Geography Archives: Venezuela

Make the world believe the government is violent and there is no way to really figure out what violence the opposition is responsible for and any insurgency can engage in the armed overthrow of their government with global support.

Washington has made one of its most foreboding threats so far against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson openly floated the possibility of stepping up “regime change” measures against the government of democratically-elected President Nicolas Maduro.

In total, the Interior Ministry has reported that 21 state security personnel suffered gunshot wounds over the course of the day. Forty-nine people were arrested for attacks on military personnel on Sunday.

Speaking from the Plaza Bolivar in Caracas shortly after the CNE announcement, President Nicolas Maduro hailed the large vote total as indicative of the new body’s legitimacy.

The US Empire consists of allied governments like Canada, private media companies and prominent NGOs who all share its delusion that it is entitled to decide which government is a “dictatorship” that “must go”. It is a truly formidable and lethal system of misinformation. Leftists should always have done more to challenge the US Empire on Venezuela during the Chavista era, and to challenge imperialism in general. We really need to step up now.

The media keep silent about the violence of the Venezuelan opposition and the prevailing repression by the right-wing governments of Latin America. The Right’s strategy of an institutional coup faces serious limits, but the Left must address this new threat, supporting anti-imperialist decisions and making a distinction between the capitalist boycott and the government’s ineffectiveness.

The Trump government’s latest sanctions against Caracas come just two days after Venezuelan Foreign Minister Samuel Moncada publicly revealed that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was working alongside governments in Mexico and Colombia to topple the Maduro government.

The United States Committee on Foreign Relations is due to discuss the bill known as the Nicaraguan Investment Conditionality Act of 2017, or Nica Act on Thursday. It seeks to add conditions to the provision of aid from international financial institutions to the country.

While President Trump threatens to enact sanctions on Venezuela, this week will be crucial in the insurrectionary offensive of the opposition and imperialism. The hope for human rights and the breakdown of inequality is on its way.

The upper classes of Venezuela are trying to regain their lost fiefdom. The program of violence they are implementing, which has rocked Venezuela since April 4, 2017, is part of that effort.

Abby Martin addresses the criticisms with Head of the Presidential Commission to oversee the Constituent Assembly process, Elias Jaua, speaks to supporters and participants of the Assembly, interviews historian Chris Gilbert and explains what is at stake in Venezuela if the social programs instated under Chavez are terminated by the opposition.

The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry in a statement rejected the U.S. government’s “unbelievable” comments on Venezuela that “shows its absolute bias towards the violent and extremist sectors of Venezuelan politics, which favor the use of terrorism to overthrow a popular and democratic government.”

I know a number of people in Venezuela and academia in the U.S. and elsewhere who I used to see eye to eye on with regard to Chavez and I now find them expressing total rejection of and even animosity toward the government. The only thing that binds us now is our common support for the need to defend Venezuelan sovereignty, and sometimes not even that.

The possibility of an open civil war in Venezuela is not shocking. People are tensing up with the International left being reluctant to show solidarity with the Maduro government and the Bolivarian socialist movement. The need to examine what “neutrality” or, allowing the opposition to come to power via an illegal and violent transition, would mean.

Abby Martin talks to Venezuelans on the streets of Caracas and investigates the main claim that there’s no free press, and that there is no food in the supermarkets. Using hidden cameras, she takes you through local grocery stores and the underground black market currency exchange, the main source of inflation in the country. Abby sits down with economist Pasqualina Curzio to learn more about the nature of the black market and chronic shortages of goods. Knowing that world leaders are calling for foreign intervention, Abby finds out if locals agree.

Abby Martin goes on the deadly front lines of the anti government protests in Venezuela and follows the evolution of a typical guarimba—or opposition barricade. She explains what the targets from the opposition reveal about the nature of the movement and breaks down the reality of the death toll that has rocked the nation since the unrest began, and how a lynch mob campaign came after her and the Empire Files team for reporting these facts.

Revolutionary activist and sociologist Reinaldo Iturriza has spent many years working with popular movements in Venezuela and writing on the rise of Chavismo as a political movement of the poor. He also served as Minister for the Communes and Social Movements, and then Minister for Culture in President Nicolas Maduro’s cabinet between 2013 and 2016.

Venezuelan public opinion is not what you’d expect if you rely on the disinformation loop in which corporate media and Washington-friendly NGOs like HRW participate.

Responding to the United States vice president’s recent statements that “democracy is undermined” in Venezuela, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez strongly rejected Pence’s claims.

The Bolivarian leaders denounced the plan to destabilize Venezuela as “imperialist,” saying that the “extremism” and “militarism” of the U.S is a “serious threat to humanity.”

Foreign support to the Venezuelan right in the form of money, weapons, and propaganda is ongoing. Some oil corporations, such as Exxon Mobil, are directly involved in destabilization policies.