Tag: Venezuela

Oppose Attacks on Venezuela, Support Socialists There

by Stanley Heller, Administrator, Promoting Enduring Peace

By the time you read this, Trump may have launched an awful attack on the Venezuelan mainland. His Department of War is already killing scores of Venezuelans under the guise of fighting drugs, bombing boats he claims are bringing drugs to America, while making fantastic claims on the number of US lives he’s saving. The idea that you could wipe out crime just by killing “criminals” left and right was shown false long long ago (besides being morally revolting).

Of course, it’s likely part of a plan desensitizing Americans to the plan to invade and seize the assets of another fossil fuel giant (this one having the biggest oil reserves on the planet).

Promoting Enduring Peace came up with this brief statement on its views:

“We condemn the Trump Administration’s bombings of boats supposedly running drugs to the U.S. Criminal activity is not ‘war.’ Alleged criminals should not just be killed nor is this legal under US or international law. All these boats could easily have been stopped by naval authorities.

“As far as the military threats to Venezuela and Colombia, only the citizens of those countries have the right to determine who should be in power, not the US government. We stand in solidarity with Venezuelan socialist and democratic forces who organize for the rights of the Venezuelan people against dictatorship and imperialism.”

If the attack or invasion comes, we hope there will be a massive outpouring of anger all throughout Latin America led by the Left.

One problem is this disastrous idea that Venezuela is a “socialist” country and the blind support many on the Left give to the Maduro regime. He leads a country with the lowest minimum wage in Latin America, a government that enforces extreme austerity measures, and repression of all dissidents. None of the socialist parties were allowed to run in the 2024 presidential election, not even the Communist Party which had been Maduro’s ally until just a few years ago. We can support Venezuelans without supporting Maduro and discrediting ourselves.  Learn more about this from Venezuelans. See PEPeace.org.

Fundraiser for Venezuela Embassy Protectors Jan. 28, New Haven

by Henry Lowendorf, GNH Peace Council

On (new date, place and time) Monday Jan. 27, 2020, the people of Connecticut will welcome the “Embassy Protectors.” We will be able to hear their story and will be raising funds for their defense.

UPDATE: Friends, Embassy Protectors Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers have to appear in court in DC on Wednesday morning the 29th. They would have had to face an overnight 7 hour trip back to DC if they spoke on the 28th.

Thus, we had to move the date for their fundraiser. Sorry for the abrupt change.

The fundraiser will be held and Zeese and Flowers will speak at the Performing Arts space in the New Haven Free Public Library on Monday, Jan. 27, 5:30 to 7:30 (the library closes at 8).

The forum is free and open to the public, although we will be fundraising. The host, the US Peace Council, is building a list of co-sponsors. For more information, please contact Henry Lowendorf, uspeacecouncil@gmail.com, (203) 389-9547.

On May 16, 2019, four US citizens were arrested in the Washington, D.C., Embassy of Venezuela after having occupied that Embassy with as many as 100 other activists over the course of 37 days.

Those final four “Embassy Protectors,” Kevin Zeese, Margaret Flowers, David Paul and Adrienne Pine, and the scores of others had been asked by the legitimate government of Venezuela to protect its embassy against being stolen by President Donald Trump in an intensification of the US political and economic war on Venezuela, started decades earlier.

“The Four are now facing misdemeanor charges of ‘Interfering with certain protective functions’ of the Federal government that carries a maximum of one-year imprisonment and $100,000 fine for each of them. The United States Government is intent on making examples of these citizens and is using its unlimited resources to make sure that they are penalized and incarcerated.”

Trump, in full regime-change mode, last winter decided who should govern Venezuela. He picked a rightwing parliamentarian, Juan Guaidó, relatively unknown to Venezuelans, to be president trying to force out the elected president Nicolás Maduro. Disagreeing with Trump, the people of Venezuela and their military stood behind the man they elected. In decimating the human rights of Venezuelans, Trump took the whole population hostage by illegally imposing deadly sanctions, threatening a military invasion and backing right-wing violence in the streets. By denying Venezuelans the ability to buy food and medicines the sanctions are intended to coerce that country’s citizenry to submit to the demands of the US.

In parallel to the oppressive measures taken by Washington toward Venezuela, Trump blockaded food, water, medicine and electricity from being delivered to the Venezuelan Embassy Protection Collective, to force them out.

 

March 16 National March on Washington: Hands Off Venezuela! No Coup, No sanctions, No New U.S. War!

by Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER)

On Saturday, March 16, thousands of people will march in Washington, D.C. against the Trump administration’s effort to engineer a coup in Venezuela and a new devastating war there. The aggressive policy against Venezuela repeats the ugly pattern of wars for regime change in the oil-rich countries of Iraq and Libya. National Security Advisor John Bolton is reading from the same script, declaring a “troika of tyranny” in Latin America (like the “axis of evil”) as a precursor for regime change first in Venezuela, and then Cuba and Nicaragua. Trump has always said that the “mistake” of the Middle East wars was that the U.S. didn’t “take the oil.”

It is time to stand up and with a clear voice say NO to the newest example of the “Monroe Doctrine,” which the U.S. government has used for over two centuries to repeatedly invade Latin America and Caribbean, control its politics and extract its resources.

The White House aims to overthrow the government of President Nicolás Maduro and replace him with Juan Guaidó. Guaidó is a U.S.-trained operative who was unknown to the vast majority of Venezuelans before he proclaimed himself president — at Vice President Mike Pence’s urging. Although Guaidó has the backing of Trump, the CIA, and the Republican and Democratic Party leaderships alike, huge numbers of Venezuelans have marched to reject this coup and defend their independence.

On March 16, the people of the United States will come together to say:

  • U.S. hands off Venezuela!
  • NO to the coup — the U.S. does not have the right to select other country’s leaders!
  • NO to the sanctions, oil embargo and economic war on Venezuela that aims to cause suffering for ordinary people in the country.
  • NO to intervention and war from the U.S. and their proxies in the region.

    info@answercoalition.org