Venezuela

[blindpig]

THE FIVE CONSENSUSES

The Cayapo

Jan 24, 2024 , 3:39 pm .


(Photo: El Cayapo)

When you want anything you can. We can think very well and be great technicians, intellectuals, artists, politicians, athletes, professionals, but if building a country is not an objective, what we are will be of no use.

The great mystery of being a people begins to be cleared up with the proposal of President Maduro's five consensuses. In that skeleton of a proposal there is room for all the ideas to fill with flesh the construction of a desire of the ancestors who fought to get rid of the yoke of the invaders and design a town different from what they inherited.

In different writings we have expressed the need to have an idea that unites us, that constitutes us as a people. To be the country we dream of. On more than one occasion we have expressed that, in 500 years, despite the proposal of Rodríguez, Miranda, Bolívar, Zamora, who invite us to merge as a people, with our own decisions, independently of criteria regarding the powers of the world, it has not been possible to have an idea, an impulse, a plan, a strategy, a tactic that would lead us over time in this territory to become a people with a profile, with its own interest, a people that calls itself and not be named or called from afar.

On the contrary, the business, governing, intellectual, academic, technical, and artistic elites have only contented themselves with being vulgar imitators, lapdogs of foreign interests, to the point of proposing, without anyone forcing them, to hand over the country in exchange for the usufruct. of crumbs at different times and with various actors of that elite, which transmits the same surrendering, home-selling ideology, from generation to generation and which uses propaganda and ideological mechanisms such as churches, schools, universities, spectacles to transmit the same values ​​to the rest of the population throughout the territory, which tells us that, from the richest to the poorest, we have the same thoughts or ideologies about what we are, what the territory is and its possible future, tied to the moorings that will always keep us in a mining present, hammocked by the vagaries of predatory capitalism, whose strings and controls are managed from outside.

Paraphrasing President Maduro, in his meeting with the Chavista deputies: it is important to be together and united in the purpose of building ourselves as a people, basing this union on the love for the territory, necessary fuel for the energy we need to invent ourselves as a people, having It is clear what our interests are and what are the interests of an opposition sector where concentrated evil, violence, the desire for revenge, of those here and abroad who cultivate the anti-country, sell-home spirit, that extremist, kneeling, colonized, sepoy opposition , with absolute dependence on Washington's orders, they never decide anything, never with their own mind on national territory.

Knowing the interests of the opponents in the service of the invader, we are obliged to connect and anchor ourselves with the great purposes. Building on a new ethic of being able to be collectively, being clear that this architecture will require the collective effort of those of us who propose to design this territory and our existence, from another artistic, ethical, political, productive conception, where we identify ourselves and name ourselves. as people with real, intra-cultural love, amalgamated with the territory to which we must belong and not the one that belongs to us, thus creating a new vision of what the territory is and what we will be with knowledge of the facts. Focusing on strengthening collective values, getting rid of the individualistic, egocentric, selfish and petty values ​​that capitalism promotes. Thus clearing the minds and hearts of those who will build and live the future.

Those of us who assume these tasks must recognize ourselves as people at the service of a historical cause, at the service of a transcendental project that is none other than the project of the Liberator Simón Bolívar, brought to the 21st century by our beloved Commander Hugo Chávez, at the service of a higher project , of a historical cause greater than any of us, no matter how important any of us may be. We all have to see ourselves as militants of a historical cause, as soldiers of an army that defends, that talks, that experiments, that designs an idea of ​​homeland, that vindicates us in a collective project.

In 2023, five dynamic and dialectical consensuses have emerged that today reflect a national vision of unity among Venezuelans. These five consensuses do not come from nowhere, they come from the battle of these years and to a large extent these five consensuses have emerged because society begins to recompose itself, to recover and has a direction. Venezuelan society, today, January 24, 2024, has a direction, has consensus, has a model, has a vision on which we must persevere, from now on, to find our own path, to walk on our own feet, to think with your own head and to build our country in the only way that it can be built with your own hands, with your own work, with your own sacrifice, with your own vision.

A dependent country, without vision, kneeling to the interests of foreigners and the gringo empire, will never find its own path of dignity, construction and full development of well-being and prosperity. We have never and never found our way. (Here we add) following the foreign step that always invites us to imitation, copy, belief in the strange, which subjects us to excessive adulation, refusing to activate the spirited muscles of collective invention.

UNITY AND TOGETHERNESS
The different and great cultures of the world have gone through long and painful processes, where few visionary leaders have led them to glorification, to settlement, to being a culture practiced by the elites and the majorities. Without ceasing to have these cultures the plundering character that until now the elites have decided, based on the accumulation of wealth.

All of this is due to these visionaries who educated these elites with their examples so that they understood that the only way to be great and powerful was through the unity of factions, tribes, genes, regions, States, regions, skin colors, data. religious and magical, which amalgamate people at a given moment, and in that unity are the alliances where each one gives part of themselves to win in the future and their small ambitions are superimposed by the great purposes, ideas, plans that lead them to become the cultures that they have become, in historical times determined by new ideas that, with the unitary effort of the elites of the time, become physical facts, lasting over time, together with imaginaries that make them belong. to the territory that they are going to defend with nails, viscera, ideas, plans and physical constructions. Achieving in difficult times the necessary joints to overcome difficulties successfully. All of this independent of ideologies or beliefs of each elitist group or sector.

We repeat all this truism truth as an appetizer that introduces us to the intricacies of who we have been, who we are and who we should be from now on.

Let's enter the conflict of who we have been outside of cheap ideologies, outdated nationalisms or unfulfilled desires. For 500 years the true truth of who we have been is that we have not been, because both the elites who should have been builders, shapers of people, as well as us slaves at their service... (And we use the term slave because The truth, even if it hurts, must be told with all its letters and without disguises. Although most of us do not like or dislike being told the truth and we prefer to let ourselves be carried away by the songs of sirens, of academics, intellectuals, artists, professionals. and politicians at the service of the highest foreign bidder, but we insist, the truth is that we are slaves and we will continue to be if we are not able to understand each other collectively to get out of this miserable condition to which mining capitalism has led us for more than 500 years. and plunderer.)

Once the water is clear, let's continue. In this territory initially invaded by the Europeans, both the resources and the people, those brought from outside, as well as the original ones, have been considered merchandise that produces and reproduces merchandise-wealth, which fills the coffers of elite capitalism in the world, without import its settlement, because as Marx defined it: capitalism neither has nor defends a homeland.

The elites that were formed in these areas never considered establishing themselves as such on these properties, because their ambition was to be next to their owners as peers, and their only proposed task was to plunder all types of resources without building future bases. of a country or town calling themselves, on the contrary, they were accumulating, as a result of their fears, frustrations and defects brought from beyond the seas, a hidden hatred against the territory and the inhabitants that had nothing to do with their European origin, because both Africans, the Indians, like the poor whites and their descendants, had nothing to do with their illusions of the new rich who tried to erase their Maula origins with money. On the contrary, the self-confidence of these people reminded them of the pigsties and pigsties from which they started. and those who never wanted to return, except as noble lords, to rub shoulders with their former masters.

These elites hid in their own Mantuan shell and understood that their only task was to increase ownership over the territory and the people who inhabited it. It never occurred to them to think and even less to think about the design of a country in which to found a culture different from the one from which they left, and to understand that it was from there where they could relate face to face with their former masters, because they had a territory , a culture, an idea, a plan to be power, amalgamating as a people and fulfilling the maxims that made the different cultures that settled and became powerful great. These ordinary people, of low intellect, advised by ignorant and obscurantist priests, loaded with many vices, were content to be bosses of estates who lost them in games of dice or ajiley. These elites who traded their daughters for positions in the Crown were no more than the same port gamblers and ill-gotten medicine cabinets.

In 300 years they could never think, they never came up with an idea to be a people, they only miserated the territory by plundering it and handing it over to those who wanted to pay and in their depravity. They debased the people with whom they could well have built a strong and culturally formed people for great causes, as has been demonstrated throughout history, by leaving the controls of these perverted elites.

This explains to us that projects such as the Colombeia of Francisco de Miranda, supported by Simón Bolívar, formed under the philosophical precepts of Simón Narciso Rodríguez, failed painfully and resoundingly until Ezequiel Zamora, but not before sacrificing thousands of lives in the bonfire of the possible. of slaves and young Mantuans who joined the new ideas, which were heard and became reality throughout Europe.

From then on, this territory and its people continued to suffer from the same elites revamped by generals who earned their fortunes by stealing territory and goods assigned to soldiers after the war of independence.

Already at the end of the 19th century, this territory suffered a new silent invasion, carried out by the representatives of the new empire that Simón Bolívar had announced as the one destined to plague this continent with hunger and misery, we add: and to the world, with the casual consent of the elites who once again only settled for crumbs. All of their miserable behavior developed throughout the 20th century, absorbing the new looting and slum culture of the oil companies, which was once again transmitted to us slaves.

Later, the governments and elites of academics, intellectuals, religious women, artists, professionals and politicians that followed only lent themselves to maintaining the cultural ordinariness of the looting oil companies. Once again, the elites without ideas of their own, with shameless mockery of what we were, repeating the same story that foreign is the best, imposing projects or plans that only benefited local and foreign scammers and usually murdering or imprisoning anyone who were opposed or denounced the looting action of the dominant companies. The exceptions even supported the idea of ​​washing blood by bringing Germans to these lands, overcoming culture by importing educators who taught us how to behave, and even poet imitators held dinners uncovering cans that contained Parisian air, in Sabana Grande restaurants, to maintain a Parisian atmosphere of authentic bohemian. This was carried out by a court that did not differentiate between right or left in the so-called Eastern Republic.

This lasted until Chávez came to power of the State. From now on, for the first time, to the slaves and sectors of the elites who did not agree with the looting and the surrendering and cowardly behavior of the traditional elites, we are proposed a country plan into which we must put our brains to think about it, to design it. , and the body to build it, to experience it. But that is not possible without going through the tormented process of discovering ourselves and healing the wounds inflicted in 500 years of despising ourselves.

This is the first consensus, as we understand it, a bridge built for those of us who, of our own free will, even when we do not share the same ideas, have decided to establish ourselves in this territory, whether we are Chavistas or the opposition. To cross from apathy and vulgar surrender to the wonderful invention of a country by those united in dialectical contradiction who in the end will inherit it together, and these, in difficult moments, will find it easy to defend what was built together. Because they will have a history, a common root, and never again in this territory will the traitors have the power to sell it.

https://misionverdad.com/chavismo/los-cinco-consensos

[blindpig]

Corporate Coup: Venezuela and the End of US Empire
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor 31 Jan 2024


Anya Parampil’s book tells the story of US hybrid warfare on Venezuela and of the tectonic social and economic shifts reshaping the world today.

“Sanctions,” as imposed by the US, is a sanctimonious word for economic warfare and outright theft, and Venezuela is a textbook case. As Anya Parampil demonstrates in Corporate Coup: Venezuela and the End of US Empire , sanctions were part of a multi-pronged regime change war that included diplomatic aggression, economic terrorism, covert operations, and information warfare.

It also included the bizarre US recognition of an obscure Venezuelan legislator, Juan Guaidó, as the president of Venezuela from January 2019 to January 2023, even as the elected president, Nicolas Maduro, remained in power.

Ridiculous as that was, it worked. By transferring Venezuela’s foreign assets to Guaidó and his “administration,” and by its relentless economic sanctions campaign, the US enabled US and Canadian corporations to suck Venezuelan wealth into their own coffers, where much of it remains to this day. It was a corporate coup but, as Parampil argues in her conclusion, successful only in the near term.

Parampil skillfully weaves the personal story of her frontline reporting through the history of this war, beginning in 2019, when she first walked through the front doors of Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry and saw a “peculiar art installation.” Gradually she realized that it was a sculptural rendering of former Chilean President Salvador Allende’s fractured glasses “left shattered on the floor of his office on September 11, 1973, after US-backed military forces stormed the Presidential Palace in Santiago and overthrew his government.” What could better symbolize the Bolivarian Revolution and the fearsome imperial force it faces still?

Days before she walked through those doors, Juan Guaidó had declared himself the president of Venezuela, “sparking an international political crisis that continues to this day,” even though a Venezuelan pollster demonstrated that “a whopping 81% of Venezuelans did not even know who Guaidó was at the time.”

Venezuelan socialism, US and Canadian corporate vultures
Venezuela embraces the term “socialism,” as Parampil explains, even though the private sector still operates the vast majority of its economy. Its core belief is that the country’s vast natural resource wealth— arguably including the world’s largest oil and gold reserves—belongs to the Venezuelan people. This of course sparks the ire of Western oil and mining companies and the governments that represent them, most of all the US.

Venezuela has a national oil company that owns and manages its oil resources, as did several nations who’ve been toppled by US coups. The government has also claimed its own gold resources, including the Las Cristinas gold mine, arguably the largest unexploited gold mine in the world.

Crystallex, a Canadian mining company, signed an exclusive contract with the government to develop Las Cristinas in 2002, but Venezuela canceled the contract in 2011. Crystallex then asserted that Venezuela owed it $3.16 billion plus interest for expropriating the mine even though it had never been operational.

With the help of Guaidó’s shadow government, Crystallex became the first major player in seizing Venezuela’s most valuable international asset, US-based Citgo Petroleum. Parampil describes a fire sale that ultimately benefited both Crystallex and American oil companies:

“When a court rules that one corporation, such as Crystallex, can seize shares belonging to another, such as Citgo, as a debt payment, the shares are not directly transferred from company to company. Rather, the court sells off a portion of the indebted company’s assets and uses funds raised from the sale to pay the claimant.

“‘They’re auctioned,’ [Venezuelan economist Francisco] Rodríguez explained, referring to the indebted company’s assets.

In Citgo’s case, this meant the court would oversee the fire sale of roughly $1.2 billion worth of its assets—including gas stations, oil pipelines, oil terminals, and refineries throughout the United States—in order to satisfy Venezuela’s debt to Crystallex. Through that process, oil industry rivals including Shell, British Petroleum, and ExxonMobil would gain a chance to expand their share of the US oil market by swallowing up Citgo’s infrastructure.”

Voilà. Coup complete. Or rather, started. As Parampil recounts, a US court’s decision in favor of Crystallex made way for a host of other corporate vultures to move in on Venezuela’s Citgo assets in the US.

This is, of course, a gross oversimplification of a complex process that I couldn’t have begun to understand without Parampil’s masterful guidance through a byzantine legal and business maze.

Surviving a medieval siege
UN Rapporteur Alfredo de Zayas described the UN sanctions regime on Venezuela as “comparable with medieval sieges of towns with the intention of forcing them to surrender.” Parampil describes how it greatly restricted imports and thereby starved the private sector that the US might have been expected to defend.

The government responded by instituting CLAP, the Comités Locales de Abastecimiento y Producción (Local Committees for Supply and Production), which became “Maduro’s single most effective intervention against US financial war.”

While the sanctions regime had reduced Venezuela’s GDP by 75 percent, its living standards by 72 percent, and increased its mortality rate by 31 percent, the CLAP program delivered regular shipments of government subsidized pantry staples and household products to millions of families nationwide. Its success made it an obsession of the US government, which made repeated attempts to undermine the alternative supply chains it depended on, most notably by arresting and imprisoning Alex Saab , the

Colombian-Venezuelan businessman and diplomat who had undertaken the job of creating them. God forbid that a nation should not only claim its own natural resource wealth but also dare to feed its people.

Failed “humanitarian” invasion
Another story line in Corporate Coup is almost as bizarre as the Western recognition of Juan Guaidó. In February 2019, one month after Guaidó inaugurated himself, the US announced that it would force a convoy of “humanitarian aid” into Venezuela from Colombia and began assembling a military presence on the border to oversee its delivery. The narrative it fed the media was that Venezuela was starving its people and even refusing to allow an aid convoy in.

At the time this occurred it was only on the edge of my consciousness because I was focused largely on understanding US aggression in Africa. I did of course note that the US was trying to force “aid” in, and that billionaire Richard Branson was prancing around on the Colombia-Venezuela border making an ass of himself with his 2019 Venezuela Aid Live concert.

Since Branson’s billions aren’t derived from oil, gold, or other natural resources, he seemed to be there simply to assert his right to be a billionaire and challenge an economic model that he imagined might deny him that right.

What I didn’t realize before reading Corporate Coup was that the delirious organizers of this stunt were trying to inspire the Venezuelan troops who amassed on the Venezuelan side of the border to defect and trigger a military uprising that would bring down the Maduro government. Parampil writes:

“Rather than ignite chaos in Venezuela’s streets, the February 23 plot was designed to test the loyalty of the country’s armed forces. By forcing Venezuelan troops to prepare for an invasion, Washington waged a psychological war against the military’s rank and file with the aim of intimidating them into defection. Trump and his advisors did not hide this objective.

“‘To the Venezuelan military high command, now is the time to stand on the side of the Venezuelan people,’ White House National Security Advisor John Bolton tweeted on February 2. ‘It is your right and responsibility to defend the constitution and democracy for Venezuela!’”

Some few defected, but the vast majority of the Venezuelan soldiers stood their ground, and the US operation was a dismal failure. Parampil’s blow-by-blow account of how this all transpired is well worth reading. There’s a sad irony to it now as miles of aid trucks line up on the Egyptian side of the Rafah Crossing, waiting to get into Gaza, and the US continues to oppose a ceasefire that would open the way to letting them in.

Who remembers Juan Guaidó?
The US-backed pretender Juan Guaidó will no doubt be discussed in future academic discourse on the first three decades of 20th century Venezuelan history. If remembered beyond that, he’s likely to be shorthand for a feckless lackey. A “guaidó” could become similar to a “quisling,” shorthand for “traitor” based on the career of Vidkun Quisling, the collaborator who nominally headed Norway’s government during Nazi occupation. Or he may, as Parampil writes, just be a bad, forgettable joke.

In any case, US and Canadian corporate coupsters are still laughing all the way to the bank.

Short term coup, long term loss
As Parampil’s subtitle—Venezuela and the End of Empire—implies, the hybrid warfare against Venezuela worked to enrich Western corporations, but only in the short term. In the long term, they proved the US and its Western allies to be dishonest international partners and inspired nations like Venezuela to establish new trade relationships—including trade not transacted in US dollars—with more trustworthy partners in the new multipolar world.

Parampil’s narrative makes for a fascinating read, not only about Venezuela, but also about the tectonic social and economic shifts reshaping the world as we know it today.

https://blackagendareport.com/index.php ... -us-empire

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VICE PRESIDENT RODRÍGUEZ'S RESPONSE TO WASHINGTON: THREE KEYS
Jan 31, 2024 , 3:42 pm .



After knowing the first actions of the United States government, after the ratification of the disqualification of María Corina Machado, focused on the lifting of the licenses granted in October 2023 and which constituted a certain flexibility for PDVSA's operations in gas and oil , different officials of the Venezuelan State responded to the demands of their American counterpart in a clear way.

On this occasion we highlight what was stated by Executive Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, pointing out three key aspects that allow us to understand and analyze, from a geopolitical perspective, the current political moment.


" Venezuela all rejects the rude and improper blackmail and ultimatum expressed by the US government."
Despite the hegemonic narrative, the current dispute is not between the government and the opposition, but between the United States and Venezuela, and their repeated attempts to treat us neocolonially. In this sense, the controversy goes beyond the electoral issue and is posed in terms of the very existence of the State and the recognition of its main characteristic: the sovereign exercise of power.

Ignoring a decision of the TSJ implies ignoring a sovereign action of the State and means a flagrant violation of the principles of equality between States and non-interference contemplated in the Charter of the United Nations.

" Flights for the repatriation of Venezuelan migrants would be revoked immediately, and any cooperation mechanism would be reviewed"
Cooperation between sovereign States is based on the principles of good faith as a norm or rule of conduct and behavior between them. It could not be understood that, with an act of aggression such as the (re)implementation of a sanction, existing cooperation could be maintained, as if nothing had happened.

Cooperation on migration and energy matters continues to be a point of interest for both States and should be managed that way. There is no room for naivety at this level of negotiation, both States will act in accordance with their national interests.

Consequently, the manipulation that a certain narrative attempts to give to the possible suspension of repatriation flights—a countermeasure suggested by Venezuela—ignores that the one promoting the departure of Venezuelan migrants is the United States government with its misguided sanctioning policy against Venezuela, being them The same ones who do not accept Venezuelans in their territory.

" V enezuela, inspired by its glory and historical dignity, will continue its efforts to recover the Venezuelan economy with its own efforts in national unity"
The path of growth that the country has been consolidating responds to the political, economic and social stability that the people have been materializing with their own efforts. Although the (re)implementation aims to undermine this path taken since 2021, it is based on the conviction that there is a plan that will allow us to continue advancing on this path. The sanction scenario is not new for the Venezuelan authorities.

Thus, a first conclusion, already knowing the dynamic nature of the issue, behind the Vice President's positioning is the continuous denunciation of the questioning of the national sovereignty and legitimacy of Venezuelan institutions; Any negotiation that takes place internally or externally in the country must start from that unquestionable fact. Above the Constitution there can be no negotiation or agreement possible.

https://misionverdad.com/venezuela/resp ... res-claves

Google Translator

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Dawn Is Breaking Out All Over, and the World Is Waking Up: The Sixth Newsletter (2024)
FEBRUARY 8, 2024


Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe (Venezuela), Hema ahu (Spider Web with Dew in the Morning), 2021.

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

On 2 February 2024, the people of Venezuela celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Bolivarian Revolution. On that day in 1999, Hugo Chávez took office as the president of Venezuela and began a process of Latin American integration that – because of US intransigence – accelerated into an anti-imperialist process. Chávez’s government, understanding that it would not be able to govern on behalf of the people and address their needs if it remained tied to the 1961 Constitution, pushed for deeper and deeper democratisation. In April 1999, a referendum was held to set up a Constituent Assembly, tasked with drafting a new constitution; in July 1999, 131 deputies were elected to the assembly; in December 1999, another referendum was held to ratify the draft constitution; and, finally, in July 2000, a general election was held based on the rules set out in the newly adopted constitution. As I remember, it rained hard on the day that the new constitution was put before the people. Nonetheless, 44% of the electorate turned out to vote in the referendum, with an overwhelming 72% choosing a new start for their country.

Under the new constitution, Venezuela’s old Supreme Court – which the country’s oligarchy had used as a mechanism to prevent any major social changes from taking place – was replaced by the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (Tribunal Supremo de Justicia) or TSJ. Over the course of the past quarter century, the TSJ has been disturbed by several controversies, largely stemming from interventions of the old oligarchy, which refused to accept the major changes that Chávez pushed through in his early years. Indeed, in 2002, the judges on the TSJ acquitted the military leaders who attempted a coup d’état against Chávez, an act which outraged the majority of Venezuelans. This ongoing interference eventually led to the expansion of the bench (as US President Franklin D. Roosevelt had done in 1937 for similar reasons) as well as more legislative control over the judiciary, as exists in most modern societies (such as in the United States, where Congressional oversight of the courts is institutionalised through instruments such as the ‘exceptions clause’). Nonetheless, this conflict over the TSJ provided an early weapon for Washington and the Venezuelan oligarchy as they attempted to delegitimise the Chávez government.


Oswaldo Vigas (Venezuela), Alacrán (‘The Scorpion’), 1952.

More people will go to the polls across the world in 2024 than in any previous year. About seventy countries, collectively making up almost half of the world’s adult population, have either already held elections or will hold elections this year. Amongst them are India, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa, the United States, and Venezuela, which is slated for presidential elections in the second half of this year. Well before the Venezuelan government was expected to declare the date for the elections, the country’s far-right opposition and the US government had already begun to intervene, attempting to delegitimise the elections and destabilise the country with the return of financial and trade sanctions. At the heart of the current dispute is the TSJ, which, on 26 January 2024, refused to overturn a June 2023 decision to disqualify far-right political figure María Corina Machado – who has called for sanctions against her own country and for the United States to intervene militarily against Venezuela – from holding elected office in Venezuela until at least 2029 if not 2036. In the proceedings, the TSJ looked at the case of eight individuals who had been barred from holding public office for a variety of reasons. Six of them have been reinstated, and two of them, including Machado, have had their disqualifications upheld.

The TSJ’s decision evoked fire and brimstone from Washington. Four days after the court decision, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller released a press statement that said that the US disapproved of the ‘barring of candidates’ from the presidential elections and would therefore punish Venezuela. The US immediately revoked General Licence 43, a treasury licence that had permitted the Venezuelan public sector gold mining company Minerven to conduct normal commercial transactions with US persons and entities. In addition, US State Department warned that if the Venezuelan government does not allow Machado to run in this year’s election, it will not renew General Licence 44, which allows Venezuela’s oil and gas sector to conduct normal business and is set to expire on 18 April. Later that day, Miller told the press that ‘absent a change in course from the government, we will allow that general licence to expire, and our sanctions will snap back into place’.


Elsa Gramcko (Venezuela), R-33 Todo comienza aqui (‘R-33, It All Begins Here’), 1960.

The United Nations Charter (1945) permits the Security Council to authorise sanctions under chapter VII, article 41. However, it emphasises that these sanctions can only be implemented by way of a UN Security Council resolution. That is why US sanctions on Venezuela, which were first imposed in 2005 and have deepened since 2015, are illegal. As UN special rapporteur on unilateral coercive measures Alena F. Douhan wrote in her 2022 report, these unilateral measures are prone to overcompliance and secondary sanctions as a result of countries’ and firms’ fear of being punished by the US. The illegal measures imposed by the US have resulted in tens of billions of dollars of losses since 2015 and have served as collective punishment against the Venezuelan population (forcing over six million of them to leave the country). In 2021, the Venezuelan government formed the Group of Friends in Defence of the UN Charter to bring countries together to defend the integrity of the charter and stand against the use of these kinds of violent, unilateral, and illegal measures. Trade amongst members of this group has been increasing, and many of them (particularly Russia and China) have provided Venezuela with options other than the financial and trade system dominated by the United States and its allies.


Jacqueline Hinds (Barbados), The Sacrifice of the Builders of the Panama Canal, 2017.

Last month, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research published a landmark study, Hyper-Imperialism, and dossier, The Churning of the Global Order, in which we analysed the Global North’s decline in legitimacy, the new mood in the Global South, and the violent mechanisms used by the Global North to desperately hold onto its power. Last year, the governments of the United States and Venezuela met in Bridgetown, Barbados, under the sponsorship of Mexico and Norway to sign the Barbados Agreement. Under the terms of this agreement, Venezuela would allow the disqualification of some opposition candidates to be challenged in the TSJ and the US would begin to lift its embargo against Venezuela. This was an agreement that the US signed not from a position of strength, but due to the isolation that it faces from the newly buoyant OPEC+ (made up of Global South nations that, in 2022, accounted for 59% of global oil production) and due to its failure to fully assert authority over Saudi Arabia. In an effort to hedge these challenges, the US has sought to bring Venezuelan oil back into the world market. After refusing to participate in the terms set by the Barbados Agreement, Machado challenged her disqualification at the TSJ, whose authority she claimed to honour. But when the verdict went against her, Machado and the United States went into their toolbox and found that all that remained was force: a return to sanctions and a return to the threat of military intervention. Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Yvan Gil called the US reaction ‘neo-colonial interventionism’.

Washington’s return to sanctions comes just as the Associated Press published a report based on a secret 2018 US government memorandum that provides evidence that the US sent spies to Venezuela to target President Nicolás Maduro, his family, and his close allies. ‘We don’t like to say it publicly, but we are, in fact, the police of the world’, former US Drug Enforcement Agency official Wes Tabor told the Associated Press in clear disregard of the operation’s violation of international law. This is the attitude of the United States. That kind of thinking, which calls to mind the clichés of Hollywood Westerns, governs the rhetoric of US high officials. It is in this tone that US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin threatens militias in Iraq and Syria, saying that while they might ‘have a lot of capability, I have a lot more’. Meanwhile, Austin declares that the US will respond to the strikes on its military base in Jordan ‘when we choose, where we choose, and how we choose’. We will do what we want. That arrogance is the essence of US foreign policy, which calls upon Armageddon when it feels like it. ‘Target Tehran’, says US Senator John Cornyn, unconcerned about the implications of a US bombardment in Iran or anywhere else.


Mario Abreu (Venezuela), Mujer vegetal (‘Vegetable Woman’), 1954.

Of course, there is a fine line between persecuting political opponents and disqualifying those who want their country invaded by a foreign power, in this case ‘the police of the world’. It is true that governments often disparage their opponents by alleging that they are agents of a foreign power (as US Senator Nancy Pelosi did recently to those in the United States who are protesting Israel’s genocide against Palestinians, calling them agents of Russia and asking the Federal Bureau of Investigations to monitor them). Machado, however, has openly made statements calling for the United States to invade Venezuela, which in any country would be considered out of bounds.

In December 2020, I met with a range of opposition leaders in Venezuela who had turned against the regime change positions of people like Machado. Timoteo Zambrano, a leader of Cambiemos Movimiento Ciudadano, told me that it was no longer possible to go before the Venezuelan people and call for an end to Chavismo, the socialist programme set in place by Hugo Chávez. This meant that large sections of the right, including Zambrano’s social democratic formation, have had to acknowledge that this standpoint could not easily win popular support. The far right, comprised of people like Juan Guaidó and María Corina Machado, do not have the stomach for actual democratic processes, preferring instead to ride into Caracas on the backs of an F-35 Lightning II.



Not even a few months after promising sanctions relief to Venezuela, the US has returned to its hyper-imperialist ways. But the world has changed. In 2006, Chávez went to the United Nations and asked the world’s peoples to read Noam Chomsky’s Hegemony or Survival and then mused, ‘Dawn is breaking all over… It is that the world is waking up. It is waking up all over. And people are standing up’. On 31 January 2024, Maduro went to the TSJ headquarters, where he said, ‘We do not depend on gringos or anyone in this world for investment, prosperity, progress, advancement, [or] growth’. Channelling Chávez from eighteen years ago, Maduro said, ‘Another world has already been born’.

Warmly,

Vijay

https://thetricontinental.org/newslette ... venezuela/

[blindpig]

Nicolás Maduro received by thousands in the city of Maturín. (Photo: Nicolás Maduro/ X)

Venezuela’s election in the crosshairs of new U.S. regime change scheme
Originally published: Peoples Dispatch on March 15, 2024 by Zoe Alexandra and Walter Smolarek (more by Peoples Dispatch) | (Posted Mar 18, 2024)

Twenty-five years after Hugo Chávez took office and began the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela, U.S. officials have still not tired of dreaming up new plots to overthrow the country’s government. Five years ago, following the last presidential election, they attempted to install Juan Guaidó—a politician most Venezuelans had never even heard of—as the country’s head of state. And now, with the date for the next presidential election officially set for July 28, the Biden administration is gearing up for the biggest regime-change push since the Guaidó coup attempt.

Venezuela has long been a target for U.S. intervention because of its efforts to build an alternative model to the neoliberal capitalism pushed by institutions like the IMF and World Bank. First theorized and implemented under the leadership of Chávez, the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela puts forward a new model that emphasizes using the country’s resources, such as its oil revenue, to fund crucial missions. These then guarantee rights such as education, food, housing, transportation, culture, and sports to historically excluded majorities, to decrease longstanding socioeconomic inequality. A central part of the Bolivarian Revolution is the political and cultural transformation of the people through the promotion of Venezuelan national culture, internationalism, anti-imperialism, and the empowerment of all people as political subjects with rights and responsibilities. It is a project in direct contradiction to U.S. interests in the oil-rich country and the region Washington considers its backyard.

The 2024 elections
President Nicolás Maduro is running for re-election as the candidate of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and the broader Great Patriotic Pole coalition. He has built his campaign around a program referred to as the “Seven Transformations,” proposing major new initiatives in the fields of economic modernization, asserting national sovereignty, safety and security, ensuring social rights, political participation, the environment, and geopolitics. These aim to maintain the pro-poor, socialist orientation of the country’s development model while enacting reforms to stimulate greater economic activity and counteract the impact of crippling U.S. sanctions.

The opposition is divided into several different camps. The largest coalition of opposition parties is called the Unitary Platform and consists of parties or factions of parties controlled by the Venezuelan elite who were displaced from positions of power as a result of the Bolivarian Revolution. The Unitary Platform has taken part in several rounds of negotiations with the government over the past year leading up to the elections and signed an agreement last October known as the “Barbados Agreement.”

In this agreement, the opposition was granted concessions on issues related to the organization of the electoral process, and in exchange, the United States agreed to loosen some sanctions relating to Venezuela’s oil and mining industries. The Barbados Agreement stipulated that only opposition figures who are eligible according to existing laws would be permitted to run. At this stage, the Unitary Platform has not chosen a candidate.

The specifics of how the electoral process will be carried out, regulations on campaigning on media platforms, participation of electoral observers, and the updating of electoral rolls were outlined in an agreement signed on February 28. The agreement was the product of dialogue among over 150 political and social organizations and was based on over 500 proposals. Ninety-seven percent of the political parties registered with the National Electoral Council participated.

Nonetheless, U.S. officials have presented this electoral process, subject to such extensive deliberation and approved with such wide support, as an attack on democracy.

María Corina Machado and the fraud narrative
The approach of the U.S. government follows a familiar script—wage a campaign in the media and through international organizations to cast doubt on the integrity of the electoral process so relentlessly that the result can be presented as fraudulent no matter what the actual evidence is on election day.

The key piece of the “electoral fraud” narrative is already in place and revolves around the disqualification of the opposition figure María Corina Machado.

Machado is the oldest daughter of Henrique Machado Zuloaga, who was an executive of Sivensa. One of Venezuela’s largest steel companies, Sivensa was nationalized in 2008 under Hugo Chávez. Since the start of the Bolivarian Revolution, Machado has been active in the right-wing opposition and has gone so far as to support destabilization campaigns and attempts to overthrow Venezuela’s democratically elected governments. She served as a member of Venezuela’s National Assembly from 2011-2014.

In July 2015, the Venezuelan comptroller general’s office announced that Machado was barred from holding public office for a period of one year after neglecting to disclose the extent of her earnings while she held public office.

The investigations into Machado continued. In July 2023, opposition deputy José Brito requested an update on Machado’s eligibility for holding public office given the upcoming presidential election and her stated intention to run. The comptroller general’s office responded, confirming that the disqualification of Machado was maintained and constituted a 15-year ban due to her support of regime change plots.

Though she initially refused to participate in the process, Machado appealed her ban through the Barbados Agreement procedure, which also stated that all candidates must defend Venezuela’s independence and reject violent actions against the government. In January 2024, the Supreme Court of Venezuela issued a sentence rejecting Machado’s appeal of the ban.

The Biden administration immediately sought to use economic coercion to undermine this decision by an institution of Venezuela, a sovereign state. As part of the Barbados Agreement, the U.S. government issued licenses to certain oil companies permitting them to resume operations in Venezuela despite the sanctions. At the end of January, the State Department announced that the sanctions waivers issued to these companies would not be renewed once they expire on April 18.

At the same time, there is endless media reinforcement of the position that an election without Machado cannot be considered legitimate. On January 30, a few days after the Supreme Court rejected her appeal, Machado went on the television network CNN and was presented to viewers as “Venezuela’s main opposition leader.” An earlier Washington Post article is also typical of this narrative, headlined, “She’s the front-runner in the race to oust Maduro. He’s out to block her.” This combination of economic and political pressure is what has led to explosions in right-wing street violence in the past, following the 2013 presidential election when Maduro was first elected.

Machado: Regime change operative?
In 2002, following the short-lived coup d’état against Chávez, Machado signed the decree which established an unelected government under chamber of commerce head Pedro Carmona. In 2005 she met with former U.S. president George W. Bush at the White House to discuss “democracy” (i.e., the overthrow of the Venezuelan government) More recently, she has been a key supporter and leader of the numerous right-wing plots to overthrow the democratically elected President Nicolás Maduro. These include the 2014 and 2017 guarimba protests which saw extreme violence against security forces and chavista supporters, as well as the destruction of infrastructure.

In 2014, Machado was removed from her post in the National Assembly after she attended a meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) in the place of the Panamanian representative in order to testify about 2014 protests, to speak out against the government, and to call for foreign support for her cause. The move was widely condemned as a violation of both the Venezuelan constitution and Panamanian law, and in response, Panamanian civil society and movement organizations filed a lawsuit against her for usurping a public post.

Machado has also celebrated the effectiveness of the illegal sanctions regime imposed on Venezuela in applying political pressure for regime change, and on several occasions, has called for even more sanctions. The sanctions have had devastating consequences for the Venezuelan people, well documented by different UN bodies and rapporteurs, human rights organizations, and think tanks. United Nations special rapporteur Alena Douhan noted that “[t]he announced purpose of the ‘maximum pressure’ campaign—to change the Government of Venezuela—violates the principle of sovereign equality of states and constitutes an intervention in the domestic affairs of Venezuela that also affects its regional relations.”

In 2019, Machado supported the push by Juan Guaidó’s parallel, fictitious government to request that the OAS apply the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR) against Venezuela to end the “usurpation of power” by Maduro. The activation of TIAR would have provided a legal justification for foreign military intervention, (more) economic sanctions, and a commercial blockade.

Machado participated and benefitted from the looting of the state companies and assets that the Guaidó “government” had illegally seized such as Monomeros and CITGO.

U.S. seeks to delegitimize Venezuela’s democracy
An examination of the actual facts of Machado’s political career shows how the truth is much more complicated than the mainstream narrative about a government baselessly repressing an opponent.

After years of political instability caused by right-wing plots to overthrow the democratically elected government and even assassinate the leader, the Venezuelan government has pursued a straight-forward principle: political forces of any ideological variety can participate in elections as long as they do not conspire with foreign powers to undermine the independence of Venezuela or its sovereign institutions. This is in line with practices around the world. In the United States, for instance, there has been a great deal of public attention to the clause of the 14th Amendment that bars those guilty of insurrection from public office.

As the July 28 elections approach, tensions between the disparate elements of the Venezuelan political scene are bound to intensify. But the Biden administration is bound to be guided by the same overarching goal that has animated the policy decisions of Democratic and Republican administrations alike—remove from power one of the most long-standing opponents of Washington’s dominant role in the western hemisphere.

https://mronline.org/2024/03/18/venezue ... ge-scheme/

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MACHADO'S SUBSTITUTION BETWEEN TABOO AND SUSPENSE
Mar 15, 2024 , 12:00 pm .


There is a framework conditioned by time and what is established as a rule for the elections on July 28 (Photo: Archive)

On March 5, the Venezuelan electoral schedule was defined for this year's presidential elections. In accordance with what was established by the National Electoral Council (CNE), the date was set for July 28 and candidate nominations were scheduled to take place from March 21 to 25.

A week after the candidate registration process begins, there does not seem to be, at least for now, a consensus in the opposition about who will be the figure to represent them in the next race and the suspense takes space and body within a sector of This one seems not to want to play ahead and prefers that María Corina Machado end up accepting the unviability of her candidacy and, consequently, the narrative that accompanies it.

The panorama is the following:

The division in the opposition is evident, for at least two reasons. The first of them is that Machado continues with the story of proclaiming himself as the absolute leader among them, which requires continuing with the plan to register her candidacy, even though she is legally disqualified from holding public office. This attitude prevents the discussion and debate on its replacement from being assumed in a transparent, frank and, above all, practical way, this being the second evidence of the fragmentation of the opposition in the face of the electoral scenario. It seems that talking about her impersonation leads to a media lynching to which the party leadership does not want to expose itself. Nobody wants to project themselves as a possible replacement for a mainly media cost.

Thus, despite being aware of the unviability of Maria Corina Machado's candidacy, no opposition leader wants to take the step of proposing her name as a substitute. If in recent days Manuel Rosales and Un Nuevo Tiempo distanced themselves from the possibility of assuming the commitment to lead a presidential candidacy on July 28, the most recent turn was Gerardo Blyde , chief negotiator for the Unitary Platform, who He assured: “The coordinator of the delegation cannot end up being a candidate, it is against nature, it is irregular; “Everyone must begin to assume their role,” which ruled out the possible replacement of Machado pending a “rectification” by the government that would allow “compliance with what was agreed in Barbados and María Corina Machado can register with the CNE.”

The conclusion is simple: the relationship between Machado and the traditional political parties of the Platform deteriorates to the extent that the registration date approaches and neither the strategy to follow—"until the end" versus alternative candidacy—nor is defined. The mechanism for choosing the substitute—is appointed by Machado or decided by consensus. The dilemma is not trivial because to compete electorally, a minimum party structure is essential that allows connecting the leadership—in this case opposition—with the aspirations of the voters and, most importantly, having the possibility of registering a candidacy.

The problem remains that, having accumulated so many errors in the recent past, almost all of them related to the promotion of abstention, the opposition does not have a political vehicle that makes the registration of a unitary candidacy viable, through a party or coalition card. duly authorized to compete. A scenario that becomes even more complex with the terrible relationship that the aforementioned maintains with the political parties that have not followed the abstentionist guidelines, such as Un Nuevo Tiempo, MAS or Fuerza Vecinal, whose cards are authorized.

"Listen to me carefully, those who are talking about a substitute, I have a surprise for you. Yes, here there is a substitute, the one who is going to replace Nicolás Maduro, which is me," he said recently in Barinas.

For the director of Datanalisis, Luis Vicente León, the real keys are in Machado's response and strategy when the application date approaches and he realizes that he will not be able to participate as part of the Unitary Platform (PU) and in how The United States reacts after the outcome of the process.

However, the panorama can change at any time on the eve of the candidate registration process, so nothing can be decided yet.

Until last Wednesday, March 13, Machado's campaign team stated that they would go, between March 21 and 25, to the CNE to nominate their leader's candidacy.

"We are not going to let that victory be taken away from us and the commitment to change is until the end (...) I want to ask you for confidence in the candidate, in her decisions," said Andrea Tavares, a member of the opposition's political team, reports Infobae .

The impression that remains right now is that there is inertia in the PU and everything depends on the decision of the disqualified person, who is expected to raise her hand to another candidate.

And this position, far from adding forces, distances them; There are already voices within the opposition polychromy that would not accompany a designation of Machado by hand, which makes invisible the work that, especially the large parties and regional leaderships, maintain actors within that ecosystem that is the oppositions in Venezuela.

Until now, traditional parties such as Copei and Democratic Action are betting on whoever wins the opposition primaries, and Manuel Rosales, from Un Nuevo Tiempo, said last Tuesday that his party's card is at the disposal of the PU and Machado, although some members of his party refer to him as "one of the best candidates available to be president."

For his part, Antonio Ecarri, leader of the Alianza del Lápiz party, proposes a third way and rules out that the best possibility is a consensus around a single candidate. Likewise, it reduces the relevance of the primaries due to the fact that only 10% of the population participated: "Having a single candidate is a tactical and strategic error. Democracy is weakened by abstention and polarization. That will make any change much more complex. ", he said .

The truth is that it has been observed that this dilemma in relation to the figure of Machado, his impossibility of registering and, consequently, his replacement, not only divides - more - the opposition but also permeates the internal political parties, such as It is reflected in the positions of Primero Justicia, where a sector led by Juan Pablo Guanipa and Carlos Ocariz would be betting on the registration of the leader of Vente Venezuela, and another group led by Tomás Guanipa and Henrique Capriles on the designation of a substitute candidacy.

The latest speculation, according to the media—which have actually served as spokespersons for the opposition—is that Machado and Omar Barboza, general coordinator of the PU, admitted in a meeting that she will not be able to register as a candidate, and that she could support another in order not to abandon the electoral route. On Tuesday, March 12, it was learned that the PU had requested a meeting with Machado to "evaluate scenarios" and start an agenda of conversations to analyze new "possibilities."

That the PU has to ask Machado for a meeting reveals the drift and lack of communication in which all the opposition factors find themselves. The scenario is changing. However, there is a framework conditioned by time and what has been established as a rule for the elections on July 28, which they will not be able to avoid.

https://misionverdad.com/venezuela/la-s ... l-suspenso

[blindpig]

DISQUALIFICATION, POLITICS AND ELECTIONS
Augusto Marquez

Mar 26, 2024 , 1:17 pm .


María Corina Machado along with Corina Yoris who would be her replacement. (Photo: @CorreodelCaroni)

In recent months, as the electoral scenario has been taking shape, our eyes have had to witness the most brazen act on record in Venezuelan history. A "political" group, which for years promoted sanctions, invasions, coups d'état, the disastrous "interim" of Guaidó, among other openly illegal resources against the stability of the country, questioned the disqualifications that prevented its main figure from running for elections and run for public office.

This was the case of María Corina Machado, who after having won the opposition primaries considered her candidacy as a presidential candidate assured. Who has based her political career on promoting confrontation and hatred of Chavismo since the beginning, she stood out especially in recent years of tension by openly calling for military operations and economic and diplomatic aggression against Venezuela. So the disqualification processed by the Comptroller General's Office and later confirmed by the TSJ was not a surprise.

However, she looked surprised, genuinely surprised (and of course upset) when she found out that she could not run in the presidential elections scheduled for the middle of this year, following the ruling of the TSJ . What she considered was a sincere attitude on her part toward the information describing several things.

First, his already well-known notion of superiority, a common value among the rich. Heir to the wealthy Caracas elite, Machado perceives herself as above any legal or political order.

Second, his delirious liberal worldview, according to which States must be taken to their minimum expression to allow the extreme exercise of freedom (of the rich), even against the very foundations of the State, no matter how small it may be.

For both reasons, promoting the destruction of the Venezuelan State is in line with its ideological and class principles. For both reasons, the disqualification continues to seem like a surprise that is impossible to digest.

But reality always ends up imposing itself, no matter how much you fight against it. In an imitation of Henry Ramos Allup's iconic phrase, "you have to bend so as not to break," knowing that it was impossible to reverse the disqualification, he decided to raise his hand as a substitute for Corina Yoris, an academic in his close circle who, according to It has been seen on networks, it supported at the time Guaidó's false interim presidency and the destabilization operations against Venezuela, in addition to promoting hatred and persecution against Chavismo.

The elderly lady, who was advertised for her candor, professionalism, academic resume, among other "goodnesses," is a reflection of the classism, intolerance and drive for violence that governs the so-called "civil society." María Corina Machado has once again been surprised (and obviously annoyed) by the impossibility of processing Yoris' candidacy, for which she continues to bet... until the end?

THE STATE MUST STOP A POSSIBLE PROCESS OF NECROSIS

Machado surely thought it was a "brilliant" maneuver to put a puppet lady with the same name as her as a substitute candidate. Her propensity to deny reality perhaps led her to think that, having not held public office, being someone without political experience in parties, her registration with the CNE would become a reality.

But this could hardly be considered a concrete possibility. Supporting sanctions, parallel governments, military interventions, promoting persecution and political hatred, as Corina Yoris and many others from the extremist opposition sector have done, must be definitively exempt from political activity in Venezuela.

No person, whether they have a political or academic career, who actively works to achieve these objectives should participate in electoral processes, as this would imply a humiliation of the existing legality and a demolition, authorized by the State itself against the population, of political and social coexistence. national that the same laws must protect.

It is not legal, but neither is it political, to register as a candidate if your program of action and government consists of having your own country invaded militarily, destroyed by bombs, destroyed by the economy, and imposed an illegitimate government from abroad. This not only implies violating any legal framework, but also the basic meaning of politics itself: oriented to the common good and the preservation of society.

Therefore, the disqualifications and restrictions on this sector, contrary to what its figures think, are a way to maintain coexistence and the realization of healthy elections where they do not see their aspirations realized.

Allowing a person who pursues these goals to run for public office would be akin to authorizing pressing the self-destruct button. Biology has a name for something like that: necrosis. It is the process by which body tissue breaks down, its condition is irreversible and is caused by a shortage of blood flow.

If this were allowed, the analogy is valid, the Venezuelan State (the entity of material and symbolic representation of the nation) would be exposed to a process of necrosis, where its materiality (the laws) and its natural body (the people) would decompose until there is nothing left. The worst thing about the situation is that it would be the State itself that would initiate self-inflicted structural damage.

The State, through disqualifications, is obliged to protect the country, its people, from those who have actively campaigned for their destruction, suffering and loss of quality of life, whether through a frustrated mantuana, an academic lady full of titles or of anyone interested in Venezuela ceasing to exist as we know it.

https://misionverdad.com/venezuela/inha ... elecciones

BETRAYALS AND DEBACLE IN THE NOMINATION OF OPPOSITION CANDIDATES
Mar 26, 2024 , 3:57 pm .


The evident rupture between the oppositions is deep and transversal. (Photo: @unidadvenezuela)

The process of registering presidential candidates in Venezuela, with a view to the July 28 election, culminated with important news, intrigues and "betrayals" among the ranks of the various oppositions.

Manuel Rosales, leader of the Un Nuevo Tiempo (UNT) party and current governor in the state of Zulia, closed the registration day for opposition candidates, accumulating a long list of 12 figures from various spectrums of anti-Chavismo.

The closing of the process was decided by the controversy surrounding two names: Manuel Rosales and Corina Yoris, also due to various allegations of apparent "problems with the automated application system" that supposedly would have prevented the loading of names by the UNT organizations and the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD).

THE EPHEMERAL CORINA YORIS
Last Friday, March 22, the opposition represented by the factors that make up the PUD evidenced the lack of a replacement strategy for María Corina Machado as electoral standard bearer, given the impossibility of her assuming such a role due to her disqualification from assuming public office.

Machado, who would have won the opposition leadership in dubious primary elections held in October 2023, claimed the power of sole decision-maker over his substitute figure.

The leader had maintained a narrative for months in which she criticized any accusation about a possible replacement in her name and managed to condition the messages among the opponents themselves, carrying the diatribe until the day of the nominations.

Henrique Capriles, leader of the Primero Justicia (PJ) party, had pointed out on several occasions the need to discuss methods of appointing other "options" to Machado, either among figures participating in the primaries or who had not participated in them, but his demand It was rejected by Machado and his acolytes.

The lack of strategy resulted in Machado's discretion to exercise the "power of the finger" and appoint her replacement , thus appointing Corina Yoris, an 80-year-old university professor who was part of the National Primary Commission. The name Yoris arose due to Machado's trust, but it was also a political marketing strategy. Furthermore, Yoris had already been accused, along with Teresa Albanes and Jesús María Casal, of "hijacking" the primary elections in favor of Machado.

According to spokespeople from the PUD and María Corina Machado herself, the PUD and UNT were prevented from making their applications digitally, but there is no conclusive evidence of this. Both parties were supposed to register Corina Yoris, but this did not happen as the nomination process closed late into the night on Monday, March 25.

Corina Yoris's nomination was already marked by controversy, as she was considered an "alter ego" of María Corina Machado. For this it is necessary to review the rules of the game.

The electoral governing body, the National Electoral Council (CNE), advanced the date on which the phase of admission or rejection of applications should be carried out.

"Although the website publication indicates that the admission or rejection of applications will be from March 28 to April 1, the instructions given to the parties indicate that admission will be decided between March 21 and 25," wrote the opposition journalist expert in electoral issues Eugenio Martínez.

According to Martínez, simultaneously with the application process, there was a process of reviewing the applications and, although Yoris did not manage to be nominated (for reasons that are not yet clear), it is a fact that her name was under discussion for being a figure "delegate."

The application process for presidential candidates is governed in accordance with the provisions of the Organic Law of Electoral Processes (LOPRE) and its General Regulations.

In accordance with Article 61 of the LOPRE, the CNE is empowered to rule on "the admission or rejection of the application." The evaluation that the CNE carries out of the applications includes the review of the government proposal of the candidates, in addition to the eligibility conditions provided for in the Constitution and electoral laws.

The General Regulations of the LOPRE in its Article 120 establish that "the non-compliance with any of the eligibility conditions required by the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and the Laws". Of course, this article states that a disqualified person cannot participate, but not necessarily any person who is qualified can do so.

In the case of Corina Yoris, her announcement as a candidate was made under the supervision of María Corina Machado. It was a candidacy proposal without its own government project. She did not represent any of her own parties, nor has she been a leading factor. That is to say, it was a candidacy proposal "by delegation", or "alter ego".

It is very likely that in a review process of Corina Yoris's application, it would not have been validated by the CNE, given that it was a public, well-known and communicational fact that this person did not have a minimum of autonomy to assume the position and, Consequently, trying to assume it so that another person can do it de facto (Machado) would be a type of farce, false electoral offer or electoral fraud.

Yoris' candidacy suggested creating conditions to violate Article 139 of the Constitution, which states that the exercise of Public Power "carries individual responsibility."

Article 225 of the constitutional text states that the Executive Power "is exercised" by the President of the Republic. For its part, Article 226 of the Magna Carta states that it is "the head of State who directs the action of government" and, additionally, Article 232 indicates that the President is responsible for his or her actions and the obligations of his post.

Corina Yoris's promise to be a candidate to assume office "in the name of" Machado and in order to initiate a "transition" is covered in illegality, since it openly implied the intention of establishing a de facto transfer of power to a particular person. The functions of a position are non-transferable.

THE DIFFICULT APPLICATION PROCESS AND THE INTERNAL OPPOSITION CONFLICT
This Tuesday, March 26, leader María Corina Machado declared in a presentation to the press that the nomination of Manuel Rosales as a candidate was a "betrayal" of the PUD and the "mandate" of the October 2023 primaries.

During these statements, Machado was asked if he would support Manuel Rosales, to which he stressed that his only candidate was Corina Yoris. Again and without disparaging the viability of this, she declared that they would fight until she was registered as a candidate.

Until the early hours of Tuesday the 25th, it was estimated that the PUD and its "unitary" card would not have Yoris' candidacy, nor would it participate in the election, while the UNT card would have Rosales' name as a candidate.

The wounds and open divisions among the opposition factors reached a new zenith, in surely irreparable ways, due to the controversy over the registration of candidacies, which occurred in the meantime of closed meetings between the leaders of the parties that make up life. in the PUD.

As a relevant point of the debate, it appears that the "technical impossibility" of registration by the PUD and UNT would have been a mechanism of the CNE to condition the application process.

But this element is weak, given that the only "proof" of this is a live video released by the PUD where a person tries to log into what appears to be the automated application system. But in the images you cannot see the domain of the website. This would have taken place late at night on Monday the 25th. However, on March 22, journalist Eugenio Martinez commented that the CNE had established time blocks for political organizations to carry out their application processes.

This suggests that the PUD had fallen out of time with its time block. Additionally, there were no reports on in-person activity by PUD actors to try to carry out the process through administrative means in the CNE.

Probably the dilatory processes would be in the backstage and debates that took place within the PUD among the political actors, especially in a context of intransigence on the part of María Corina Machado in not giving up on the proposal of her alter ego Corina Yoris.

BETRAYALS AND INTRIGUES
Journalist Carla Angola, a member of María Corina Machado's communications ring, declared from her account on Platform X that the UNT emissaries "deceived the 9 parties of the Unitary Platform."

Angola said that every time the rumor was mentioned that Rosales was already going to register, UNT representatives assured them: "How do you think that can be true if we are here with you?"

"They deceived them all. The system was closed for the MUD, but not for UNT," Angola stressed.

But there are more contradictions between opposition actors on the issue of "the system." UNT would have registered Rosales early in the afternoon of Monday the 25th, while they publicly pretended that they did not have access.

Nícmer Evans, an opponent who is also head of the Punto de Corte media outlet, indicated that "according to his sources" UNT tirelessly pushed for Rosales' nomination by consensus, trying to gain the support of a large part of the PUD, but they would have met with absolute intransigence of Machado, who even left a meeting claiming that he would not accept names other than Corina Yoris.

UNT would have made "a theater that they could not register," while they continued "insisting on a consensus candidacy with Rosales' name," Evans published .

The UNT emissaries had gone to the CNE to obtain the nomination of Rosales through administrative means, but also, knowing that there would not be an agreement in the PUD, of which they are also a part, they would have obtained the nomination of someone else (his name was not has been revealed before this writing) in order to "safeguard space" for a later replacement and to be able to use the PUD card in the election.

According to Evans, Rosales will seek to gain more support in the PUD to have the endorsement of putting his name on that card in the coming days, but the public commotion that this issue has generated makes that possibility very difficult.

According to Orlando Avendaño, accused of being part of the entourage of "journalists" at the service of Machado, in addition to UNT, the leaders Henry Ramos Allup, Henrique Capriles, Juan Pablo Guanipa and the Fuerza Vecinal party (FV) would have participated in this arrangement; The latter appeared on the night of Monday the 25th before the CNE to support Rosales' candidacy.

"UNTIL THE END"
In just three days, a year of political work by the PUD and other actors outside it, like María Corina Machado herself, collapsed.

But this maximum crisis was foreseeable, firstly because of Machado's personalism, because of his immovables, his express prohibition of seeking substitutes, his strategies based on maximum premises, for unilaterally imposing a "delegated" candidacy and his determined interest in controlling the opposition.

Despite Machado's obvious and visceral rejection of Rosales, she insisted that she will remain "on the electoral route" pushing for the registration of Corina Yoris, but there are no clear elements of how she will be able to make it possible in these instances.

Machado knows that significant public attention weighs on her. He does not want to lose his timming of her by openly taking the side of abstention, but the evident rupture between the oppositions is deep and transversal.

For Machado, "all" of the candidates are "Maduro's" candidates, while Rosales declared that he had run "to fill a space and to give Venezuelans the opportunity to participate in the election."

In total, we know the names of 12 opposition leaders who will go to elections against a single candidate registered by the Chavista parties: Nicolás Maduro.

https://misionverdad.com/venezuela/trai ... opositoras

NICOLÁS MADURO: FIVE STRATEGIC REASONS THAT SUPPORT HIS CANDIDACY
Mar 26, 2024 , 11:30 am .


The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, registered as a presidential candidate of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), in a public event on March 25 (Photo: Presidential Press)

During his second term as president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro has achieved fundamental milestones to overcome the crises generated by the extremist opposition and the United States, directing the country towards a horizon of political, economic and social stability. These achievements have strengthened his leadership within Chavismo and have positioned him as the natural candidate to represent the Bolivarian Revolution in the presidential electoral process on July 28 of this year.

Below, we present five milestones, five strategic achievements, that have made it the only political and electoral option for Chavismo.

OVERCOMING HYPERINFLATION
Economic, financial and trade sanctions are instruments of pressure widely used by the United States to influence non-aligned governments and force changes, mostly outside of illegality, in their internal administration or political system.


President Nicolás Maduro at the National Council of Productive Economy (Photo: Presidential Press)

In the case of Venezuela, although the political effectiveness of these measures in terms of their objectives is questionable, their impact on the national economy is undeniable. This policy has been predominant in the US government since the decree was issued in 2015 that describes Venezuela as an "unusual and extraordinary threat" to its national security, reaching its peak with the strategy of "maximum pressure" from Donald Trump's administration in 2017. These shocks have hindered economic growth and restricted the flow of goods and capital in the country, generating structural failures that, through media campaigns, are attributed to alleged mismanagement and inefficiency. of the government.

In total, 930 unilateral coercive measures have been applied , more than half directed against the Venezuelan State, especially against its main economic engine, Petróleos de Venezuela, SA (PDVSA). The highest inflation peaks in Venezuela were recorded between 2018 and 2019, coinciding with the most aggressive measures by the United States against the country.

In this context, during the second term of President Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela has been implementing a plan that has managed to reverse the hyperinflation process. In this last stage of the government cycle, positive and clear results are evident. Currently, the inflation rate in Venezuela is the lowest in the last 12 years, with a reduction of 1.2% in February compared to January and an annual inflation of 75%, still high but far from the levels observed. in recent years.

The economic policies implemented by the Venezuelan government are diverse and respond to multifactorial aggression. These actions range from those carried out by the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) to control the exchange rate, to policies aimed at strengthening tax collection and combating corruption to protect national income from plunder and looting.

The eradication of hyperinflation in Venezuela represents a significant milestone achieved by President Maduro, which is also the starting point for his second achievement.

CREATE THE BASIS OF A NEW PRODUCTIVE ECONOMIC MODEL
President Nicolás Maduro has proposed the construction of his own and diversified economic model, of which, in the first instance due to its impact on the recovery of social well-being, we must highlight the promotion of agri-food production , bringing the country closer to self-sufficiency in many areas. items of the basic Venezuelan diet. This increase is reflected in the availability of products consumed by Venezuelan families in supermarkets and markets, both domestically produced and imported.


President Maduro together with investors and businessmen from the metallurgical sector (Photo: @NicolasMaduro)

In addition, the industrial sector has experienced a significant rebound in 2023 , with growth of 3.93% in the third quarter of last year, while in the same period commercial activity grew by 3.49%. The government has established the National Council of Productive Economy to design economic strategies at the national level, encouraging collaboration between public and private companies.

The diversification of the Venezuelan economy does not imply the abandonment of the oil sector. The government understands how crucial this industry is to Venezuela's economic income, which is why its economic recovery approach has been reflected in recent data showing that in 2023 the country experienced a significant 12.3% increase. in crude oil exports, generating income for a total of 6.23 billion dollars, which underpins organic economic growth supported by diversification and the creation of real wealth.

Despite the challenge imposed by the US blockade and sanctions, which continue despite specific and temporary licenses, Venezuela's economic recovery continues its course and the economy continues its growth driven by the government strategy. The year 2023 closed with a GDP growth of more than 5%, one of the most significant, comparatively speaking, in the Latin American and Caribbean region.

STRENGTHENING RELATIONS WITH CHINA, RUSSIA AND INDIA
Significant transformations are underway in Eurasia in the political and financial spheres, with concrete initiatives aimed at challenging the hegemony of the US dollar and thus ending blackmail and coercion. BRICS+ countries such as Russia, China and India are playing a crucial role in creating a new financial structure independent of Western control.


Meeting between Presidents Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela and Xi Jinping of China (Photo: Xinhua / Ding Lin (EFE))

During his second term, President Maduro has strengthened his position as a member nation of this growing multipolar dynamic in Eurasia. During this presidential period, he has made two official visits to China, traveled to Russia and received his Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, on several occasions. In addition, he has carried out international tours to Eurasian and West Asian countries. The vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, has also made official visits to India. Venezuela has participated in the Saint Petersburg Economic Forum, in the Eurasian Economic Union, and President Maduro intervened in the country's first participation in the XV BRICS+ Summit.

These approaches have led to bilateral agreements that promote advances in key sectors for Venezuela, such as energy, agriculture, technology, industry, trade, finance and tourism. With its potential, especially in the energy field, Venezuela also makes important contributions to these countries that are building new platforms for diplomatic-economic relations.

In this context, it is essential to highlight the importance of the request made by President Nicolás Maduro to the BRICS+ countries for Venezuela to be admitted to this group , a request that has been taken into consideration. The president has not allowed the country to remain static in the face of changes in the global panorama, but is committed to its integration into a multipolar world, based on respect for sovereignty, self-determination and external non-interference.

MAINTENANCE OF THE UNITY OF CHAVISMO
Chavismo has managed to establish itself as a bastion of resistance against internal and external political attacks, through which it has attempted to destabilize the country and undermine its foundations. Unity has been key to standing firm in the face of these adversities, strengthening popular participation and social cohesion in times of crisis and demonstrating collective learning in the face of a clearly identified enemy.


President Nicolás Maduro candidate of the Great Patriotic Pole. (Photo: @NicolasMaduro)

The political serenity and capacity for adaptation that President Maduro has been able to forge in the foundations of Chavismo during more than a decade of unconventional war that has been waged against Venezuela have become essential on this path of adversity, but these qualities are also essential for the political, economic and social transformations sought for the country.

At this crucial moment in the history of Chavismo, the ability to reinvent itself and adapt to new times will be decisive for its relevance in the future. Therefore, it is essential that the Venezuelan head of state continues to exercise his leadership in order to maintain solidity within the Chavismo bloc and achieve these stated objectives.

INSTITUTIONAL PEACE AND POLITICAL NORMALIZATION
If on the one hand, under the mandate of Nicolás Maduro the cohesion of Chavismo has been preserved, it is even more relevant that his government has been a guarantee of the institutional peace and political normalization that the country enjoys today.

Economic wars, threats of invasion, assassination attempts, coup d'état plans, promotion of color revolutions, fabrication of false governments and institutions; All of these resources used covertly in the last decade have been effectively dismantled by the Venezuelan government in order to protect peace and national stability.


Perfect Civic - Military - Police Union (Photo: Presidential Press)

President Maduro's insistence on this direction has been such that he has even achieved a change of focus in sectors of the opposition, which currently dissent from extremism and choose a position contrary to the government through political participation, dialogue and negotiation. With this, the capacity to act of the extremist opposition aligned with Washington, fundamentally responsible for the application of sanctions and the various regime change operations in the last decade, has been reduced.

This has had a correlation in the strategic defense of sovereignty, as was demonstrated at the end of last year with the escalation of the conflict with Guyana, fueled by the ExxonMobil company. As a result of this, the head of state proposed actions to defend Guayana Esequiba , through a consultative referendum in early December, which exemplified his commitment to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Bolivarian Republic.

Defending what has been achieved so far involves recognizing the leadership that has made it possible, that of Nicolás Maduro. July 28 is about that.

https://misionverdad.com/venezuela/nico ... andidatura

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[blindpig]

THE HISTORICAL AND CURRENT ELEMENTS OF FASCISM IN VENEZUELA
Apr 3, 2024 , 1:45 pm .


Orlando Figuera was 22 years old and was dedicated to taking care of and parking vehicles in a supermarket in Las Mercedes, when he was lynched and burned alive on May 20, 2017 in Plaza Altamira by guarimberos. He died a few weeks later from his injuries (Photo: Archive)

Fascism in Venezuela has several sources of origin.

One of them was the Nazi activity registered in Venezuela, specifically the action of groups of this profile in Venezuela through the sponsorship of the German embassy in our country in the first half of the 1940s.

These actions consisted of promoting Nazi ideology in Venezuela, even in public events and activities, trying to bring Venezuelan political power closer to German thought. For security reasons in the context of World War II and through American collaboration, Venezuela expelled Nazi officials in 1941 .

Another drift of Venezuelan-style fascism came from Perezjimenism. Although Marcos Pérez Jiménez did not classify himself as a fascist, his government had conservative, totalitarian and corporatist practices. His pseudo-nationalist ideology was based on a narrative that served to justify the totalitarianism of his government.

The confluence of nationalist ideas and the characteristics of his "modernizing dictatorship"—this is the way in which the style of developmental dictatorships in the region was cataloged— laid the conceptual foundations of a Venezuelan neo-fascism.

Within the framework of the Fourth Republic, an openly fascist political party was founded. New Order (NOR) was a Venezuelan political party declared fascist and anti-communist that came from the Perezjimenista student movement Poder Nacionalista (PN), which lived at the Central University of Venezuela. It was founded as a national party in Caracas on January 12, 1974, but it did not acquire relevance in national political life.

The NOR party even participated in three presidential elections, in 1983, 1988 and 1993, fortunately with zero support from the population. It was finally banned by the National Electoral Council (CNE) in 2002.

In 1984, the government at the time, headed by Luis Herrera Campíns, banned the organization called Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) , a sect or group of lay Catholics linked to conservative far-right groups of the Catholic Church. Among his intentions was to found a nation within Venezuela, located in the Amazon on the border with Brazil, which would be called Roraima, and even assassinate Pope John Paul II.

In 1984 the TFP headquarters at the Caracas Country Club was raided. It was discovered that the majority of the young people who were part of the organization had high-ranking surnames, came from white families, were subject to anti-socialist and anti-communist training, and also received paramilitary training.

TFP then continued to engage in clandestine activities, and among the young people who were part of it were the leaders of the current Venezuelan opposition Henrique Capriles Radonski and Leopoldo López.

The roots of the organization of fascism in Venezuela have their reference point in the country's own traditional political organizations, especially from the most conservative wing of the Copei party of the late 1990s, from which political bodies and groups of leaders that have founded new organizations, such as Primero Justicia (PJ), Voluntad Popular (VP) and Vente Venezuela (VV). All of them have a common factor: they have been led by people of high ancestry, of high social class, trained in ultra-conservative ideals and in the same political-social niches of TFP.

In other words, they keep the same point of origin: the secret society of the Venezuelan Country Club.

CONCRETE EXPRESSIONS AND MILESTONES OF NEOFASCISM IN VENEZUELA
Political and armed violence (guarimbas)

It must be considered that the so-called guarimbas, especially those of 2014 and 2017, were social upheavals induced by Venezuelan extreme right groups in which, in the style of Franco's Falangism, an attempt was made to consolidate a state of siege and an attempt at civil conflict through methods of social coercion and the use of political violence extensive to the entire society.

Although the guarimbas were regime change operations that were unsuccessful, it is also evident that they were characterized by being mechanisms of shock directed against society itself in order to subdue the population and the State through force and intimidation. , with discriminatory components and the promotion of an extreme right-wing imaginary.

During these processes of political and armed destabilization, barricades were formed in the middle class and upper class communities in the country, which turned them into identity bastions of a classist and discriminatory struggle. The selective pattern of these devices of violence, based on the persecution of Chavistas, lower class people and "collectives"—a mechanism to single out poor citizens in public spaces—implied the development of actions of political persecution focused against people, who joined in forms of indiscriminate violence that produced hundreds of deaths during these years.

These actions were similar to the commotions created in Spain in the prelude to Francisco Franco's coup and the subsequent civil war, since an attempt was made to divide Venezuelan society and confront it under concrete expressions of discrimination based on race, social class and, especially, by political ideology. They wanted citizens to confront each other through these types of patterns of segregation and the exaltation of political intolerance.

The racist, classist, aporophobic and openly anti-socialist, anti-communist and anti-social democratic component of the guarimbas results in a regrettable milestone in the politics of the extreme right in Venezuela, due to its meaning and its repercussions.

Promote the crimes of the blockade

Another milestone of Venezuelan neofascism is the promotion and request of the economic blockade and illegal sanctions against the Venezuelan economy. The request for these coercive measures has the implicit purpose of destroying the State's sources of income, degrading the material base of the government and affecting the development of public policies, including Missions and Great Missions.

Therefore, this pseudo-political praxis of sponsoring and requesting such types of coercive measures is deeply aporophobic, it is marked by ideas and purposes favorable to the right, it targets poor people in an attempt to affect their material and existential living conditions. Note the deeply classist component of promoting through political methods the destruction of the living conditions of the most vulnerable part of the population.

According to Venezuela's position before the United Nations System, the acts of blockade that the United States and other allied countries commit in Venezuela are considered crimes against humanity. Therefore, they are included in the categories of damage to eradicate or suppress the "other", through a wide scale of economic effects.

The elite of the Venezuelan extreme right, this caste, who is not affected by the illegal blockade but rather profits from it, practices fascism by promoting criminal actions against the country's population in order to subjugate it.

Treason to the country and ignorance of the institutions

Venezuelan far-right factors have aligned themselves with foreign powers to orchestrate regime change operations against their government, their institutions and against their country. Like many fascism regimes in the past, they would like to come to power by force and attacking the integrity of their country and its population in general.

These expressions are inherent to the militarism and imperialism of neo-fascists, even when requesting foreign interventions and interference in Venezuela, even under humanitarian pretexts. This describes neo-fascist behavior.

The new "libertarian" right

Venezuela is a political space where foreign and national actors want to manufacture this phenomenon in order to make possible the capture of national political power.

It must be considered that neo-fascist ideologies based on the political denominations of "new right" must be vetoed in Venezuela, just as in post-war Germany all Nazi ideology or identity was vetoed.

The reason is obvious. In Venezuela there can be no place for totalitarian ideologies that mean the persecution or attempts to suppress, for ideological reasons, large sectors of society and large ideological groups in the nation, such as socialists, social democrats, communists and traditional moderate right-wing groups. .

For this it is necessary to explain "the paradox of tolerance" according to Karl Popper, described by the Austrian philosopher in his 1945 book The Open Society and Its Enemies . It is a paradox framed within decision theory, it states that if a society is unlimitedly tolerant, its ability to be tolerant will ultimately be reduced or destroyed by the intolerant. Popper concluded that, although it may seem paradoxical, to maintain a tolerant society, society has to be intolerant of intolerance and its concrete ideological expressions.

According to Popper's dilemma, a politically healthy society, as the Venezuelan one should be, is one that dispenses with political frameworks that accommodate ideological forms based on intolerance.

https://misionverdad.com/venezuela/los- ... -venezuela

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Very interesting historically, but you don't need Karl Popper to explain anything. Try ‎Georgi Dimitrov ....

[blindpig]

THE PUPPET BOX

The Cayapo

Apr 15, 2024 , 5:19 pm .


(Photo: El Cayapo)

LULA, PEPE MUJICA AND PETRO: INNOCENCE DECEIVED

Is the current left, progressivism, those who sell capitalism like a poem that can be corrected in a literary workshop cowardly? Definitely not. Their actions are a reflection of the conviction that anything is possible in capitalism, that there is no other way, that the poor can live like slaves, serving the owners just as we have done throughout the existence of power, and that From time to time we can trust in fire extinguishers like Lula, Petro, Pepe Mujica and others who, in our name but in favor of capitalism, present themselves as the hope of the poor and aspire for us to conform with their reformism seasoned with empty talk and high-sounding statements of democracy for all, we all have rights, we are all human, respect for the unions and the democratic institutions of capitalism, while capitalism does not respect anyone, even if they play by their own rules, but since the climbers are well-off, the hunger for the others don't hurt someone else's stomach.

That is why they are not cowards or deceived, they are what they are: politicians who seek accommodation in capitalism, and to do so they deceive, con, deceive the poor in the name of hope and utopia. They are the modern fire extinguishers that, accompanied by NGOs, political companies funded by corporations, by parties without substance, unions of any gender, color, ethnicity or profession that only want to resolve the selfish interests of their leaders or owners, do the work of numb the possibility that the poor can think with their own heads and abandon forever the illusions, hopes, utopias and chimeras with which corporate power has always controlled us.

These settlers do not accept President Nicolás Maduro, nor did they accept President Hugo Chávez, for the simple reason that they did not belong and do not belong to that combo of climbers who fervently seek to be recognized by the bourgeoisie. For them, this government and its leadership are a bad example because it forces them to compromise with the majorities, to fulfill what they promise, to abandon their comforts in capitalist culture, because deep down this box of puppets feels good having slaves at their service, even if they are invited as servants to their owners' table.

AND WE ARE ON THE OFFENSIVE FROM VICTORY TO VICTORY
For 35 years now, Venezuela has been suffering historic attacks by the speculative-financial capital of the world. Objective: to turn us into chaos, a civil war, which allows the owners of capital to steal, without rules that prevent them, all the resources that exist in this territory.

Since President Chávez took office until Maduro's presidency, around 75 violent events have occurred, including guarimbas, terrorism, assassinations of Chavista leaders such as Robert Serra, Eliécer Otaiza, Danilo Anderson, frustrated assassination attempts, mass murders, shortages, blockades, sanctions, theft of gold and money, Citgo, Monomers, blackouts, sabotage of public services, water, electricity, transportation, education, health, burning of people alive, destruction of currency, all carried out by the opposition phalanxes under the orders of the North American and European governments controlled by corporations.

Since then, presidents have come and gone in the United States and the European Union, in America and the Caribbean, all with the same objective: to overthrow the government, eliminate Chavismo and continue stealing and plundering resources with the dogged complicity of the internal opposition elites. . The names, ages, titles, colors of the opponents, whether local or international, are rather distracting, because they all act under the same order of the regime of financial-speculative capital that seeks to sow chaos and establish new conditions for looting.

On February 4, 1992, Chávez leads an insurrectional movement that reveals the rot of the system, assumes responsibility and is imprisoned for two years. This fact brings with it two unique things of great importance: one, that for the first time someone takes responsibility for his actions and assumes the consequences; and the second, that for the first time a military movement does not have the consent of the US embassy in Venezuela. From then on, the fierce war against the government and the workers was unleashed and until now it has not stopped, on the contrary, it intensifies every day.

But the obstinacy of the government and the political intelligence of the management team, with President Chávez and now President Nicolás Maduro at the helm, have kept us on the offensive, defeating in all battles the intentions of the owners of financial-speculative capital. There have been 25 years of tough battles in all areas: artistic, social, economic, political, military, diplomatic, and in each one the government has made them swallow the mud of failure.

To each action a timely and forceful response, without fuss, without arrogance, with wisdom, and in each event we have been there, whether as patriotic soldiers or as workers.

Although the opposition, by order of its owners, has constantly and repeatedly deliberately violated the Constitution and other fundamental laws of the Republic, thereby intending that the government also violates them, they have not succeeded; They have stolen, murdered, burned people alive, they have committed fraud, they have betrayed the foundations of the country and, despite everything, the government has not fallen into the trap of getting mired in the quagmire of illegality, just as it is muddied until now. the neck of the opposition with all his academic degrees, with all his knowledge of national and international law, with everything and his three engineer sons. The only thing they have proven is that they don't even taste like casabe.

SOME EVENTS OF THE MANY CRIMES THAT THE OPPOSITION HAS COMMITTED AGAINST US
Two days before the elections of December 6, 1998 : attempted coup d'état perpetrated by Caldera's son-in-law, General Rojas Pérez.

December 2001 : 24-hour strike called by CTV and Fedecámaras.

Year 2002 - April 11, 12 and 13 - coup d'état : leaving 19 dead and dozens injured, they are defeated when Chávez is restored by the civil-military union. October 22, 2002 : active and retired soldiers speak out in Altamira Square against the government, resulting in three people dead and 25 wounded, again the government defeats them by letting them cook in their own sauce without firing a shot. December 2, 2002-2003, oil strike : Venezuela defeats them and gains control of PDVSA.

May 9, 2004 : On the Daktari farm, a group of 150 men from the Colombian army and paramilitaries were being trained to commit an assassination against President Chávez. The government defeats them before they achieve the objective. In this year 2024, Salvatore Mancuso, Colombian military chief, confirmed that they had been given the order to overthrow and assassinate Chávez. August 15, 2004 : President Hugo Chávez's victory with 59.1% in the presidential recall referendum is overwhelming; the opposition responds with violence, leaving one person dead and several injured. November 18, 2004 : Prosecutor Danilo Anderson, responsible for the investigations of the coup d'état against Commander Hugo Chávez, is assassinated by detonating a bomb in his car ; The government arrests the murderers.

May 2007 : the White Hands emerge. Characters like Yon Goicochea, Freddy Guevara, Stalin González, Juan Guaidó, among others, become the new crop of murderers and thieves who lead the war against the government, which disperses them in its actions.

From 2009 to 2011, White Hands shock groups developed, who were trained by Colombian paramilitary groups, becoming the operators of the guarimbas of 2014 and 2017 , when once again the government managed to defeat them with the Constituent Assembly.

May 2012 : the "I would leave Venezuela too much" campaign began.

March 5, 2013 : the assassination of President Chávez is completed. Hours earlier, Maduro expelled two officials from the North American Military Attaché Office in the country. April 14 : Election results give President Maduro the winner; Capriles calls to "unload the arrechera." Consequences: 11 people dead and 78 injured. June 10 : Nine paramilitary members of Los Rastrojos were captured in Coloncito (Táchira) and in Guanare (Portuguesa); confessed mission: assassinate President Maduro. From September to December 2013, blackouts occurred, leaving 70% of the country without electricity, and sabotage of the economy began.

SMART PEOPLE DON'T CHANGE A TRIUMPHANT GENERAL IN THE MIDDLE OF A BATTLE

Year 2014 : hoarding and bachaqueo operation of food, medicine, gasoline and cash is applied, which extends until 2017. In February the guarimbas begin, the death toll was 44 people dead and 878 injured. March 25 : a group of Military Aviation generals was captured, with direct links to sectors of the opposition. April : assassination of Eliézer Otaiza, Chavista leader. October : assassination of Robert Serra, Chavista leader. December 9 and 10 : The sanctions law against Venezuela is approved in the North American Senate and Congress. On the 18th of that same month, Obama signs and decrees the operation of the sanctions project previously discussed and approved in the legislative bodies of the American government.

2015, all year : Acceleration of shortages and electoral campaign towards legislative elections based on queues. February 12, 2015 : Venezuelan authorities dismantle an attempted coup d'état, the so-called Operation Jericho or Blue Coup. March 8, 2015 : Obama's decree where he calls Venezuela an "unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States."

January 2016 : pharmaceutical companies reduce imports of medicines in complicity with the opposition majority in the AN.

March 2017 : the guarimbas are resumed and violence increases in the streets, fierce hatred is unleashed, people are burned alive, their throats are slit for suspicion that they are Chavistas, bottles of ice are thrown at the marches in support of the government and the protests continue. practices of the guayas against motorized vehicles, leaving a balance of 129 dead. But persistence in the government defeats them again. First quarter of 2017 : The government thwarts Operation Sword of God, whose objective was to assassinate President Maduro. April 2017 : the government dismantles Operation Zamorano Shield, a coup plot where 32 kilos of C4 explosives and other weapons that would be used to overthrow President Maduro were seized.

June 27, 2017 : Former police officer Óscar Pérez hijacked a helicopter, shot and tried to attack different institutions of the Venezuelan State. August 2017 : Donald Trump's executive order 13,808 and threat of military intervention against Venezuela. January 15, 2018 : The point where Óscar Pérez's terrorist cell was located was detected; several members of Operation Genesis were killed, including Óscar Pérez.

March 2018 : Since the beginning of that month, a coup d'état plan within the FANB, called the Transition Movement to the Dignity of the People, was detected and dismantled.

April 2018 : the government dismantles a terrorist cell involved in destabilizing acts that sought to generate anxiety in the population and prevent the May 20 elections. May 2018 : Colombian government blocks the entry of 15 containers with 25 thousand CLAP combos to Venezuela. The state intelligence and counterintelligence agencies frustrated and dismantled a group that was trying to carry out a new coup d'état under the name Operation Constitution, which, in parallel to Operation Armageddon with the attempted military coup, planned to thwart the presidential elections with financing from the United States and Colombia. August 4, 2018 : a frustrated assassination attack against President Maduro occurred (Operation David against Goliath). There, explosives directed by drones were set off to assassinate President Maduro. The work of civilians, military and police forces together frustrated the operation.

January 2019 : The coven of violation of laws by the foreign-led opposition breaks out. Guaidó proclaims himself president, trying to undermine Venezuelan institutions, it will serve as a front to loot the country and steal its assets abroad: Monómeros, Citgo, application of blockade and sanctions, theft of gold by the United Kingdom, theft of money in banks of Portugal, sanctions on the Venezuelan General Mining Company, Conviasa, ships, always seeking to dismantle PDVSA. February 2019 : The so-called Battle of the Bridges took place, where the government together with the army, security forces and the people faced the paramilitarism that was trying to enter from Colombia. Fire at the CLAP combo warehouse and assembly center in the Port of La Guaira. March 7, 2019 : physical and cyber terrorist attack against the National Electrical System (SEN) leaving the entire country without electricity for seven days. April 2019 : Military coup attempt defeated by the government and the civil-military union. May 2019 : sanctions on ten shipping companies that transported food to Venezuela. June 2019 : blocking of purchases of seeds and fertilizers by Portugal. OFAC sanctions the company Asasi Food FZE, CLAP supplier. September 2019 : The United States sanctions Álex Saab.

2020 : With covid-19, sanctions on medicines and food increase, however, the government is not intimidated and designs mechanisms to import medicines and other treatments for the entire population, and successfully overcome the global pandemic. February : fire in the state of Carabobo causes total loss of strategic telecommunications material. May : attempted terrorist incursion by fugitive Venezuelan soldiers, Operation Gedeón. June 12 : Álex Saab is kidnapped in Cape Verde, and illegally taken to the United States, in retaliation because the mission that the diplomat was carrying out as a government order to overcome the imposed sanctions was frustrating Washington's criminal plan. August : seizure by the United States of ships with gasoline for Venezuela. October : attack on the Amuay refinery. December 2020 : an attack that was going to take place before the December 6 elections was thwarted.

September 2021 : terrorist attack on an electrical substation in Aragua. December 2021 : The United States seizes four tankers heading to Venezuela from Iran.

July 2022: Attack on gas pipeline in Monagas. August 2022 : burning of the IVSS central warehouse of medical supplies.

Year 2023 : conflict with Guyana and ExxonMobil. The government of Guyana is bought by ExxonMobil to take licenses and concessions over disputed seas and the territory of Guayana Esequiba, using the Paris Arbitration Award to justify said acts, overriding the Geneva Agreement signed with the government of Venezuela in the 1960s. To this, the government responded with a consultative referendum, which the opposition and María Corina Machado undertook the task of boycotting, thus collecting their dues from ExxonMobil. October 2023 : embargo of CITGO refineries.

Current events: January to March 2024. January 22 : The country's intelligence services dismantled several conspiracies against President Maduro. First conspiracy : it was deactivated in the month of May 2023. Second conspiracy : Guasdualito Espionage case. Third conspiracy : La Viñeta case. Fourth conspiracy: Fortunato case. Fifth conspiracy : White Bracelet case.

Despite the great defeats suffered by foreign forces and their local puppets, the plan of international financial-speculative capital continues its course, using once again María Corina Machado as a coup instrument, based on her disqualification and the false positive of the primaries held in 2023. Everything indicates that the plan is not to go to elections, to create conditions to blame the government internationally as the dictatorship that does not allow opposition candidacies and disrespect for human rights seeking to agitate the majorities and prevent the elections from taking place. scheduled for July 28, 2024. To do this, they are preparing plans to heat up the street and carry out terrorist, military and false positive information actions.

This brief summary of the terrorist and criminal actions of the opposition led by foreign corporations indicates that the opposition, and much less its owners, are interested in legality, nor in the good progress of the country, nor in democracy, nor in progress. of the Venezuelans; They only care about their interests, their money, their dominion and the exercise of their free will over the territory and everything that lives in it.

THE STUBBORN REALITY
"Until the end" is not María Corina and the box of puppets they call the ultra-right opposition: it is an insurgent plan supported by financial-speculative capital, it is a plan that seeks to stir up the majorities to impose invading force. These people have prepared themselves for armed struggle, because they understand that it is not possible to legally win elections against the government, therefore, all the plans they carry out are supported and they seek to create the conditions to overthrow the government in any way, always. and when it is violating the law by force. So they swear and perjure, that they love elections and that they cannot live without them.

We Chavistas must be clear that both María Corina and her owners know that their violence leads to the murder of children, to the ruin of the country, to civil war, and they know it because they are not at home knitting, they are doing politics against the government, calling for sanctions, blockade, invasions, participating in the planning of Maduro's death. We must all know that this entire international framework has a lot of awareness, a lot of knowledge of its role, of its task.

They do not have a desire for power because they already have it, and they feel that they are losing it and that is why they are willing to kill anyone. For the first time in the history of the owners they hear the roar of ruin riding on the back of their necks; Before they entered Miraflores like a river through a canal, today they must make an appointment unless the President invites them, be it a gringo or English ambassador, whoever.

For them it is terrible, frightening, they are losing the power to appropriate the State budget, which before they distributed it as they please. Mrs. María had no need to do politics, because she lived in England somewhere, walking around with her family's fortune; There was no need to engage in politics, but now they stoop to participation in politics for control of the State.

After these 25 years of continuous defeat, the stubborn reality teaches them that a politician is not produced overnight, nor because he is the son of a mother and father. Unlike President Maduro, for example, who has been doing politics since the 1970s. Nicolás has 50 years of experience in politics, we are not talking about the newly minted opposition, we are talking about a serious guy who learned the exercise of politics, because that is where politics is learned, because that is where all the liveliness is, all the innocence, everything is in the street; That is not at a table, politicians meet at the table to discuss the decisions they are going to make with all that information they bring from the street, and of course those people, not being prepared, cannot fight against Maduro, against the government, as they could not against Commander Chávez.

For the world, Venezuela is a disaster. But the truth is that here we are on the offensive, from victory to victory, with the dynamic and effective leadership of President Nicolás Maduro. Smart people don't change a triumphant general in the middle of a battle.

https://misionverdad.com/chavismo/la-caja-de-titeres

Google Translator

[blindpig]

US Reimposes Illegal and Inhumane Oil Sanctions on Venezuela: The New York Times Runs Cover
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on APRIL 20, 2024
Roger D. Harris



A minute after midnight on April 18, the US reimposed coercive economic measures designed to cripple Venezuela’s oil industry. Later that day, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved a new sanctions bill on Nicaragua. Meanwhile, Cuba protested the US’s six-decade blockade as talks resumed between the two countries on migration.

At a time of challenged US dollar hegemony and questioning of the neoliberal order, the three countries striving to build socialist societies in the Americas pose a “threat of a good example.”

Also on April 18, Biden announced new sanctions on Iran. Globally, Washington has imposed sanctions on some forty countries. Because these unilateral coercive measures are a form of collective punishment, they are considered illegal under international law.

Even the US Congressional Research Service recognizes sanctions have “failed” to achieve their regime-change goals. Yet the empire’s perverse response is to do more of the same rather than reverse course. “Once they are imposed, they become politically impossible to lift without getting something in return,” observed The New York Times.

Times runs cover for US sanctions on Venezuela

The empire’s “newspaper of record” bewailed that Uncle Sam had “no choice” but to reign more misery on the people of Venezuela even though sanctions do not achieve their purported purpose.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, according to the Times, had “promised to take steps toward holding free elections… with the lifting of some American sanctions as an incentive. But the ink was hardly dry before his government upheld a ban on running for office that had been placed on María Corina Machado.”

In fact, the Barbados agreement, negotiated last October, said nothing about Ms. Machado, who had been proscribed from holding public office for fifteen years back in 2015 for financial and treasonous misconduct. There was little chance that the notorious politico would have her conviction reversed by Venezuela’s supreme court which, as in the US, is an independent branch of government not under the dictates of the president.

The US knew this when the agreement was signed, but has subsequently used it as an excuse to delegitimize the upcoming Venezuelan presidential election. Why? One reason may be that the US Intelligence Community’s Annal Threat Assessment anticipates that Maduro will win the contest on July 28th.

The article correctly reports that Machado was the “overwhelming victor” of a primary, but omits that her incredulous 93% margin in a crowded and highly contested field raised doubts about its credibility. Another leading opposition figure in the primary accused the process of being a fraud.

The primary was held privately, not by the official election authority as other primaries were. Machado’s own NGO, one that had received funds from the CIA front group, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), had administered the primary. And after Machado was declared the winner, the ballots were destroyed. This news, apparently, was not “fit to print” in the Times.

Times laments the downsides of US sanctions…to the US

The article raises a concern dear to the Times, which is that the “immigration crisis,” precipitated by the US sanctions, pose “a major political problem for Mr. Biden during an election year.” In addition, the Times noted, the sanctions “pushed Venezuela further into the arms of Russia and China.”

The article, concluding with a hackneyed observation that “dictators do dictatorship,” gripes that “US sanctions can do great harm but rarely delivers the political results that American officials seek.”

However, the US didn’t completely close the door on Venezuelan oil industry for select corporations in the US and abroad. The new policy, while revoking the general license, will allow companies to seek individual licenses. The change, the Wall Street Journal noted, “is likely to benefit large oil companies with lobbying power in Washington.”

More distortions

A second Times editorial on Venezuela appeared the next day, this time masquerading as a news story. “One opposition party was allowed to officially register” in the presidential race, the article reads, inferring that there is only one opposition candidate on the ballot, when Reuters reports there are eleven others.

“Many Venezuelans living abroad,” carps the Times, “have been unable to register to vote because of expensive and cumbersome requirements.” Unreported is the biggest barrier for Venezuelans living in the US to vote remotely in their country’s election. Washington does not recognize the legitimate Venezuelan government, which means no functioning consular services and, therefore, no way to vote.

The Times reporter also complained that deportation of Venezuelan migrants were suspended “without explanation.” While the newspaper’s articles are protected behind a paywall, one would think that staff would have access to a February Times report that Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez warned that the flights would be discontinued in response to the US’s reimposition of sanctions on Venezuelan gold sales.

Times acknowledges the purpose of US sanctions

The Times at least no longer blames the “economic free fall” of the Venezuelan economy on the socialist government but fully admits the economic sanctions have “crippled the country’s crucial oil industry.” Further, the Times acknowledges that the Biden administration’s action, “could carry significant consequences for the future of Venezuela’s democracy, for its economy, and for migration in the region.”

In short, the Times reported that US sanctions, “intensified…the single largest peacetime collapse of any country in at least 45 years.”

Finally, the Times implicitly acknowledged that the sanctions were never to promote democracy, but were “meant to force the Maduro government from power.” An earlier 2019 Times opinion piece included the suggestion that while sanctions “may make the humanitarian crisis worse” they are still desirable as a “source of leverage to remove Maduro.”

Venezuela’s response

The week before the oil sanctions were reimposed, Venezuelans celebrated the anniversary of the defeat of the 2002 unsuccessful 48-hour US-backed coup. Neither the tactics – the continuing coup attempts – nor the US policy of regime-change have changed. The Venezuelan president’s response: “We are going to keep moving forward with a license or without a license…we are not your colony.”

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/04/ ... uns-cover/