I don’t think that he is praising Russia but to be as objektive as possible you have to view all sites. Russia has a lot of blood on his hands too but that doesn’t relativise or justify any war or oppression in all its facets. Russian, American, Iraqi, Kurdish, Venezuelan government probably all corrupt. The absurd thing is the US says they want to save the people and bring democracy, while it’s all about resources and power. Why don’t the US just declare war to Venezuela the old fashion way? You know why, I am not really asking.

Mastercard and Visa = new weapons to destroy Maduro

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is considering imposing financial sanctions that could prohibit Visa, Mastercard and other financial institutions from processing transactions in Venezuela, a senior Trump administration official said on Thursday.

Wow, this shows you the "Noose" politics the US uses against Venezuela......, a country that is not at a military war with the US or poses a significant threat but sanctioned to death just like
North Korea (https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-op ... -no-qualms) and IRAN anyway.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... SKCN1QV2VS

To the credit of the US President, Donald Trump he has not yet got into any new War that includes the US Military ! RESPECT !

Inside the August plot to kill Maduro with drones

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/14/amer ... index.html

Re:Venezuela - power now back up !

http://en.freshnewsasia.com/index.php/e ... 50-43.html

Venezuela is under threat of US aggression - another perspective !

Of the 92 elections we’ve monitored, I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world: Former US President Jimmy Carter

Venezuela has been under US-enforced “medieval siege” designed to terrorise the population and bring Venezuela on its knees. It is a genocidal economic warfare targeting any independent nation that refuses to kowtow to US criminal imperialist demands.

According to Jack Lew, former Secretary of the Treasury in the Obama’s regime which initiated the sanctions regime against Venezuela: “[Economic] sanctions are the silver bullet of US foreign policy because they are more effective and cheaper to subdue enemies than traditional power, because they have influence in the US financial markets, the central nerve of the globalised economy”.

Thus, sanctions are, as in medieval era, measures of siege to fortresses.

Former UN special rapporteur and expert in human rights and international law, Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, has said that US-led sanctions and the needless killing of Venezuelans is a crime against humanity under international law.

In his UN report, De Zayas states that: “Modern-day economic sanctions and blockades are comparable with medieval sieges of towns with the intention of forcing them to surrender. Twenty-first century sanctions attempt to bring not just a town, but sovereign countries to their knees.

“A difference, perhaps, is that 21st century sanctions are accompanied by the manipulation of public opinion through ‘fake news’, aggressive public relations and a pseudo-human rights rhetoric to give the impression that a human rights ‘end’ justifies the criminal means.

“There is not only a horizontal juridical world order governed by the United Nations UN Charter and the principles of sovereign equality, but also a vertical world order reflecting the hierarchy of a geopolitical system that links dominant states with the rest of the world according to military and economic power.

“It is the latter, geopolitical system that generates geopolitical crimes, hitherto in total impunity.”

De Zayas recommended the International Criminal Court (ICC) investigate US sanctions against Venezuela as crimes against humanity.

Since the election of late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in 1998, Venezuela has been a leading example in Latin America.

After the introduction of Chavez structural socio-economic reforms, including free education and universal healthcare, Venezuelans have freed themselves from the clutches of illiteracy and extreme poverty – from 40 per cent to seven per cent.

The US ruling class despises a Venezuela leading by example in wealth distribution and participatory democracy.

A 2015 report published by the UN’s Economic and Social Council (UNESC) said the Council “takes note with satisfaction of the progress made by [the Venezuelan government] in combating poverty and reducing inequality.

“The Committee also welcomes the huge progress made by the [Venezuelan government] in the fight against malnutrition through the expansion of the school meals programme and the food allowance for low-income families”.
(For more on this and US Media’s distortions see for example, Gregory Shupak, FAIR, March 14.)

Chavez’s social programmes gave Venezuela the lowest level of inequality in the region based on its Gini’s coefficient, while Colombia and Guatemala are the most unequal nations.

As of 2015, Venezuela and Uruguay each have Gini coefficients (0 represents the absence of inequality and 1 a maximum) of 0.40 or less, compared to the continent’s average of 0.469.

The US ruling class cannot tolerate another Cuba leading by example in a region that the US will commit any crime to keep under its imperialist control.

The US regime has threatened Venezuela with military aggression to topple the democratically elected president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, and replace him with a US-created puppet in a US-planned circus show often called “regime change” to give it legitimacy.

More than 81 per cent of Venezuelans have never heard of the new puppet, Juan Guaido.

In 2018, Nicolas Maduro was re-elected president by a huge majority of Venezuelans in an election when 9,389,056 people voted; 16 parties participated, and six candidates stood for the presidency.

President Maduro won 6,248,864 votes, or 67.84 per cent. The election was described by international observers as “entirely fair”, and “there was no fraud; none of the lurid media claims stood up. Zero”. (Venezuelan Analysis, June 26, 2018.)

By contrast, in the 2016 US election, Trump won 46.1 per cent of the popular vote. And according to the Washington Post: “Roughly 43 per cent of eligible American voters didn’t bother filling out a ballot.”

According to former President Jimmy Carter, the US has one of “world’s worst” elections. Thus, the US regime has no right whatsoever to lecture other nations on democracy and international and human rights laws.

President Trump was elected by a few million Americans, in a completely fraudulent election controlled by money (Wall Street) and lobbies.

For example, the pro-Israel Jewish Lobby, including “dual loyalty” wealthy individuals like Haim Saban, Sheldon Adelson, Paul Singer, and Norman Braman paid Trump’s way to the White House.

In fact, members of the Jewish Lobby are repeatedly captured on a reporter’s hidden camera (Al-Jazeera series The Lobby) explaining how they, backed by the intelligence services within Israel, attack and silence American critics and use huge cash donations to control the American electoral process and political system, including the election of the president.

Of course, Trump paid back by making Israel (not the US) “Great Again”. The Zionist Sheldon Adelson alone has given more than $100 million to the Republican (Donald Trump) Party. Adelson owns the Republican leaders from top to bottom.

Meanwhile, the false propaganda about US “humanitarian aid” stunt at the border between Colombia and Venezuela – which is just a cover to deliver arms and ammunitions to mercenaries and terrorists – continue unabated.

Most informed people know that Western “humanitarian aid” is nothing more than just a big PR operation designed to provoke scenes of violence and justify illegal US invasion to oust President Nicolas Maduro from power.

Some of the ignorant and simple-minded US Congressmen, the likes of Israeli-owned Marco Rubio and Bob Menendez, have threated to assassinate President Maduro if he does not resign.

Then on March 8, Rubio called on the US to initiate “violent widespread unrest” in the country.

“Venezuela is going to enter a period of suffering no nation in our hemisphere has confronted in modern history,” said the fascist Senator Rubio.

It is consistent with US criminal practices. First you starve people, then you bring them humanitarian aid – as in Iraq. countercurrents.org

Ghali Hassan is an independent political analyst living in Australia.

https://phnompenhpost.com/opinion/venez ... aggression

Venezuela ... all options on the table ?

Looks like another syria to me. The russians are already there... (invited by the elected Venezazuelan Gov.) while the US Gov.with Bolton in Front still try to figure out what to do to keep the russians out of their backgarden.

Sorry guaido, our army is busy keeping those Caravan people from jumping over the mexican border. Just hang in there, you can count on us.

The report is made by an american journalist and i wonder what a report made by a cuban journalist would look like. There is always two sides to each story.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/venezuela ... heir-lives

Do you think Maduro will use poison gas on his people as Assad does with the backing of your beloved Russians or will he just barrel bomb them into submission? Will Maduro continue to block humanitarian assistance to his people? If there are two sides to every story, why is the side you promote always the same, lame bulls*t? Let me guess there is your side to a story and then there is the evil American hegemony side.

Latin Americans fear precedent set by legal justification for Syria intervention

The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, claimed in February there were Hezbollah “active cells” in Venezuela, and declared: “We have an obligation to take down that risk for America.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ ... tervention