A

• This has been happening since 1999.... Comandante Chávez, was also seen as a dictator, as a socialist, a dictator, and the United States government was behind a coup d’état in 2002 and all the sabotage to our oil industry. So, this has been happening, because we have the objective, the goal, of changing the model, of building a new democratic society, which we call the socialism of this new century. And we have the right to do it. And we are an independent and sovereign country. And the thing is that here in the United States—not in the United States, I must say, not the people of the United States, but the elite that is in power, that is ruling the United States, they want—they believe that Latin America is their backyard. And they want to impose their model.
  • Jorge Arreaza in Venezuelan Foreign Minister: The U.S. Interferes in Latin American Politics Every Day, Every Hour, Democracy Now, (25 January 2019)

• And they want to have these presidents who are also businessmen and who follow the orders of the president of the United States. But we are not. So, we’re trying to build our own society and in new terms and with equality, with access to health, to education, to housing, to culture. And that is our struggle. And, of course, what happens is that in those terms, the U.S. elite and the other countries, satellite countries of the United States, they are trying to isolate Venezuelan government. They are trying to stop this from happening.
  • Jorge Arreaza in Venezuelan Foreign Minister: The U.S. Interferes in Latin American Politics Every Day, Every Hour, Democracy Now, (25 January 2019)

• This was a plan. It was activated last year, when they decided not to recognize the results of the presidential elections. And then they had to wait for the day of the inauguration of President Maduro, and this plan was activated. And it cannot be a coincidence that after this man goes to the rally and in the middle of the street, in a square, public square, he raises his hand, and he self-proclaims as president of Venezuela, with no formality, no constitution provision to support what he was doing, immediately Mike Pence recognizing him, and then Trump and the presidents of Chile, Argentina, Colombia and all these countries that are against Venezuela and following U.S. orders. So, that was a plan, well organized from much before. And we have to understand this: Nothing is a coincidence when it comes to Venezuela and the U.S.
• It’s sad. But it’s also insane. You cannot believe or tell the people that you are the president, so-called president, of your country and ask for a foreign intervention against your people, against your family, against your friends, you know, because bombs will not differentiate who is Chavista and who is not Chavista. So, it’s, I believe—I can almost not believe when I hear these people calling for these things...
  • Quoted in The Coup Has Failed & Now the U.S. Is Looking to Wage War: Venezuelan Foreign Minister Speaks Out, Democracy Now. (25 February 2019)

B

• The U.S. government has been opposed to Venezuela’s socialist revolution since Hugo Chavez was first elected in 1998, and it supported the unsuccessful 2002 coup. Chavez was well loved by poor and working class Venezuelans for his extraordinary array of social programs that lifted millions out of poverty. Between 1996 and 2010, the level of extreme poverty plummeted from 40 percent to 7 percent. The government also substantially improved healthcare and education, cutting infant mortality by half, reducing the malnutrition rate from 21% to 5%, and eliminating illiteracy.
• Since Chavez’ death in 2013, Venezuela has fallen into a deep economic morass... U.S. economic sanctions have only added to that toxic mix... The freezing of the funds of Venezuela’s oil company in the U.S., CITGO, deprives Venezuela of billions of dollars in revenue that it previously received from the export, refining and retail sale of gasoline to American drivers.
• The U.S. government claims to be acting in the best interests of the Venezuelan people, but over 80 percent of Venezuelans, including many who do not support Maduro, are opposed to these crippling economic sanctions and to... military intervention.
  • Medea Benjamin & Nicolas J S Davies, U.S. Brinksmanship in Venezuela Is Dangerous, The Progressive (19 February 2019)

• U.S. national security adviser John Bolton predicted that the latest sanctions will block $7 billion in the state oil company’s assets, plus over $11 billion in lost export proceeds over the next year....U.S. sanctions are designed to “make the economy scream” in Venezuela, exactly as President Nixon described the goal of U.S. sanctions against Chile before the CIA engineered the overthrow of democratically elected Salvador Allende in 1973.
• Venezuela’s economy... has shrunk by about half since 2014, the greatest contraction of a modern economy in peacetime. The World Health Organization estimated that the average Venezuelan lost an incredible 24 pounds in body weight in 2017...
• On January 31, U.N. Special Rapporteur Idriss Jazairy said that “sanctions which can lead to starvation and medical shortages are not the answer to the crisis in Venezuela” and that “precipitating an economic and humanitarian crisis is not a foundation for the peaceful settlement of disputes.”...
  • Medea Benjamin & Nicolas J S Davies, U.S. Brinksmanship in Venezuela Is Dangerous, The Progressive (19 February 2019)

• Juan Guaidó is the product of a decade-long project overseen by Washington’s elite regime change trainers. While posing as a champion of democracy, he has spent years at the forefront of a violent campaign of destabilization. Before the fateful day of January 22 (2019), fewer than one in five Venezuelans had heard of Juan Guaidó. Only a few months ago, the 35-year-old was an obscure character in a politically marginal far-right group closely associated with gruesome acts of street violence.
• But after a single phone call from from US Vice President Mike Pence, Guaidó proclaimed himself president of Venezuela. Anointed as the leader of his country by Washington, a previously unknown political bottom-dweller was vaulted onto the international stage as the US-selected leader of the nation with the world’s largest oil reserves.
• Echoing the Washington consensus, the New York Times editorial board hailed Guaidó as a “credible rival” to Maduro with a “refreshing style and vision of taking the country forward.” The Bloomberg News editorial board applauded him for seeking “restoration of democracy” and the Wall Street Journal declared him “a new democratic leader.” Meanwhile, Canada, numerous European nations, Israel, and the bloc of right-wing Latin American governments known as the Lima Group recognized Guaidó as the legitimate leader of Venezuela.
  • Dan Cohen and Max Blumenthal in How the US Regime Change Laboratory Created Venezuela’s Coup Leader, MintPress News, (29 January 2019)

• In 1990 I went to a Cato Institute conference in what was then still the Soviet Union. We were told to bring our own toilet paper, which was in fact useful advice. Now, after only 16 years of Chavista rule, Venezuela has demonstrated that 'Socialism of the 21st Century' is pretty much like socialism in the 20th century.
  • David Boaz, "Venezuela Reaches the Final Stage of Socialism: No Toilet Paper" (5 April 2015), The Cato Institute'

President Hugo Chavez's Speech at the U.N. General Assembly, Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Full Transcript online

• They [US officials] say they want to impose a democratic model. But that's their democratic model. It's the false democracy of elites, and, I would say, a very original democracy that's imposed by weapons and bombs and firing weapons. What type of democracy do you impose with marines and bombs?
• [If] we walk in the streets of the Bronx, if we walk around New York, Washington, San Diego, in any city, San Antonio, San Francisco, and we ask individuals, the citizens of the United States, what does this country want? Does it want peace? They'll say yes.
• But the government doesn't want peace. The government of the United States doesn't want peace. It wants to exploit its system of exploitation, of pillage, of hegemony through war... But what's happening in Iraq? What happened in Lebanon? In Palestine? What's happening? What's happened over the last 100 years in Latin America and in the world? And now threatening Venezuela -- new threats against Venezuela, against Iran?
• I think there are reasons to be optimistic...because over and above the wars and the bombs and the aggressive and the preventive war and the destruction of entire peoples, one can see that a new era is dawning... the era is giving birth to a heart. There are alternative ways of thinking. There are young people who think differently. And this has already been seen within the space of a mere decade. It was shown that the end of history was a totally false assumption, and the same was shown about Pax Americana and the establishment of the capitalist neo-liberal world. It has been shown, this system, to generate mere poverty. Who believes in it now?
• What we now have to do is define the future of the world. Dawn is breaking out all over. You can see it in Africa and Europe and Latin America and Oceanea. I want to emphasize that optimistic vision.
• We have to strengthen ourselves, our will to do battle, our awareness. We have to build a new and better world.
• Venezuela joins that struggle, and that's why we are threatened. The U.S. has already planned, financed and set in motion a coup in Venezuela, and it continues to support coup attempts in Venezuela and elsewhere.
• ...reminded us just a moment ago of the horrendous assassination of the former foreign minister, Orlando Letelier. And I would just add one thing: Those who perpetrated this crime are free. And that other event where an American citizen also died were American themselves. They were CIA killers, terrorists.
• In just a few days there will be another anniversary. Thirty years will have passed from this other horrendous terrorist attack on the Cuban plane, where 73 innocents died, a Cubana de Aviacion airliner. And where is the biggest terrorist of this continent who took the responsibility for blowing up the plane? He spent a few years in jail in Venezuela. Thanks to CIA and then government officials, he was allowed to escape, and he lives here in this country, protected by the government. And he was convicted. He has confessed to his crime. But the U.S. government has double standards. It protects terrorism when it wants to.

C

• Most Venezuelans didn’t know Guaidó until recently. Most Venezuelans still support Maduro... and... don’t want military intervention or U.S. sanctions. Yet CNN and NPR and Fox News and the BBC and every other corporate outlet will have you thinking everyone is starving to death, on their knees begging for America’s democracy bombs...
• For 20 years we’ve been trying to destroy Venezuela, and our government always gives the standard line: “We want to help the people. We care about their democracy. They have a lot of inflation, and that’s why we need to drop our freedom bombs on their heads.” They’ve trotted out that bullshit brigade under Bush, Obama and now Trump. The officials never just say, “Yeah, there’s like, tons of oil there, and we want it.”.....The Venezuelan people deserve self-determination, no matter how you feel about the current government. The absolute last thing they need is to be turned into a neocon / neoliberal parking lot in which America rips all their resources out from under them while calling it “freedom.” Luckily, there are already many signs this U.S.-created attempted coup is failing.
  • Truthdig: Everyone Has Fallen for the Lies About Venezuela, Lee Camp (20 February 2019)

• Despite the Yankees, our gas is at the service of Venezuela first, and next to our brothers in the Caribbean.
  • Hugo Chavez, "Chavez proposes oil barter scheme". BBC News (United Kingdom: British Broadcasting Corporation). 22 December 2007. 

• Before the fateful day of January 22 (2019), fewer than one in five Venezuelans had heard of Juan Guaidó. Only a few months ago, the 35-year-old was an obscure character in a politically marginal far-right group closely associated with gruesome acts of street violence. But after a single phone call from from US Vice President Mike Pence, Guaidó proclaimed himself president of Venezuela. Anointed as the leader of his country by Washington, a previously unknown political bottom-dweller was vaulted onto the international stage as the US-selected leader of the nation with the world’s largest oil reserves. Echoing the Washington consensus, the New York Times editorial board hailed Guaidó as a “credible rival” to Maduro with a “refreshing style and vision of taking the country forward.”...
  • Max Blumenthal and Dan Cohen in How the US Regime Change Laboratory Created Venezuela’s Coup Leader, MintPress News, (29 January 2019)

D

• The U.S.-led effort targeting the oil-rich nation of Venezuela dates back two decades, since the late Hugo Chávez became president in 1999. In November, John Bolton accused Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua of being part of a “troika of tyranny.” In September, The New York Times reported the Trump administration conducted secret meetings with rebellious military officers in Venezuela to discuss overthrowing Maduro.
  • Democracy Now Venezuelan Foreign Minister: The U.S. Interferes in Latin American Politics Every Day, Every Hour, (25 January 2019)

E

• The sanction that prohibits Citgo from remitting profits to Venezuela... means that the Venezuelan government is being deprived of approximately $1 billion a year. But in addition to that, the sanctions also stipulate that Venezuela practically cannot refinance its foreign debt, which is something logical that any country facing a difficult economic situation would do. The sanctions prohibit U.S. financial institutions from having any transaction, any interaction with the Venezuelan government and the Venezuelan state oil company, PDVSA...in addition to that, there is a major impact in terms of discouraging commercial and financial interests throughout the world from any kind of transaction with Venezuela.... And that translates into a situation in which the U.S. government, and specifically Steven Mnuchin, the secretary of the treasury... has created a situation in which commercial interests throughout the world are afraid to have anything to do with Venezuela. That amounts to virtually... an economic blockade.
  • Steve Ellner in How Washington’s Devastating “Economic Blockade” of Venezuela Helped Pave the Way for Coup Attempt, Democracy Now (25 January 2019)

• Washington’s recognition of the shadow government headed by Venezuelan National Assembly president Juan Guaidó is one more demonstration of how the Trump administration has radicalized foreign policy positions and in doing so violates international law, including the OAS charter.
  Never since the Cuban revolution, has the U.S. government played such an overtly activist role throughout the continent in favor of the isolation of a government that is not to its liking. In the process it has further polarized Venezuela and the continent as a whole. The moderates in the Venezuelan opposition, including two former presidential candidates of the two main traditional parties, Claudio Fermín and Eduardo Fernández, have favored electoral participation and recognition of the legitimacy of the Maduro government. Washington’s actions pull the rug from under the moderates and strengthen the hands of the extremists in the opposition.
  • Steve Ellner in The Radicalization of U.S. Policy on Venezuela, Venezuela Analysis, (26 January 2019)

• The presence of Russian bombers in Venezuela last week and the possibility of future deployments are clear examples of the undesirable consequences of Washington’s unyielding hostility toward that nation.
  • Steve Ellner in U.S. Reaction to Russian Bombers in Venezuela, Venezuela Analysis, (21 December 2018)

• Venezuela has as much right to call itself a democracy as does the United States. Until that is understood by enough people, the Trump administration will continue to devastate Venezuela’s economy with illegal sanctions and push it towards civil war. People can oppose President Donald Trump’s economic sanctions and incitement of a military coup without acknowledging President Nicolas Maduro’s democratic legitimacy, but by not acknowledging his legitimacy they needlessly weaken their position.
• On May 20 of last year, Maduro received the votes of 6.2 million people, about 31 percent of the eligible voters, about the same percentage that U.S. presidents generally receive (Obama received 31 percent in 2008 and 28 percent in 2012, while Trump received 26 percent in 2016). Four different groups of international observers... [validating links are on article web page] concluded that Maduro’s electoral victory was clean. If you look beyond vague appeals to the authority of establishment groupthink — statements that typically say the election was “widely dismissed as fraudulent” — you’ll find the arguments to support that claim appallingly thin.
  • Joe Emersberger in When Is a Democracy not a Democracy? When It’s Venezuela and the US is Pushing Regime Change, MintPress News (28 January 2019)

F

• International opinion largely opposes Donald Trump’s current and threatened intervention in Venezuela, but that’s not the impression you get US corporate news media, who appear to be all-in with Trump’s push for the ouster of democratically elected President Nicolás Maduro... In reality, 75 percent of the world’s countries reject the US anointing of Juan Guaidó—whom most Venezuelans hadn’t heard of when Trump declared him their leader. And the UN has formally condemned US sanctions on Venezuela, which a special rapporteur compared to a “medieval siege.”
  • FAIR: Venezuela in the US Press, Alfredo Lopez, (8 March 2019)

• Alfred de Zayas, the first UN special rapporteur to visit Venezuela in 21 years, told the Independent (1/26/19) that US, Canadian and European Union “economic warfare” has killed Venezuelans, noting that the sanctions fall most heavily on the poorest people and demonstrably cause death through food and medicine shortages, lead to violations of human rights and are aimed at coercing economic change in a “sister democracy.” ...Given that de Zayas is the first UN special rapporteur to report on Venezuela in more than two decades, one might expect the media to regard his findings as an important part of the Venezuela narrative, but his name does not appear in a single article ever published in the Post; the Times has mentioned him once, but not in relation to Venezuela.
• Sanctions have kept the Venezuelan government from accessing financing and dealing with its debt while hamstringing its most important industry. Given that US media are writing for a principally US audience, the damage done by Washington and its partners’ sanctions should be front and center in their coverage. Exactly the opposite is the case.
• Thus, the US government acknowledges that it is knowingly, consciously driving the Venezuelan economy into the ground, but US media make no such acknowledgment, which sends the message that the problems in Venezuela are entirely the fault of the government, and that the US is a neutral arbiter that wants to help Venezuelans. Call this elision what it is: war propaganda.
  • FAIR: US Media Ignore—and Applaud—Economic War on Venezuela, Gregory Shupak (6 February 2019)

• While thousands of people gathered around Miraflores Presidential Palace to greet the re-election of President Nicolás Maduro, opposition sectors, the United States, the European Union and the Latin American right launched a predictable destabilization plan against the most recent democratic electoral process undertaken on Sunday, May 20, in Venezuela.The Venezuelan people, victims of one of the most brutal economic wars of recent times, only comparable to the blockade imposed on Cuba for more than 50 years, re-elected Nicolás Maduro as their legitimate President with more than six million votes.
• Meanwhile, the “protectors of democracy” in the region and the world reactivated their hostile agenda against the homeland of Bolívar, and ignored the clear message emitted at the polls. The Venezuelan government, accustomed to this type of action since taking a different path to that dictated by Washington in 1998, once again faces a wave of interference in its internal affairs.
• Granma outlines ten of the destabilizing actions made public in the last 48 hours against the legitimate government of Nicolás Maduro: 1- New Sanctions Imposed by the USA... 2- Refusing to Recognize the Popular Will... 3-Diplomatic Attacks... 10.-Media Manipulation...
• From the photos used in the international media, to the headlines chosen, the coverage of the elections in Venezuela was designed to try to undermine the participation of citizens and their majority support for the Bolivarian Revolution...most of the Western mass media continues to echo terms such as “political prisoners,” when the government has provided countless evidence that those who are being prosecuted have committed crimes or incited violence, which has resulted in hundreds of deaths.
  • Iramsy Peraza Forte in Ten Attempts to Destabilize the Re-elected Venezuelan Government of President Maduro, Granma, (23 May 2018)

G

• The United States needs to stay out of Venezuela. Let the Venezuelan people determine their future. We don't want other countries to choose our leaders--so we have to stop trying to choose theirs.
  • U.S. Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard on Twitter, (24 January 2019)

• 2 million Venezuelans have left since 1999 when a socialist regime took power.
  • Patrick Gillespie, "Thousands of Venezuelans fleeing to the US" (23 May 2017), CNN Money

• Denying medicines to Iran and Venezuela is a crime against humanity... One of the most truly despicable aspects of the coronavirus is how it is being exploited by Washington to punish countries like Iran and Venezuela, currently the enemy-designates of the inside the Beltway crowd...
  Venezuela has been denied a $5 billion International Monetary Fund loan to combat the virus based on the seemingly irrelevant and politically motivated argument that it is not clear who represents the legitimate government in the country, whether it is Nicolas Maduro, the [democratically elected] president, or Juan Guaido, the aspirant to the position of head of state being promoted by Washington. The White House has also declared a “maximum pressure March” directed against the Venezuelan economy, with the health care sector particularly targeted. So, Venezuelans will die and Maduro will undoubtedly continue to run the government, making the position of the Trump Administration demanding regime change both toxic and pointless.
  Waging war on innocent people should not in any event be what the United States of America is all about. A shift in policies that actually demonstrates that Washington might be interested in saving lives rather than destroying them would be welcomed by most of the world and also by many Americans.
  • Philip Giraldi in Punishing America's Enemies, Unz Review (24 March 2020)

• People elected... Nicolas Maduro...There’s a conspiracy to undermine the will of the people... that has happened, the will of the majority of the people. They delegitimized the elections when the Carter Institute said... “these are the best elections in the world.” ...We seem to redefine or define dictator in ways that are useful [to dishonest politicians]. So you drive it into people’s consciousness... This pathology, if you drive that into people’s consciousness, that a person is a dictator, then in some sense, they accept that in ways, subconsciously, unconsciously, because it’s been drummed into their memory. No matter all the information that refutes that... free elections... transparent elections, whatever...The question is always going to be what they hear...
  • Danny Glover Danny Glover on the Conflict Over Venezuela, The Real News (12 February 2019)

• And so the confrontation begins, as I anticipated just hours ago. Maduro expels US diplomats, they refuse to leave. If he tries to force them out, US will respond, with 'all options on the table' (military intervention). This is a total reality show, invent a reason to invade.
• And so, Venezuela becomes a geopolitical battlefield. The country with the largest oil reserves on the planet.
• US hypocrisy in plain sight. The same democratic party outraged over alleged Russian interference in the US presidential election is now openly intervening in the affairs of Venezuela, supporting regime change and backing a self-proclaimed 'interim president'.
  • Eva Golinger on Twitter (23 January 2019)

• No matter what you may think of Nicolas Maduro, this sets a dangerous precedent for every country around the world. It is an absolute violation of international law, sovereignty and self-determination for foreign leaders to determine the presidents of other nations.
• It’s a violation of international law. Not just OAS charter, but also UN Charter and basic, fundamental tenets of international law, rights to sovereignty, self determination and non intervention.
  • Eva Golinger on Twitter (23 January 2019)

• This is a very unprecedented situation. Maduro has been the president of Venezuela. He's the one in control of government. He's the one in control of the country's institutions. He went through a presidential election, disputed as it may be, and won with the majority of votes. Juan Guaido was elected as a legislator in the National Assembly which is Venezuela's parliament and he also is a legitimately elected politician, a legislator, but for him to declare himself the executive — the head of government really is an unprecedented scenario... There is no logistical path for that unless it's done by force because as of this moment, at least, you know Nicolas Maduro and his government are not relinquishing power. They're not just going to walk out of the presidential palace and say, "Here's the key it's all yours." They're standing strong in their position saying, "Wait a minute, we are the legitimate representatives of this country." They're recognized by other powerful nations like Russia and China.
  • Eva Golinger in Former Hugo Chavez adviser says Venezuela needs change, but not like this, CBC Radio (25 January 2019)

• We have to remember Venezuela has the largest oil reserves on the planet. It's sitting in Venezuelan territory. On top of that, it's a country very rich in other minerals and resources like gold, natural gas, I mean there's all kinds of strategic resources in Venezuela. It's a very geo-strategically located country. So, of course there are many powerful interests around the world — economic and political — that would like control of Venezuela. There's competing interests and now the doors have been opened over the past decade or so to Russia and China and Iran and, of course, that has not made the United States very happy. The United States considers this their sphere of influence and they want to keep it that way.
  • Eva Golinger in Former Hugo Chavez adviser says Venezuela needs change, but not like this, CBC Radio (25 January 2019)

• It's not just Bolton. I think the person who's most got Trump's ear on Latin America is Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio who has a widespread constituency of expat Venezuelans who are very wealthy... they've been wanting to do whatever's possible to provoke regime change in both Venezuela and Cuba and, I think, Rubio probably made a deal with Trump saying essentially he would back Trump's policies and agenda if Trump lets him lead on Latin America...
  • Former Hugo Chavez adviser says Venezuela needs change, but not like this, CBC Radio (25 January 2019)

• Most people are not aware of how the sanctions have had an impact on Venezuela, specifically, for instance, Citgo, the huge American-based subsidiary of the Venezuelan oil industry, which has not been allowed to remit back any of the money that it’s making here in the United States back to Venezuela.
  • Eva Golinger in Juan Gonzalez in **How Washington’s Devastating “Economic Blockade” of Venezuela Helped Pave the Way for Coup Attempt, Democracy Now, (25 January 2019)

• The United Nations, the Red Cross and other relief organizations have refused to work with the U.S. on delivering aid to Venezuela, which they say is politically motivated. Venezuela has allowed aid to be flown in from Russia and from some international organizations, but it’s refused to allow in the aid from the United States, describing it as a Trojan horse for an eventual U.S. invasion.
• Over the weekend, U.S. officials ramped up pressure on the Maduro government. On Sunday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Maduro’s days in office are numbered. He also threatened more sanctions are coming. Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida tweeted the violence on the border, quote, “opened the door to various potential multilateral actions not on the table just 24 hours ago,” unquote. In what many saw as a cryptic threat to Maduro, Rubio tweeted an image of a bloodied Muammar Gaddafi as he was being killed following the U.S. bombing campaign of Libya. Rubio also tweeted photos of former Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega, who was removed from power during the U.S. invasion in 1989 and remained in a U.S. jail for years.
  • Amy Goodman in The Coup Has Failed & Now the U.S. Is Looking to Wage War: Venezuelan Foreign Minister Speaks Out, Democracy Now. (25 February 2019)

Glenn Greenwald: NYT’s Exposé on the Lies About Burning Aid Trucks in Venezuela Shows How U.S. Government and Media Spread Pro-War Propaganda, The Intercept, (10 March 2019)

• Every major U.S. war of the last several decades has begun the same way: the U.S. government fabricates an inflammatory, emotionally provocative lie which large U.S. media outlets uncritically treat as truth while refusing at air questioning or dissent, thus inflaming primal anger against the country the U.S. wants to attack...This was exactly the tactic used on February 23, when the narrative shifted radically in favor of those U.S. officials who want regime change operations in Venezuela... they vehemently stated that the trucks were set on fire, on purpose, by President Nicolas Maduro’s forces.
• On Saturday night, the New York Times published a detailed video and accompanying article proving that this entire story was a lie. The humanitarian trucks were not set on fire by Maduro’s forces. They were set on fire by anti-Maduro protesters who threw a molotov cocktail that hit one of the trucks. And the NYT’s video traces how the lie spread: from U.S. officials who baselessly announced that Maduro burned them to media outlets that mindlessly repeated the lie...
• Other media outlets endorsed the lie while at least avoiding what CNN did by personally vouching for it. “Humanitarian aid destined for Venezuela was set on fire, seemingly by troops loyal to Mr Maduro,” The Telegraph claimed. The BBC uncritically printed: “There have also been reports of several aid trucks being burned – something Mr Guaidó said was a violation of the Geneva Convention.”
• That lie – supported by incredibly powerful video images – changed everything. Ever since, that Maduro burned trucks filled with humanitarian aid was repeated over and over as proven fact on U.S. news outlets. Immediately after it was claimed, politicians...U.S. news stars and think tank luminaries...took a leading role in beating the war drums...
• Everything the New York Times so proudly reported last night has been known for weeks, and was already reported in great detail, using extensive evidence, by a large number of people. But because those people are generally skeptical of the U.S. Government’s claims and critical of its foreign policy, they were ignored and mocked and are generally barred from appearing on television, *While the liars from the U.S. Government and their allies in the corporate media were, as usual, given a platform to spread their lies without any challenge or dissent, just like the manual for how to maintain State TV instructs...
• While the NYT’s article and video are perfectly good and necessary journalism, the credit they are implicitly claiming for themselves for exposing this lie is totally undeserved.
• That’s because the U.S. media, by design, does not permit dissent on U.S. foreign policy, particularly when it comes to false claims about U.S. adversaries. That’s why skeptics of U.S. regime change in Venezuela, or dissenters on the prevailing orthodoxies about Russia, have largely been disappeared from mainstream media outlets, just as they were in 2002 and 2003. That’s not because U.S. media stars are ordered to do this. They don’t need to be ordered. They know propaganda is their job...
  • Glenn Greenwald: NYT’s Exposé on the Lies About Burning Aid Trucks in Venezuela Shows How U.S. Government and Media Spread Pro-War Propaganda, The Intercept, (10 March 2019)

K

• Corporate media in this country [USA] deliver a steady onslaught of anti-Venezuelan propaganda. The Washington Post fumes about Venezuelan “pirates ” while the New York Times reports that Ecuador is overwhelmed by desperate Venezuelan migrants. Unfortunately the propaganda has succeeded to a large degree. “Socialism doesn’t work, just look at Venezuela,” is an all too common trope. It is rare that anyone with a public platform reveals a simple truth. Venezuela’s problems were created by the United States government, first during the Obama administration and now continuing under Trump’s.
  • Margaret Kimberley in Freedom Rider: The United States Destroys Venezuela’s Economy, Black Agenda Report, (15 Aug 2018)

• Nearly every day, we are bombarded with “news” about problems in Venezuela. And certainly, there are problems, such as food and medicine shortages and skyrocketing inflation. But there is something that is downplayed. What the press downplays, if it mentions it at all, is the very real and significant ways that US sanctions have contributed to these problems facing Venezuela and how these sanctions are making it nearly impossible for Venezuela to solve these problems. What the press also fails to mention is the even greater humanitarian issues confronting Venezuela’s next-door neighbor, Colombia – the US’ number one ally in the region and, quite bizarrely, the newest “global partner” of NATO from Latin America. And, the US is very much responsible for these issues as well, but in quite different ways. The fact is that, by a number of measures, Colombia has one of the worst human rights situations on earth, but you would never know this from watching the nightly news.
  • Daniel Kovalik in Colombia, the death squads & the US’ human rights double standard, RT News (7 June 2018)

L

• We are concerned about what the US and its closest allies are doing with respect to Venezuela, brazenly violating all imaginable norms of international law and actually openly pursuing the policy aimed at overthrowing the legitimate government in that Latin American country... US companies operating in Venezuela are exempt from these sanctions. In other words, they wish to topple the government and derive material gains from this... According to our sources, the leaders of the opposition movement who have declared ‘dual power’ are in fact receiving instructions from Washington not to make any concessions until the authorities agree to abdicate in some way. Together with other responsible members of the international community, we will do everything to support President Maduro’s legitimate government in upholding the Venezuelan constitution and employing methods to resolve the crisis that are within the constitutional framework...
  Given signals coming from the EU and... Caribbean countries, as well as...China and India... we would like to figure out what the international community could do to prevent another blatant violation of international law and violent regime change... This is what I discussed yesterday with the Iranian foreign minister, who - just like us - wants to find an opportunity for external players to prove themselves useful to the Venezuelan people.
  • Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in US policy aimed at toppling Venezuela’s government (29 January 2019)

• Pointing to "the map of the U.S. military bases" around the world as evidence of American imperialism, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday his country has no plans to remove the small number of troops it has stationed in Venezuela despite- Trump administration demands to withdraw.... Lavrov called U.S. demands Russian military personnel leave Venezuela "insolent" and asserted that America does not, in fact, have the right to tell Russia what to do—even in America's so-called "sphere of influence." "What do they mean by insolent remarks that the countries external to the Western Hemisphere are not allowed to have any interests there?"
  • Common Dreams, [https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/04/04/rejecting-demand-leave-venezuela-russias-lavrov-says-whole-world-dotted-us-soldiers

Rejecting Demand to Leave Venezuela, Russia's Lavrov Says 'Whole World Dotted' With US Soldiers, Eoin Higgins,] (4 April 2019)

• In Venezuela, we are watching a replay of the events leading up to the U.S. invasion of Mexico in 1846. Pro-coup politicians like Trump, Pence, and Abrams are using against Venezuela the tactics... employed to frame the war against Mexico as a “defensive conquest.” Rubio and other supporters of U.S. imperialism have explicitly argued that alleged pro-Maduro violence must be met with U.S. military intervention.
• In 1848, after antiwar politicians gained control of the House of Representatives, they narrowly passed a resolution censuring the president for “unnecessarily and unconstitutionally” beginning the conflict. But, by that point, it was too late to stop the conflict or to prevent the cession of the northern provinces of Mexico. Today, however, offers a new opportunity to prevent a U.S. coup in Venezuela. We can watch events unfold in real time, and with the perspective provided by the history of U.S. imperialism, we can recognize the “defensive conquest” rhetoric adopted by the Trump administration.
• We must be careful to avoid the narratives that have supported U.S. imperialism for centuries. By refusing to debate these issues on the terms of the bipartisan imperialist consensus, we can argue for democracy and socialism in explicitly anti-imperialist terms.
  • Jacob F. Lee: Venezuela and the Long History of U.S. Imperialism, CounterPunch (4 March 2019)

• After days of breathless reporting in the U.S. media about public and military support for Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro collapsing, and about an April 30 coup by presidential poseur Juan Guaidó, we now know the truth: The whole thing was a fraud, staged at the instigation of Washington in hopes that the Venezuelan people and rank-and-file troops would fall for the trick and think an actual coup was underway.
  • Dave Lindorff in Failed Venezuela coup was fake news — designed to fool people in two nations, Salon, (9 May 2019)

• Their attacks against Venezuela’s sovereignty are the final nail in the coffin of the endless wars, and the preparation for war, that are now all the rage among the sycophants of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
• Venezuela is absolutely no threat to the U.S., and therefore, the U.N. Charter prohibits the kinds of dangerous and lethal idiocy that the Trump administration is now orchestrating against Venezuela. Readers need to consider that presidents are viewed in a positive light when they are seen as acting in a presidential manner, i.e., threaten or incite war against other nations. Recall the popularity of the newly elected Trump when he ordered the use of the mother of all bombs against Afghanistan. The bipartisan talking heads in the U.S. loved that theatre (“Trump Drops The Mother Of All Bombs On Afghanistan,” New Yorker, April 14, 2017).
  • Howard Lisnoff The Mother of All Bombs: U.S. Foreign Policy, CounterPunch, (6 February 2019)

President Nicolás Maduro

M

• For those who don’t like the American Raj, a US invasion of Venezuela would mark a step forward in the crumbling of the empire. More aimless imperial over-reach, more lack of strategy, more enemies generated. The big winner would, of course, be the Pentagon and military industrial complex. More billions spent on a nation most Americans could not find on a map if their lives depended on it, more orders for ‘counter-insurgency’ weapons, more military promotions, and cheers from Fox News and wrestling fans.
  • Eric Margolis in Sure. Let's Invade Venezuela. Another Jolly Little War, CommonDreams (04 May 2019)

• The violent confrontations are happening.. are going on every single day and night... The opposition does not denounce the violence, and they also incite the violence and use the violence and the deaths. It’s like this theater of cruelty...to bolster international support... [Opposition activists] pulled out people from 18-wheelers, stole trucks on the highway, created giant barricades, doused the freeways in gasoline...
  • Abby Martin in Interview with Abby Martin and Michael Prysner on Venezuelan Opposition & attacks on Journalism, Kevin Gosztola (11 June 2017)

• As soon as it got dark, I’ve never felt like my life was more in danger... We had press jackets on, but at the same time, we knew that if we identified ourselves as Telesur journalists we could get lynched. Because that’s the climate right now. They just call you an infiltrator, and then you get killed. And they deemed many other people as infiltrators...they said, hey, black guy are you a Chavista? And they threw a Molotov cocktail on him. They also beat to death a national guardsmen, who was retired, just for being in the vicinity, thinking he was an infiltrator.
  • Abby Martin in Interview with Abby Martin and Michael Prysner on Venezuelan Opposition & attacks on Journalism, Kevin Gosztola ] (11 June 2017)

• We went into at least ten supermarkets. The shelves were fully stocked with every goddamn Nestle brand, every paper product—except toilet paper...And this is where you get into some weird territory, where there are some huge shortages of particular goods used and hoarded for propaganda purposes, to create this kind of international humiliation campaign.
  • Abby Martin in Interview with Abby Martin and Michael Prysner on Venezuelan Opposition & attacks on Journalism, Kevin Gosztola ] (11 June 2017)

• For doing my job –– for interviewing government officials, protesters at los guarimbas, average Venezuelans and peaceful marchers –– I am called a spy who should be killed by the same people called ‘peaceful freedom fighters’ by Western press...These unsuccessful attempts to intimidate us reveals how much they really fear accurate reporting that might undermine their narrative... The show [The Empire Files] is totally independent of TeleSUR...We merely sell them the content; they have zero control over anything we do.
  • Abby Martin in Venezuelan Opposition Spreads Lies About U.S. Journalists, Inciting Violence, Death Threats, by Ben Norton, AlterNet (3 June 2017)

• Americans have been trained by decades of Cold War propaganda to look for any confirmation that “socialism means poverty.”
• The problems plaguing the Venezuelan economy are not due to some inherent fault in socialism, but to artificially low oil prices and sabotage by forces hostile to the revolution.
• Starting in 2014, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia flooded the market with cheap oil. This is not a mere business decision, but a calculated move coordinated with U.S. and Israeli foreign policy goals... The result has been driving the price of oil down from $110 per barrel, to $28 in the early months of this year. The goal is to weaken these opponents of Wall Street, London, and Tel Aviv, whose economies are centered around oil and natural gas exports.... Saudi efforts to drive down oil prices have drastically reduced Venezuela’s state budget and led to enormous consequences for the Venezuelan economy.
• At the same time, private food processing and importing corporations have launched a coordinated campaign of sabotage. This, coupled with the weakening of a vitally important state sector of the economy, has resulted in inflation and food shortages. The artificially low oil prices have left the Venezuelan state cash-starved, prompting a crisis in the funding of the social programs that were key to strengthening the United Socialist Party.
  • Caleb Maupin in US-Led Economic War, Not Socialism, Is Tearing Venezuela Apart, Global Research, (28 January 2019)

• The global rise of fascism will change a landscape already on shaky ground. Trump’s National Security adviser, John Bolton, has already set the agenda and put in the neofascist crosshair Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua, which he called the “troika of tyranny.” Naturally, Bolton counts on the new fascist regional helpers of US imperialism, Colombia and Brazil, to enforce a revived full-blown Monroe Doctrine. In Europe, neofascists have risen to power in Hungary and the coalition governments of Italy and Austria. Their ideological comrades in Germany, Poland, France, Sweden, and the Netherlands have not risen to power, but their political clout is quickly growing. This rise of the neofascists, combined with the UK’s Brexit, is jeopardizing the European Union. In these developments, Steve Bannon of the US is playing the part of a fascism ideologue and black-clad eminence grise.
  • Gilbert Mercier inThe Global Rise of Fascism: Capitalism End Game? Global Research, (12 January 2019)

• This... concerted drive by the US elite to oust a democratically elected government which has been going on for at least 13 years... the US elite, is undermining Venezuelan democracy... The reason is simple. Since Hugo Chavez Frias became President through the ballot-box in 1998, he and his successor, Nicolás Maduro, have been determined to preserve and enhance the independence, sovereignty and integrity of their nation...
  The Venezuelan people as a whole are not prepared to yield to US dominance and control... is not just because of the resistance of the Venezuelan people to US hegemony that they are being threatened and punished... The US elite knows that their resistance is part of an...ever-expanding resistance... a large number of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
  If the US realizes that it cannot throw its weight around anymore it is also because of the increasingly close ties that are developing between nations in the region and China, and to a lesser extent, Russia. In other words, the new scenarios that are unfolding are not to the US’s liking... Venezuela — one of the movers of change in Latin America and the Caribbean — is a “threat” to a declining hegemon.
  • Chandra Muzaffar]] in Venezuela: A Threat to US National Security? An Absurd Political Pronouncement, Global Research, (18 March 2015)

N

• If anything represents a threat to peace and security, it is the shameless and aggressive actions of the United States and their allies to oust a legitimately elected president of Venezuela (Nicolas Maduro).
  • Vasily Nebenzya quoted in US attempting to engineer coup d’etat in Venezuela: Russia, PressTV (26 January 2019)

• You have a very strange way of proposing to prevent this crisis by putting forward an absurd ultimatum. You completely disregard the sovereignty of Venezuela, imposing on it decisions that you prefer and rejecting its people the right to resolve their affairs. Germany’s delegate is calling the legitimate authorities of Venezuela to acknowledge defeat and transfer of power. What you are doing is not prevention, but incitement. How would you (Germany’s delegate) feel if the Russian Federation brought the situation and protests in France to the Council? The Russian Federation is proposing to help Venezuela resolve its own affairs.
  • Vasily Nebenzya quoted in With Venezuela Buckling under Severe Shortages, Security Council Emergency Session Calls for Political Solution to End Crisis, as Divisions Emerge over Path Forward: Foreign Minister Rejects Pressure by Self-Proclaimed President, Decries United States Attempts to Meddle in Domestic Affairs, United Nations News, (26 January 2019)

• The US government, its right-wing allies, and an obeisant corporate media have repeatedly referred to Venezuela’s actual president, Nicolás Maduro, as an “authoritarian dictator.” What they have failed to mention is that Venezuela still has regular elections, but the US-backed right-wing opposition, which is notoriously disunited and incompetent, has chosen to boycott these elections, preferring to call for foreign-backed military coups instead.... Venezuela, which has the world’s largest oil reserves... has long been a target of US aggression. In 2002, the United States supported a military coup that briefly ousted democratically elected President Hugo Chávez and replaced him with the right-wing oligarch Pedro Carmona. US intervention, including crippling economic sanctions, has only continued since then. Elements of Venezeula’s opposition have portrayed themselves to credulous foreign observers as “social democratic,” but their real intentions are very clear: The opposition-controlled legislature has demanded mass privatization of state assets and a return to a capitalist oligarch-controlled economic system built on “property rights and freedom of enterprise.”
  • Ben Norton in US Backs Coup in Oil-Rich Venezuela, Right-Wing Opposition Plans Mass Privatization and Hyper-Capitalism, MintPress News, (24 January 2019)

• Reporters Abby Martin and Mike Prysner, co-producers of the political television show The Empire Files, traveled to Venezuela in May to report on the ongoing violent protests, and to provide an independent perspective often ignored in Western corporate media outlets. In the midst of these bloody protests, several influential voices in the Venezuelan opposition have circulated lies about Martin and Prysner, accusing them of being “spies” for the country’s intelligence agencies, without presenting a modicum of evidence.
  • Ben Norton in Venezuelan Opposition Spreads Lies About U.S. Journalists, Inciting Violence, Death Threats/ AlterNet (3 June 2017)

O

• Venezuela has become a failed state. According to the International Monetary Fund's latest projections, it has the world's worst economic growth, worst inflation and ninth-worst unemployment rate right now. It also has the second-worst murder rate, and an infant mortality rate at public hospitals that's gotten 100 times worse itself the past four years. And in case all that wasn't bad enough, its currency, going by black market rates, has lost 99 percent of its value since the start of 2012. It's what you call a complete social and economic collapse. And it has happened despite the fact that Venezuela has the world's largest oil reserves. Never has a country that should have been so rich been so poor. There's no mystery here. Venezuela's government is to blame...

  It's enough that Transparency International ranks Venezuela as the ninth-most corrupt country in the world. The only ones worse — Somalia, North Korea, Afghanistan, Sudan, South Sudan, Angola, Libya and Iraq — are a collection of rogue and war-torn nations. Venezuela is the answer to what would happen if an economically illiterate drug cartel took over a country. This corruption hasn't just enriched the few. It has also impoverished the many. That's because the government has tried to control the economy to the point of killing it — all, of course, in the name of 'socialism'...

  Venezuela has gotten something worse than death. It has gotten hell. Its stores are empty, its hospitals don't have essential medicines, and it can't afford to keep the lights on.

  • Matt O'Brien, "There has never been a country that should have been so rich but ended up this poor" (19 May 2016), The Washington Post

Open Letter by Over 70 Scholars and Experts Condemns US-Backed Coup Attempt in Venezuela: Stop Interfering in Venezuela’s Internal Politics,] (24 January 2019)

• The United States government must cease interfering in Venezuela’s internal politics, especially for the purpose of overthrowing the country’s government. Actions by the Trump administration and its allies in the hemisphere are almost certain to make the situation in Venezuela worse, leading to unnecessary human suffering, violence, and instability.Venezuela’s political polarization is not new; the country has long been divided along racial and socioeconomic lines. But the polarization has deepened in recent years. This is partly due to US support for an opposition strategy aimed at removing the government of Nicolás Maduro through extra-electoral means. While the opposition has been divided on this strategy, US support has backed hardline opposition sectors in their goal of ousting the Maduro government through often violent protests, a military coup d’etat, or other avenues that sidestep the ballot box.
  • Noam Chomsky, Laura Carlsen, Miguel Tinker Salas, Greg Grandin in Open Letter by Over 70 Scholars and Experts to the United States: Condemns US-Backed Coup Attempt in Venezuela: Stop Interfering in Venezuela’s Internal Politics, (24 January 2019)

• Under the Trump administration, aggressive rhetoric against the Venezuelan government has ratcheted up to a more extreme and threatening level, with Trump administration officials talking of “military action” and condemning Venezuela, along with Cuba and Nicaragua, as part of a “troika of tyranny.” Problems resulting from Venezuelan government policy have been worsened by US economic sanctions, illegal under the Organization of American States and the United Nations ― as well as US law and other international treaties and conventions. These sanctions have cut off the means by which the Venezuelan government could escape from its economic recession, while causing a dramatic falloff in oil production and worsening the economic crisis, and causing many people to die because they can’t get access to life-saving medicines. Meanwhile, the US and other governments continue to blame the Venezuelan government ― solely ― for the economic damage, even that caused by the US sanctions.
  • Noam Chomsky, Laura Carlsen, Miguel Tinker Salas, Greg Grandin in Open Letter by Over 70 Scholars and Experts Condemns US-Backed Coup Attempt in Venezuela: Stop Interfering in Venezuela’s Internal Politics, (24 January 2019)

Four centuries of white supremacy in Venezuela by those who identify their ancestors as European came to an end with the 1998 election of Hugo Chavez, who won with the overwhelming support of the Mestizo majority. This turn away from white supremacy continues under Maduro, Chavez’s chosen successor... ~Greg Palast

P

• This is the story of Venezuela in black and white, the story not told in The New York Times or the rest of our establishment media. This year’s so-called popular uprising is, at its heart, a furious backlash of the whiter (and wealthier) Venezuelans against their replacement by the larger Mestizo (mixed-race) poor... Four centuries of white supremacy in Venezuela by those who identify their ancestors as European came to an end with the 1998 election of Hugo Chavez, who won with the overwhelming support of the Mestizo majority. This turn away from white supremacy continues under Maduro, Chavez’s chosen successor.... The putsch in Venezuela is run by the wealthy, internationally connected minority operating by a regime-change plan designed by neocon retread John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser — a plan to control Venezuela and its oil, as Bolton openly proclaims.
  • Greg Palast in In Venezuela, White Supremacy Is a Key Driver of the Coup, Truthout (7 February 2019)

• Since Chavez’s death in 2013, his successor Nicolas Maduro has shed his derisory label in the Western press as a “former bus driver” and become Saddam Hussein incarnate.... As the journalist and film-maker Pablo Navarrete reported this week, Venezuela is not the catastrophe it has been painted. “There is food everywhere,” he wrote. “I have filmed lots of videos of food in markets [all over Caracas] … it’s Friday night and the restaurants are full.”
• ...In the pages of liberal newspapers in the West, race and class are two words almost never uttered in the mendacious “coverage” of Washington’s latest, most naked attempt to grab the world’s greatest source of oil and reclaim its “backyard”. For all the chavistas’ faults — such as allowing the Venezuelan economy to become hostage to the fortunes of oil and never seriously challenging big capital and corruption — they brought social justice and pride to millions of people and they did it with unprecedented democracy.
  • John Pilger, The War on Venezuela is Built on Lies, John Pilger, (22 February 2019) {{w:CounterPunch}}

• Should the CIA stooge Guaido and his white supremacists grab power, it will be the 68th overthrow of a sovereign government by the United States, most of them democracies. A fire sale of Venezuela’s utilities and mineral wealth will surely follow, along with the theft of the country’s oil, as outlined by John Bolton. Under the last Washington-controlled government in Caracas, poverty reached historic proportions. There was no healthcare for those could not pay. There was no universal education; Mavis Mendez, and millions like her, could not read or write.
  • John Pilger, The War on Venezuela is Built on Lies, CounterPunch, (22 February 2019)

• The real crux...[Matt Taibbi’s Goldman Sachs-Venezuela Story For Rolling Stone] is the Venezuelan government is really trying to solve their economic crisis through getting foreign investment... The opposition is using their power in government to go around and sabotage every type of deal, international investment or loan deal, that the Venezuelan government is able to get. If they try to get a loan, if they try to get bonds, if they try to get foreign companies to come invest Venezuela, the opposition follows right behind them and says don’t do this. Cancel this deal. So, this Goldman Sachs deal is just Venezuela trying to bring money into the country, and then the opposition is turning it into something else because they want to bankrupt the country.
  • Michael Prysner quoted in Interview with Abby Martin and Michael Prysner on Venezuelan Opposition & attacks on Journalism, Kevin Gosztola, Shadowproof.com (11 June 2017)

• It’s [Shortages, a campaign of humiliation] women’s tampons. It’s diapers for newborns. It’s toilet paper. It’s rice. So there are shortages of things that are basic staples...Some of the reason for economic problems like that is the legacy of underdevelopment and colonialism.”
  • Michael Prysner quoted in Interview with Abby Martin and Michael Prysner on Venezuelan Opposition & attacks on Journalism, Kevin Gosztola, Shadowproof.com (11 June 2017)

• The opposition is pretty weak in the country. They won the national assembly election recently, but they hadn’t done that ever. And it’s under the most advantageous conditions for them, an incumbent administration under a severe economic crisis. The fact that they’re pushing things so far, escalating violence to such a high level, is because they believe they have the political support of the United States.”
  • Michael Prysner quoted in Interview with Abby Martin and Michael Prysner on Venezuelan Opposition & attacks on Journalism, Kevin Gosztola, Shadowproof.com (11 June 2017)

R

• Don’t you think something is fishy when the presstitutes orchestrate a fake news “humanitarian crisis” in Venezuela, but totally ignore the real humanitarian crises in Yemen and Gaza? Don’t you think something is really very rotten when the expert, Alfred Maurice de Zayas, sent by the UN to Venezuela to evaluate the situation finds no interest by any Western media or any Western government in his report? Don’t you think it is a bit much for Washington to steal $21 billion of Venezuela’s money, impose sanctions in an effort to destabilize the country and to drive the Venezuelan government to its knees, blame Venezuelan socialism (essentially nationalization of the oil company) for bringing “starvation to the people"...
  As the United States is completely devoid of any print or TV media, it falls upon internet media such as this website to perform the missing function of honest journalism.
• Washington’s attack on Venezuela is in violation of established international law. Zayas reports that an atmosphere of intimidation accompanied the mission, attempting to pressure him into a predetermined matrix. He received letters from American-financed NGOs asking him not to proceed on his own, dictating to him the report he should write... As Washington’s sanctions and currency manipulations constitute geopolitical crimes, Zayas asks what reparations are due to the victims of sanctions. He recommends that the International Criminal Court investigate Washington’s coercive measures that can cause death from malnutrition and lack of medicines and medical equipment.
  • Paul Craig Roberts in Corporate Media “Presstitutes” Turn Blind Eye to UN Report on Venezuela, Global Research, (9 March 2019)

• Earlier this month, a 21 Air cargo flight from Miami International Airport was seized by government authorities in Valencia, Venezuela, transporting 19 assault rifles, telescopic sights, radio antenna and other materiel likely for anti-Maduro forces.... As McClatchy reported, “Only a fool would try sending guns out of the [Miami] airport,” said Cesar Meneses, GP-Air’s cargo shipping manager... Last year, a rumor circulated that the CIA was involved in an attempted assassination of Pres. Maduro. While giving a TV broadcast speech in February 2018, an explosion disrupted the event... Trump advisor Bolton denied any U.S. involvement, insisting on Fox News, “I can say unequivocally there is no US government involvement in this at all.”
  • David Rosen in Remember the Maine? CIA Intervention in Venezuela, CounterPunch, (1 March 2019)

• Americans will likely never know the complete role the CIA has played – and likely continues to play — in the campaign to overthrow the Maduro government in Venezuela. (Claims of “national security” are used to hide the truth.) The Trump administration’s Troika of Evil – VP Mike Pence, Sec. of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton – seem to be plotting the overthrow of the Maduro government. One can well assume that the CIA, along with other agencies of the U.S. military-industrial complex, have been recruited to destabilize Venezuela, if not worse. Given this, one can wonder if another provocative act like the sinking of the Maine will be orchestrated to legitimize a domestic coup – or U.S. military intervention — in Venezuela.
  • David Rosen in Remember the Maine? CIA Intervention in Venezuela, CounterPunch, (1 March 2019)

• Venezuela's product shortages have become so severe that some hotels in that country are asking guests to bring their own toilet paper and soap...

  Venezuelan officials have been stopping people from transporting essential goods across the country in an effort to stem the flow of contraband...

  Product shortages are not the only challenge for tourists in Venezuela. The socialist-run country also has South America’s highest murder rate, and an archaic foreign exchange system that essentially forces tourists to carry big wads of U.S. dollars with them to avoid the expensive rates that are charged by banks if they pay for things with credit cards or take money from an ATM... In Merida, a state in western Venezuelan that’s known for its stunning mountain landscapes, small hotels are struggling to stock their rooms with basic supplies, especially as the busy Semana Santa or Holy Week holiday gets underway.

  • Manuel Rueda, "Venezuelan hotels are asking tourists to bring their own toilet paper" (2 April 2015), Fusion

S

• The White House is openly plotting to bring down the government of Nicolas Maduro in Caracas. It is being openly promoted as a campaign to steal Venezuelan oil for the benefit of U.S. corporations, and some powerful Democrats are cheering Trump on and joining the conspiracy. Elliott Abrams, one of the premiere butchers of the U.S. dirty wars in Central America in the 1980s, has been named the point man in the effort to bring regime change to Venezuela. Let’s be clear here, Elliott Abrams is an unrepentant war criminal. He played a central role in the mass-slaughter of tens of thousands of people across Central and Latin America in the dirty wars of the 1980s. He was a player in the Iran-Contra scandal. It’s sickening. This administration brought in Abrams because of his immorality and his willingness to support mass murder. It’s the only reason he is there and no one with even a flimsy grasp of morality should be welcoming his appointment as special envoy on Venezuela.
  • Jeremy Scahill in Donald Trump And The Yankee Plot to Overthrow The Venezuelan Government, the Intercept (30 January 2019)

• In 2002, during the Bush-Cheney administration, Abrams was a major proponent of the coup against Hugo Chávez. But even some Democrats have praised the Abrams appointment. Among those was former Clinton ambassador to the UN and former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson. He said the Trump administration was “Smart to bring in Abrams,” saying, and I’m quoting here: “This is good and they’re bringing sorta the moderate Republican Bush foreign policy advisers in.” Elliott Abrams a moderate? That’s just nuts. On Fox News, Bill Richardson also praised Trump for recognizing the Guaidó administration.
  • Jeremy Scahill in Donald Trump And The Yankee Plot to Overthrow The Venezuelan Government, the Intercept (30 January 2019)

• Chickenhawks like John Bolton are saying the quiet part out loud on why the ruling class should support the Venezuela coup: “It will make a big difference to the US economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in & produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela."
  • Jill Stein on Twitter (1 February 2019)

• When you think back to the lead-up to the Iraq War, do you wish we had fought harder to stop the slaughter? Now's our chance to do that as Trump's gang pushes Venezuela towards a bloodbath. Expose & resist these warmongers NOW! #NoMoreWar
  • Jill Stein on Twitter (1 February 2019)

• They lied to you about Vietnam. They lied to you about Iraq. They lied to you about Syria. They lied to you about Honduras. They lied to you about Libya.
  So why would you believe what they're saying about Venezuela?
  • Jill Stein on Twitter (1 February 2019)

• The same blowhard politicians talking about "bringing democracy" to Venezuela have aided & abetted the Saudi dictators executing dissidents, murdering journalists & starving millions of kids in Yemen. They don't give a damn about democracy or poor people's lives. It's about OIL.
  • Jill Stein on Twitter (25 January 2019)

• US has backed right-wing coups up and down Latin America for 100+ years. Not one was about democracy. All have been to enrich the global elite. But we’re supposed to believe this time in Venezuela - which has the world’s largest oil reserves - is different?
  • Jill Stein on Twitter (23 January 2019)

• It is part of a strategy of both the MUD and the Trump administration of dismissing the election in favor of extra-legal regime change.... Both the Bush and the Obama administrations pursued regime change... for the 15 years preceding Trump... the 2002 military coup, which Washington was involved in.... supporting the 2013 violent street demonstrations that rejected the presidential election results, which were not in doubt. The US has also poured many millions of dollars into Venezuela... to promote regime change....
  There are actually four candidates opposing Maduro, and one of them is ahead of all the others, and according to the more reliable polls has a good chance of winning if people vote. That is Henri Falcón, a former Governor and military officer who is more of a centrist than the far-right-led MUD coalition. The US government threatened him with personal financial sanctions if he entered the race, because, as I noted, they don't want an election. And they don't want a centrist candidate who might try to make peace with the Chavistas if he were to win.
  • Oliver Stone in Exclusive Interview: Oliver Stone on Venezuelan Election, Pravda (19 May 2018)

• Basically, Washington... believe that the government can be overthrown... the Trump administration has imposed a financial embargo on Venezuela, which makes it nearly impossible for the Venezuelan government to borrow internationally or restructure its foreign debt. So they are basically telling the Venezuelan people that their suffering will get worse so long as Maduro remains in power, and exacerbating the shortages of food, medicine, and many other goods, as well as hurting oil production, which the economy depends on. Despite the depression and hardships of daily life, the country remains politically polarized. If you look at the crowds of pro-government and anti-government demonstrators over the years, you can see the difference in class and also race -- since the two are highly correlated in Venezuela, as in most of the Americas...
  Millions of Venezuelans got health care, college education, and pensions for the first time in the 21st century under Chavez and his party. ...The right doesn't offer any solutions to the problems of economic and social injustice that propelled the left, pro-self-determination movements and governments to power.
  • Oliver Stone in Exclusive Interview: Oliver Stone on Venezuelan Election, Pravda (19 May 2018)

T

• Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro accused officials at the U.S. Embassy in Caracas of conspiring to bribe people close to the Venezuelan government, including current and former ministers and military officials... for them to conspire against the Bolivarian government....The Venezuelan leader said Samper had been provided with proof of the activities of U.S. diplomatic staff in Venezuela....
  [Maduro]..expressed hope that President Barack Obama is unaware of these activities, saying he is giving Obama “the benefit of the doubt.” He repeated his accusation that U.S. Vice President Joe Biden was behind the plot, saying the U.S. politician told regional leaders that the Venezuelan government would be “overthrown.” Maduro said presidents of the region had told him this directly at the recent CELAC summit in Costa Rica. The U.S. applied new sanctions against Venezuela Monday...
  The Venezuelan government has been the target of an increasingly aggressive media campaign, attacking the country’s leader’s and policies in order to justify foreign intervention. “All imperialist wars have been precipitated by media campaigns such as this one, giving false information that wishes to provide the world with the justification for an intervention,” said Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez.
  • US Embassy Bribing Venezuela Officials to Topple Maduro Government, Telesur (4 February 2015)

U

• Sanctions which can lead to starvation and medical shortages are not the answer to the crisis in Venezuela, says UN human rights expert Idriss Jazairy. His comments follow the imposition of sanctions on Venezuela’s national oil company by the United States. “I am especially concerned to hear reports that these sanctions are aimed at changing the government of Venezuela... Coercion, whether military or economic, must never be used to seek a change in government in a sovereign state. The use of sanctions by outside powers to overthrow an elected government is in violation of all norms of international law... His call echoed comments by the Spokesman for the UN Secretary General, underscoring “the urgent need for all relevant actors to engage in an inclusive and credible political dialogue to address the long crisis facing the country, with full respect for the rule of law and human rights”. The expert drew attention to the UN Declaration on the Principles of International Law concerning friendly relations and cooperation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, which urges States to resolve their differences through dialogue and peaceful relations, and to avoid the use of economic, political or other measures to coerce another State in regard to the exercise of its sovereign rights.
  • United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights: Venezuela sanctions harm human rights of innocent people, UN expert warns, United Nations News (31 January 2019)

V

• Since 5pm this Thursday, March 7, Venezuela has suffered a nationwide blackout. The Minister of Electric Power, Luis Motta Domínguez, denounced that the blackout was caused by sabotage to the central hydroelectric power plant and transmission area, located in El Guri, Bolívar state. Minister of Communication and Information, Jorge Rodriguez, in a statement made yesterday in VTV also denounced that the blackout was the result of "criminal and brutal sabotage against our electricity generation system" aimed at harming the Venezuelan people and generating general chaos and despair... Minister Rodriguez pointed out that US Senator Marco Rubio had announced just last week that Venezuela was just “days away from grave scarcity of food and fuel.” He also noted that Rubio sent out tweets announcing the blackout just minutes after it occurred.
• President Nicolás Maduro also responded with a Tweet last night denouncing the “announced and directed by US imperialism against our people” and promising that “it will be defeated.”
  • Venezuelanalysis Nationwide Blackout In Venezuela, Katrina Kozarek, (8 March 2019)

• Veterans For Peace is outraged at the unfolding coup d’etat in Venezuela, which is clearly being orchestrated by the U.S. government. Two hundred years of blatant U.S. intervention in Latin America must come to an end... Years of increasingly crippling U.S. sanctions have succeeded in destabilizing the Venezuelan economy and created great unrest, division and migration. The U.S. government encouraged Venezuelan opposition parties to boycott last year’s election. Now they are calling the election fraudulent, and attempting to install a little-known politician more to their liking. This is part of a dangerous game that the U.S. continues to play throughout Latin America.
• President Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton has called Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba the “Troika of Tyranny,” and boasted that they have now “met their match.” Right-wing Cuban American Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, said to be deeply involved in orchestrating this coup, has implied that U.S. military intervention may be next.
• In our Statement of Purpose, Veterans For Peace promises to “restrain our governments from intervening, overtly and covertly, in the internal affairs of other nations.” We call on our members in over 100 U.S. cities and internationally, to make their voices heard. We must do all we can to prevent a bloody civil war from taking a huge toll on the Venezuelan people, and the peace-loving people of the hemisphere.
  • Veterans Call to Resist U.S. Coup in Venezuela, Veterans for Peace (28 Jan 2019)

• Mr. President: Your Administration’s policies regarding Venezuela appear to be on a slippery slope that could take us toward war in Venezuela and military confrontation with Russia. As former intelligence officers and other national security practitioners with many decades of experience, we urge you not to let yourself be egged on into taking potentially catastrophic military action in response to civil unrest in Venezuela or Russian activities in the Western Hemisphere. With the recent arrival of two transport aircraft and enduring political support for the government of Venezuela, the Russians are far from crossing any “red line” emanating from the 1823 Monroe Doctrine... Inside Venezuela, U.S. actions have failed to do more than plunge the country into deeper crisis, cause greater human suffering, and increase the prospects of violence on a national scale. President Maduro’s mishandling of the economy and authoritarian reactions to provocations are impossible to defend, but they result in part from the fact that he has been under siege since he was first elected in 2013 and has faced sanctions aimed ultimately at removing him from office. In our view, the advice you’ve received from your top advisors – Florida Senator Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor John Bolton, Special Representative Elliott Abrams, and Secretary of State Michael Pompeo – was and apparently continues to be wrong... your Administration’s repeated hints at military intervention have been counterproductive to your regime-change objectives.
  • Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), VIPS warn that Trump’s policies regarding Venezuela appear to be on a slippery slope that could take us toward war in Venezuela and military confrontation with Russia. (4 April 2019)

• Your Administration’s strategy of punishing the Venezuelan people, including apparently knocking out their electricity, seems based on the false assumption that humanitarian crisis will prompt a coup to remove Maduro. In fact, the U.S. sanctions have allowed Maduro to shift blame from his own failings to U.S. malice – and it has left Guaidó, whom your advisors portray as the moral equivalent of our Founders, looking like a sell-out to Yankee imperialists at the cost of the Venezuelan people’s health and welfare and magnified civil disorder... Most dangerous, however, are aggressive statements about Russia’s engagement with Venezuela. Russian oil companies, particular Rosneft, have long been in Venezuela – bailing out the Venezuelan petroleum company (PDVSA) as its mismanagement and falling oil prices have caused production and revenues to plummet... Most dangerous, however, are aggressive statements about Russia’s engagement with Venezuela. Russian oil companies, particular Rosneft, have long been in Venezuela – bailing out the Venezuelan petroleum company (PDVSA)...
  As intelligence officers and security experts, we have given many years to protecting our nation from a host of threats, including from the Soviet Union. We also believe, however, that picking fights. including ousting governments, blocking negotiated settlements, and threatening other countries’ sovereign decision to pursue activities that do not threaten our national security – is rarely the wise way to go.
  • Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), VIPS warn that Trump’s policies regarding Venezuela appear to be on a slippery slope that could take us toward war in Venezuela and military confrontation with Russia. (4 April 2019)

W

• The U.S. government is not only seeking to punish the Venezuelan government with its increasingly draconian sanctions, but is seeking as well to cripple the teleSUR media network, despite the fact that it is funded by several other countries. Recent sanctions imposed on Venezuela by the Trump administration have forced the Empire Files program, hosted by American investigative journalist Abby Martin, to shut down. The decision to officially announce the show’s end came after blocks on wire transfers originating in Venezuela and sent to the U.S. were recently imposed, thereby cutting off the show’s primary source of funding. Issues with funding caused by the U.S.’ Venezuela policy had, however, been a problem for some time, leading Martin and her staff to halt production in late May. While Martin and her team had hoped conditions would improve, the recent sanctions make that such a distant possibility that the decision to shut down the show was made on Wednesday.
  • Whitney Webb in US Sanctions Against Venezuela Force Abby Martin’s “Empire Files” to Shut Down (23 August 2018)

• The Trump administration is repeating the collective punishment strategy in Venezuela with a crippling financial embargo since August 2017 and, since January, a trade embargo. The financial embargo has prevented any measures that the government might use to get rid of hyperinflation or bring about an economic recovery, while knocking out billions of dollars of oil production. The trade embargo is projected to cut off about 60 percent of the country’s remaining meager foreign exchange earnings, which are needed to buy medicine, food, medical supplies, and other goods essential to many Venezuelans’ survival.
  • Mark Weisbrot in The Reality Behind Trump’s Coalition for Regime Change in Venezuela, The New Republic, (13 March 2019)

• Seeking to foment a military coup, a popular rebellion, or civil war, the Trump administration has made it clear that the punishment will continue until the current government is ousted. “Maduro must go,” said U.S. Vice President Mike Pence yet again in early March.
• All of this is illegal under numerous treaties that the U.S. has signed, including the charter of the United Nations, the charter of the Organization of American States, and other international law and conventions. To legitimize this brutality, which has likely already killed thousands of Venezuelans by reducing access to life-saving goods and services, the Trump administration has presented the sanctions as a consensus of the “international community”—similar to what George W. Bush did when he put together a “coalition of the willing” of 48 countries to support his disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq.
• The cast of characters supporting this regime-change effort, whether in Washington or among some of its closest allies, should underline what is already obvious: The United States’ attempt to oust Maduro has nothing to do with democracy or human rights.
  • Mark Weisbrot in The Reality Behind Trump’s Coalition for Regime Change in Venezuela, The New Republic, (13 March 2019)

Z

• When I come and I say the emigration is partly attributable to the economic war waged against Venezuela and is partly attributable to the sanctions, people don’t like to hear that. They just want the simple narrative that socialism failed and it failed the Venezuelan people... When I came back [the UN and media were] not interested. Because I am not singing the song I’m supposed to sing so I don’t exist … And my report, as I said, was formally presented but there has been no debate on the report. It has been filed away.
  • Alfred de Zayas quoted in Venezuela crisis: Former UN rapporteur says US sanctions are killing citizens, The Independent (27 January 2019)

• Modern-day economic sanctions and blockades are comparable with medieval sieges of towns....Twenty-first century sanctions attempt to bring not just a town, but sovereign countries to their knees. The key to the solution of the crisis is dialogue and mediation… There is nothing more undemocratic than a coup d’état and nothing more corrosive to the rule of law and to international stability when foreign governments meddle in the internal affairs of other states...
• Only the Venezuelans have a right to decide, not the United States, not the United Kingdom … We do not want a repetition of the Pinochet putsch in 1973 … What is urgent is to help the Venezuelan people through international solidarity – genuine humanitarian aid and a lifting of the financial blockade so that Venezuela can buy and sell like any other country in the world – the problems can be solved with good faith and common sense.
  • Alfred de Zayas quoted in Venezuela crisis: Former UN rapporteur says US sanctions are killing citizens, The Independent (27 January 2019)