President, whom the U.S. regime has long been trying to oust.
Guaido has never even been a candidate in any national Venezuelan election, but he was trained in the U.S., and has always cooperated with the U.S. Government’s repeated efforts to take control over Venezuela. Venezuela has never invaded nor even threatened the United States. This coup-attempt is purely an effort for imperialistic conquest of Venezuela, but it is cloaked in ‘democratic’ and ‘humanitarian’ lies, for fools, like America’s invasions and coups typically are.
Only idiots can’t see what the U.S. pattern is here, especially after the lies that had suckered Americans in 2003 to support “regime-change in Iraq.” Trump is continuing Barack Obama’s policy, which continued that of George W. Bush. Whatever changes in personnel occur within the U.S. regime, the regime itself remains basically the same, though its theatrics change, and that’s enough change to satisfy most Americans that we live in a democracy. Virtually all of the U.S. Congress supports these efforts to conquer Venezuela, and this fascism includes all of the Democratic Party’s Presidential candidates.
Therefore, none of the candidates are being challenged about their votes supporting this (or any other) attempted conquest by the U.S. regime. The neoconservative policy is bipartisan in America, though the personnel do change, from the representatives of one group of billionaires, to the representatives of another group of billionaires.
And the vast majority of Americans think that it’s good, or at least okay — even after all of the lies have been exposed, they still approve. Of course, most Italians, Japanese, and Germans, thought favorably about their Government’s imperialistic conquests, during WW II; but Americans became opposed to that when we were hit by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor and Germany declared war against us. This time around, we are the Japanese, and the Germans, and the Italians. Things weren’t supposed to turn out this way, but it has happened. The U.S. is today the world’s leading fascist nation. And very few Americans recognize that it’s the way that things did turn out. Very few Americans know that we live in a fascist nation — today’s leading fascist nation.
After that News-Report
The next day, August 7th, Venezuela’s Telesur headlined “EU Opposes Recent US Total Blockade Against Venezuela” and reported that Trump had failed to get the EU — his biggest hope for destroying Venezuela short of militarily invading it — to accept even that proposal. The EU said “We oppose the extraterritorial application of unilateral measures.” They further said
“A negotiated outcome remains the only sustainable way to overcome this multidimensional crisis.”
The EU couldn’t muster enough fascists to go along with anything that the U.S. regime proposed. At this point, Trump isn’t far from the moment when he will need either to abandon his effort to grab Venezuela in this round, or else spring a blitz invasion without allies. Even if he calls off the effort, that would only be temporary.
Perhaps if and when he is re-elected, he will feel freer just to send in thousands of troops, tanks, and missiles, to get the job done. However, if Russia stands firm, then such an invasion could spark WW III. He would have to decide whether grabbing the world’s largest oil reserves is worth that risk.
Meanwhile, he will almost certainly continue to try to make life as difficult as possible for the Venezuelan people, all the while blaming Maduro for their misery. This has been the basic American plan, since well before Trump occupied the White House.
At this stage, an American President is just a figurehead for one or another faction of America’s 607 billionaires, and it seems that whereas some of them demand conquest of Venezuela, none of the others opposes such a conquest. The only issue, therefore, for the American regime, is how and when to do that.
On August 8th, Venezuela, Iran, China, and Russia, held “war games” at Kaliningrad, Russia, on the Baltic coast, which military exercises had been organized by Russia, perhaps in order to indicate to Washington that a U.S. invasion against any of these four would be militarily responded to by all of the four. This symbolic act warns the fascist, and fascist-accepting, regimes: Your imperialist alliance has 60 nations, but is fractious; ours, on the other hand — all resolute supporters of national sovereignty, and therefore opponents of imperialism — has 4 nations, but we are united. Consequently, though “US warns off Venezuela’s supporters as Lima meeting opens,” Venezuela’s three allies here answered that verbal threat immediately after the Lima Group meeting, by a joint action, which symbolized that they are ignoring it.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
This article was originally published on The Saker.



https://www.globalresearch.ca/adding-context-news-about-venezuela/5686151

JUST NEWS published this article following the Creative Commons rule. If you don't want your article to appear in this blog email me and I will remove it asap.