Thursday, January 31, 2019
Mexico and Uruguay will Host a Conference About Venezuela - Spain plays role of US imperialist bitch like EU
Spain is playing a perfidious role - Mexico resists Spanish perfidious role - EU and Spain are Imperialist Bastards remember Catalonia
Chris Williamson British Member of Parliament opposes US intervention in Venezuela
A lonely voice in the Palace of Westminster Warmongers - Trump has turned May into his War Bitch and Trade Whore
Contradiction : Why does Williamson support EU when they have supported the US Venezuelan imposter ?
Venezuela - A History Lesson - Past as Present
Talking Bolivarian Revolution is not making Revolution - Agree with you George - Good diagnosis of Venezuela's problems - Adam Garrie on the revisionist road on China and that limits his understanding of class dynamics and geo politics.
Wednesday, January 30, 2019
Bolton Pushes Privatization of Venezuela’s Oil - War for Oil as transparent as you can make
The United States Stands for freedom and democracy in Venezuela - are you deluded - mad or just stupid ?
Bolton spells it out they want the Oil from the Country with the Largest Oil Reserves in the World and everything else on CNN and MSNBC hides that basic face of robbery an theft - already theft of Venezuelan assets is taking place in broad daylight and get applauded on Western Media from BBC to Fox News.
Trump wants a War that liberals will love and Venezuela is the target.
Make the Venezuelan Economy Scream - Nixon on Chile - Trump on Venezuela to Bolton
THE LOOTING OF VENEZUELAN ASSETS IS BEING DONE BY THE USA WITH CONSENT OF EUROPE AND TRUMP'S LATIN AMERICA BITCHES
China: A Study of Unnatural Deaths During the Difficult Three Year Period in China, 1959–1961 by Cheng Enfu and Zhan Zhihua
Democracy and Class Struggle was one of the first to make comrades in the West in 2016 aware of the studies of Sun Jingxian on the Famine in late 1950's China and we translated and published some of Sun Jingxian's work - the main work of Sun Jingxian has not yet been published in the West - but is already in English awaiting publication.
The popular view that the number of unnatural deaths in China during the Difficult Three Year Period (1959–1961) amounted to some 30 million is false, as shown by careful analysis.
Taking the average death toll from 1955 to 1957 as the base
number, and combining this with unreported deaths from 1953 to
1964 and subsequent corrections, it may be estimated that approxi-
mately four to five million people suffered unnatural deaths during
the Difficult Three Year Period.
These deaths had a complex series of causes. Starvation-caused deaths were the primary type, followed by weak disaster relief, and then by mistakes of local government.
READ CHENG ENFU AND ZHAN ZHIHUA AND SUN JINGXIAN
BELOW PDF FULL PAPER BY CHENG ENFU AND ZHAN ZHIHUA
BELOW PDF FULL PAPER : POPULATION CHANGES DURING CHINA'S THREE YEARS OF HARDSHIP BY SUN JINGXIAN
Proper historical materialist research of both Maoist China in 1950's and 60's and the Soviet Union in the 1930's and 1940's increasingly show how deep are the misconceptions in the West about these historic attempts at Socialism.
Do not expect Road to Damascus like conversations of Trotskyists and Revisionists when these facts and reality are revealed they have been in the forefront of this falsification and profoundly invested in them - just the slow emergence of truth with the passing of time.
Mao in 1965 dealt with question of of the false 1950/60's population statistics and reasons for the inaccuracies here
https://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.com/2014/10/edgar-snow-interview-of-chairman-mao-in.html
Maduro Announces Formation of Resistance Movement Ahead of US Intervention - Militia to expand to 500,000 units
500,00 Special Militia Units to act as core of domestic resistance to US Attack
There are 1.6 million armed and trained civilian militia members ready to take to the streets to fight coup attempts and foreign invaders.
Red Salute to Venezuelan Militia the core for emerging People's War Against US Imperialism and its Latin American Bitches In Brazil and Colombia
The Making of Juan Guaido - How US Trained Juan Guaido
SOURCE : https://grayzoneproject.com/2019/01/29/the-making-of-juan-guaido-how-the-us-regime-change-laboratory-created-venezuelas-coup-leader/
The “real work” began two years later, in 2007, when Guaidó graduated from Andrés Bello Catholic University of Caracas.
He moved to Washington, DC to enroll in the Governance and Political Management Program at George Washington University, under the tutelage of Venezuelan economist Luis Enrique Berrizbeitia, one of the top Latin American neoliberal economists. Berrizbeitia is a former executive director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) who spent more than a decade working in the Venezuelan energy sector, under the old oligarchic regime that was ousted by Chávez.
That year, Guaidó helped lead anti-government rallies after the Venezuelan government declined to to renew the license of Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV). This privately owned station played a leading role in the 2002 coup against Hugo Chávez. RCTV helped mobilize anti-government demonstrators, falsified information blaming government supporters for acts of violence carried out by opposition members, and banned pro-government reporting amid the coup. The role of RCTV and other oligarch-owned stations in driving the failed coup attempt was chronicled in the acclaimed documentary The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.
That same year, the students claimed credit for stymying Chavez’s constitutional referendum for a “21st century socialism” that promised “to set the legal framework for the political and social reorganization of the country, giving direct power to organized communities as a prerequisite for the development of a new economic system.”
From the protests around RCTV and the referendum, a specialized cadre of US-backed class of regime change activists was born. They called themselves “Generation 2007.”
The Stratfor and CANVAS trainers of this cell identified Guaidó’s ally – a street organizer named Yon Goicoechea – as a “key factor” in defeating the constitutional referendum. The following year, Goicochea was rewarded for his efforts with the Cato Institute’s Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty, along with a $500,000 prize, which he promptly invested into building his own Liberty First (Primero Justicia) political network.
Friedman, of course, was the godfather of the notorious neoliberal Chicago Boys who were imported into Chile by dictatorial junta leader Augusto Pinochet to implement policies of radical “shock doctrine”-style fiscal austerity. And the Cato Institute is the libertarian Washington DC-based think tank founded by the Koch Brothers, two top Republican Party donors who have become aggressive supporters of the right-wing across Latin America.
Wikileaks published a 2007 email from American ambassador to Venezuela William Brownfield sent to the State Department, National Security Council and Department of Defense Southern Command praising “Generation of ’07” for having “forced the Venezuelan president, accustomed to setting the political agenda, to (over)react.”
Among the “emerging leaders” Brownfield identified were Freddy Guevara and Yon Goicoechea. He applauded the latter figure as “one of the students’ most articulate defenders of civil liberties.”
Flush with cash from libertarian oligarchs and US government soft power outfits, the radical Venezuelan cadre took their Otpor tactics to the streets, along with a version of the group’s logo, as seen below:
“Galvanizing public unrest…to take advantage of the situation and spin it against Chavez”
In 2009, the Generation 2007 youth activists staged their most provocative demonstration yet, dropping their pants on public roads and aping the outrageous guerrilla theater tactics outlined by Gene Sharp in his regime change manuals.
The protesters had mobilized against the arrest of an ally from another newfangled youth group called JAVU.
This far-right group “gathered funds from a variety of US government sources, which allowed it to gain notoriety quickly as the hardline wing of opposition street movements,” according to academic George Ciccariello-Maher’s book, “Building the Commune.”
While video of the protest is not available, many Venezuelans have identified Guaidó as one of its key participants. While the allegation is unconfirmed, it is certainly plausible; the bare-buttocks protesters were members of the Generation 2007 inner core that Guaidó belonged to, and were clad in their trademark Resistencia! Venezuela t-shirts, as seen below:
That year, Guaidó exposed himself to the public in another way, founding a political party to capture the anti-Chavez energy his Generation 2007 had cultivated. Called Popular Will, it was led by Leopoldo López, a Princeton-educated right-wing firebrand heavily involved in National Endowment for Democracy programs and elected as the mayor of a district in Caracas that was one of the wealthiest in the country. Lopez was a portrait of Venezuelan aristocracy, directly descended from his country’s first president.
He was also the first cousin of Thor Halvorssen, founder of the US-based Human Rights Foundation that functions as a de facto publicity shop for US-backed anti-government activists in countries targeted by Washington for regime change.
Though Lopez’s interests aligned neatly with Washington’s, US diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks highlighted the fanatical tendencies that would ultimately lead to Popular Will’s marginalization. One cable identified Lopez as “a divisive figure within the opposition… often described as arrogant, vindictive, and power-hungry.” Others highlighted his obsession with street confrontations and his “uncompromising approach” as a source of tension with other opposition leaders who prioritized unity and participation in the country’s democratic institutions.
By 2010, Popular Will and its foreign backers moved to exploit the worst drought to hit Venezuela in decades. Massive electricity shortages had struck the country due the dearth of water, which was needed to power hydroelectric plants. A global economic recession and declining oil prices compounded the crisis, driving public discontentment.
Stratfor and CANVAS – key advisors of Guaidó and his anti-government cadre – devised a shockingly cynical plan to drive a dagger through the heart of the Bolivarian revolution. The scheme hinged on a 70% collapse of the country’s electrical system by as early as April 2010.
“This could be the watershed event, as there is little that Chavez can do to protect the poor from the failure of that system,” the Stratfor internal memo declared. “This would likely have the impact of galvanizing public unrest in a way that no opposition group could ever hope to generate. At that point in time, an opposition group would be best served to take advantage of the situation and spin it against Chavez and towards their needs.”
By this point, the Venezuelan opposition was receiving a staggering $40-50 million a year from US government organizations like USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy, according to a report by the Spanish think tank, the FRIDE Institute.
It also had massive wealth to draw on from its own accounts, which were mostly outside the country.
While the scenario envisioned by Statfor did not come to fruition, the Popular Will party activists and their allies cast aside any pretense of non-violence and joined a radical plan to destabilize the country.
Towards violent destabilization
In November, 2010, according to emails obtained by Venezuelan security services and presented by former Justice Minister Miguel Rodríguez Torres, Guaidó, Goicoechea, and several other student activists attended a secret five-day training at the Fiesta Mexicana hotel in Mexico City. The sessions were run by Otpor, the Belgrade-based regime change trainers backed by the US government. The meeting had reportedly received the blessing of Otto Reich, a fanatically anti-Castro Cuban exile working in George W. Bush’s Department of State, and the right-wing former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.
At the Fiesta Mexicana hotel, the emails stated, Guaidó and his fellow activists hatched a plan to overthrow President Hugo Chavez by generating chaos through protracted spasms of street violence.
Three petroleum industry figureheads – Gustavo Torrar, Eligio Cedeño and Pedro Burelli – allegedly covered the $52,000 tab to hold the meeting. Torrar is a self-described “human rights activist” and “intellectual” whose younger brother Reynaldo Tovar Arroyo is the representative in Venezuela of the private Mexican oil and gas company Petroquimica del Golfo, which holds a contract with the Venezuelan state.
Cedeño, for his part, is a fugitive Venezuelan businessman who claimed asylum in the United States, and Pedro Burelli a former JP Morgan executive and the former director of Venezuela’s national oil company, Petroleum of Venezuela (PDVSA). He left PDVSA in 1998 as Hugo Chavez took power and is on the advisory committee of Georgetown University’s Latin America Leadership Program.
Burelli insisted that the emails detailing his participation had been fabricated and even hired a private investigator to prove it. The investigator declared that Google’s records showed the emails alleged to be his were never transmitted.
Yet today Burelli makes no secret of his desire to see Venezuela’s current president, Nicolás Maduro, deposed – and even dragged through the streets and sodomized with a bayonet, as Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi was by NATO-backed militiamen.
The alleged Fiesta Mexicana plot flowed into another destabilization plan revealed in a series of documents produced by the Venezuelan government. In May 2014, Caracas released documents detailing an assassination plot against President Nicolás Maduro. The leaks identified the Miami-based Maria Corina Machado as a leader of the scheme. A hardliner with a penchant for extreme rhetoric, Machado has functioned as an international liaison for the opposition, visiting President George W. Bush in 2005.
“I think it is time to gather efforts; make the necessary calls, and obtain financing to annihilate Maduro and the rest will fall apart,” Machado wrote in an email to former Venezuelan diplomat Diego Arria in 2014.
In another email, Machado claimed that the violent plot had the blessing of US Ambassador to Colombia, Kevin Whitaker. “I have already made up my mind and this fight will continue until this regime is overthrown and we deliver to our friends in the world. If I went to San Cristobal and exposed myself before the OAS, I fear nothing. Kevin Whitaker has already reconfirmed his support and he pointed out the new steps. We have a checkbook stronger than the regime’s to break the international security ring.”
Guaidó heads to the barricades
That February, student demonstrators acting as shock troops for the exiled oligarchy erected violent barricades across the country, turning opposition-controlled quarters into violent fortresses known as guarimbas. While international media portrayed the upheaval as a spontaneous protest against Maduro’s iron-fisted rule, there was ample evidence that Popular Will was orchestrating the show.
“None of the protesters at the universities wore their university t-shirts, they all wore Popular Will or Justice First t-shirts,” a guarimba participant said at the time. “They might have been student groups, but the student councils are affiliated to the political opposition parties and they are accountable to them.”
Asked who the ringleaders were, the guarimba participant said, “Well if I am totally honest, those guys are legislators now.”
Around 43 were killed during the 2014 guarimbas. Three years later, they erupted again, causing mass destruction of public infrastructure, the murder of government supporters, and the deaths of 126 people, many of whom were Chavistas. In several cases, supporters of the government were burned alive by armed gangs.
Guaidó was directly involved in the 2014 guarimbas. In fact, he tweeted video showing himself clad in a helmet and gas mask, surrounded by masked and armed elements that had shut down a highway that were engaging in a violent clash with the police. Alluding to his participation in Generation 2007, he proclaimed, “I remember in 2007, we proclaimed, ‘Students!’ Now, we shout, ‘Resistance! Resistance!'”
Guaidó has deleted the tweet, demonstrating apparent concern for his image as a champion of democracy.
On February 12, 2014, during the height of that year’s guarimbas, Guaidó joined Lopez on stage at a rally of Popular Will and Justice First. During a lengthy diatribe against the government, Lopez urged the crowd to march to the office of Attorney General Luisa Ortega Diaz. Soon after, Diaz’s office came under attack by armed gangs who attempted to burn it to the ground. She denounced what she called “planned and premeditated violence.”
Guaido alongside Lopez at the fateful February 12, 2014 rally
In an televised appearance in 2016, Guaidó dismissed deaths resulting from guayas – a guarimba tactic involving stretching steel wire across a roadway in order to injure or kill motorcyclists – as a “myth.” His comments whitewashed a deadly tactic that had killed unarmed civilians like Santiago Pedroza and decapitated a man named Elvis Durán, among many others.
This callous disregard for human life would define his Popular Will party in the eyes of much of the public, including many opponents of Maduro.
Cracking down on Popular Will
As violence and political polarization escalated across the country, the government began to act against the Popular Will leaders who helped stoke it.
Freddy Guevara, the National Assembly Vice-President and second in command of Popular Will, was a principal leader in the 2017 street riots. Facing a trial for his role in the violence, Guevara took shelter in the Chilean embassy, where he remains.
Lester Toledo, a Popular Will legislator from the state of Zulia, was wanted by Venezuelan government in September 2016 on charges of financing terrorism and plotting assassinations. The plans were said to be made with former Colombian President Álavaro Uribe. Toledo escaped Venezuela and went on several speaking tours with Human Rights Watch, the US government-backed Freedom House, the Spanish Congress and European Parliament.
Carlos Graffe, another Otpor-trained Generation 2007 member who led Popular Will, was arrested in July 2017. According to police, he was in possession of a bag filled with nails, C4 explosives and a detonator. He was released on December 27, 2017.
Leopoldo Lopez, the longtime Popular Will leader, is today under house arrest, accused of a key role in deaths of 13 people during the guarimbas in 2014. Amnesty International lauded Lopez as a “prisoner of conscience” and slammed his transfer from prison to house as “not good enough.” Meanwhile, family members of guarimba victims introduced a petition for more charges against Lopez.
Yon Goicoechea, the Koch Brothers posterboy and US-backed founder of Justice First, was arrested in 2016 by security forces who claimed they found found a kilo of explosives in his vehicle. In a New York Times op-ed, Goicoechea protested the charges as “trumped-up” and claimed he had been imprisoned simply for his “dream of a democratic society, free of Communism.” He was freed in November 2017.
David Smolansky, also a member of the original Otpor-trained Generation 2007, became Venezuela’s youngest-ever mayor when he was elected in 2013 in the affluent suburb of El Hatillo. But he was stripped of his position and sentenced to 15 months in prison by the Supreme Court after it found him culpable of stirring the violent guarimbas.
Facing arrest, Smolansky shaved his beard, donned sunglasses and slipped into Brazil disguised as a priest with a bible in hand and rosary around his neck. He now lives in Washington, DC, where he was hand picked by Secretary of the Organization of American States Luis Almagro to lead the working group on the Venezuelan migrant and refugee crisis.
This July 26, Smolansky held what he called a “cordial reunion” with Elliot Abrams, the convicted Iran-Contra felon installed by Trump as special US envoy to Venezuela. Abrams is notorious for overseeing the US covert policy of arming right-wing death squads during the 1980’s in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. His lead role in the Venezuelan coup has stoked fears that another blood-drenched proxy war might be on the way.
Four days earlier, Machado rumbled another violent threat against Maduro, declaring that if he “wants to save his life, he should understand that his time is up.”
A pawn in their game
The collapse of Popular Will under the weight of the violent campaign of destabilization it ran alienated large sectors of the public and wound much of its leadership up in exile or in custody. Guaidó had remained a relatively minor figure, having spent most of his nine-year career in the National Assembly as an alternate deputy. Hailing from one of Venezuela’s least populous states, Guaidó came in second place during the 2015 parliamentary elections, winning just 26% of votes cast in order to secure his place in the National Assembly. Indeed, his bottom may have been better known than his face.
Guaidó is known as the president of the opposition-dominated National Assembly, but he was never elected to the position. The four opposition parties that comprised the Assembly’s Democratic Unity Table had decided to establish a rotating presidency. Popular Will’s turn was on the way, but its founder, Lopez, was under house arrest. Meanwhile, his second-in-charge, Guevara, had taken refuge in the Chilean embassy. A figure named Juan Andrés Mejía would have been next in line but reasons that are only now clear, Juan Guaido was selected.
“There is a class reasoning that explains Guaidó’s rise,” Sequera, the Venezuelan analyst, observed. “Mejía is high class, studied at one of the most expensive private universities in Venezuela, and could not be easily marketed to the public the way Guaidó could. For one, Guaidó has common mestizo features like most Venezuelans do, and seems like more like a man of the people. Also, he had not been overexposed in the media, so he could be built up into pretty much anything.”
In December 2018, Guaidó sneaked across the border and junketed to Washington, Colombia and Brazil to coordinate the plan to hold mass demonstrations during the inauguration of President Maduro. The night before Maduro’s swearing-in ceremony, both Vice President Mike Pence and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland called Guaidó to affirm their support.
A week later, Sen. Marco Rubio, Sen. Rick Scott and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart – all lawmakers from the Florida base of the right-wing Cuban exile lobby – joined President Trump and Vice President Pence at the White House. At their request, Trump agreed that if Guaidó declared himself president, he would back him.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met personally withGuaidó on January 10, according to the Wall Street Journal. However, Pompeo could not pronounce Guaidó’s name when he mentioned him in a press briefing on January 25, referring to him as “Juan Guido.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo just called the figure Washington is attempting to install as Venezuelan President "Juan *Guido*" - as in the racist term for Italians. America's top diplomat didn't even bother to learn how to pronounce his puppet's name.
By January 11, Guaidó’s Wikipedia page had been edited 37 times, highlighting the struggle to shape the image of a previously anonymous figure who was now a tableau for Washington’s regime change ambitions.
In the end, editorial oversight of his page was handed over to Wikipedia’s elite council of “librarians,” who pronounced him the “contested” president of Venezuela.
Guaidó might have been an obscure figure, but his combination of radicalism and opportunism satisfied Washington’s needs. “That internal piece was missing,” a Trump administration said of Guaidó. “He was the piece we needed for our strategy to be coherent and complete.”
“For the first time,” Brownfield, the former American ambassador to Venezuela, gushed to the New York Times, “you have an opposition leader who is clearly signaling to the armed forces and to law enforcement that he wants to keep them on the side of the angels and with the good guys.”
But Guaidó’s Popular Will party formed the shock troops of the guarimbas that caused the deaths of police officers and common citizens alike. He had even boasted of his own participation in street riots. And now, to win the hearts and minds of the military and police, Guaido had to erase this blood-soaked history.
On January 21, a day before the coup began in earnest, Guaidó’s wife delivered a video address calling on the military to rise up against Maduro. Her performance was wooden and uninspiring, underscoring the her husband’s limited political prospects.
At a press conference before supporters four days later, Guaidó announced his solution to the crisis: “Authorize a humanitarian intervention!”
While he waits on direct assistance, Guaidó remains what he has always been – a pet project of cynical outside forces. “It doesn’t matter if he crashes and burns after all these misadventures,” Sequera said of the coup figurehead. “To the Americans, he is expendable.”
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
Venezuela Crisis: U.S. Has Painted Itself Into Corner
South Front always worth listening too - their view of Venezuelan Events
Kurdish Leadership At Crossroads Between Syria and Turkey ?
A Kurdish - Syrian Deal is in the making
UK Protests Sanctions on Venezuela
The UK is playing the role of co-thief with the United States on Venezuelan assets and property - we fear the money will disappear to pay for attack on Venezuela.
The victim has to pay for his own murder - Imperialism 101 in 21st Century
Grand Theft and Larcency Committed by United States of America against Assets and Property of Republic of Venezuela
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has authorized Venezuelan opposition leader and self-declared interim president to control US-held assets belonging to the country’s government.
The certification, issued on Tuesday, applies to certain Venezuelan government and Central Bank property held by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or any other US insured banks.
Putting these assets under control of a imposter nominated by the United States is an outrage - memories of Libya and its stolen assets come to mind.
The Money and Property in UK. Belgium and USA should be returned to the Government of Venezuela and these thieving Governments brought before a People's Tribunal.
Trump has descended from kidnap and political ransom against China to outright theft of Venezuela assets and property aided and abetted by Canada the extractors of blood from Mining in Latin America - Britain the Imperial stooge and Brussels the craven bootlicker.
Venezuelan Assets and Money will not be used by US Imperialism and its stooge to start on War and pay US Bills.
The Lima Group and Why Canada leads the Vultures to attack Venezuela
“This careful and comprehensive analysis of Canada’s economic policies and political interference in Latin America demonstrates in brutal detail the predatory and destructive role of a secondary imperialist power operating within the overarching system of subordination of the Global South to the demands of northern wealth and power. It also reveals clearly the responsibility of citizens of Canada and other dominant societies to join in the resistance of the victims to the shameful and sordid practices exposed graphically here.”
— Noam Chomsky
Monday, January 28, 2019
Is a Foreign Military Intervention in Venezuela Imminent? by James Jordan
Democracy and Class Struggle welcomes this thoughtful article by James Jordan of Venezuela Analysis
James Jordan examines the US's interventionist move towards Venezuela alongside Colombia's recent history.
Negron Valera's understanding of non conventional warfare informs us how the war will unfold when it starts..
The Venezuelan Army and Militia's are ready for a baptism of fire - fire that will collapse the Colombian Government and trigger further implosions in Brazil.
The future is ours but we must fight for it.
SOURCE :https://venezuelanalysis.com/N4q3
According to conventional wisdom, there should be no serious talk of foreign military intervention in Venezuela. But these aren’t conventional times. The conventional playbook would adopt a strategy of foreign coordination of the Venezuelan opposition, economic sabotage, infiltration of the military, and manipulation of popular movements against the elected government. All this is being done, however, so far, not successfully. The frustrations of the Bolivarian movement’s enemies is palpable. Does this mean intervention is imminent? And what would such an intervention look like?
We know that the Trump administration met with Venezuelan coup plotters in 2017 and the Venezuelan opposition speaks openly of its coordination with the United States government. Officials in the U.S. and internationally have repeatedly called for the Venezuelan military and business people to take power, denouncing and refusing to recognize legitimate elections, and even having the audacity to “recognize” a “new president” in Venezuela who was not elected and who has no legitimate claim to office. Recent events have included the first ever attempted coup-by-drone, in August 2018; and the January 22nd mutiny by 27 National Guard troops led by a sergeant. One might infer a sense of desperation among the enemies of the Bolivarian government.
US National Security Advisor John Bolton called Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua a “Troika of Tyranny”, but the real triple threat faced by Latin America is the alliance of ultra-right administrations from the United States, Colombia, and Brazil of Donald Trump, Iván Duque, and Jair Bolsonaro, respectively. These Oligarchs of Overthrow have Venezuela in their sight, and military intervention is clearly an option on the table where they are seated.
Important circumstances have changed that had previously served as effective obstacles to intervention. Military engagements in the Middle East and Central Asia had made intervention in Venezuela untenable. In Colombia, the kind of military invasion advocated by former President Álvaro Uribe was impossible because the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) were committed to defending Venezuela from within should war break out. Today the FARC has transformed into a political party, the unarmed Revolutionary Alternative Common Force (still called FARC). Meanwhile, President Trump has announced troop withdrawals from both Syria and Afghanistan. Trump is not a man of peace, and he has openly expressed his support for a violent intervention in Venezuela.
Certainly, there is a long-standing connection between the Colombian military and the war in Afghanistan. Colombia has sent advisors, trainers, and special operations troops to Afghanistan, and there is a history of U.S. troop transfers between the two countries. In fact, the application in Afghanistan of lessons learned from decades of protracted war in Colombia is an oft-mentioned theme among military officials. Regarding Syria, Venezuelan expert on unconventional warfare, Jorgé Negrón Valera wrote in October 2018 that, “A hypothesis of a direct conflict cannot be discarded. But all indications are that the the first thing on the Pentagon’s table will be Syria….” But as we enter 2019, the situation has changed. Should U.S. troops be withdrawn from Afghanistan and Syria, they could be well-suited for redeployment in a Colombia-based conflict with Venezuela.
Does all this mean that an invasion of Venezuela is imminent? Not at all. But it also doesn’t mean an invasion is not imminent, or that there are not scenarios that include other forms of military intervention. The US Empire and its Latin American partners want to use Venezuela as an example and put the nail in the coffin of socialist and popular advances in the region.
They want it so badly that they are willing to consider options that had previously been unthinkable.
Back in the early 2000s, when then Colombian President Álvaro Uribe wanted the US to back him in a military assault on Venezuela, even an enthusiastic proponent of war like George W. Bush felt constrained to put the brakes on Uribe’s adventurous inclinations.
At that time, traditional voices still were confident they could put together the coalition to force regime change. Nineteen years later, one cannot be surprised if some of that confidence has waned.
Until recently, talk about military intervention in Venezuela was roundly criticized and dismissed. Neither Wall Street nor the traditional right wing had any stomach for the disruption that would follow. But that was then, and this is now. Bess Levin makes this point in a September 2018 article published in Vanity Fair:
“Approximately one year ago, Donald Trump said that he was considering a ‘military option’ in Venezuela. At the time, virtually no one in Washington thought this was a good idea….
What has changed, alarmingly, is that now there are some people in Washington who have actually come around to the idea. Last month, Senator Marco Rubio said that… there is now a ‘very strong argument’ that the situation… could very well necessitate U.S. military involvement. Bloomberg notes that ‘security hawks with an interest in Latin America are taking positions in the administration, adding to a sense that Washington may be warming to intervention.”
There has been a series of statements by world and national leaders concerning military intervention in Venezuela. President Trump famously declared “We have many options for Venezuela, including a possible military option”. In September 2018, Trump said that, Venezuela, “…frankly, could be toppled very quickly by the military if the military decides to do that.”
Likewise, in September 2018, Luís Almagro, General Secretary of the Organization of American States said, “With regards to a military intervention aimed at overthrowing the regime of Nicolas Maduro, I think we should not exclude any option.”
Latin American opposition to military intervention is widespread, and a subsequent vote to denounce Almagro’s comment was passed by the Lima Group, specifically tasked to find a solution to the Venezuelan crisis.
Nevertheless, it is notable that Canada, Colombia, and Guayana refused back this censure.
Since then, the situation on the diplomatic front has only worsened. The OAS’ Almagro, all thirteen members of the Lima Group, and the U.S. government have released statements that they would not recognize the election of Nicholas Maduro as Venezuela’s President. Both Almagro and the U.S. State Department, in an act of brazen violation of Venezuelan sovereignty, have instead recognized the little-known Juan Guaidó, leader of the right-leaning National Assembly (as opposed to the more popular Constituent Assembly). While President Maduro was reelected overwhelmingly in May 2018, Guaido has not even run in a national election. Former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and current Secretary of State Michael Pompeo released a statement on January 23 2019 saying,
“The United States recognizes Juan Guaidó as the new interim President of Venezuela, and strongly supports his courageous decision to assume that role pursuant to Article 233 of Venezuela’s constitution and supported by the National Assembly, in restoring democracy to Venezuela. As President Trump said, “The people of Venezuela have courageously spoken out against Maduro and his regime and demanded freedom and the rule of law.”
On the Colombian front, indications from President Iván Duque have been contradictory. Not only did Colombia refuse to censure Almagro’s comments, but its ambassador in Washington DC, Francisco Santos has insisted that “all options are on the table”. Nevertheless, Duque, in contrast with his mentor, Uribe, has said that the military option “is not the way.” On the other hand, Duque has called for increasing spending on Colombia’s air force and issued an order to put the air force on high alert. Following on the heels of Pompeo’s announcement, Duque declared his recognition of Guaidó as Venezuela’s president.
As mentioned earlier, the disarming of the FARC is a factor we must consider.
In a 2005 interview (while the FARC still existed as an armed force) conducted by Dick Emanuelsson and Ingrid Storgen, political analyst Heinz Dieterich makes the following points:
“There are 20,000 soldiers in the rear guard of an eventual military conflict between Colombia and Venezuela…. If these forces were not to exist, I am absolutely sure that today we would have the scenario that the Sandinistas had on the northern border with Honduras (in the 80s)…. Objectively, by its mere existence, they fundamentally make impossible whatever strategy of military or paramilitary destruction by the forces of the United States or Uribe.”
Similarly, in February 2005, the FARC made exclusively clear their position when FARC commander Raúl Reyes declared,
“In case of an invasion of our Venezuelan brothers by the United States War Hawks, the FARC would condemn it energetically and will offer its unconditional solidarity to the Bolivarian process of the country that saw the birth of our Liberator. In Bolívar we find everything.”
Now the FARC are demobilized and Raúl Reyes himself was killed in a camp in Ecuador, working out terms for the release of prisoners of war.
Many Colombian Refugee's in Venezuela have returned to Colombia
With this absence of the FARC, the presence and activity of Colombian paramilitaries has grown and intensified.
As previously mentioned, on August 4 2018, Venezuela’s President Nicholas Maduros was targeted in an assassination attempt using drones. Venezuela says it has evidence that Colombian paramilitaries were involved.
In October 2018, the Venezuelan military captured three Colombian paramilitaries in the state of Tachira along the border, citing evidence that the paramilitaries were in coordination with Colombian police and military.
On November 5 2018, at least three members of the Venezuelan National Guard were killed in confrontations with Colombian paramilitaries in the state of Amazonas. On December 24, 2018, Venezuela captured nine Colombian paramilitaries entering the country to carry out a “mission in Caracas.”
Maduro maintains that as many as 734 Venezuelan and Colombian mercenaries are preparing to commit false flag operations attacking military units on the border in order to escalate and confuse popular opinion, and to justify a potential intervention.
Negrón Valera instructs,
“Finally, we must understand that within the doctrine of Non-Conventional Warfare, aggression will not come in the traditional army against army form…. It will be the Colombian paramilitaries operating on the border, the U.S.’s armed wing in the region.
Only this time it will have the full logistical and military support of Washington and the support of Colombia on the ground.”
Negrón Valera also notes the construction of wells in Colombia by the U.S. Army near the border with Venezuela as a possible precursor to intervention. He writes that,
“Let’s turn our attention to the tweet of the Commander of the Colombian National Army, Ricardo Gómez Nieto, who in the framework of the UNITAS naval exercises, speaks of his gratitude to the U.S. Army for its help in the ‘construction of a drinking water well’ in the community of Rumonero.
The same ‘altruistic’ strategy has been used by the US army in Afghanistan to consolidate itself in the territory.
In any case, the important thing to highlight is that it was precisely in this part of Guajira that Colombia established in 2015 the Task Force on Combined Medium Arms (FUTAM), equipped with armored combat weapons, artillery, infantry, logistical support and army aviation.
Only by looking at the map where the ‘water wells’ are built do we understand why Venezuela has a right to be concerned.”
Nevertheless, we must consider that there remain strong arguments that military invasion and other forms of intervention are not likely. It behooves us to soberly assess both Empire’s voices for and against such a war before we jump to any conclusions.
The main argument is that such an invasion or other interventions would be far too disruptive not only to their targets, but to all those involved. Such efforts would throw the economy into yet further crisis and fuel a flood of refugees. A coup or invasion would also likely spur a civil war that, in the absence of a strong Venezuelan military component, would depend on foreign troops to stabilize.
That in and of itself would be so offensive to most Venezuelans that, be they supporters of the Bolivarian government or not, many would defend their national soil on patriotic grounds.
And that underscores the lack of popular backing for the Venezuelan opposition. Uruguayan journalist and Telesur cofounder Aram Aharonian observes,
“A Hinterlaces poll revealed that more than 64% of Venezuelans have an unfavorable opinion about the actions of rightwing leaders….There is another fact that stands out in the poll: 62% of Venezuelans prefer President Maduro to solve the economic problems of the country, while 34% prefer an opposition government. 61% blame economic problems on agents external to the government, such as the economic war, the fall of the price of oil, price speculation, and U.S. financial sanctions, while 37% attribute them to economic policies implemented by the government.
….However, it is clear that the US hawks may push for intervention: we must not let our guard down.”
Another factor that makes military intervention less plausible is the reality that the Venezuela military would not resist a military intervention alone.
There are 1.6 million armed and trained civilian militia members ready to take to the streets to fight coup attempts and foreign invaders.
At the same time, with the failures of the Colombian peace process, many former FARC insurgents are returning to the hills to join other armed groups and to perhaps form a new insurgency.
The National Liberation Army (ELN) is still armed and several thousand strong. The ELN has claimed responsibility for a January 17 car bombing in Bogotá.
Would the ELN be a pro-Bolivarian force within Colombia in the event of an invasion?
With or without an armed Colombian insurgency, there is a popular movement that can be expected to take the streets in Colombia in protest to any invasion. Colombia has a very large and well-organized opposition that could paralyze its streets with protest, should its people rise up to resist this war.
Internationally, countries such as Russia, China, and Cuba could be counted on to come to Venezuela’s defense, perhaps even with arms. On December 10, 2018, Russia openly sent two nuclear-capable bombers to Venezuela. Likewise, Mexico’s newly elected President Manuel Lopez Obrador has announced that Mexico will not participate in or support destabilization plans toward Venezuela.
When we weigh all the factors, it is not possible to say with any kind of certainty that there will be, or that there will not be, a foreign military intervention, invasion, or otherwise foreign directed coup in Venezuela.
But Empire has been waiting a long time and faced failure after failure, so patience may be running thin.
More, the prize of regime change in Venezuela, even with all the disruption and chaos that would entail, is that it would existentially threaten popular governments and movements throughout Latin America. We must not underestimate that temptation.
What is required of all those who stand in solidarity with Venezuela, and of all those who oppose Empire and its wars, is this: that we be ready for all eventualities on the table, including the military option.
The best way to end a march toward war is to make sure that war never happens.
To do that requires those who love peace to mobilize.
Sunday, January 27, 2019
Israel recognizes the Imposter Venezuelan President Juan Guaido - No Surprise here !
Israel recognizes Venezuelan opposition deputy Juan Guaidó as “president in charge” of Venezuela, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced on Twitter Sunday.
He said that Israel joins the US, Canada and most Latin American and European countries in recognizing the “new leadership.”
Venezuelan army chiefs have confirmed their loyalty to Nicolás Maduro, who has denounced a “coup d’état in development” and received the support of Russia, China, Turkey, Bolivia, Mexico.
Brazil -The Dramatic Scandal Swallowing the Bolsonaro Presidency by Glenn Greenwald
A DRAMATIC, MULTI-LEVEL AND INCREASINGLY DARK scandal has been engulfing the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro for the last month. It began just weeks after his stunning November victory but before he was inaugurated on January 1, and has completely paralyzed his presidency.
The scandal most centrally involves President Bolsonaro’s eldest son, Flavio, who has long been a State Deputy from Rio de Janeiro but was just elected to the Federal Senate with a massive vote total in the last election. The scandal began with the discovery of highly suspicious payments into and out of the account of Flavio’s driver, a former police officer and long-time friend of President Bolsonaro’s.
Each new discovery has escalated the scandal’s seriousness: one unexplained deposit was found going into the account of President Bolsonaro’s wife, Michelle; both the driver and Flavio himself began using highly suspicious maneuvers to try to stymie the investigation; the amounts of the suspicious transfers began rapidly increasing to $US 2 million; and then deposits were found going into Flavio’s accounts in small increments of multiple deposits in rapid succession: at times up to 10 cash deposits made within 3 minutes.
But two recent events have converted what looked to be a classic scandal of money laundering and kickbacks into something much more ominous and terrifying. Earlier this week, Rio de Janeiro police arrested five members of Brazil’s most dangerous militia: one linked to the 2018 assassination of City Councilwoman Marielle Franco of the left-wing PSOL party. As it turned out, Flavio Bolsonaro formally praised two of the leading members of that militia; gave an award to the militia’s chief; and, most astonishingly of all, kept the mother and the daughter of the militia chief on his payroll for the last ten years.
That the Bolsonaro family has been discovered to have such close and intimate ties with militias, including the one involved in Marielle Franco’s brutal assassination, stunned the country.
Then, on Thursday, Brazil’s only LGBT member of Congress, the long-time leftist critic of Bolsonaro Jean Wyllys who just won a third term in the November election, announced that he has fled the country, and will not assume his office due to serious threats to his life. In explaining why he fears for his life, Wyllys specifically cited these new revelations that the Bolsonaro family is linked to the militia blamed for the death of Franco, who was in the same party as Wyllys (my husband, David Miranda, is a Rio de Janeiro City Councilman in that same party and, as the alternate behind Wyllys, will now assume Wyllys’ seat in Congress, becoming the only LGBT member of the lower house).
Earlier this week, prior to Wyllys’ stunning announcement, we produced a short video documenting the key facts of this genuinely shocking scandal that has paralyzed the Bolsonaro presidency before it could even begin and, today, drove the country’s only LGBT Congress member not only from office but from the country.
Felon and Death Squad Gangster organiser Elliott Abrams appointed by US to oust Venezuelan government: Analyst James Petras
ELLIOT ABRAMS AND THE NEW OPERATION CONDOR TWO AND THE DIRTY WAR AGAINST VENEZUELA AND THE PEOPLE OF LATIN AMERICA
Elliott Abrams was appointed US special envoy for Venezuela on Friday, as Donald Trump’s administration and European leaders on Saturday further increase the pressure and create crisis.
Abrams accompanied the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to a meeting of the UN security council in New York on Saturday, during which Pompeo will urged members to join the US in declaring Venezuela’s opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the legitimate head of state.
Abrams, a neoconservative, has returned to the centre of the political action over the region like the ghost of administrations past.
Even if he was not chosen expressly to haunt Latin America and Congress, the Trump White House clearly does not care if they are spooked.
Abrams is widely remembered in Central America, but particularly from his time in the Reagan administration, when he tried to whitewash a massacre of a thousand men, women and children by US-funded death squads in El Salvador, when he was assistant secretary of state for human rights.
He shrugged off the reports as communist propaganda, and insisted: “The administration’s record in El Salvador is one of fabulous achievement.”
Abrams also helped organise the covert financing of Contra rebels in Nicaragua behind the back of Congress, which had cut off funding. He then lied to Congress about his role, twice. He pleaded guilty to both counts in 1991 but was pardoned by George HW Bush.
More than a decade later, working as special Middle East adviser to former president George W Bush, Abrams was an enthusiastic advocate of the Iraq invasion.
He was in the White House at the time of the abortive coup in 2002 against Hugo Chávez.
The Observer reported that Abrams gave the green light to the putsch, another an inspector general enquiry found no “wrongdoing” by US officials.
That was not enough to erase his reputation as the assistant secretary of dirty wars.
The message sent by his return to the front rank of US diplomacy will not be missed in Caracas.
SOURCE: Guardian
Saturday, January 26, 2019
Jorge Arreaz,Foreign Minister of Venezuela speaks at United Nations
Venezuelan money frozen in Belgium - Venezuelan Gold in London withheld - Europeans are Imperialist Robbers and Thieves.
Also Venezuelan Oil Money in US should be released immediately from the US Mob Thug Trump Administration.
The blocking of Venezuelan Money in transfers via New York and London is a disgrace
THE UNITED STATES HAS BEEN ECONOMICALLY STRANGLING VENEZUELA ALREADY HIT BY LOW OIL PRICES - BLAMES VENEZUELA FOR ITS ECONOMIC PROBLEMS - THE KILLER BLAMES THE VICTIM
NOW THE EUROPEAN UNION JOINS THE UNITED STATES IN ITS STRANGULATION OF VENEZUELA
IMPERIALIST HYPOCRISY WAS ON SHOW AT THE UNITED NATIONS - NO CNN FACT CHECKING FOR THE LIES OF USA AND UNITED KINGDOM LOL
Britain rejected Venezuela’s request to withdraw $1.2bn in gold stored in the UK, according to reports.
Democracy and Class Struggle is shocked by the level of conspiracy and downright criminality and lies around the current attacks on Venezuela - an information warfare plan is being implemented against Venezuela and some Leftists have already fallen for it - it is a test of their new social media control mechanisms
It only confirms the validity of our solidarity - and solidarity must build fast - and be a wildfire to stop these criminal actions against our brothers and sisters in Venezuela.
Britain rejected Venezuela’s request to withdraw $1.2bn in gold stored in the UK, according to reports.
It was enough for the self-declared and US-backed ‘president’, Juan Guaido, to support the alleged move.
The Bank of England blocked Venezuela’s attempts to retrieve $1.2 billion worth of gold stored as the nation’s foreign reserves in Britain, sources told Bloomberg on Friday.
According to the media outlet, officials in Caracas have for weeks been trying to withdraw the gold, with Calixto Ortega, the head of Venezuela’s central bank, traveling to London in mid-December to seek access to the nation’s assets.
The talks were “unsuccessful,” as US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the national security advisor to President Donald Trump, John Bolton, pressured their British counterparts to freeze the Venezuelan assets, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
By some estimates, Venezuela holds more than $8 billion in foreign reserves. According to earlier reports, the amount of Venezuelan gold kept in the Bank of England doubled in recent months, growing from 14 to 31 tons.
The South American nation has reportedly experienced problems in extracting its own gold from the Bank of England in the past. Bankers in Britain were allegedly concerned that Venezuelan officials would sell the state-owned gold “for personal gain.”
The Bank of England, along with press officials for Pompeo and Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, declined to comment.
Despite the fact that the story was not confirmed, the alleged move of the British bank was swiftly praised by the self-proclaimed ‘interim president’ of Venezuela. “The process of protecting the assets of Venezuela has begun,” Juan Guaido tweeted.
“We will not allow more abuse and theft of money intended for food, medicine and the future of our children.”
Guaido, the speaker of the national parliament, declared himself ‘interim president’ of the state earlier with week in opposition to Maduro. He was subsequently recognized as the “legitimate” leader of Venezuela by the US, Canada, and the majority of South American nations.
SOURCES:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-25/u-k-said-to-deny-maduro-s-bid-to-pull-1-2-billion-of-gold
https://www.rt.com/news/449833-venezuela-gold-bank-england/?utm_source=browser&utm_medium=aplication_chrome&utm_campaign=chrome
France Germany and Spain - three EU Imperialist States Threaten Venezuela with imposition and recognition of imposter President Jaun Guaido
The Arrogance of European Imperialists towards Venezuela knows no bounds
France, Germany & Spain issue ‘identical’ threats to recognize Venezuela’s self-appointed president Venezuela's opposition leader Juan Guaido seen in Caracas, Venezuela on January 25, 2019. © Reuters / Carlos Barria
Warnings from Germany, France and Spain to recognize the self-proclaimed president of Venezuela unless new elections are held came at the same time and were even similarly worded, Russia’s FM spokesperson noted.
“The statements are not simply identical but they are even made simultaneously,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, wrote on Facebook.
Earlier on Saturday, Paris, Berlin and Madrid announced their readiness to recognize the self-proclaimed “interim president” of Venezuela, Juan Guaido, unless the country holds snap presidential elections within eight days.
The messages appeared to be well-coordinated indeed.
“The government of Spain gives Nicolas Maduro eight days to call free, transparent and democratic elections,” Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in statement. “If that doesn't happen, Spain will recognize Juan Guaido as interim president in charge of calling these elections.”
The ultimatum was almost instantly echoed by French President Emmanuel Macron, who took to Twitter issuing a similar threat in French and Spanish – to get the message through, apparently.
SOURCE: RT
WHERE ARE THE LATIN AMERICAN PATRIOTS THAT THEY ALLOW THIS INSULT TO VENEZUELA ?
Friday, January 25, 2019
Historian: Venezuela Is “Staging Ground” for U.S. to Reassert Control Over Latin America
THE WAR AGAINST THE PEOPLE OF LATIN AMERICA HAS BEGAN ONCE AGAIN - IT IS NOT JUST VENEZUELA - IT IS OPERATION CONDOR TWO
Venezuela: Principal Contradiction and War of Imperialist Aggression
Democracy and Class Struggle says some "self described Maoists" are denouncing Maduro as a fascist rather than the bureaucrat capitalist social democrat that he is.
For them the principal contradiction is not with US Imperialism and its aggression against Venezuela but between Maduro and the People.
We quote Mao below who makes clear in what circumstances the principal contradiction is with Imperialism based on his understanding of principal contradiction.
Those bad elements that make the principal enemy Maduro at this point of time are singing from the CIA handbook and not supporters of our Chairman Mao Zedong
When imperialism launches a war of aggression against such a country, all its various classes, except for some traitors, can temporarily unite in a national war against imperialism.
At such a time, the contradiction between imperialism and the country concerned becomes the principal contradiction, while all the contradictions among the various classes within the country (including what was the principal contradiction, between the feudal system and the great masses of the people) are temporarily relegated to a secondary and subordinate position.
So it was in China in the Opium War of 1840, the Sino-Japanese War of 1894 and the Yi Ho Tuan War of 1900, and so it is now in the present Sino-Japanese War.
But in another situation, the contradictions change position. When imperialism carries on its oppression not by war, but by milder means--political, economic and cultural--the ruling classes in semi-colonial countries capitulate to imperialism, and the two form an alliance for the joint oppression of the masses of the people.
At such a time, the masses often resort to civil war against the alliance of imperialism and the feudal classes, while imperialism often employs indirect methods rather than direct action in helping the reactionaries in the semi-colonial countries to oppress the people, and thus the internal contradictions become particularly sharp.
This is what happened in China in the Revolutionary War of 1911, the Revolutionary War of 1924-27, and the ten years of Agrarian Revolutionary War after 1927. Wars among the various reactionary ruling groups in the semi-colonial countries, e.g., the wars among the warlords in China, fall into the same category.
When a revolutionary civil war develops to the point of threatening the very existence of imperialism and its running dogs, the domestic reactionaries, imperialism often adopts other methods in order to maintain its rule; it either tries to split the revolutionary front from within or sends armed forces to help the domestic reactionaries directly.
At such a time, foreign imperialism and domestic reaction stand quite openly at one pole while the masses of the people stand at the other pole, thus forming the principal contradiction which determines or influences the development of the other contradictions.
The assistance given by various capitalist countries to the Russian reactionaries after the October Revolution is an example of armed intervention. Chiang Kai-shek's betrayal in 1927 is an example of splitting the revolutionary front.
But whatever happens, there is no doubt at all that at every stage in the development of a process, there is only one principal contradiction which plays the leading role.
Mao on Contradiction
President Donald Trump's longtime friend and veteran political operative Roger Stone has been indicted on seven counts
Alex Jones a friend Roger Stone and a Trump longtime friend and right wing John Bircher for the high jump - could not happen to a more deserving fiend.
President Donald Trump's longtime friend and veteran political operative Roger Stone has been indicted on seven counts, including one count of obstruction of an official proceeding, five counts of false statements and one count of witness tampering in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election.
Stone was arrested and is expected in court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, later Friday. The indictment was filed on Thursday.
Democracy and Class Struggle says Roger Stone is an anti communist Joseph McCarthy inspired piece of shit who calls himself a Libertarian - is hosted by his own petard of a lifetime of dirty works.
PS
"This doesn't have anything to do with the president. It doesn't have anything to do with the White House," @PressSec Sarah Sanders says of Roger Stone being indicted in Mueller probe
LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL - Laugh Out Loud
ILPS supports Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro against usurper backed by U.S. and ultra-reactionaries
By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Chairperson, International League of Peoples’ Struggle
January 24, 2019
We, the International League of Peoples’ Struggle, vigorously support the democratically elected and newly inaugurated President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro against usurper backed by U.S. and ultra-reactionaries and vehemently condemn Juan Guaidó who has proclaimed himself the “interim president” of Venezuela in a brazen coup attempt.
Guaidó is merely the stooge of US imperialism and the representative of the ultra-reactionaries of Venezuela.
We therefore hold the U.S. the most responsible for his unconstitutional and undemocratic act and we praise and support President Maduro for breaking off diplomatic relations with the interventionist U.S. government.
US imperialism is most interested in acquiring the huge oil wealth of Venezuela, whose proven oil reserves amount to 300,878 millions of barrels. This is far bigger than those of Saudi Arabia at 286,455; Iraq at 142,503; Russia at 80,000; and Libya at 48,000.
The US government has long been waging a campaign of destabilization against the Maduro presidency by imposing sanctions, freezing the assets of Venezuela abroad and threatening a coup d’etat and military intervention by the US and its puppets in the Organization of American States.
But the people of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, especially the workers and other toilers, continue to be inspired by Chavismo and to follow the courageous leadership of Maduro in defense of national sovereignty, democracy and peace.
The armed forces and police of Venezuela have reaffirmed their loyalty to President Maduro and have successfully acted against a minor military mutiny.
The broad masses of the people are thronging the cities of Venezuela to express their support to their President and condemn the US puppet Guaidó and his US imperialist master.
They are ever ready to resist with arms any serious coup attempt or foreign military intervention.
The Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice of Venezuela has called the attention of the prosecution to the gross violation of Article 236, numerals 4 and 15, prohibiting the usurpation of the competence and powers of the President.