Venezuelan Opposition Leader Guaidó Declares Himself President, With U.S. Backing

[Guest Nicole SG]

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó declared himself the country's interim president amid nationwide protests Wednesday, in a bid to seize power from sitting leader Nicolás Maduro.

The U.S. swiftly proclaimed its support for Guaidó. Maduro responded by announcing a break in diplomatic relations with Washington.

Guaidó, the 35-year-old recently elected head of Venezuela's National Assembly, took the oath of office on an outdoor podium in Caracas, flanked by yellow, blue and red Venezuelan flags. He raised his right hand as a crowd erupted in cheers. He promised to serve as interim leader and call for general elections.

Read more: https://www.npr.org/2019/01/23/687643405/anti-maduro-protesters-march-in-cities-across-venezuela

[Guest Nicole SG]

Break in US-Venezuela relations raises fresh concerns for oil market and OPEC

• The break in U.S.-Venezuela diplomatic relations raises concerns that Washington will expand sanctions to energy trade.
• Venezuela relies on imports of super light oil from the United States, while U.S. refiners are big purchasers of heavy crude from the Bolivarian Republic.
• Sanctions on Venezuela's energy minister, who holds OPEC's rotating presidency this year, would also create a headache for the 14-nation producer group.

A sudden escalation in long-burning tensions between the United States and Venezuela could have far-reaching ramifications in the oil market, where the Bolivarian Republic remains a significant player despite its plunging output.

On Wednesday, the Trump administration announced it would back Venezuelan National Assembly leader Juan Guaido, who declared himself the country's interim president earlier in the day. Shortly after President Donald Trump recognized Guaido, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro severed relations with the United States and gave U.S. diplomatic personnel 72 hours to leave the country.

The latest development raises the prospect that the United States will expand sanctions to U.S.-Venezuelan energy trade, a move that would be potentially devastating to Venezuela. The nation has seen its oil production crater in recent years, depriving the socialist republic of its lifeblood energy revenue and exacerbating a devastating economic crisis.

Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/23/break-in-us-venezuela-relations-raises-fresh-concerns-for-oil-market.html

[Guest Nicole SG]

[admin]

Wow!!

[JW Insider]

This shows the hypocrisy of NPR and the US Government in all their talk about supposed Russian interference in our own US elections. You can't interfere more blatantly than to get behind a coup attempt and declare a person President when he has never been involved in a national election before.

Then, a supposedly "Christian" U.S. vice-President named Pence, blatantly lies about the recent re-election of Maduro.

Pence claimed that “Nicolas Maduro is a dictator with no legitimate claim to power,” saying he “has never won the presidency in a free and fair election.”

In fact, according to Venezualanalysis, a left-leaning reporting source:

In accordance with Venezuela’s Constitution, Maduro was sworn in January 10 for his second six-year mandate after defeating three other candidates in the presidential elections of May 2018. The elections, which were boycotted by some sectors of the opposition, were declared to be free, fair, and transparent by independent international electoral observers in the country at the time.

One of the big problems with elites in Venezuela is their blatant racism. They have been behind several failed attempts to assassinate Maduro. They promote social media memes showing him as a monkey and many other racist comments. And they use hashtags in Spanish that mean "Assassinate Maduro." He is darker skinned than the white Venezuelans, and he is a socialist. Socialists, because they represent workers, instead of the profiteers, are often persecuted by elites in their own country. The US administration, of course, also hates socialism and has always backed character assassination of socialist leaders, sometimes it goes beyond just "character" assassination.

The US will no doubt look for any opportunities to raise the rhetoric, hoping for any opportunity to justify a crackdown and violence. In fact, when Maduro expelled the US diplomats for supporting the coup attempt, the US said that the president didn't have the authority to expel diplomats and that the they will stay there. Marco Rubio immediately made the threat that if anything happened to them they could expect the US to come down with full force (violence) upon Maduro.

The US has said that Venezuelans should take to the streets and that they would have the full support of the US. Of course, they only mean the support of anti-Maduro crowds in the streets, as their have also been equal numbers of pro-Maduro crowds.

The US hates it when they cannot control the leader of a country that is rich in oil. The direct hypocrisy of the US shows up even more clearly when we look at US recent support for Brazil and Colombia.  

[JW Insider]

Here are some interesting articles. Most of them from venezualanalysis.com

US Administrations Have Been Intervening in Venezuela Since at Least the Early 2000s

FAIR's Janine Jackson interviews Alexander Main about US-backed regime change efforts in Venezuela and the role of the international media.

Janine Jackson: When it comes to Venezuela, elite US media don’t hide their feelings. And their feelings are all the same. Headlines on last year’s reelection of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro differed only in tone, including the disdainful: “As Venezuelans Go Hungry, Their Government Holds a Farcical Election,” from the Economist; the decisive:  USA Today‘s “Maduro Is Turning Venezuela Into a Dictatorship,” or Foreign Affairs’ more somber version, “Venezuela’s Suicide; Lessons From a Failed State.” There’s Forbes’ vaguely threatening “Why Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela May Wish He Lost the Presidential Election,” and Foreign Policy’s unashamed “It’s Time for a Coup in Venezuela.”

But they’re all pretty much variations on a theme that’s hard to unhear, given that media bang it out so loudly and repeatedly. Here to help us sort fact from froth is Alexander Main. He’s director of international policy at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He joins us by phone from Washington, DC. Welcome to CounterSpin, Alex Main.

read more .... https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14238

 

[Guest Nicole SG]

And do you think that people who are suffering in Venezuela and Nicaragua care if USA or Afrika or whoever support the fall of the regimes?

@JW InsiderGo and live in Nicaragua and Venezuela, try to get a decent job, food, health care  and tell me if you won't continue considering privileged your butt for living in a country where you can express freely your dissapointmente without fearing that police will come and torture you. 

In the past you have defended Daniel Ortega and Maduro, I thought you were neutral or at least kind towards your fellow believers who suffer. 

Have you not read what had happened to the JWS there,? Would you like to be one of those who have been raped, assaulted, or having to leave the country? Ask JW.ORG they posted a video about the crisis in Venezuela. 

As for politics, which I don't care but it is good to know. The process in Venezuela with Juan Guaido or whoever  is the most closest to what the law states about a president elected by the congress, a congress elected by people, not a parallel congress created by Maduro to ussurp the power, that is what is has been happening for the past 3 years.

Go and read and get informed, because is is hyprocrisy from you siting your butt in the USA, having food everyday and pretending to be a normal JW when you are supporting dictators in the region without having information and worst of all not wearing the shoes of the victims. 

Don't come to tell us fairy tales to who know and live the story every day...

 

[Guest Nicole SG]

Have everyone a beautiful and blessed day, I have a lot of many importants things  to do, like trying to stay in my work than come here and read here how an american pretending a JW is defending this animal 

[JW Insider]

2 minutes ago, Nicole SG said:

As for politics, which I don't care but it is good to know. The process in Venezuela with Juan Guaido or whoever  is the most closest to what the law states about a president elected by the congress, a congress elected by people, not a parallel congress created by Maduro to ussurp the power, that is what is has been happening for the past 3 years.

Just pointing out the hypocrisy of the statements made, and a pattern that often precedes regime change just before things get much worse for everyone except elites and typically lighter-skinned populations. When the US interfered in Libya, actual slave trading, human trafficking, became a common occurrence.

Sometimes even the elites, and those who support the elites for the sake of "stability" with the rest of the world, do not know what is behind the LIMA Group for example. They also don't realize, even while living in a country, that the chaos and violence is stoked through sanctions and support for fascist elements within a country. Just yesterday, a PR head of the a US company known for promoted political divisiveness in the past, posted a video of a huge crowd from 2016 as if it were the current anti-Maduro. When he was caught, he merely erased all the comments and left it up with the same lie.

Regime change is a dirty business. There is corruption in government everywhere. But where there is a much higher level of corruption, you will see full support by the US. You will see selective use of statistics. You will see the promotion of ignorance about supported corruption, but hypocritical magnification of corruption on the part of leaders the US cannot control.

 

[JW Insider]

Yikes. I think you just helped to make the point.

 

7 minutes ago, Nicole SG said:

Have everyone a beautiful and blessed day, I have a lot of many importants things  to do, like trying to stay in my work than come here and read here how an american pretending a JW is defending this animal  



.

[Guest Nicole SG]

No sir, I don't understand your point and honestly don't care Yikes. As for the foto of the Burro listen in Spanish what Maduro says, specially regarding economics and you'll find that the Burro is smarter than Maduro

[JW Insider]

19 minutes ago, Nicole SG said:

Don't come to tell us fairy tales to who know and live the story every day...

I don't think you are representative of "those who know and live the story every day." You represent the views of a minority in a country where the most vocal are able to control not only the view the rest of the world gets, but the view of many people inside the country too. Yes, things are bad, for Witnesses, too. But I think you tend to forget or perhaps didn't know why they are bad.

Here is another article found in venezualanalysis, whose reporting I have come to respect based on its consistent ability to predict the case that imperialists and oligarchs would make, long before it happened.

The U.S. Has Venezuela in Its Crosshairs

As US threats increase, Vijay Prashad examines the current context in Venezuela.

Last Thursday—on January 10—Nicolas Maduro was sworn in for his second term as president of Venezuela. “I tell the people,” Maduro said, “this presidential sash is yours. The power of this sash is yours. It does not belong to the oligarchy or to imperialism. It belongs to the sovereign people of Venezuela.”

These two terms—oligarchy and imperialism—define the problems faced by Maduro’s new government.

Oligarchy

Despite 20 years of governance by the socialist forces—first led by Hugo Chavez and now by Maduro—the Venezuelan oligarchy remains firmly intact. It dominates large sections of the economy, holds immense amounts of the country’s social wealth and controls the main media outlets. A walk through the Altamira neighborhood in eastern Caracas is sufficient to gauge the resilience of the wealthy, most of whom have homes in Spain and in Florida as well. Pelucones is the name used to define them—bigwigs, a term with aristocratic connotations. They have resisted all attempts by the socialist Bolivarian movement to expand political and economic democracy in the country.

This oligarchy, through its media, controls the political and social narrative, defining the nature of Venezuela’s crisis to its advantage. For this small sliver of the population, all of Venezuela’s serious problems are blamed on the Maduro movement. None of the problems are laid on the doorstep of their long domination of Venezuela nor do they cast an eye at the United States, which has tried to suffocate the Bolivarian revolution since 1999.

.... read more .... https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14242