Pence call for regime change says something about America and its not good.

[EvadingGrid]

For those that remember this film clip says it all . . .











Last Edit by Gladstone

[2Revolutions]

I noticed that CNN and ABC News changed their headlines from "coup" to "uprising".

It has turned from a coup to an uprising and now it is a crisis according to CNN and other mainstream outlets.  I have read many articles in the US media asking what went wrong during the attempted coup and not whether attempted coup is moral or legal.   In addition, the US media immediately switched to covering the political theater of attorney general Barr testifying before the US Senate after it was obvious the coup attempt failed.



Last Edit by Gladstone

[Al Bundy]

If the Neocons can not drop bombs on you,  they starve you into submission.


U.S. imposes sanctions on Venezuelan state oil firm PDVSA

https://reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-usa-sanctions/u-s-imposes-sanctions-on-venezuelan-state-oil-firm-pdvsa-idUSKCN1PM2DP

The Trump administration on Monday imposed sweeping sanctions on Venezuelan state-owned oil firm PDVSA [PDVSA.UL], the toughest U.S. financial measure so far against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

The sanctions were announced to ratchet up pressure against Maduro and demonstrate U.S. support for Juan Guaido, the Venezuelan opposition leader who proclaimed himself interim president last week and was immediately recognized by the United States and a host of other countries.

“We have continued to expose the corruption of (Venezuelan President Nicolas) Maduro and his cronies and today’s action ensures they can no longer loot the assets of the Venezuelan people,” U.S. national security adviser John Bolton told reporters at a White House briefing.

PDVSA is OPEC nation Venezuela’s largest source of revenue and owns U.S. refining arm Citgo Petroleum, Venezuela’s most important foreign asset.

U.S. officials said the sanctions on PDVSA were intended to prevent Maduro’s government from siphoning off funds from the oil company.

Bolton said Monday’s announcement would block $7 billion in PDVSA’s assets “plus over $11 billion in lost export proceeds over the next year.”



Last Edit by Gladstone

Boris Malagurski last year about Venezuela ( I have his new better comment but it not translate on English )











Last Edit by Gladstone

[2Revolutions]

Thanks for the video Al.  Shows that the US mainstream media should never be trusted in its coverage of Venezuela.

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Venezuela: It’s Only a Coup if the US Government Says So

Media side with Trump cronies rather than common sense in labeling coup a 'protest'
by Alan MacLeod

https://fair.org/home/venezuela-its-only-a-coup-if-the-us-government-says-so/

Despite bearing the clear hallmarks of a coup—defined as “the violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group”—US media have overwhelmingly supported it, as they have past attempts (FAIR.org, 1/25/19, 5/16/18, 4/18/02). CNN (4/30/19) told the United States that it must “root for the people” of Venezuela, before explicitly stating, “Rooting for the Venezuelan people means hoping that Maduro will step down”—thus underlining the phenomenon noted by FAIR (1/31/19) that to corporate media, “the people” of Venezuela are whoever agrees with the US government. CNN (4/30/19) also used images of Guaidó’s paramilitaries (identifiable by their blue armbands) to illustrate a report claiming the forces of “socialist dictator” Maduro were “mowing down citizens in the streets.”

Framing how readers see an issue is an incredibly powerful tool of persuasion. It’s not carpet bombing, it’s surgical strikes. And people are more likely to accept advanced interrogation techniques than they are torture.

In their efforts to refrain from using the negative—but accurate—term “coup” to describe events they support, the media have sometimes had to go to bizarre, roundabout and garbled lengths to dance around it. The Washington Post (4/30/19) used the clunky phrase “opposition-led military-backed challenge.”  The Post (4/30/19) also published an article in support of Guaidó headlined “Is What’s Happening in Venezuela an Attempted Coup? First, Define ‘Coup,” arguing that there were such things as “noble” and “democratic coups.”

Other outlets also refused to use the most logical word to describe events. CBS (4/30/19), Reuters (5/1/19) and CNN (5/1/19) chose the word “uprising,” NPR (4/30/19) and the New York Times (4/30/19) “protest,” and Yahoo! News went with the phrase “high-risk gamble” (5/1/19). Meanwhile, the Miami Herald (4/30/19) insisted that the “military rebellion” in Venezuela “can be called many things. But don’t call it a ‘coup attempt.’”

Even international organizations like the BBC (5/1/19), the Guardian (5/1/19) and Al-Jazeera (5/1/19) only used the word “coup” in quotations, characterizing it as an accusation attributed to government officials media have been demonizing for years (Extra!, 11–12/05; FAIR.org, 5/28/18, 4/11/19). This despite the fact that Al-Jazeera (4/30/19) reported on the day of the coup that Erik Prince, CEO of the private military contractor Blackwater, tried to persuade Donald Trump to let him send 5,000 mercenaries to Venezuela to “remove” Maduro.

More at the link --->  https://fair.org/home/venezuela-its-only-a-coup-if-the-us-government-says-so/



Last Edit by Gladstone

[Al Bundy]

Self-claimed Gauido President of Venezuela ask for US military invade to overthrow the legal President Nicolas Maduro.
Headman of US diplomacy Mike Pompeo said that US Army is ready to invade Venezuela. 

http://time.com/5587728/venezuela-guaido-us-military-maduro/

P.S. Something similar is happening in 1999. One of Serbian liberal opposition Z. Djindjic from exile:

http://img2163.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=02422_djindjic_haaretz_1999_122_509lo.jpeg











Last Edit by Gladstone

[2Revolutions]

U.S. Plans for Post-Maduro Future With Team to Send to Venezuela

https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-19/u-s-sets-up-venezuela-unit-as-it-presses-for-maduro-to-resign

The U.S. State Department is setting up a 13-person Venezuela unit that will be based in Colombia for now and deploy to Caracas once security allows, as the Trump administration continues to exert pressure on President Nicolas Maduro to step down.

The Venezuela Affairs Unit, based at the U.S. embassy in Bogota, will allow the department to “engage the broadest and most meaningful group of Venezuelan actors” and “participate in the greatest number of events and meetings to affect change,” according to a letter sent by the State Department to Idaho Senator Jim Risch, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The unit’s personnel, who will deploy later this month, would be among the first to go to Caracas once the security situation allows, according to the July 11 letter, which was obtained by Bloomberg News. The U.S. pulled out all its embassy staff from Caracas in March.

More at the link ---> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-19/u-s-sets-up-venezuela-unit-as-it-presses-for-maduro-to-resign



Last Edit by Gladstone

[2Revolutions]

Looks like the US government will attempt another coup soon.

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Trump administration plans to divert $40 million in aid to Venezuela's opposition

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-administration-plans-divert-40-235459814.html

U.S. President Donald Trump's administration plans to divert more than $40 million in humanitarian aid for Central America to support the U.S.-backed opposition in Venezuela, according to an internal document obtained by Reuters on Tuesday.

The $41.9 million had been destined for Guatemala and Honduras, two of the three Central American countries at the center of a migration crisis in which thousands of people have fled poverty, violence and corruption and attempted to cross the southern U.S. border.

The congressional notification from the U.S. Agency for International Development said the money will instead be used for salaries, travel, communications equipment, technical assistance and training for the management of a government budget and other needs for the Venezuelan opposition.

The memorandum, dated July 11, says the funds are necessary because of "a significant, exigent event in the U.S. national interest, specifically the rapidly evolving crisis in Venezuela."


More at the link ---> https://news.yahoo.com/trump-administration-plans-divert-40-235459814.html



Last Edit by Gladstone

[2Revolutions]

Venezuela hyperinflation hits 10 million percent. ‘Shock therapy’ may be only chance to undo the economic damage

https://cnbc.com/2019/08/02/venezuela-inflation-at-10-million-percent-its-time-for-shock-therapy.html

Shock therapy measures, based on recent economic history, can include ending price controls and government subsidies, instituting higher tax rates and lower government spending to reduce budget deficits, devaluing the currency to boost foreign investments and selling state-owned industries to the private sector.

Venezuela will have to transform its current scheme of restricting foreign investment in order to fund the restoration of the energy sector, as well as its infrastructure, including the country’s roads and bridges and the power grid.

Venezuela is home to the world’s largest oil reserves, and its economy has been tied to the ups and downs of the international price of oil for decades — oil constitutes about 25% of the country’s GDP and 95% of its exports. But the country’s oil production reached its lowest point since 2003 this year, when production went from 1.2 million barrels per day in the beginning of 2019 to an average of 830,000 barrels per day.

The energy sector is only producing a fraction of the 4 million barrels of oil a day it could be producing.

“The sector has to be completely recapitalized,” said Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas and the Americas Society.

“The government will have to reinvest in that industry. They also need to modernize that sector because they haven’t done anything in the last decade,” Gamarra said.
The World Bank and IMF

Besides foreign investment, Venezuela will likely need help from multinational institutions such as the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the Development Bank of Latin America in order to fund the infrastructure development.

It is not rare for a South American country attempting to recover from an economic crisis to accept large loans from multinational institutions. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund played an instrumental role in Bolivia’s economic recovery in 1985 by pledging a total of $250 million in loans. Chile also received multimillion-dollar loans from international institutions such as the Inter‐American Development Bank and the World Bank throughout the ’70s in order to manage its mounting inflation rates and debt.

Last Edit by Gladstone

[2Revolutions]

This article from 1989, but I am posting to show 30 years later the agenda never changes.

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C.I.A. Seeks Looser Rules On Killings During Coups

By Stephen Engelberg, Special To the New York Times

    Oct. 17, 1989


https://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/17/world/cia-seeks-looser-rules-on-killings-during-coups.html

William H. Webster, the Director of Central Intelligence, called today on the President and Congress to consider giving the Central Intelligence Agency greater latitude in supporting potentially violent efforts to overthrow foreign dictators.

Mr. Webster, in an interview, said a longstanding Presidential executive order barring American involvement in assassinations had been interpreted to prohibit American assistance to any coup that could lead to the death of a country's leader, even in the heat of battle.

Asked if he would like to see this interpretation relaxed, Mr. Webster said, ''I don't think you're misreading me.'' Order Adopted in 1976

The executive order was adopted in 1976 by President Gerald R. Ford after Congressional investigations in the mid-1970's detailed the Central Intelligence Agency's role in assassination plots against President Fidel Castro of Cuba and others. It is the cornerstone of legal restrictions on American covert action abroad. The order was strengthened by President Jimmy Carter and adopted without change by President Ronald Reagan in 1981.
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Mr. Webster, in his first extensive discussion of the agency's role in the failed coup attempt in Panama on Oct. 3, said he now detected a willingness in the Bush Administration and Congress to reinterpret the order in a way that would give the C.I.A. greater freedom to deal with coup planners like those in Panama, while preserving the prohibition on assassination plots.

''The United States does not engage in selective, individual assassination,'' Mr. Webster said. ''But the United States has other important overriding concerns about security and protecting democracy in areas of the world where it has a legitimate claim of interest. And when despots take over, there has to be a means to deal with that short of making us to be hired killers.''

Mr. Webster said the agency was ''looking at this hard and fast, right now, fast and hard.''

Administration officials said that various drafts of a new intepretation had been circulated but none had been adopted, and senior officials anticipate lengthy discussions about the issue with the Senate and House Intelligence Committees.

Mr. Webster said: ''We all need to look at that and say, 'Have we pushed this beyond a practical effectiveness? Have we extended the executive order beyond its intended original meaning by both the White House and Congress?' ''

Administration officials said that when the dissident Panamanian officers said this month that they were plotting a coup, C.I.A. officers in Panama were essentially barred from providing advice because of the possibility that the coup might lead to the death of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, the country's leader. May 'Make a Difference'
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Mr. Webster said he wanted to formulate rules so that C.I.A. officers' authority was so clearly defined that ''they can go right up to the edge of that authority and not worry if they or their agency is going to get into trouble.'' He added, ''When you have deliberate blurring, it puts a terrible and I think unacceptable pressure on the people who have do the work.''

Asked if such guidelines would have made a difference in Panama, he said: ''I'm not certain it would have made a difference in this situation. But it could very well make a difference in the next one, because the likelihood of the next plotter planning that he may probably have to take Noriega out is real.

''If there was a lesson learned, it was that sending him into the bedroom and giving him a telephone was not the way to carry out a plot.''

Read the rest of the article --->  https://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/17/world/cia-seeks-looser-rules-on-killings-during-coups.html