2nd Special Bulletin 2019 by Venezuelan Embassy in Nairobi

Bulletin Special

Bolivarian Government Ministry of Peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Embassy of the Bolivarian of Venezuela Power for Foreign Affairs Republic of Venezuela Volume 2, 2019

Venezuela: It is not a crisis It is a blockade!

Content 1) Editorial 2) Venezuela, the most important country on the planet 3) The History and Hypocrisy of US Meddling in Venezuela 4) Similarities and aggressions: The experiences of Syria and Venezuela 5) The oil embargo as a strategy to break Venezuela 6) Parallel government: An old format to destroy Chavez 7) Venezuela: The growing terminal aggressivity of the american empire 8) The creation of Juan Guaidó: How the United States fabricated the coup leader in Venezuela 9) Will Venezuela pass on what Chávez denounced in Libya? 10) An open letter to the People of the United States 11) "Humanitarian aid" as a tool to destroy countries 12) Crude oil and false ﬂag operations 13) East Africa among most attractive investment destinations in Africa 14) Why is Venezuela a key geopolitical target for the US? 15) Lies about Venezuela

Editorial Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro denounced that the real objective of the United States behind imposing a parallel government in the South American nation is to appropriate the energy and mineral resources of this country. A deeper look into the reasons behind such right-wing flood to support the parliamentary coup reveals that the objective behind such endorsement of an internationally illegal act is behind the publicly stated humanitarian reasons and in fact about robbing the country of its riches after two decades of progressive and sovereign policies by the Bolivarian government that limited Washington's access to such resources. In 1998, Commander Hugo Chavez Frias had a pivotal electoral triumph that changed the fate of Latin America for around 20 years, from that time to this date, there have been up to 15 progressive democratically elected governments in the region. From that moment a series of efforts began, in order to destabilize these governments. Soft coups against progressive presidents started, the first one against President Chavez in 2002 which failed, then another against Honduras' President Manuel Zelaya in 2010, followed by a parliamentary maneuver against Paraguay's President Fernando Lugo, and partially ending with a parliamentary coup against Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff in 2016. These processes have been defined as "lawfare", such as the current legal wrangling against Lula, to which we can add the more recent ones against Rafael Correa and Jorge Glas in Ecuador and a very similar process against Cristina Kirshner in Argentina. The domino effect rising of right-wing governments in Latin America, and defeating the "National Popular governments" continues in the region, and Venezuela is one of the last standing defenses, along with Bolivia, Nicaragua, Cuba, and El Salvador. This is why a destabilization mediatic and a political and economic campaign has been unleashed against Venezuela, and all the "National Popular governments" of Latin America, for years. Defeating Venezuela, one of the first progressive countries and governments in the region, is so important for the U.S. and the local right-wing oligarchies. It would be a defeat to progressivism in the region.

Venezuela, the most important country on the planet It is undeniable, everyone comments, nobody ignores it: Venezuela is the most important country in the world. Such is its weight that today it is a "state matter" in Great Britain, Germany, Spain, Paraguay, Papua New Guinea and South Ossetia.

invented an unprecedented ultimatum in the history of international law, giving the country 8 days to make elections because none of the previous 25 gave them peace of mind , and both Europe and the United States need peace for their looting.

It is of such caliber the relevance of Venezuela that the OAS - very concerned - has held emergency sessions to deal with the "Venezuelan question", and because of it the head of this organization, a certain Mr. Almagro, was expelled from his political party in his country. Worse, Venezuela has achieved what few: fracture the European Union, a bloc that loves consensus and speaks as one voice. Because of their tropical meddling, that of "Union" did not work for them and, to make matters worse, they have formed bands unknown until now in the old continent: Germany, France, Great Britain and Spain on the one hand, Austria, Italy and Greece, on the other .

Venezuela is so powerful that it disturbs not only geographic spaces, it also alters the vectors of time. Because of Venezuela, it seems that the world has turned, suddenly, to the first half of the 20th century, and because of it we realize that it is there, in the last century, where Europe and the United States want to keep us, in that luminous century where looting was done in peace, with placidity and serenity. This insolence from Venezuela puts us before the annoying question of whether there is a 21st century for Latin America or whether the 20th century will be eternal for our continent. The Caribbean effrontery to remove the mildness of countries accustomed to sending and plundering has caused the 21st Century for Latin America to be defined in Venezuela. That insolence to despise the American custom of removing and putting governments and to begin the 21st century wanting to be sovereign, means that in the Caribbean today we are determining part of the future of Humanity.

The intrusion of Venezuela goes further and it seems to be planetary: even the Security Council of the United Nations has called an emergency session and also here the inﬂuence of Venezuela broke that "United". The UN itself, in its oﬃcial communication, spoke of "Division in the Security Council" (https://news.un.org/es/story/2019/01/1450062).

That is why we are living a historic time these days, because Venezuela today is the main trench against the neocolonial and imperial continuity in our continent, and the most serious obstacle to the reconﬁguration of the extreme right in the world. That is why the elites of the world, commanded by enlightened democrats such as Trump and Bolsonaro, today lead a low intensity world war against Venezuela. Because history shows that there are times when, thanks to the struggle of the peoples, ﬂuttering in a country on the periphery of capitalism can cause a hurricane.

That power of Venezuela is the one that possibly explains that in March of 2015 a fearful Barak Obama, president of the most powerful country in the history of the Humanity and in which every 28 hours the police kill an afrodescendant, recognized "national emergency" for US security and will sign an executive decree that putting things in their place - declares Venezuela as an "extraordinary and unusual threat" to the USA. Faced with a threat of such caliber (Caribbean, can you believe it?) It is understood that enlightened men have

Article by: Pedro Santander The opinions expressed in these articles are of the author and do not necessarily reﬂect the oﬃcial position of the Embassy

The History and Hypocrisy of US Meddling in Venezuela There isn’t a nation in the Western Hemisphere that hasn’t at one time or another found itself caught in the far-reaching tentacles of U.S. imperialism. Venezuela is certainly no exception. Washington has been meddling in its internal aﬀairs since the 19th century and it continues to do so to this very day, when the specter of yet another U.S.-backed coup, or even a direct American military intervention, looms larger by the day.

A Long History of Meddling During most of the 20th century, U.S. interference in Venezuela was mostly about oil, but that wasn’t always the case in earlier times. Washington’s involvement in the 1895 boundary dispute between Venezuela and Britain 4

his dreaded Directorate of National Security (DSN) with invaluable assistance as it imprisoned, tortured and murdered thousands of innocent Venezuelans.

was a key event in the emergence of the United States as a world power as the Grover Cleveland administration, invoking the Monroe Doctrine prohibition against European colonization of the Americas, successfully sided with Venezuela. The Cleveland administration, which noted that “today the United States is practically sovereign on this continent,” issued thinly veiled threats of war against Britain, which eventually acquiesced to U.S. demands.

A few years after Venezuela shifted to democracy in 1958, most other South American nations began falling under the iron-ﬁsted rule of U.S.-backed military dictatorships. The military and security forces of these repressive coup regimes were often trained by the United States, at the U.S. Army School of the Americas and elsewhere, in kidnapping, torture, assassination and democracy suppression. As U.S.-backed death squads trained from U.S.-authored torture manuals murdered, tortured and terrorized innocent men, women and children from Central America to Argenti-

Later, during the Dutch-Venezuelan crisis of 1908, the U.S. Navy helped Venezuelan Vice President Juan Vicente Gomez seize power in a coup. Gomez, known as “The Catﬁsh,” would rule the country either directly or through puppet presidents, until his death in 1935. His regime was one of inconceivably medieval brutality. His enforcers were fond of shackling political prisoners in grillos, leg irons that rendered many victims permanently disabled — and those were the “lucky” ones. The unlucky ones were hanged to death by meathooks through their throats or testicles. Gomez was fantastically corrupt. He was believed to be worth a staggering $200 million, or more than $3.6 billion today, at the time of his death. However, he endeared himself to Washington and Wall Street by granting highly lucrative concessions to foreign oil companies including Standard Oil (ExxonMobil today) and Royal Dutch Shell. Romulo Betancourt, who served two presidential terms in the mid-20th century and is considered the founding father of modern democratic Venezuela, wrote that Gomez “was the instrument of foreign control of the Venezuelan economy, the ally and servant of powerful outside interests.” The exploitation of Venezuela’s tremendous petroleum resources has been the constant objective of U.S. policy and action toward the South American state for over a century. This meant backing the viciously repressive dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez (1948-1958), whose regime forces subjected political prisoners to tortures every bit as horriﬁc as those committed during the Gomez era. Jimenez was as generous to transnational corporations as he was cruel to his own people. The United States, which cared about the former far more than the latter, counted the despot as a close ally, even awarding him the military Legion of Merit “for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services and achievements” and providing

na, Venezuelans enjoyed decades of peace and prosperity. However, the U.S. never stopped meddling in Venezuela’s aﬀairs, and after the free and fair election of Hugo Chavez in 1998 and the subsequent launch of the Bolivarian Revolution, U.S. meddling would reach levels that would shock the conscience of the world.

Bolivarian Backlash

The Bolivarian Revolution, a series of economic and social reforms that dramatically reduced poverty and illiteracy while greatly improving health and other living conditions for millions of Venezuelans, drew worldwide acclaim. The reforms, which included nationalizing key components of the nation’s economy as part of an agenda of socialist uplift, made Chavez a hero to millions of people and the enemy of Venezuela’s oligarchs. The exportation of the Bolivarian Revolution, which included forging stronger, more peaceful inter-American relations and even the provision of free home heating oil for hundreds of thousands of needy people in the United States, made Chavez a marked man in Washington.

The administration of George W. Bush — who infamously called Chavez “the devil” in a speech before the United Nations — backed a failed military coup against Chavez in 2002. The attempted coup was closely linked to prominent neoconservatives including Elliott Abrams, the disgraced Iran-Contra criminal who played a key role in covering up massacres committed by U.S.-backed death squads in Central America; and Otto Reich, a staunch supporter of Cuban-exile terrorists who have killed at least hundreds of innocent men, women and children throughout the Americas. Two key coup plotters, Army commander Efrain Vasquez and Gen. Ramirez Poveda, were trained at the U.S. Army School of the Americas. The coup brieﬂy ousted Chavez but loyalist forces and popular support restored his rule 47 hours later.

thousands of lives, while severely repressing its own subjects at home — as well as brutal dictators in Bahrain, Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea, South Sudan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and elsewhere. While bashing Maduro, Trump has heaped praise upon North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, leader of the world’s most murderous regime, Philippines’ “death squad mayor”-turned president Rodrigo Duterte, China’s “president for life” Xi Jinping, Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Vladimir Putin and other unsavories. Trump’s latest moves, recognizing Venezuela’s illegitimate would-be presidential usurper Juan Guaido and appointing the neoconservative regime change hawk Elliott Abrams as special envoy, seems designed to sow seeds of subversion and revolt within the country’s government and military. This follows National Security Adviser John Bolton — a key neocon architect and cheerleader for the 2003 invasion of Iraq and who has also advocated regime change in Iran, Venezuela and elsewhere — calling Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua a “troika of tyranny,” a hypocritical characterization reminiscent of Bush’s “axis of evil,” and one that utterly ignores the far worse, but far more subservient, regimes backed by the Trump administration.

Barack Obama continued Bush’s policy of demonizing Chavez, whose government he called “authoritarian.” This, despite the fact that former President Jimmy Carter, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work at the election-monitoring Carter Center, called Venezuela’s election process “the best in the world.” In 2015, Obama declared Venezuela an “extraordinary threat to national security,” a bewildering assertion considering the country has never started a war in its history. The United States, on the other hand, has intervened in, attacked, invaded or occupied Latin American and Caribbean nations more than 50 times and, as Obama spoke, the U.S. military was busy bombing seven countries in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. For decades, successive U.S. administrations have also lavished Venezuela’s neighbor Colombia — which has been condemned for its government and paramilitary death squad massacres and deadly corporate-backed crackdowns on Indigenous peoples and workers — with billions upon billions of dollars in military and economic aid.

The United States has almost always opposed — whether by slaughter, spies or sanctions — any government or movement that seeks to freely choose its own political and economic path if it diverges from the corporate capitalist order backed by Washington and Wall Street. It has long sought to crush the boldly deﬁant Bolivarian Revolution, just as it has crushed countless popular revolutions and movements before. The Maduro regime is far from perfect. But to call Maduro a dictator and to advocate regime change in Caracas while supporting far worse tyrants around the world just because they’re U.S.-friendly is an exercise in the blatant, bloody hypocrisy for which the United States has long been infamous around the planet, especially among its poorer parts and peoples.

With Friends Like These… In an act of breathtaking yet typical U.S. hypocrisy, President Donald Trump in July 2017 announced economic sanctions against Nicolas Maduro, who was elected president following the death of Chavez in 2013. While Maduro vowed to continue the Bolivarian Revolution, the Trump administration threatened to attack Venezuela, citing the “suﬀering” of its people. Meanwhile, Trump continued previous administrations’ support for some of the world’s worst human rights violators, including the Islamic fundamentalist monarchy of Saudi Arabia — which is waging a war of aggression and starvation in Yemen that has claimed tens of

Brett Wilkins is a San Francisco-based author and activist. His work, which focuses on issues of war and peace and human rights, is archived at www.brettwilkins.com www.telesurenglish.net

Similarities and aggressions: The experiences of Syria and Venezuela The laboratories of the war in the United States have been successful in the application of formats of pre-designed aggressions against countries that do not align with their imperial policies. These obviously adapt to cultural, religious, social, historical and even geographical features.

In Venezuela, this type of groups have acted for years, making speciﬁc attacks on electricity distribution systems, food and medicine warehouses, burning of public and private property. On January 10 of this year, they caused a voracious ﬁre in IVSS warehouses on the Guarenas-Guatire highway, where medical equipment and supplies valued in millions of dollars were stored.

In 2011, Syria began to suﬀer a brutal aggression by imperial powers, which continues today, but from which it has emerged practically victorious at a very high cost.

Attacks on electrical installations are constant, the most recent occurring on February 4 in the states of Anzoátegui and Miranda. Terrorist attacks have not only been limited to property, but also to human life. Dozens of peasant leaders, and political and public ﬁgures sympathetic to the Revolution, of medium and high levels, have been assassinated, the most emblematic case being that of Robert Serra.

At present, in Venezuela, the scenario is being prepared for an aggression similar to that experienced by Syria, which, in spite of speciﬁc and marked diﬀerences, is essentially structured in a similar way.

Inﬁltration of terrorist groups and mercenaries

Treason of politicians and military In Syria foreign intelligence services managed to penetrate the political and military estates, however, with a limited scope and not strategic. They created the "Syrian National Council" whose main headquarters were in Turkey, in addition to an appendix of this, the "Free Syrian Army", composed of traitorous military. They also oﬀered high sums of money to Syrian ambassadors in strategic countries in exchange for betraying Al-Assad.

In Syria the infiltration of terrorist and mercenary groups took time, but their action was simultaneously and simultaneously. If we go back to April 2011, it is worth remembering Nidal Jannoud who is said to have been the first victim of the conflict. He was a farmer and guard of an officer's club in Banias, on the Mediterranean coast. He was intercepted on the way to the market and massacred. His only crime was to be Alawite (a branch of Shiite Islam practiced by Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad).

In Venezuela, the dissidence of politicians of certain relevance has been basically due to being linked to corruption cases, victims of opposition blackmail or feeling cornered. With regard to the military aspect, the betrayals in general outline include military without command of troops. One stands out before all despite the fact that little is said about it, that of Major General Hebert García Plaza. This to be discovered of his corrupt conduct in public administration, seeks asylum in the United States. He was director of armament of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB) during the purchase of the bulk of the modern war material during the management of Comandante Chávez. Undoubtedly, it provided vital information on the type and quantity of weapons acquired, as well as its location and storage.

Bank of Syria within the United States and the EU, as well as restrictions on the supply of equipment and technology. Even against Russian people and entities for the supply of oil to Syria. Venezuela, during the government of Hugo Chávez, was the victim of an embargo on the sale of weapons manufactured by the United States, extending to any war equipment supplied by third countries that had components manufactured by them.

In recent days we have seen the consul in Miami and the ambassador in Iraq square with the coup. It is worth noting that Jonathan Velasco, now a former ambassador in Iraq, was accused by the right of handing over Venezuelan passports to groups that they consider (like the United States and Israel) as terrorists.

At ﬁrst it resulted in a strong blow to the nation, taking into account that almost all of our weapons systems were manufactured in the West, but our good economic situation allowed us to seek new military markets in sovereign countries, obtaining equipment and supplies of high technology .

Intense propaganda in international media As happened with Bashar Al-Assad in 2011 and later years, Maduro is the victim of a ruthless international media campaign that has tried to demonize him, all this to justify to foreign public opinion any action against Venezuela outside the framework of legality.

The measure taken by the United States at the time led them to lose a modest but valuable market for their military-industrial complex. As against Syria, until basically the year 2018, the sanctions were directed against political personalities, military and private businessmen linked to the government.

Media like the BBC, Deutsche Welle, Reuters and CNN, among others, of national reach in countries not sympathetic to the Bolivarian Revolution, without shame prepare the media stage as a theater of operations parallel to the military. The orgy of lies is shocking and emetic for any individual with minimal awareness of reality.

This year 2019, the United States and some European countries are playing all of them by going further. With the appropriation of Citgo, the Trump government holds 7 billion dollars in assets and 11 billion dollars in oil exports for this year. At present, Citgo has three reﬁneries in the United States, 48 storage and distribution terminals with some 6,000 service stations.

Sanctions and economic blockade The United States and the European Union (EU) have punished dozens of Syrian people and entities for "providing military equipment or support to Syria to suppress the protests." Oil embargo, prohibition of certain investments, freezing of assets of the Central

It has the capacity to process 749 thousand barrels of crude oil per day, which places it as the sixth company in the sector in the United States. The measures announced by Washington could be translated into an oil embargo not openly declared, but which is rigorously executed against the oil assets of the country.

Joint Staﬀ Course of the Spanish Armed Forces in May 2001. It proposed the "Balkanization" of Venezuela by dividing it. For many years the right has promoted Zulia secession plans, of which the old aspiration of the Colombian oligarchy is not exempt. Said plan considered feasible that, in a "humanitarian" intervention, Colombia would reserve the "protection" of Zulia, Tachira, Mérida, Trujillo, Apure, the rest of the western states and the joint "protection" with Washington of the Amuay reﬁnery. For its part, the United States reserves the East, from Margarita to Guayana, oil production, the dominance of the mouths of the Orinoco and dominant look towards the Atlantic.

Similarly, the provider of ﬁnancial services Euroclear keeps frozen 1 thousand 650 million dollars for the purchase of medicines and food for the Venezuelan population, with the EU participating in the ﬁnancial blockade against the country. Also, the Bank of England refuses to deliver 14 tons of gold, valued at around 550 million dollars, brandishing incredibly ridiculous excuses. It is worth noting that the set of sanctions has been promoted and requested by traitors of the opposition, being the deputy Julio Borges.

In November of 2011, the Arab League expelled Syria, becoming a shameful organization at the service of imperialism and Zionism. Venezuela is besieged by the Organization of American States (OAS), becoming under the management of Luis Almagro at the tip of the spear of regional "diplomacy" for the destruction of the Bolivarian Revolution.

Treason of neighboring countries and regional organizations at the service of imperialism Syria is the "cornerstone" of the Middle East region, hence its leading role in the geopolitics of the area. It has borders with the terrorist State of Israel, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey and Lebanon.

The "Group (or Cartel) of Lima" is another regional body that brings together the right-wing leaders of the continent and who grouped together with one single objective: to actively collaborate in the overthrow of Nicolás Maduro by mandate of the United States.

The criminal dictatorships, retrograde and vassals of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan need to "buy" their stay in power to the United States and Israel. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are the ones that contribute most of the petrodollars that ﬁnance the aggression against Syria.

It's time for deﬁnitions. Never before has the Bolivarian Revolution been so threatened. The vassal opposition would be nothing without the international pressure of which we are victims. A psychological war looms over our nation with a view to weakening the loyalty of the revolutionary people, but the days pass and it remains in stoic resistance.

As for the neighboring countries of Venezuela, Colombia and Brazil have the baton regarding the desire to become territorial bridges for an eventual aggression against the country. The president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, declared that his military forces could fulﬁll the same role in Venezuela as they did in Haiti. Together with Colombia, they are oﬀered as "collection centers" for the reception of "humanitarian aid".

This leads to two alternatives for the opposition; The ﬁrst and most convenient is to resume the democratic channels and sit down to dialogue, and the second, to continue preparing the ground for an eventual foreign military aggression as the only alternative for the seizure of power.

To pretend to introduce to Venezuela the supposed "humanitarian aid" would imply that our military forces would have to allow the violation of the sacred soil of the homeland without quibbling. Colombia and Brazil intend to assume the role that Turkey has had to the north of Syria. Do not forget the so-called "Balboa Operational Planning Speciﬁc Exercise" of which Colombia was part.

www.misionverdad.com

The oil embargo as a strategy to break Venezuela From August of 2017, by means of executive order of the White House, the Trump Administration gave step to the severe episodes of open and total sanctions against the Venezuelan economy, vetoing to the oil nation of the ﬁnancial markets of bonds.

latter considered one of the most aggressive in its ﬁeld. Also the Venezuelan political authorities denounced in the framework of these detentions that there was a process of cooptation of executives of the state by factors of the US energy sector, interested in making Venezuelan property through disadvantageous businesses to the Republic.

In this same package of measures, the subsidiary of Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA) with headquarters in the United States, CITGO Petroleum Corporation, not to send to Venezuela and its parent company the dividends generated by its activities.

Almost in unison with these events, the arrest of Eulogio del Pino and Nelson Martínez, both former oil ministers and former presidents of PDVSA, took place in Venezuela in what could be described as the most sensitive and important arrests in the ﬁght against corruption. in Venezuela in the last 20 years. Martinez, who had chaired CITGO, was also appointed as promoter of the management teams that would have participated in the frustrated delivery of CITGO to US vulture capitals.

Just in mid-September 2017, the Venezuelan subsidiary in the United States reported several boycott situations on its operations on US soil associated with the blockade of Venezuela and CITGO on the credit markets, including those in the short term, related to the acquisition of crude in the United States payable in 30 days.

The previous precedent gave way to new situations. In May 2018, speciﬁcally on the 21st, just the day after the Venezuelan presidential elections in which Nicolás Maduro was the winner, the White House issued a new package of sanctions.

CITGO, a complex of three refineries, pipelines, terminals and 6,000 gas stations on US soil, depends on light crude oil to support the diet of its refineries. Since the blocking measures issued by the government of Donald Trump, the Venezuelan company dealt with unprecedented situations in its business scheme, having to disburse advanced payments to access the local market. Elements that undoubtedly affected this company, the sixth in its field in the United States, weakening its finances.

In these sanctions, accounts receivable from Venezuela and CITGO in the United States were frozen, and an express prohibition was also made to individuals and legal entities in the United States or any related to that country, to participate in any sale or transfer of any asset. Venezuelan or with participation of Venezuela in majority position.

In November 2017, six CITGO executives were captured in Venezuela in an operation to clean up the activities of the Venezuelan oil industry ordered by President Nicolás Maduro. The capture of the executives took place in Caracas and was caused by situations of embezzlement that compromised the destiny and ownership of these sovereign assets of Venezuela.

In other words, the United States expressly disabled Venezuela's negotiation of CITGO, an issue that reached a greater degree of possibility in the last two years by increasing pressures, sanctions and accusations from Washington against the Caribbean nation. In this event the ground was prepared for other situations that are in force right now.

The Attorney General of Venezuela Tareck William Saab said that the accused had signed an agreement with two international companies qualified as "vulture capital" to request financing of up to 4 billion dollars, offering as collateral to the subsidiary itself, an operation that occurred at backs of PDVSA and the Republic with the intention of seriously damaging the national interest. The American companies involved in this operation were the risk fund firms Frontier Managment Group LTD and Apollo Global Managment LLC, the

Evolution and intentions In January 2019, the United States proclaimed the president of the National Assembly in contempt of the other public powers in Venezuela, Juan Guaidó, as "interim president" of the oil nation. A high intensity event crossed by great repercussions, because it is the eﬀect of a coup d'etat in progress with a US seal. 10

On anuary 28, barely a week after Juan Guaidรณ's self-regulation as Venezuela's "president," White House security adviser John Bolton announced, along with US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, the freezing of the Bank's accounts. Central of Venezuela in the United States and other assets of the Republic on US soil, including the subsidiary CITGO.

From this point, Washington undertakes the exercise of an arbitration action on the sovereign assets of Venezuela, or what is in practical terms, its use and use to award them at discretion. In theory, Washington would begin to adjudicate the assets of PDVSA to Juan Guaidรณ, who simultaneously ordered from Venezuela the "progressive and orderly taking" of the assets of the Republic abroad.

Since January 23, the day of the proclamation of Guaidó before Washington, the White House has announced sanctions that were already eﬀective in the facts, but now presents as "hunting trophies." One of them is the case of de facto freezing of CITGO and so is the case of the freezing and non repatriation to Venezuela of 1.2 billion dollars in Venezuelan gold by the Bank of England.

The White House stressed that by receiving Venezuelan oil in US refineries, the payments would go directly to the benefit of the "parallel government" of Guaidó and his delegated acolytes to allegedly administer Venezuelan assets. In theory, the declared intention on CITGO occurs as a "safeguard measure" for Venezuelan assets. The Venezuelan frozen goods are quantified in about 7 billion dollars by the Secretary of the Treasury, and his effective dispossession and in fact would come with an additional loss to Venezuela of income of 11 billion dollars according to Mnuchin, for losses in oil exports. This figure joins the already extensive table of Venezuelan losses through sanctions of about 23 billion dollars, according to Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza, who recently affirmed it before the UN Security Council.

The announcements, now oﬃcial, of these blockade actions previously consummated to partiality, become Washington's narrative that points to the upheaval in Venezuela to increase its rupture, facilitate other external pressures, intensify the internal conﬂict and also make it escalate to the scope military. In this way, they tie together a hybrid war scheme that aims to raise internal tensions simultaneously with the present tension.

The measure obliges Venezuela to change the terms of payment of oil bills favorable to the nation, and also imposes the search of other markets for the placement of its extra heavy crude, a product that is difficult to replace in the short term. in some US refineries, because they depend almost exclusively on the Venezuelan crude diet. Although Caracas has announced legal actions on US soil to protect the assets of PDVSA, the White House measure consists of a de facto embargo against the assets of the Republic and in theory benefits Venezuelan sectors, which de facto are in marginal positions. of the national institutionality through a form of artificial proto-government, by autojuramentación and proclamation of Washington.

Of course, through this large-scale economic, political and psychological operation, another of Washington's intentions is to promote false steps and unregulated reactions in the Chavismo leadership. Also create the eﬀective moment to get out the co-opted elements that could exist in the national political leadership or in some military sectors.

In practical terms, Washington's measure of exercising control over Venezuela's assets is highly functional both to exert pressure against the country and at the same time to shape the dangerous para-state ﬁgure of Guaidó, a plot that undoubtedly aims to increase the pressure and economic blockade, as well as the institutional chaos from Venezuela and with projection to its external front. In other words; There is a coup d'etat in progress in Venezuela that operates from several and simultaneous directions.

The White House is betting on the loss of cohesion in Chavismo that it needs so much, to the point that the theft of CITGO, as a sensitive economic node, is also an instrumentalized element in favor of the strategic objective: to bend the Republic completely in its forms of political, institutional and military fabric. www.misionverdad.com

It is consequently the fact that the intensiﬁcation of the conﬂicts generated by the actions of the Trump Administration aims to accelerate the breakdown of Venezuela from within. Washington encourages the Bolivarian National Armed Forces to take a coup d'etat and the multidirectional psychological pressure escalates to unprecedented levels.

Parallel government: An old format to destroy Chavez

The interventionist policy of the United States in the internal aﬀairs of other nations has been a constant in all regions of the world. It is based on the national security of that country, not accountable to its population and territory but to the global corporations that ﬁnance it. What they are now applying in Venezuela is the conjugation of other contemporary operations in the region of the Middle East and the Balkans. The experience systematized and converted into manuals became accepted by local politicians of antichavism. Chrono-

logical sequence that takes us to the act of presidential self-proclamation of the premier leader of the opposition Juan Guaidó, with the sensation of being repeating scenarios, with other actors. The review is necessary, so that we value the results of granting them the opportunity to construct artiﬁcial states to the western powers. 13

backdrop, without this making much noise in the international community, despite being scenarios where the confronted blocks were measured of the Cold War.

Provisional regimes are the bridge to induce neoliberal, free-market policies that guarantee corporations control of strategic regions and world merchandise trade. This is on the kinder side of capitalism, while its alter ego installs the deep structures of power where organized crime, human traﬃcking, drug traﬃcking and arms coexist freely.

Coltan, uranium, diamond and oil are the resources that condition the political destiny of Africa. The networks of illicit traﬃcking in these areas are administered by political-military commandos that guard the mines and wells of oil and mining companies. Corporations make a proﬁt by extracting raw materials and providing weapons to local custodians.

African sub-states and the control of natural resources The case of Libya, because of the crude outcome, is a mandatory reference. It worked in 2011 with the strategy of setting up a government abroad, providing it with resources and convulsing public opinion with anti-Gadaﬃ propaganda. After a few months, the National Transitional Council was recognized diplomatically and politically, giving way to the disastrous NATO military intervention and the installation of thousands of militias confronting each other, which segregated the country.

Trading with weapons is a policy of double standards for the United States. In addition to the proﬁts they obtain from military spending, they condition the sale to factors that tip the balance to the strategic objectives in the continent. Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon are military contractors who nurture warmongering. Libya was relegated to that common denominator.

After the institutional breakdown, it was not a matter of the ﬁrst order for the foreign actors involved in promoting national reconciliation. While the belligerent parties turned to convert arms traﬃcking, oil smuggling, mercenary training and slavery into routine activities of the informal economy, the US State Department was responsible for managing Tripoli's frozen assets in foreign accounts.

Kosovo: model of criminal institutions to export While in the African countries the indiscriminate supply of armaments favors the war situations and prevents the recognition of a common authority, in speciﬁc circumstances the military industry cuts that ﬂow, again, to induce tendencies. Something that happened in the Balkanization of the Yugoslav State.

Libya was an area that contrasted with the rest of the continental map, but the restoration of the democratic order put it in tune with the fate of its compatriots who, since the 1960s, suﬀer the ravages of premature mutilation that the CIA planned for pan-African movements in its attempt to unify its own criteria of African identity.

The case of the dismemberment of the Republic of Yugoslavia exhibits a perfect image of how the installation of foreign governments linked to big capital brings with it the criminal vices of the free market that forever alter the substance of society. After the military intervention of NATO, in Kosovo it was found that the factual can perfectly overlap the theoretical and legal if conditions permit. The United States achieved the unilateral proclamation of independence of a strategic portion in the former Yugoslav states.

In the countries of the old continent are installed ﬁgures that allow the control of parallel criminal structures supported by multinational companies and non-state agencies. Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Angola, all countries of sub-Saharan Africa submerged in conﬂicts that are framed in the neoliberal logic and the intermediation of States in the looting of resources.

This, after the Security Council of the UN approved the international presence of military and civil security under the ﬁgure of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). This ﬁgure worked from 1998 to 2008 as foreign territorial administrator, imposing agents not linked to the territory to the institutional spaces. In that period, the self-proclamation of Kosovo's independence was promoted, deploying its personnel to build, organize and supervise the institutions of that new democratic stage.

Roger Morris, direct assistant to Henry Kissinger's administration on foreign policy matters during the 1970s, conﬁrmed that, with some speciﬁc exceptions, the United States was behind all the coups that took place in Africa since the decade 1960 Since then, the populations have attended a carnival of deposed regimes, interim governments and dictatorships with genocides and generalized killings as a

The provinces of the former Yugoslavia made the immediate transition to mafia states and drug traffickers. According to estimates of UNMIK itself, criminal activities in Kosovo represented, for 2008, between 15 and 20% of GDP, a considerable figure considering that a large part of the economy is supported by foreign aid.

Public knowledge is the pretext used by the member countries of the Atlantic Alliance, led by the United States, to intervene Yugoslavia militarily. The land was previously paid with coercive measures to the national economic system that generated the collapse of the regions. Together they mediated an ethnic-nationalist conﬂict that undermined the cohesion of the more stable region of Eastern Europe.

High officials of the modern "State" of Kosovo show a dark sum of denunciations that connects them with the structure of organized crime. The Council of Europe presented evidence that accused Hashim Thaçi, former prime minister of Kosovo and member of the Kosovo Liberation Army (a terrorist organization financed by the United States), of leading illicit companies operating behind the scenes of the war. Among them a criminal network that extracted organs to prisoners of war to sell them to the international mafia.

It is now known that the geopolitical objective of the United States was to take over a strategic zone for the control of energy trade flows between the Middle East and Europe, as well as the illegal trafficking of opiates from Afghanistan. In fact, as soon as NATO's bombing of depleted uranium ended in 1999, the Pentagon took a thousand-hectare portion of Kosovo to install the Camp Bondsteel military base. The business was closed with the transnational Halliburton, which reached its first military logistics contract thanks to the devastation of a nation.

Managing the traﬃcking of organs, weapons and drugs is the collaboration of the elites with the transnational criminal networks that paid him independence.

The dominance of the drug cartel in the Eurasian crossing ﬁnanced the operational bases aimed at mitigating the inﬂuence of the Russian and Chinese socialist systems in Southeast Europe to allow entry to multinationals and Western banks with their free market economic regimes. Laboratories were installed to test the color revolutions and form jihadists that were then exported to the rest of the Balkan region, Europe and the Middle East.

What emerges the democratic restoration pushed by the United States? It is no accident that the coup d'état in Venezuela calls for operators with experience in destroying entire nations to increase corporate proﬁts.

In turn, the management of the steps of the motorways that connect both Western Europe and China with the oil producers of the Arab countries also sought to weaken their commercial enemies. 15

From National Security Advisor John Bolton and his record of unfounded accusations to Iraq and Cuba, to the envoy to "restore democracy" Elliot Abrams and his relationship with the Iran-Contra scandal. Even in the lower positions, the selected group is very well taken care of. The last business managers sent to Venezuela worked at sites of geostrategic conﬂict: Lee

The corporate class advocates a process of transition that allows the reordering of public institutions delegating loyal employees to protect their functions, with the proﬁle of those who administer the submissive regions. Groups that deliver resources as easily as Africa does and that participate in drug traﬃcking networks and irregular derived activities, such as the Balkan region.

McClenny, who was in charge between 2014 and 2017, was a NATO press officer during the bombings in Kosovo; and the current one, James Story, served as the high representative of the Rakkasan Airborne Regiment Combat Team deployed in Afghanistan in 2010. The recent decisions taken by the White House to confront the country show that the objective is aimed at restoring the strongest bastion of resistance to the multinationals. The State Department armed the "interim government" and the first order was to elaborate an instrument in legal appearances that would guarantee the appropriation of hydrocarbons to US private capital, a requirement that was met by the self-proclaimed "president" Juan Guaidó when he declared that he was going to create a new hydrocarbons law that will grant bids for natural gas and conventional crude projects, directly benefiting the transnational ExxonMobil.

The project of the country they want to destroy At the time, Pan-Africanism, Yugoslav nationalism and Pan-Arabism were cracking down, dangerous programs that presented their own alternatives, distanced from the third-world category assigned to them by the West. The wound was deep enough to rule out any resurgence. However, the world elites understood that the withdrawal did not last long. They tremble at the advance of the multipolar world, even though in temporal terms it is still in the embryonic process. The violent attack against Venezuela is understood in that context.

In parallel, the United States was taking embargo measures against PDVSA and its US-based subsidiary Citgo. Steven Mnuchin, secretary of the Treasury, reported the blockade of assets valued at 7 billion dollars that will also bring projected losses of 11 billion.

Chavismo cooperates with the geopolitical projects of China and Russia, establishes commercial exchange channels with other countries banned by the United States and Europe, contributes to the regional integration of the Caribbean islands, while stoically supporting the breakdown of the Latin American project that it founded.

They aggravate a nation that depends exclusively on the entry of foreign currency by the state-owned PDVSA. But beyond the damage is to reappropriate the soil that previously could drill to extract energy resources without asking permission from the Venezuelan State. Bolton's intervention on the Fox television network conﬁrms that: "We are talking to the main US companies now ... It would make a big diﬀerence for the United States economically if we could have US companies investing and producing Venezuela's oil."

The destruction of the Venezuelan institutional structure would mean a scenario penetrated by parapolitical, para-economic and paramilitary groups (contractors or fascist-rich armed groups), or under the aegis of the Pentagon (Colombian style), throughout the territory for the ease of looting and larceny with Western traces, as has happened in the examples outlined in this note.

Venezuela, as a country, is a stumbling block not only because of its sovereign attitude with the resources it has or its commitment to the emerging multipolar world, but because of the delays it generates in the Colombia-United States drug corridor. Penetrating the territory would also guarantee the free ﬂow of cocaine produced in Colombian departments to Caribbean waters.

Hugo Chávez made sure that the oil rent, gas and gold reserves, mineral resources, were taken from the corporations to place them at the complete disposal of a country that forged, in a state of permanent instability, a political subject with characteristics own, closely linked to the territory and with knowledge of its history. Erase that current of thought from the world map is the point of no return that you want to reach. www.misionverdad.com

VENEZUELA: THE GROWING TERMINAL AGGRESSIVITY OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE "We can not rule out a systemic failure and a global depression. [...] There is a risk of a market crash, a financial meltdown and a global depression. " (2008).

The panic over the new financial crisis in the US, already on its doorstep, which will be even more devastating than that which occurred in 2008, has placed the rulers of that country, of Europe and some of Latin America, on the verge of schizophrenic delirium . The desperation is such that they have chosen to violate any rule of International Law in order to recover the oil, gold, diamonds and Venezuelan coltan that they suppose can save them from the hecatomb that is coming upon them. In this regard, the sentence of Professor Roubini in 2008 was fulfilled that same year. Banks collapsed because of the planned scam of mortgage loans called "junk or toxic credits" granted to people with low solvency, which caused the collapse of the two largest US mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, followed by cascading by prestigious American and European banks, such as Bear Stearns, JP Morgan, Indy Mac Bank, Bank of America, among others. That financial earthquake brought down the Yankee monster and the oldest investment bank: Lehman Brothers. In Europe, the British Government nationalized the Northern Rock Bank. The earth trembled and will tremble again. 17

exist in real life, but they modiﬁed the psychological behavior of immense North American communities for something non-existent.

This panorama of the past provokes chills throughout the Bilderberg Group, that is to say bankers, right-wing politicians, representatives of European monarchies and owners of the world's main media, who have given President Trump orders to get his hands on it to the resources of any country, including Venezuela Bolivariana, to try to alleviate the inexorable cataclysm that is looming.

What has been said so far assumes that the use of the "Fakenews" has become habitual with an unusual boldness. The case of the alleged Kuwaiti young woman who runs between ruins to save her baby from the bombs of Saddam Hussein, turned out to be a monumental lie when it was found that the trick photograph was made in a Chicago studio and that the desperate mother was none other than a model, daughter of a Saudi diplomat.

Meanwhile, in Venezuela, the cynical deceit of "the dictatorship" is resorted to with all the power of the media, when it has been the US that has ﬁlled dictatorships and left a trail of blood throughout Latin America during the 20th century and part 21. Just remember the criminal assault in Chile, confessed by President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, to place that murderer of Pinochet and keep it for 17 years stabbing his people and Latin American ﬁghters through the " Operation Condor ".

Likewise, the most atrocious lie was the one that produced a million deaths in Iraq with the story of "the weapons of mass destruction" that made claim to Hans Blix, adviser to the American government, this pearl: "The ability of the services of Anglo-American intelligence to show false evidence is surprising ... " These are just some evidence of the real shock of the imperial powers that has led them to resort to any ruthless scheme to try to save their skin at the expense of the blood of other peoples.

Moreover, the systematic propaganda mounted to make us believe the existence of a dictatorship of Commander Chávez and then of President Nicolás Maduro rests on a whole media scaﬀolding to falsify the facts through the hybrid war, the fourth generation war or the postmodern war , neurotizing daily life and in general society in its entirety through campaigns that spread panic to everything and everywhere.

With regard to Venezuela, the idea is to force the idea that there is a dictatorship by ignoring the presidential elections of May 20, 2018. It is necessary to know that the elections were carried out at the request of the opposition on the right. It aﬃrms with an extravagant lightness that guarantees were not given to the opposition when they were the same with which they made it possible for that same right to win the legislative elections in 2015. A "void of power and a government of transition" is invoked, nonexistent in the Constitution, and irresponsibly recognizes someone who proclaims himself "interim president", who dances between the ridiculous and the tragic, before a microphone in the middle of the street in front of a group of his acolytes by direct order of the President Donald Trump.

It should be mentioned that the German philosopher Theodore Adorno illustrates us in this sense when, based on what Freud says is that "we have a mental life of which we have no knowledge", he explains that the ancestral fear of the pneumatic traces (Erinnerungsspur) , as the fear of castration and ostracism in contemporary civilization, must be added the excessive fear of death (hence the violence through the media) or, hunger, unemployment, the disarticulation of the family, street violence, etc. These "big bags" that are repressed in the unconscious provoke in the victim the disarticulation with the reality that the Italian philosopher Umberto Eco will call the inversion of the real.

It should be noted that in the 2018 elections, 16 political parties participated and only three opposed and did not participate. Not for this the process has to be disqualiﬁed. Along with Nicolás Maduro, ﬁve other candidates were presented. But the withdrawal of these three parties was planned in this way to later ignore President Nicolás Maduro who won with more than 67% of the votes. It should be added that the National Assembly is in contempt of court for refusing to comply with a mandate from the Supreme Court of Justice to dismiss three deputies who were weighing an investigation into the validity of their election.

Refers Eco that when Annie the orphan (innocent creature who played in the McCarthyism persecution in the US), lost his dog Candy, was such bewilderment and anguish caused through the comic strip in the population, which stimulated the decline of the production in the automobile productive machinery of Henry Ford who was forced to send him a public telegram, through the American press, to the draftsman of the ﬁlm, Harold Gray, who incidentally had restful ties with the Rockerfeller family, who prayed like this: "Mr. Gray, help us ﬁnd the dog Candy. " Neither the dog, nor Annie 18

In other words, the Bolivarian Revolution with Chávez and Maduro at the head, have impeded this process against the revolutionary and anti-patria. With the Full Sovereignty Plan, the Orinoco Oil Belt was nationalized and full sovereignty over oil was established. The so-called oil royalty, a kind of tax for the extraction of crude, was handed over to the transnationals by the previous governments of the Venezuelan right to 1%. A real impudence. The government of President Chávez led her to 33%. The Income Tax was also increased from 30% to 50%. Until 2010, the country had recovered much more than 300 billion dollars to ﬁnance the current social investment in Venezuela, that is, the construction of 2 million and a half of popular housing, the payment of pensions to More than 4 million older adults, health and free education, etc. It is estimated that the North American transnationals took more than 400 billion dollars annually, leaving behind them misery, unemployment, shortage of housing for the poor, lack of health assistance and absence of free education.

It should also be mentioned that in the presidential elections of 2018, experts were invited to attend the elections. The UN was invited to send a commission, equal to the European Union, but they refused. They were accomplices of the plan. But there were 14 delegations of election experts from various countries, as well as journalists from diﬀerent parts of the world. Refusing to participate was the script dictated from Washington to disqualify the elections and to classify Nicolás Maduro as a "dictator". None of the participating candidates contested the results. There are few who object to the electoral system that according to former President Jimmy Carter is "the most perfect in the world," which is audited permanently and is also public and televised, where it is impossible for someone who is not registered in the National Electoral Council vote, or vote several times, because it is an electronic system that immediately detects any attempt to alter the results.

This goes to say that the Government of Donald Trump has launched to the reconquest of the product of that pillage, draws in its appetites to satellites countries of Latin America and the European Union that aspires to participate in the apportionment of that precious booty. In the same sense, it launches a booby trap like the so-called "Humanitarian Aid", as if the neofascist Elliot Abraham had not used such a trick during the Ronald Reagan war against Nicaragua, opening the boxes of that unique aid with weapons for the army of mercenaries created, armed, trained by the US in the war against the Sandinista Revolution, that had liberated that country from one of the most bloody dictatorships, that of the Somozas, who lasted more than 40 years in power at the service of the Interests of United States.

Right-wing parties that refused to participate knew they would be defeated. They knew that after having left several months of street violence where they burned nurseries, universities, public transport units, popular health center, and burned alive 19 people just because they were black or mulatto and look like "chavistas", his popularity was on the ground. In reality, and this is the neuralgic problem, with the arrival of Commander Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution, full oil sovereignty is conquered. The ﬁrst step is marked by the promulgation of the Hydrocarbons Law decreed by the Government of Commander Hugo Chávez, which establishes a majority shareholding of the State in the oil business and that generated the 2002 coup sponsored by the United States. The so-called "oil meritocracy" that directed PDVSA was at the service of the North American oil transnationals. They aimed to avoid state control to facilitate the business to transnationals and prevent them from paying royalties and income tax. The ﬁnal objective was the sale of PDVSA to the US.

In the end, the democracy proposed by the US empire for Venezuela only embodies the return to the ruthless plunder to recover the 400 billion dollars ill-gotten that the transnationals took to the North and appropriate other resources belonging to the Venezuelan people. By Alfredo Lugo Venezuelan Intellectual The opinions expressed in these articles are of the author and do not necessarily reﬂect the oﬃcial position of the Embassy

The creation of Juan Guaidó: How the United States fabricated the coup leader in Venezuela Juan Guaidó is the product of a decade-long project supervised by Washington's elite coaches for government changes. 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, less than one in five Venezuelans had heard of Juan Guaidó. Just a few months ago, this 35-year-old man was a dark character in a politically marginalized far-right group, closely associated with horrific acts of street violence. Even in his own party, Guaidó had been a mid-level figure in the National Assembly, dominated by the opposition, which is now under contempt under the Constitution of Venezuela. But after a single telephone call from the vice president of the United States, Mike Pence, Guaidó proclaimed himself president of Venezuela. Anointed as the leader of his country by Washington, a previously unknown politician was transferred to the international stage as the United States-selected leader for the nation with the largest oil reserves in the world. Echoing the Washington Consensus, the editorial committee of the New York Times described Guaidó as

a "credible rival" for Maduro with a "refreshing style and a vision to advance the country." The Bloomberg News editorial committee applauded him for seeking the "restoration of democracy" and the Wall Street Journal declared him "a new democratic leader." Meanwhile, Canada, numerous European nations, Israel and the block of Latin American right-wing governments known as the Lima Group recognized Guaidó as the legitimate leader of Venezuela. Although Guaidó seemed to have materialized from nothing, he was, in fact, the product of more than a decade of assiduous preparation by the elite factories dedicated to changing regimes of the United States Government. Along with a group of right-wing student activists, Guaidó was trained to undermine the socialist-oriented government of Venezuela, to destabilize the country and, someday, to seize power. Although he has been a minor ﬁgure in Venezuelan politics, he had spent years quietly demonstrating his worth in the corridors of Washington's power. "Juan Guaidó is a character that has been created for this circumstance," Marco Teruggi, an Argentine sociologist and main chronicler of Venezuelan politics, told Grayzone. "It's the logic of a laboratory: Guaidó is like a 20

mixture of several elements that create a character that, in all honesty, provokes between laughter and concern."

members of the military to set up a military junta, but that eﬀort failed. According to the Venezuelan government, the United States also participated in a plot with the code name "Operation Constitution" to capture Maduro in the Miraﬂores presidential palace, and another called "Operation Armageddon" to assassinate him in the July 2017 military parade. A little more than a year later, the exiled opposition leaders tried to kill Maduro with drones during a military parade in Caracas.

Diego Sequera, Venezuelan journalist and writer of the research agency, Misión Verdad, agreed: "Guaidó is more popular outside Venezuela than in the interior, especially in the elite circles of the Ivy League and Washington," Sequera commented. Grayzone: "He's a well-known character there, he's predictably right-wing and he's considered loyal to the program." While Guaidó is sold today as the face of democratic restoration, he spent his career in the most violent faction of the most radical opposition party in Venezuela, positioning himself at the forefront of one destabilization campaign after another. His party has been widely discredited within Venezuela and is partly responsible for fragmenting a very weak opposition.

More than a decade before these intrigues, a group of students of the right-wing opposition was personally selected and prepared by an academy to train the elites in the change of regimes ﬁnanced by the United States to overthrow the government of Venezuela and restore the neoliberal order .

Training provided by "the group 'export a revolution' that sowed the seeds for several revolutions of color"

"These radical leaders have no more than 20 percent in opinion polls," wrote Luis Vicente León, Venezuela's top pollster. According to Leon, the party of Guaidó remains isolated because the majority of the population "does not want war." "What they want is a solution."

On October 5, 2005, with the popularity of Chávez at its height and his government planning socialist programs, ﬁve Venezuelan "student leaders" arrived in Belgrade, Serbia, to begin training for an insurrection.

But this is precisely the reason why Guaidó was selected by Washington: he is not expected to lead Venezuela towards democracy, but to collapse a country that has been a bastion of resistance to US hegemony for the past two decades. His unlikely rise marks the culmination of a two-decade project to destroy a robust socialist experiment.

The students had arrived from Venezuela courtesy of the Center for Action and Non-Violent Applied Strategies (CANVAS). This group is financed in large part through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), an appendix of the CIA that functions as the main arm of the United States government to promote changes in governments; and by affiliates such as the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. According to internal leaked emails from Stratfor, an intelligence firm known as "the CIA in the shadows," "[CANVAS] may also have received financing and training from the CIA during the fight against Milosevic during 1999/2000 "

Pointing to the "troika of tyranny" Since the election of Hugo Chávez in 1998, the United States has fought to reestablish control over Venezuela and its vast oil reserves. Chávez's socialist programs may have redistributed the country's wealth and helped lift millions of people out of poverty, but they also placed a goal on his back. In 2002, the Venezuelan right-wing opposition brieﬂy overthrew him with the support and recognition of the United States before the Army reestablished its presidency after a massive popular mobilization. Throughout the administrations of the presidents of the United States, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Chávez survived numerous assassination plans before succumbing to cancer in 2013. His successor, Nicolás Maduro, survived three attempts on his life. The Trump government immediately elevated Venezuela to the top of Washington's list of regime change goals, calling it the leader of a "troika of tyranny." Last year, Trump's national security team tried to recruit

CANVAS is a split of Otpor, a Serbian opposition group founded by Srdja Popovic in 1998 at the University of Belgrade. Otpor, which means "resistance" in Serbian, was the student group that gained international fame and promotion at the Hollywood level, by propitiating the protests that eventually overthrew Slobodan Milosevic. This small cell of regime change specialists operated according to the theories of the late Gene Sharp, the so-called "Clausewitz of nonviolent struggle". Sharp had worked with Colonel Robert Helvey, a former analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency, to devise the strategic plan for a hybrid form of warfare, gave weapons to the protest and targeted the states that resisted the unipolar domination of Washington.

Program at George Washington University under the tutelage of Venezuelan economist Luis Enrique Berrizbeitia, one of the leading neoliberal economists in Latin America. Berrizbeitia is a former executive director of the International Monetary Fund and spent more than a decade working in the Venezuelan energy sector at the time of the old oligarchic regime that Chávez eliminated.

Otpor received support from the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID and the Albert Einstein Institute of Sharp. Sinisa Sikman, one of Otpor's main trainers, once said that the group even received direct funding from the CIA. According to a leaked email from a Stratfor employee, after taking Milosevic out of power, "the children who ran OTPOR grew up, bought suits and designed CANVAS ... or, in other words, a group" export a revolution "" that sowed the seeds for several revolutions of color, they are still dependent on US funding and, basically, they go around the world trying to overthrow dictators and autocratic governments (those who do not like the United States). "

That year, Guaidó helped lead anti-government rallies after the Venezuelan government refused to renew the license of Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV). This private station played an important role in the 2002 coup against Hugo Chávez. RCTV helped mobilize anti-government protesters, falsiﬁed information that blamed government supporters for acts of violence carried out by members of the opposition, and banned pro-government reports in the midst of the coup. The role of RCTV and other stations owned by the oligarchs in the conduct of the failed coup attempt was described in the acclaimed documentary, "The revolution will not be televised."

That same year, the students claimed the credit for obstructing Chávez's constitutional referenGuaidó comes from the student movement of 2007 formed with the advice of members of Otpor, who was in dum for a "socialism of the 21st charge of the overthrow of Serbian President Slodoban Milošević century" that promised "to establish the legal framework for the political and social reorganization of the Stratfor revealed that CANVAS "turned its attention to country, granting direct power to the organized Venezuela" in 2005 after training opposition movecommunities as a requirement prior to the developments that led the regime change operations in favor ment of a new economic system ". of NATO in Eastern Europe. From the protests around RCTV and the referendum, a specialized cadre of activists was born to change regimes backed by the United States. They called themselves "Generación 2007."

By monitoring the CANVAS training program, Stratfor described his insurrectionary agenda in strikingly forceful language: "Success is not guaranteed, and student movements are just the beginning of what could be a multi-year eﬀort to unleash a revolution in Venezuela. , but the trainers themselves are the people who make fun of the "butcher of the Balkans." They have insane skills When you see students in ﬁve Venezuelan universities perform simultaneous demonstrations, you will know that the training has ended and that the real work has begun.

The birth of the "Generation 2007" cadres for the change of regimes

The trainers of Stratfor and CANVAS of this cell identiﬁed Guaidó's ally, a street organizer called Yon Goicoechea, as a "key factor" in defeating the constitutional referendum. The following year, Goicochea was rewarded for his eﬀorts with the Milton Friedman Prize for Promoting the Freedom of the Cato Institute, along with a prize of US $ 500,000, which quickly invested in the promotion of his own political network "Primero Justicia".

The "real work" began two years later, in 2007, when Guaidó graduated from the Andrés Bello Catholic University in Caracas. He moved to Washington DC to enroll in the Governance and Political Management

Friedman, of course, was the godfather of the notorious Chicago Boys neoliberals who were imported into Chile by the dictatorial junta leader Augusto Pinochet

cultivated. The so-called "Popular Will" was led by Leopoldo López, a rightist educated in Princeton, who actively participated in the programs of the National Endowment for Democracy, who was elected mayor of a district in Caracas and who was one of the richest in the country. López was a portrait of the Venezuelan aristocracy, directly descended from the ﬁrst president of his country. He is also the ﬁrst cousin of Thor Halvorssen, founder of the Human Rights Foundation, based in the United States, which operates as a de facto advertising store for anti-government activists backed by the United States in countries selected by Washington for the change of government.

to implement radical policies of fiscal austerity type "shock doctrine". And the Cato Institute is the group of libertarian experts based in Washington DC founded by the Koch brothers, two of the main donors of the Republican Party who have become aggressive advocates of the right throughout Latin America. Wikileaks published a 2007 email from the US ambassador to Venezuela, William Brownfield, sent to the State Department, the National Security Council and the Southern Command Defense Department, praising "2007 Generation" for having "forced the Venezuelan president , accustomed to setting the political agenda, to (over) reacting. "Among the" emerging leaders "that Brownfield identified were Freddy Guevara and Yon Goicoechea, the latter was applauded as" one of the most articulate defenders of civil liberties among the students".

While Lopez's interests aligned perfectly with those of Washington, the diplomatic cables of the United States published by Wikileaks highlighted the fanatical tendencies of Popular Will that would ultimately lead to their marginalization. A wire identified Lopez as "a divisive figure within the opposition often described as arrogant, vengeful and hungry for power." Others highlighted their obsession with street confrontations and their "inflexible approach" as a source of tension with other opposition leaders who gave priority to unity and participation in the democratic institutions of the country.

With a large amount of money from the libertarian oligarchs and the soft power teams of the United States government, the radical Venezuelan cadre took Otpor's tactics to the streets, along with a version of the group's logo, as seen below. :

"Galvanizing public unrest to take advantage of the situation and turn it against Chávez"

By 2010, Voluntad Popular and its foreign supporters moved to exploit the worst drought that hit Venezuela in decades. The great shortage of electricity had hit the country due to the shortage of water, which was necessary to power hydroelectric plants. A global economic recession and the decline in oil prices aggravated the crisis, which caused public discontent.

In 2009, the young activists of the Generation 2007 organized their most provocative demonstration so far, removed their pants on public roads and used the scandalous theater guerrilla tactics described by Gene Sharp in the regime change manuals. The demonstrators had mobilized against the arrest of an ally of another youth group called JAVU. This far-right group "raised funds from various sources in the US government, which allowed it to gain notoriety quickly as the hard-line wing of the opposition street movements," according to the book by academic George Ciccariello-Maher , "Building the commune".

Stratfor and CANVAS, key advisers to Guaidó and his anti-government team, devised a surprisingly cynical plan to introduce a dagger through the heart of the Bolivarian revolution. The scheme depended on a collapse of 70% of the country's electricity system in April 2010.

While the protest video is not available, many Venezuelans have identiﬁed Guaidó as one of its key participants. While the accusation is not conﬁrmed, it is certainly plausible; the naked buttocks protesters were members of the inner core of the 2007 Generation to which Guaidó belonged, and they were dressed in their trademark, the Resistance Venezuela T-shirts, as seen below:

"This could be the decisive event, since Chávez can not do much to protect the poor from the failure of that system," said the internal memo of Stratfor. "This would probably have the impact of galvanizing public instability in a way that no opposition group could generate, at which point an opposition group would be the best to take advantage of the situation according to their needs and turn it against Chávez."

Is this the ass that Trump wants to install in the seat of power in Venezuela? That year, Guaidó was exposed to the public in another way, founding a political party to capture the anti-Chávez energy that his 2007 Generation had

At this point, the Venezuelan opposition received US $ 40-50 million a year from government organizations such as USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy, according to a report by the Spanish think tank, the FRIDE Institute. He also had a wealth of

wealth in his own accounts, which were mostly outside the country.

records showed that the emails that were allegedly his were never transmitted.

Although the scenario foreseen by Stratfor did not come to fruition, the activists of the Popular Will Party and its allies discarded any pretension of nonviolence and joined a radical plan to destabilize the country.

However, today Burelli does not hide his desire to see the current president of Venezuela, Nicolás. Mature, deposed and even dragged through the streets and sodomized with a bayonet, as happened with the Libyan leader Moammar Gaddaﬁ in the hands of NATO-backed militiamen.

Towards violent destabilization In November 2010, according to emails obtained by the Venezuelan security services and presented by former Justice Minister Miguel Rodríguez Torres, Guaidó, Goicoechea and several other student activists attended a ﬁve-day secret training at the Fiesta Mexicana hotel in Mexico City. Mexico City. The sessions were led by Otpor, the trainers for changes of governments based in Belgrade backed by the government of the United States. Reportedly, the meeting received the blessing of Otto Reich, an exiled anti-Castro fanatic who works in the State Department of George W. Bush, and former Colombian right-wing President Álvaro Uribe.

The alleged plot of Fiesta Mexicana flowed into another plan of destabilization revealed in a series of documents produced by the Venezuelan government. In May 2014, Caracas published documents detailing a murder plan against President Nicolás. Mature. The leaks identified María Corina Machado, based in Miami, as the leader of the plan. Hard-liner and with a penchant for extreme rhetoric, Machado visited President George W. Bush in 2005, functioning as well as an international liaison for the opposition. "I think it's time to gather efforts; make the necessary calls and obtain financing to annihilate Maduro and the rest will collapse, "Machado wrote in an email to former Venezuelan diplomat Diego Arria in 2014. In another email, Machado affirmed that the violent plan was blessed by the United States Ambassador in Colombia, Kevin Whitaker. "I have already decided and this struggle will continue until this regime is overthrown and we meet our friends in the world, if I went to San Cristóbal and I went to the OAS, I do not fear anything." Kevin Whitaker has already reconfirmed his support and pointed out the new We have a stronger checkbook than the regime to break the circle of international security. "

At the Fiesta Mexicana hotel, according to e-mails, Guaidó and his fellow activists devised a plan to overthrow President Hugo Chávez, generating chaos through prolonged spasms of street violence. Three ﬁgures from the oil industry - Gustavo Tovar Arroyo, Eligio Cedeño and Pedro Burelli - allegedly paid the US $ 52,000 bill required to hold the meeting. Torrar is a self-styled "human rights activist" and "intellectual" whose younger brother, Reynaldo Tovar Arroyo, is the representative in Venezuela of "Petroquímica del Golfo", a private Mexican oil and gas company that has a contract with the Venezuelan State.

Guaidó goes to the barricades In February, student protesters, acting as shock troops of the exiled oligarchy, erected violent barricades across the country, turning the opposition-controlled barracks into violent forts known as guarimbas. While the international media described the agitation as a spontaneous protest against the Maduro government, there was ample evidence that the Partido Voluntad Popular was orchestrating the program.

Cedeño, on the other hand, is a fugitive Venezuelan businessman who applied for asylum in the United States, and Pedro Burelli, former JP Morgan executive and former director of Venezuela's national oil company (PDVSA). He left PDVSA in 1998 when Hugo Chávez took power and is on the advisory committee of the Leadership Program for Latin America at Georgetown University. Burelli insisted that the emails detailing his participation had been fabricated and even hired a private investigator to prove it. The researcher stated that Google

"None of the protesters in the universities wore their university shirts, everyone wore t-shirts of Popular Will or Justice First," said one participant of the guarimba at that time. "They could have been student groups, but the student councils are aﬃliated with the opposition political parties and are accountable to them." When asked who the leaders were, a Guarimba participant said, "Well, if I'm totally honest, those guys are now legislators."

tours with Human Rights Watch, Freedom House (an organization backed by the US government), the Congress of Spain and the European Parliament.

Around 43 died during the 2014 guarimbas. Three years later, they burst again, causing the massive destruction of public infrastructure, the assassination of government supporters and the death of 126 people, many of whom were Chavistas. In several cases, government supporters were burned alive by armed gangs.

Carlos Graﬀe, another member of the 2007 Generation trained in Otpor and who directed Voluntad Popular, was arrested in July 2017. According to the police, he was in possession of a bag full of nails, C4 explosives and a detonator. He was released on December 27, 2017.

Guaidó was directly involved in the 2014 guarimbas. In fact, he tweeted a video in which he showed himself wearing a helmet and a gas mask, surrounded by masked and armed elements that had closed a road that was involved in a violent confrontation with the police. Alluding to his participation in the 2007 Generation, he proclaimed: "I remember that in 2007, we proclaimed: 'Students!' Now, we shout, 'Resistance! Resistance!' "

Leopoldo López, the popular leader of Voluntad Popular, is currently under house arrest, accused of having a key role in the deaths of 13 people during the guarimbas in 2014. Amnesty International praised López as a "prisoner of conscience" and criticized his transfer from prison to home as "not good enough". Meanwhile, the relatives of the guarimba victims ﬁled a lawsuit with more charges against López.

Guaidó eliminated the tweet, demonstrating an apparent concern for his image as a defender of democracy On February 12, 2014, during the apogee of the guarimbas of that year, Guaidó joined López on stage at a rally of Voluntad Popular and Primero Justicia. During a long tirade against the government, Lopez urged the crowd to march to the office of attorney general Luisa Ortega Díaz. Soon after, Díaz's office was attacked by armed gangs who tried to set it on fire. She denounced what she called "planned and premeditated violence."

Yon Goicoechea, the posterboy of the Koch brothers and founder of Primero Justicia, an organization backed by the United States, was arrested in 2016 by security forces who claimed to have found a kilo of explosives in their vehicle. In a New York Times opinion piece, Goicoechea protested the charges he said were "falsiﬁed" and claimed that he had been imprisoned simply for his "dream of a democratic society, free of communism." He was released in November 2017.

In a television appearance in 2016, Guaidó described as a myth the deaths caused by the guayas, a tactic of the guarimba that involves stretching a steel cable across a road to injure or kill motorcyclists. His comments bleached a deadly tactic that had killed unarmed civilians like Santiago Pedroza and beheaded a man named Elvis Durán, among many others. This insensitive disregard for human life deﬁnes his Popular Will Party in the eyes of much of the public, including many opponents of Maduro.

David Smolansky, another member of the 2007 Generation trained by Otpor 2007, became the youngest mayor of Venezuela when he was elected in 2013 in the aﬄuent suburb of El Hatillo. But he was stripped of his job and sentenced to 15 months in prison by the Supreme Court after he was found guilty of shaking the violent guarimbas. When facing the possibility of being arrested, Smolansky shaved his beard, put on sunglasses and slipped into Brazil disguised as a priest with a bible in his hand and a rosary around his neck. He now lives in Washington DC, where he was elected by the Secretary of the Organization of American States, Luis Almagro, to lead the working group on the crisis of Venezuelan migrants and refugees.

Ending the popular will As violence and political polarization intensiﬁed throughout the country, the government began to act against the leaders of Voluntad Popular who helped nurture it. Freddy Guevara, the Vice President of the National Assembly and the second in command of Voluntad Popular, was the main leader in the street riots of 2017. Since he faces a trial for his role in the violence, Guevara took refuge in the Chilean embassy, where remains still. Lester Toledo, a legislator of Popular Will of the State of Zulia, was wanted by the Venezuelan government in September 2016 on charges of ﬁnancing terrorism and planning murders. It was said that the plans were made with the former Colombian president, Álvaro Uribe. Toledo escaped from Venezuela and made several

On July 26, Smolansky held what he called a "cordial meeting" with Elliot Abrams, the condemned convict of the Iran-Contras case who was named by Trump as the special envoy of the United States to Venezuela. Abrams is known for overseeing the covert US policy related to arming death squads and right-wing during the 1980s in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala. His leading role in the Venezuelan coup has stoked fears that another bloody war might be brewing.

Four days earlier, Machado resounded another violent threat against Maduro, declaring that if he "wants to save his life, he must understand that his time is over".

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met personally with Guaidó on January 10, according to the Wall Street Journal. However, Pompeo could not pronounce the name of Guaidó when he mentioned it at a press conference on January 25, referring to him as "Juan Guido".

A pawn in his game The collapse of Voluntad Popular, caused by the weight of the violent campaign of destabilization that it carried out, alienated it from many sectors of the public and ended up with a large part of its leadership in exile or in custody. Guaidó remained a relatively minor ﬁgure, having spent most of his nine-year career in the National Assembly as an alternate deputy. Coming from one of the least populated states in Venezuela, Guaidó took second place during the 2015 parliamentary elections, obtaining only 26% of the required votes to secure him a place in the National Assembly. In fact, your buttocks may have been better known than your face.

By January 11, Guaidó's Wikipedia page had been edited 37 times, highlighting the struggle to shape the image of an anonymous figure that was now a picture for Washington's ambitions related to a change of government. In the end, the editorial supervision of his page was delivered to the elite of the "librarians" council of Wikipedia, who declared him president of Venezuela "in dispute". Guaidó may have been a dark figure, but his combination of radicalism and opportunism met Washington's needs. "That internal piece was missing," a member of Trump's government said of Guaidó. "It was the piece we needed to make our strategy coherent and complete." "For the first time," Brownfield, the former US ambassador to Venezuela, addressed the New York Times, "You have an opposition leader who is clearly pointing out that he wants to keep the armed forces and the police on the side of the angels and the good guys. "

Guaidó is known as the president of the National Assembly dominated by the opposition, but was never elected to the post. The four opposition parties that made up the Democratic Unity Table of the Assembly had decided to establish a rotating presidency. The turn of Popular Will was on the way, but its founder, Lopez, was under house arrest. Meanwhile, his second in command, Guevara, had taken refuge in the Chilean embassy. A character named Juan Andrés Mejía would have been next on the line but, for reasons that are only now clear, Juan Guaidó was selected.

But the Partido Voluntad Popular de Guaidó formed the shock troops of the guarimbas that caused the death of policemen and ordinary citizens alike. He had even boasted of his own participation in street riots. And now, to conquer the hearts and minds of the military and the police, Guaidó had to erase this history soaked with blood.

"There is a class reasoning that explains the rise of Guaidó," observed Sequera, the Venezuelan analyst. "Mejía is from the upper class, he studied at one of the most expensive private universities in Venezuela and could not easily be sold to the public in the way he could do with Guaidó. On the one hand, Guaidó has common mestizo characteristics like most Venezuelans and seems more like a man of the people. Also, I had not been overexposed in the media, so it could become almost anything. "

On January 21, a day before the coup began, Guaidó's wife sent a video address asking the military to rise up against Maduro. Her performance lacked enthusiasm and inspiration, underscoring her husband's limited political perspectives. Four days later, at a press conference with supporters, Guaidó announced his solution to the crisis: "Authorize humanitarian intervention!"

In December 2018, Guaidó crossed the border and traveled to Washington, Colombia and Brazil to coordinate the plan to hold mass demonstrations during President Maduro's inauguration. The night before Maduro's swearing-in ceremony, Vice President Mike Pence and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland called on Guaidó to aﬃrm their support. A week later, Senator Marco Rubio, Senator Rick Scott and Representative Mario Díaz-Balart, all legislators from the lobby of exiled Cuban right-wingers in Florida, joined President Trump and Vice President Pence in the White House. At their request, Trump agreed that if Guaidó declared himself president, he would back him.

While waiting for direct assistance, Guaidó remains what it has always been: the favorite project of external cynical forces. "It does not matter if he crashes and burns after all these misadventures," Sequera said of the coup ﬁgure, "for the Americans, it is dispensable. www.misionverdad.com

Will Venezuela pass on what Chávez denounced in Libya? Before and during the international aggression that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Gulf Cooperation Council (CCG) unleashed against Libya, President Hugo Chávez made different assessments warning about the particularities of that process. In one of his interventions he commented the surprise of Muamar al-Gadaffi to the betrayal of leaders who claimed to be his friends, focused his reflection on both the voracity of oil in the United States (5% of the population that consumes 20% of world production ) as in the dictatorship of the dollar.

Freeze funds and peaceful protesters He also alluded to the alleged freezing of "Gadaffi's accounts", noting that it was actually a looting of Libya's accounts, close to 200 billion dollars, the equivalent of 4 years of oil production in the country. In addition to fossil fuel, Libya's finances, economy and natural resources were always tempting prizes for the United States and its allies. Chávez wondered about the fate of the Libyan international reserves affirming that the underlying motivation of the destruction of that country was the attempt to refloat, in full collapse, on the part of capitalism. So clear is such a claim that Libyan funds were "frozen" in the coffers of financial actors such as Goldman Sachs, Société Générale SA, Carlyle Group, JP Morgan Chase, Och-Ziff Capital Management Group and Lehman Brothers Holdings, almost all responsible for the 2008 financial bubble.

On another occasion, already convalescing, the leader of the Bolivarian Revolution reﬂected on the role of the global media industry in the face of the war then unleashed in the same country in which a media operation was carried out focused on turning armed terrorist groups into "rebels" or "protesters". He also referred to how groups exercising the destabilizing role were supported by a cycle of self-powered information between mass media and human rights NGOs for the narrative construction of a "failed state". The so-called "peaceful civil protesters" became an excuse for military intervention; they were armed, and when this became more than evident, they began to present themselves as "rebel forces." It is also known the media campaign that unleashed against Gadaﬃ, calling him a murderer for facing the actions of those mercenary groups that seized entire territories and fragmented the country. Before these accusations, Chávez declared with caution not to validate the story of those who accused him of ordering the killing of demonstrators in April 2002 during the coup led by Washington, and asked in a presidential chain: "Who condemns United States for more than 1 million innocent deaths in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in the entire world? "

Objective: Africa In addition to pointing out the interest in oil and water reserves, the leader of the Bolivarian Revolution said that the geopolitical interest in the destruction of Libya had to do with the task he was doing for the "unity of 27

Africa", by supporting the poorest countries of that continent. While the appropriation of Libya's ﬁnancial and material wealth were objectives of the NATO war in 2011, the broader objectives of the criminal war were part of the struggle to control the rest of the African continent and its vast wealth.

and then turned over to the United Nations Security Council in New York City, served as the basis for the war against Libya. These lies were accepted without any investigation initiated by the United Nations or by any other international organization. Any Libyan request from international investigation teams was ignored.

Fundamental and strategic was to stop the project and the ambitions of Gadaﬃ to unify the African continent under the leadership of Libya, whose development and political project meant a barrier to the recolonization of the African continent. Only in the case of water: huge multinationals, including American and French, sought to privatize their fresh water and control the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System that would underpin the development of neighbors such as Chad, Egypt and Sudan.

It was from this point forward that NATO used the UN Security Council to launch its war of aggression against Libya on the pretext of protecting civilians and enforcing a no-ﬂy zone over the Arab country. Although it was not oﬃcially accepted by the United Nations Security Council, the doctrine of "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P) was being shown as a new paradigm for NATO's military intervention. Actors of the so-called Deep State such as Elliott Abrams, or the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), aligned themselves with other "neocons" to reduce Libya to a weak and divided African protectorate.

To implement its plan, Washington first encouraged a conflict using the countries around Libya to seek a casus belli for military action, while addressing the logistical needs of the CIA-controlled opposition groups that launched a campaign of sabotage against the economy, infrastructure and government. It also talks about how sectors of government, security and intelligence of Libya were infiltrated, and the imperialist objectives of Washington, London, Paris and Rome existed since the Second World War, which sought to divide Libya into three colonial territories. On the other hand, in this context it is important to remember that Chávez and Gadaffi were the architects of the South America-Africa Summit (ASA), whose first meeting was held on the Island of Margarita during 2010, one before the invasion to Libya.

Diplomacy of the deep state: Lie and betrayal Nowadays it is known that the victims of those events were presented as the aggressors in the conflict while the forces of the Transitional Council, inflated by mercenaries and foreign fighters, tortured, raped and killed civilians and those who stood in their way with the help of the bombings of NATO and the CCG. Journalists acted as informants for targets and checkpoints, "human rights" organizations were part of a network that justified the aggression by spreading lies about the mercenaries, the supposed attacks of Libyan military planes against civilians and massacres of civilians committed by the "regime "of Gadaffi, as it was reflected with the assembly of an attack on the Green Square in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, by the Qatari Al Jazeera network.

It should be noted that, a few years before his persecution and assassination, Gadaffi had favored a rapprochement of Libya with the United States and the European Union, so it was unthinkable that Washington and any of its allies could have been preparing to overthrow the Libyan government when the commercial links between Libya and the United States, Great Britain, Italy, France, Spain and Turkey (then a Western ally) had flourished since 2003. Analysts speak of the core role of the Libyan leader in reducing migration across the Mediterranean that has claimed so many deaths since 2012 from Africans seeking the "European dream". In this sense, the work of Gadaffi favored the migratory demands of the European Union today impacted in all its health and education systems, among others, by the flood of African immigrants.

What Chavez saw coming From that context in which he saw similar aggressions against Venezuela, Comandante Chávez pointed out many of the events that have taken place both in recent years and in the most recent days. He highlighted at all times the role of Venezuela in the union of Latin America and the Caribbean through spaces of programmatic coincidence such as ALBA-TCP, or others where the conﬂuence is broader such as Unasur and Celac.

In this context, Chávez aﬃrmed in a Council of Ministers that the formation of a Transitional Council in Libya, recognized by the United States and European countries, destroyed the foundations of International Law. "This is very dangerous, as I told other presidents, because tomorrow we can be one of us," the This network of lies that was presented to the Human Commander emphasized at the time. Rights Council at the United Nations Oﬃce in Geneva, 28

Today that presage seems as real as possible, and responds to an intervention model, projected as in Libya, to destroy a pivot of regional integration such as Venezuela. Necessary as with GadaďŹ&#x192;, it is that Chavism falls so that the United States can consolidate its attempt to recolonize the continent.

Responsible, on the other hand, is to point out the diďŹ&#x20AC;erences that exist between both contexts and the unfavorable balance to the United States in the global geopolitical terrain. What does not make this threat less credible, but does mark a distance between the possibility of realization of this type of plans in Venezuela. www.misionverdad.com

An open letter to the People of the United States “If I know anything, it is about people, such as you, I am a man of the people. I was born and raised in a poor neighborhood of Caracas. I forged myself in the heat of popular and union struggles in a Venezuela submerged in exclusion and inequality. I am not a tycoon, I am a worker of reason and heart, today I have the great privilege of presiding over the new Venezuela, rooted in a model of inclusive development and social equality, which was forged by Commander Hugo Chávez since 1998 inspired by the Bolivarian legacy. We live today a historical trance. There are days that will define the future of our countries between war and peace. Your national representatives of Washington want to bring to their borders the same hatred that they planted in Vietnam. They want to invade and intervene in Venezuela – they say, as they said then – in the name of democracy and freedom. But it’s not like that. The history of the usurpation of power in Venezuela is as false as the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It is a false case, but it can have dramatic consequences for our entire region. Venezuela is a country that, by virtue of its 1999 Constitution, has broadly expanded the participatory and protagonist democracy of the people, and that is unprecedented today, as one of the countries with the largest number of electoral processes in its last 20 years. You might not like our ideology or our appearance, but we exist and we are millions. I address these words to the people of the United States of America to warn of the gravity and danger that intend some sectors in the White House to invade Venezuela with unpredictable consequences for my country and for the entire American region. President Donald Trump also intends to disturb noble dialogue initiatives promoted by Uruguay and Mexico with the support of CARICOM for a peaceful solution and dialogue in favor of Venezuela. We know that for the good of Venezuela we have to sit down and talk because to refuse to dialogue is to choose strength as a way. Keep in mind the words of John F. Kennedy: “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate”. Are those who do not want to dialogue afraid of the truth? 30

The political intolerance towards the Venezuelan Bolivarian model and the desires for our immense oil resources, minerals, and other great riches, has prompted an international coalition headed by the US government to commit the serious insanity of militarily attacking Venezuela under the false excuse of a non-existent humanitarian crisis. The people of Venezuela have suffered painfully social wounds caused by a criminal commercial and financial blockade, which has been aggravated by the dispossession and robbery of our financial resources and assets in countries aligned with this demented onslaught. And yet, thanks to a new system of social protection, of direct attention to the most vulnerable sectors, we proudly continue to be a country with high human development index and lower inequality in the Americas. The American people must know that this complex multiform aggression is carried out with total impunity and in clear violation of the Charter of the United Nations, which expressly outlaws the threat or use of force, among other principles and purposes for the sake of peace and the friendly relations between the Nations. We want to continue being business partners of the people of the United States, as we have been throughout our history. Their politicians in Washington, on the other hand, are willing to send their sons and daughters to die in an absurd war, instead of respecting the sacred right of the Venezuelan people to self-determination and safeguarding their sovereignty. Like you, people of the United States, we Venezuelans are patriots. And we shall defend our homeland with all the pieces of our soul. Today Venezuela is united in a single clamor: we demand the cessation of the aggression that seeks to suffocate our economy and socially suffocate our people, as well as the cessation of the serious and dangerous threats of military intervention against Venezuela. We appeal to the good soul of the American society, a victim of its own leaders, to join our call for peace, let us be all one people against warmongering and war. Long live the peoples of America! NicolĂĄs Maduro President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuelaâ&#x20AC;? www.mppre.gob.ve

"Humanitarian aid" as a tool to destroy countries In a context where the discourse of "humanitarian aid" is announced as an operation to be carried out in Venezuela by the United States, we republished the present investigation of the end of 2017, in order to keep it fresh in our memory the chronicle of what happened in countries of the Balkans, the Horn of Africa and the Levant, after "humanitarian" operations with a visibly destructive character were applied. To serve the history of other peoples as a mirror to what happened and what might happen if Washington decided to invade Venezuelan territory by military force, because the disasters that have resulted from such "aid" have greater negative consequences than anticipated. The House of Representatives of the United States Congress approved a "Humanitarian Assistance Act" a few days ago. In theory with this legal instrument, still awaiting the approval of the Senate, seek to provide humanitarian assistance to the Venezuelan population in parallel that reinforces the financial blockade against the country by preventing the importation of food and medicine. Do we know the implications of "humanitarian aid" for the countries that have received their impacts and how profitable it is for those who traffic in it? Let's see three tragic cases.

The ex-Yugoslavia or how the US has an aircraft carrier on land After decades of dismantling by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, plus political strategies of Germany and the US, managed to dismantle the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (former Federal Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia), the last remnant of socialism in Europe , and recolonize the Balkans. Geopolitical and economic movements separated Croatia and Slovenia, generating a chain reaction in which Bosnia experienced a conﬂict of more than two sides: Serbs against Croats, Croats against Muslims, Serbs against Muslims, Serbs and Croats allied against Muslims, these at their once allies with the Serbs against the Croats, Muslims with Croats against Serbs.

In March 1999, NATO launched its 78-day air assault against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia without the approval of the Security Council, more than a thousand warplanes launched more than 2,000 airstrikes in almost 40,000 sorties, throwing more than 20 thousand bombs on the former Yugoslavia, killing thousands of civilians, men and women, as well as more than a thousand Yugoslav soldiers and police. It also used weapons considered criminal under international law, such as depleted uranium and cluster bombs, and only state-owned enterprises and factories, as well as state housing projects, water supplies, railroads, bridges, hospitals and schools, were bombarded. which has resulted in "privatization by bombing".

The "humanitarian" sanctions of the United Nations (UN) in 1992 to Yugoslavia economically isolated the country, at the time President Bill Clinton approved a plan of "humanitarian aid" to guarantee, supposedly, the operation of hospitals and basic services of the population. By then, with the plan underway, per capita income fell to $ 700 per year, unemployment increased to 60%, Serbian civilians endured a 37% increase in infectious deaths and their calorie consumption fell by 28%. The most amazing thing was that inﬂation, as a result of these sanctions, reached 363 quadrillion percent. While no sanctions were applied to Tudjman's Croatia that ethnically "cleansed" almost 200,000 Serbs through rapes, executions and bombings in the same period, and with the support of private military companies composed of American veterans.

The intention of Washington was to try to create an "Israel" in the Balkans, a vassal state that owes everything to them and that they can use as "aircraft carriers" in such a sensitive strategic region. With the construction in Kosovo of the Camp Bondsteel military base (the largest in Europe), it can hold up to 7,000 soldiers, it is equipped to monitor the entire Balkan territory and even the Black Sea and Turkey. That was the strategic objective of the sanctions and "humanitarian aid" promoted by the United States.

The disintegration of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia also provoked the unilateral proclamation of the Republic of Kosovo by the insurgents financed by the West in 1991. To face the pro-independence intentions of the Kosovar Albanians, the authorities of Belgrade (Serbia) resorted to the force, at the same time that they put an end to the status of autonomy that Kosovo enjoyed since 1974 within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Since 1996 there had been an escalation and military operations (ranging from the assassination, kidnapping, trafficking of white women, trafficking of organs, heroin) to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) had been intensifying, provoking Serbian reaction.

Iraq: from the weapons that there was not to the civil war In November 2001, after the attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York, the then president of the United States, George W. Bush, deﬁned Iraq as the strategic objective of the "War on Terrorism". His administration already had an attack plan against the nation and his Secretary of State, Colin Powell, coordinated the military invasion not without preparing an oiled media machine that propitiated the ground to initiate the chaos.

After a ﬁerce media campaign, Yugoslavia was accused of excessive and indiscriminate use of force, causing numerous victims and a large number of refugees; the Security Council approved, on September 23, 1998, resolution 1199, in which it aﬃrmed that the deterioration of the situation in Kosovo constituted a threat to the peace and security of the region. NATO launched, on October 13, 1998, an ultimatum to Yugoslavia to comply with these demands.

Bush Jr. justiﬁed the invasion with the argument that the then Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, had weapons of mass destruction, even though the intelligence corps such as the CIA and MI6 knew that there were no such weapons. An Iraqi defector declared that he had worked in the supervision of bacteriological weapons: nine years later, he admitted his lie to the BBC and justiﬁed it in his desire for Iraq to get rid of the Hussein regime.

Three days after the "uprising," the British media The Guardian quoted an Al Jazeera interview with "political activist" Amer Saad, who said: "Protesters in al-Bayda have been able to take control of the military air base in the They have executed 50 African mercenaries and two Libyan conspirators, and even today in Derna, several conspirators were executed, they were locked in cells of a police station because they resisted, and some died in ﬂames inside the building. "

In fact, the US invasion of Iraq was a military action to gain control of the Arab nation's oil resources and expand its geostrategic position in the Middle East, its "ﬁght against terrorism" operation resulted in a civil war.

NGOs such as the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) and the Libyan League for Human Rights (LLDH) claimed that Gaddaﬁ was killing his own people, called for the suspension of Libya from the UN Human Rights Council and urged the Council of Security of the UN to "review the situation and consider its referral to the International Criminal Court." According to the two NGOs, "the repression has caused the death of at least 300 to 400 people since February 15" and "the Libyan regime is apparently using mercenaries from Chad, Niger and Zimbabwe" (or will they have been Chavez collectives?) .

The invasion marked the beginning of turbulence in the Middle East, the fall and capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003 and his death on December 30, 2006. The number of attacks in the country increased seven times in the ﬁrst few three years, Al Qaeda being the group that took responsibility for the bloodiest. This gave way to the emergence of terrorist groups such as Daesh, which also expanded into Syria.

In collaboration with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), more than 70 NGOs echoed the need to suspend Libya from the Human Rights Council, in addition to urging the Security Council to invoke the principle of "responsibility to protect" ( R2P) in the supposed beneﬁt of the Libyan people.

Almost 2.7 million Iraqis have been forced from their homes by agitation and violence, half were left outside Iraq, while others have ﬂed their homes but remained in the country.

Unless Gaddafi's government countered the accusations without evidence or demanded that they be presented, the Human Rights Council followed the recommendation and then the Security Council adopted resolutions 1970 and 1973, authorizing a no-fly zone for Libyan military aviation and Although article 2 of resolution 1973 emphasized the need to use diplomacy to find a peaceful solution, the bombing was not long in coming.

One study argues that war and occupation directly and indirectly claimed the lives of around half a million Iraqis from 2003 to 2011, and that violence peaked in 2006 and 2007. More than 60% of excess deaths men, women and children reported between 2003 and 2011 were the direct result of shootings, bombings, air strikes or other forms of violence. The rest was due to the collapse of the health system and the infrastructures that maintained drinking water, food, transport, waste management and energy.

After the Battle of Sirte, in which they assassinated Gaddafi, journalists and NGOs witnessed looting of homes, widespread torture and former officials, soldiers and civilians executed in figures exceeding 500 bodies.

Since the 1990s rations of ﬂour, rice, oil and sugar have been distributed within the framework of the Public Distribution System, as a way to help the poorest families to survive the war, in turn the USAID reports that between 2014 and 2017 The ﬁnancing of "humanitarian aid" for Iraq has been 1.7 billion dollars. A round business.

Between 2012 and 2015, Libya's GDP fell from 82 to 29 billion dollars. In 2008, three years before the NATO attack, it reached 87 billion dollars. Public debt increased from 3.7% in 2013 to 100% in 2017. Since NATO declared Libya "liberated" after the assassination of Gaddaﬁ in October 2011, the country has plunged into chaos, today it is a hotbed of Islamist brigades, including Daesh, rival governments and tribes compete for power and immigrants on their way to Europe are sold in open slave markets.

Libya, the chaos marks NATO The "humanitarian crisis" of Libya was declared in February 2011, after the beginning of alleged protests that in the end constituted a violent escalation similar to the Venezuelan guarimba, only that the use of conventional weapons was opened. 34

The NATO weapons directed against Libya ended up in the hands of terrorists linked to Al Qaeda. A Libyan rebel commander admitted in March 2011 that his ﬁghters had links to al Qaeda and that the White House was well aware (albeit "worried") that Qatar was sending weapons to jihadists inside Libya since the beginning of the war.

Phrases like those of the head of the committee, Ed Royce, who declared that "the international community, the regional leaders (...) must come together so that Maduro takes seriously the need to resolve this serious political and humanitarian crisis," are already common the cases that we present here, they have already done their tests in the United Nations.

A UN report says they have requested $ 165.6 million for humanitarian projects, but only 48.3 million (or 28%) of the projects have been financed, while the European Commission reports that it has allocated a total of 29.76 million. of euros in "humanitarian aid" to respond to the most urgent needs of internally displaced persons, returnees and other vulnerable groups in the areas affected by the conflict.

These are veiled threats to the stability of the country and the region in which there are enough accomplices to execute them. The project proposes to bring to the UN a resolution that obliges the Venezuelan State to accept "humanitarian aid", a movement similar to that applied to Iraq, Libya and the former Yugoslavia.

misionverdad.com

The humanitarian threat against Venezuela Now that the Foreign Aﬀairs Committee of the House of Representatives calls the Secretary of State and the USAID to "develop a strategy to provide humanitarian aid to the people of Venezuela," and that the MUD disappears in the middle of the show that they end up interpreting today ( they were but they were not), the US strategy is clear: take command and action in the disintegration of the Venezuelan State.

CRUDE OIL AND FALSE FLAG OPERATIONS government of a world power to cause the deaths of more than ﬁve thousand of its citizens by burying two planes in the buildings of a world ﬁnancial center, and another in the center of the US war machine without any apparent aim, alleging that it was "criminal minds that hate our country."

"We can conceive a world dominated by an invisible tyranny that uses forms of democratic government" Kenneth Boulding.

Since the last century and so far, the North American empire and its allies have bathed in blood the entire planet in its long, but sure final collapse. The financial crisis of 2008, the colossal American debt, the absolute loss of credibility of its leaders and the constant and desperate wars, have led the imperialist powers to the worst crimes. Since the bombing of the battleship Maine in Havana, an operation of false flag of the USA against Spain in 1898, where more than 200 sailors and officers died, pretext to enter the war of Cuban independence and appropriate Cuba and Puerto Rico. Add to these plans the accusations to the Syrian Government to use chemical weapons in Hama, Eastern Ghouta or Aleppo and the threats of the US government through the mouth of John Bolton, it was shown that the use of this dismal media weapon has been effective.

Similarly, the story points us to the propaganda minister of the Third Reich, Joseph Goebbels as the true author of the Reichstag fire in Berlin in 1933, perhaps the most spectacular and daring operation of false flag for the moment, where he accused a young communist This operation opened the doors to the reign of Hitler's terror and consequently granted full powers to Hitler, unleashing a fierce persecution against the German Communist Party, to outlaw it, persecute, imprison and assassinate its leaders and militants, as well as social democrats and Jews. In this way, a brutal and violent corporate government was consolidated that was preparing to turn all of Europe into a gigantic bonfire. That same year began the prelude to the so-called Shoah, i.e the extermination of Jews by the Nazis since 1938, with the so-called Kristallnacht, ie the Night of the Broken Glass, under the pretext of the murder of a German diplomat in Paris at the hands of a young Jewish man, which was another false flag action.

Already its promoters do not care whether the operation is credible or not. It is only a formality, an irrational pretext in order to justify the war action. Just remember the "weapons of mass destruction" of Saddam Hussein that were never found, but opened the way to the invasion of a country that left a million Iraqis dead, which would cause the schizophrenic mockery of Mrs. Hillary Clinton. Hans Blix, Swedish diplomat and senior UN oﬃcial, warned about: "... the ability of Anglo-American intelligence services to show false evidence ...". It should also be said that the French intellectual and founder of the Voltaire Network, Thierry Meyssan, states and documents in his book "The Great Impustment" that the attack on the Twin Towers in New York was a criminal operation framed in the false ﬂag action to start the intervention in Afghanistan.

Nor will forget that to start the invasion of Poland, Heinrich Himmler, head of the feared Schutzstaﬀel (SS), staged another false ﬂag action in 1939 with the attack on a radio station in Gleiwitz, on the border with Poland, executed by a group of Nazis but coined to the Poles and to begin World War II with a balance of 60 million dead. This monstrous fact, only comparable to that of the Twin Towers, for its homicidal brazenness, is enough to realize that Imperialism does not stop at details to conquer its criminal objectives.

It should be noted that the more absurd the false ﬂag, the more credible it will be for an audience intoxicated by the vulgarity and impoverishment of the conscience provoked by the media. It will then be implausible for a 36

Again, oil appears as the ignition point of the war, and the use of this terrorist practice. In June 1941, the "Operation Barbarossa" began. Hitler invades the USSR. Its objective was not only to destroy the ﬁrst proletarian state for the approval of the German militarist oligarchy, but the conquest of Stalingrad and the capture of the oil wells of the Caucasus. The Caspian

region contains enormous reserves of unexploited hydrocarbons at the moment, a large part located in the basin of the Caspian Sea itself, coveted by the big oil companies of the West. And it is right there, in Stalingrad, where the Nazi army suffers its worst defeat, and according to the French journalist and historian, Raymond Cartier in his book "World War II", Hitler loses the war. It is now when it becomes evident that oil is the privileged protagonist of wars, and of the use of state terrorism with fake flag operations as the favored weapon. The Argentine writer, Walter Graziano, in his book "Hitler won the war", argues that neither Kaiser Wilhelm II of Prussia, nor Hitler managed to break through to the Caucasus, but it was finally the German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who by recognizing the separation of Croatia and Slovenia of Yugoslavia took the first step to unleash the Balkan war and subsequent fragmentation of that country. Kohl, says Graziano, cleared the way to the rich oil wells of the Caucasus, a true Western target. Whether defeating the first socialist state in the world, the USSR, the supreme goal of Nazi-fascism, as Cartier maintains or building an oil pipeline in Afghanistan as Graziano says, the US and its allies use any dirty trickery to achieve their goals. An emblematic example was the so-called Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, in which the administration of US President Lyndon Johnson accused the North Vietnamese of torpedoing the USS Maddox ship in Tonkin Bay. This event, which never happened, was used as a pretext and allowed President Johnson to ask the US Congress for massive US intervention in the Vietnam War, whose real purpose was to avoid the already inexorable defeat of the Southern Army by the Vietcong's efforts. For the French journalist Thierry Meissand the bloody show of the Twin Towers in New York is the work of the arsonists of Washington, action that caused more than five thousand deaths, and that is considered the most daring and murderous false flag operation whose final background was the oil and the construction of an oil pipeline that would cross Afghanistan and Pakistan, the best and cheapest route to transport the fuel towards the markets of Southeast Asia and to the Persian Gulf through Iran. Therefore, the American oil company UNOCAL (Unocal Oil Corporation) has been identified as one of the main protagonists of this monumental maneuver. Even though the UN objected, who could stop that madness at the time? The US ignored the universal clamor to avoid war. This fierce war lasts until our days, however, the USA, convinced that it is lost, announced last year the increase of the war "to win it" according to President Trump, disregarding its electoral promises and serving the US Military Industrial Complex. Bloody wins In the same way, Afghanistan also has considerable gas and oil resources, as does Pakistan. President Bush launched his bombs on Afghanistan with the permission of Congress, whose false "objective" was the capture of Osama Bin Laden, alleged author of the attack in New York that, according to the false flag plan, was protected by the Afghan Taliban government . But in strict sense, Bush, coming as it is known of a prominent petroleum family, undertakes the unmerciful fire of that nation by order of the North American transnationals Chevrón, Exxon, and Arco; of Royal Dutch Shell, French Total Final Elf and British Petroleum. 37

On the other hand, with the persecution of Bin Laden, sinister character created by the CIA in the war against the USSR, the false fight against terrorism is consolidated that begins to bear its first fruits and is linked in this way with flag operations false with terrorism itself. As has been seen, these operations have never been used for charitable purposes, nor for "humanitarian aid" whatsoever, but to provoke the destruction of entire countries and generate significant bloodshed, almost always of innocent civilians.

It also shows that the US and its allies are not willing to abandon this terrorist practice that they consider as eﬀective as lethal. Which does not exempt us in Venezuela, that we are in the sights of the most perverse Empire in history. The latest events and the digniﬁed and explicit voice of Samuel Moncada, Representative of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in the UN, and Venezuelan Ambassador in the dying OAS, on September 6, 2018 in his Permanent Council, in response to the false accusations against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

In Venezuela, we have suffered serious threats since President Hugo Chávez broke into the Latin American political scene. Several attempts of assassination against the Commander and against President Nicolás Maduro were dismantled by the intelligence services of the Bolivarian country. The use of false flag operations can be illustrated with one of the most tragically famous, which occurred during the Coup of April 2002, when some snipers killed without mercy, indistinctly to revolutionaries and opponents, to blame the Government of Commander Chavez for the massacre and unleash the coup and possible US intervention whose ships sailed through the Caribbean. But they backfired because they were betrayed by the video of the generals-gorillas where they confessed "the massacre of the Chávez government", which had not happened yet.

In fact, the recent request in the Security Council to harden the aggression against Venezuela is a decisive step to understand that this is an interventionist increase that is becoming increasingly virulent, even if the military action is dismissed for the time being as inappropriate and complex for the US. But do not forget that dementia sometimes has no curb and as President Nicolas Maduro says, we must be alert all the time, even if imperialism, after so many defeats, has stepped back to consider the Coup d'Etat as a last option, counting with the sighing complicity of certain soldiers whose only result has been that some of them have lost their careers and others, who have entered the gangs of terrorists, are behind bars. Thus, the firm and unwavering stance of the National Armed Forces in defending the homeland and the revolutionary government, before and after the attempted assassination attempt of August 4th 2018, has unleashed a dangerous hysteria in US war circles to think that the upsurge of the unconventional war is coming upon us where the clandestine operations of false flags and selective assassinations will come to the fore. Preventing an attack of this nature and denouncing it in time as Russia has done in relation to the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian President and before the offensive in Idlib is an arduous and delicate task that the intelligence services of any nation that feel harassed by the Empire should have available a permanent surveillance and investigation team in order to avoid the use of this miserable and lethal weapon.

Later, former military oﬃcer José Antonio Colina along with Germán Varela and Raúl Díaz Peña, posing as Venezuelan revolutionaries, placed bombs in the diplomatic headquarters of Spain and Colombia in Caracas "in reprisal against both governments for having recognized the Carmona junta April 2002", with the intention of further complicating the already tense relations of both countries with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. On the other hand, the war in Syria and the attempt to accuse President Bashar Al-Assad of trying to use chemical weapons in Idlib, an oﬀensive that is practically a victory announced for Syria, is further proof that the US considers the world as a shortcut of sheep It does not matter to him but exhibit any pretext to unleash what John Bolton called "a blunt response", that is, bombs, against the Arab country to protect the last bastion of his terrorist pupils.

By Alfredo Lugo Venezuelan Intellectual. The opinions expressed in these articles are of the author and do not necessarily reﬂect the oﬃcial position of the Embassy

Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania will be among Africa’s most attractive investment destinations in 2019, according to a new study by South Africa’s Rand Merchant Bank (RMB). The RMB Investment Attractiveness index looks at countries’ economic and operating environments to assess their potential to attract investment.

East Africa among most attractive investment destinations in Africa

According to the report, Where to Invest in Africa 2019, Africa’s overall operating environment has improved only marginally since 2017 due to difficulties in getting financing, corruption, inadequate infrastructure and weak governance. In East Africa, the report ranks Kenya as the most attractive, attributed to the political reconciliation after the disputed 2017 presidential election and the country’s sustained consumer demand. Second placed Rwanda, rated one of Africa’s fastest growing economies, has more than doubled the efficiency of its business environment in less than a decade with the government investing heavily in domestic industries. In ranking Tanzania third in the region, the report cites government tax breaks, development of special economic zones, investment in public infrastructure and growth in the services sector as incentives for foreign investors. 39

In the larger Eastern Africa, South Sudan is the worst rated country to do business in on the continent, followed by the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi. South Sudan’s business environment has deteriorated the most, as its political instability prevents the economy from developing. A political peace deal in Juba notwithstanding, it will be a while before investor conﬁdence recovers to the post-Independence, pre-war levels. According to the report, Ethiopia, which is Africa’s fastest-growing economy, has successfully managed to nurture its comparative advantage, particularly in agriculture and manufacturing, and its demand for goods and services is rising signiﬁcantly given a market size of about 100 million people.

Most attractive destinations Continent-wide, Egypt has retained the top spot as the most attractive investment destination for the second year in a row, helped by its expanding consumer market, increasing availability of hard currency, exchange rate stability, a diversiﬁed economy and steady improvement in business environment, particularly investment-related legal reforms. It is followed by South Africa, Morocco and Ethiopia, with Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania in ﬁfth, sixth and seventh place respectively. Nigeria, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire complete the top 10 positions. Egypt, which is Africa’s largest recipient of foreign direct investment, has the largest consumer market in the Middle East and North Africa. “Egypt’s economic activity scoring continues to dominate that of South Africa, as the latter's growth forecasts and the size of its economy are inferior to Egypt’s. This has weighed down its investment scoring,” says the report.

Together, the three markets make up almost 50 percent of Africa’s estimated $7 trillion market. On a regional basis, in North Africa Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya dominate, contributing 37 per cent to Africa’s overall GDP.

Easiest business environment Mauritius has the easiest business environment in Africa followed by Rwanda, Botswana, South Africa and the Seychelles. The country's ease of doing business has been boosted by its developed infrastructure, healthy, well-educated workforce, the most eﬃcient goods market and strong institutions.

The top 20 best operating environments – core and alternative rankings. SOURCE | RMB According to the report, a pick-up in growth momentum in Africa and improving individual operating environments are key to attracting foreign investment to the continent. “And investors being even more discerning about which emerging and developing markets to invest in, exposes the urgent need for governments to prioritise competitiveness-enhancing business-environment reforms,” says the report. According to RMB, Africa’s growth momentum is expected to slow down — with only a modest pick-up from 3.9 per cent in 2018 to 4.1 per cent in 2019. It is argued that high debt levels and a slowdown in credit growth pose signiﬁcant risks to Africa’s growth outlook in the medium term.

www.theeastafrican.co.ke The opinions expressed in these articles are of the author and do not necessarily reﬂect the oﬃcial position of the Embassy

In 2018, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa were the three largest markets in Africa in terms of GDP, and they are expected to maintain these positions.

Why Is Venezuela a Key Geopolitical Target for The US? Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro denounced that the real objective of the United States behind imposing a new government in the South American nation is to appropriate the energy and mineral resources of this country. "They have the ambition for oil, gas and gold. We tell them: these riches are not yours, they are for the people of Venezuela and that's how it will be forever," Nicolas Maduro warned on Wednesday, Jan. 23, in the Venezuelan capital Caracas shortly after opposition lawmaker Juan Guaido illegally declared himself "interim president" and received support for his unconstitutional move from the U.S., Canada and other right-wing governments in the region. A deeper look into the reasons behind such right-wing ﬂood to support the parliamentary coup reveals that the objective behind such endorsement of an internationally illegal act is behind the publicly stated humanitarian reasons and in fact about robbing the country of its riches after two decades of progressive and sovereign policies by the Bolivarian government that limited Washington's access to such resources.

Oil According to the CIA World Factbook, as of Jan. 1, 2017, Venezuela had the largest proven oil reserve estimate of any country, including Saudi Arabia. As of November 2017, the South American nation had 300,900,000,000 barrels of proven reserves in the "Hugo Chávez" Orinoco Oil Belt. After the inauguration of Nicolas Maduro for a second term, Donald Trump government began to consider expanding its sanctions on Venezuelan crude to add pressure against the constitutional president.

Oil analysts have indicated that the objective, beyond preventing the sale of oil to China, is to ensure a stable source of oil to serve the U.S. market that is increasing and that its own current production can not supply. On Jan. 16, the U.S. Department of Energy revealed that its reserves decreased by 2.7 million barrels, reaching 437.1 million. In terms of proven gas reserves, Venezuela had 198.3 trillion cubic feet in 2017, according to the Ministry of Petroleum. The new proven reserves are distributed in 2.3 trillion cubic feet of the traditional areas of Maracaibo, Maturin, Barcelona, Cumana and Barinas, and 718.7 trillion that lie in the blocks of the Oil Belt.

Mining resources Venezuela has denounced the international campaign promoted by the United States against the Mining Arc where the reserves of gold, diamonds and other minerals such as coltan are concentrated. The campaign against the Mining Arc has sought to increase the levels of economic suffocation in Venezuela by presenting Venezuelan gold as a product of trafficking and corruption. In 2018 Venezuela advanced in the certification of more than 30 gold fields in the country, with which it aimed to establish itself "as the second largest gold reserve on the planet". 41

During 2018 and despite the sanctions, the South American nation received a 200 percent increase in its non-oil exports compared to 2017, mainly gold sold to Holland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United States, the United Kingdom and especially to Turkey. In the ﬁrst months of 2018, Venezuela exported 23.62 tons of gold to the Eurasian nation, valued at US$900 million.

From that moment a series of efforts began, in order to destabilize these governments. Soft coups against progressive presidents started, the first one against Chavez in 2002 which failed, then another against Honduras' Manuel Zelaya in 2010, followed by a parliamentary maneuver against Paraguay's Fernando Lugo, and partially ending with a parliamentary coup against Brazil's Dilma Rousseff in 2016.

By representing an alternative to oil and one of the largest proven gold reserves in the world, the U.S. has renewed its interest in appropriating this mineral and obstructing the commercial exchange that Venezuela maintains with Russia and Turkey in the Mining Arc.

These processes have been deﬁned as "lawfare", such as the current legal wrangling against Lula, to which we can add the more recent ones against Rafael Correa and Jorge Glas in Ecuador and a very similar process against Cristina Kirshner in Argentina.

As President Nicolas Maduro denounced Wednesday, Washington's real objective in Venezuela is to seize the immense natural and mineral resources of the South American nation.

The domino eﬀect rising of right-wing governments in Latin America, and defeating the "National Popular governments" continues in the region, and Venezuela is one of the last standing defenses, along with Bolivia, Nicaragua, Cuba, and El Salvador.

Political Beacon in Latin America In 1998, commander Hugo Chavez Frias had a pivotal electoral triumph that changed the fate of Latin America for around 20 years, from that time to this date, there have been up to 15 progressive democratically elected governments in the region. Commander Chavez and Nicolas Maduro first as foreign affairs minister and then as president have been crucial in the integrationist efforts in Latin American, guided by the ideals of Simon Bolivar of a united continent. With the cooperation of other countries and presidents such as Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Dilma Rousseff, Rafael Correa, Evo Morales, Nestor Kirchner, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Manuel Zelaya, Fernando Lugo, Daniel Ortega, Fidel Castro, Raul Castro, Venezuela pushed forward for the regional integration of the continent. During these years some bodies of regional integration bodies were created such as the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), The Union of South American Nation (UNASUR), The Bank of the South, the News Network teleSUR, and the Southern Common Market to enforce South American trade bloc (MERCOSUR), all organizations that sought to create a more unified and independent Latin American and the Caribbean community.

This is why a destabilization mediatic and a political and economic campaign has been unleashed against Venezuela, and all the "National Popular governments" of Latin America, for years. Defeating Venezuela, one of the ﬁrst progressive countries and governments in the region, is so important for the U.S. and the local right-wing oligarchies. It would be a defeat to progressivism in the region.

www.telesurtv.net

Lies about Venezuela

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The hybrid war that Venezuela is experiencing has had in the disinformation and media manipulation one of its main combat weapons. We read and listen to lies that analysts who have never been to Venezuela repeat so many times that they become a reality for public opinion:

relations with the government headed by Nicolás Maduro. Guaidó has the recognition of the same countries that on January 10 did not know Maduro: the United States and the Lima Group (except Mexico). Only Georgia (due to its territorial dispute with Russia), Australia and Israel have joined.

Venezuela has two presidents. Nothing is further from reality. The Venezuelan Constitution establishes in article 233 as the absolute lack of the president his death, resignation, dismissal decreed by the Supreme Court of Justice, or the physical or mental incapacity decreed by a medical board. Guaidó does not have any constitutional argument to proclaim himself president, since there is no absolute lack of the president, who took oath as established by the Constitution in his article 231: on January 10 and before the Supreme Court of Justice.

Guaidó is diﬀerent from violent opposition. Guaidó is a member of Voluntad Popular, a political party that ignored the presidential elections of 2013 and whose leader, Leopoldo López, is condemned for being the intellectual author of La salida, which promoted the guarimbas of 2014, with a balance of 43 dead and hundreds of injured people

Guaidó has the support of the international community. Beyond the hypocrisy of calling the West international community, on 10th January at the inauguration of Maduro there were diplomatic representations from more than 80 countries, from Russia to China, through the Vatican, the Arab League and the African Union. These countries

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The National Assembly is the only legitimate body. Article 348 of the Venezuelan Constitution authorizes the president to convene a Constituent Assembly, and Article 349 deﬁnes that the constituted powers (National Assembly) can not in any way impede the decisions of the Constituent Assembly. The decision to convene the Constituent Assembly was an act of astute chavismo to overcome the blockade of the National Assembly that may or may not like it, but was carried out with strict adherence to the Constitution.

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Maduro was re-elected fraudulently, in unopposed elections. The elections of May 20, 2018 were called by the same CNE with which Guaidó became a deputy. There were three opposition candidates who together took 33 percent of the votes and followed the rules agreed at the dialogue table held in the Dominican Republic between the Venezuelan government and the opposition, with the former Spanish president Zapatero as mediator. In Venezuela there is no democracy. Since 1998 there have been ﬁve presidential elections, four parliamentary elections, six regional elections, four municipal elections, four constitutional referendums, and one national consultation. 23 elections in 20 years. All with the same electoral system, considered the safest in the world by former US President Jimmy Carter. In Venezuela there is a humanitarian crisis. Without any doubt that in Venezuela there is now an economic crisis driven by the executive orders of Obama and Trump declaring Venezuela a danger to the national security of the United States, with sanctions that have prevented the purchase of food and medicine. This crisis has led to an economic migration that has been intended to disguise political exile, something that the data deny (between January and August 2018 the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance received 3 thousand 500 asylum seekers from Venezuela, for a total of 6 thousand 523 applications for refuge of Honduran citizens, almost double).

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In Venezuela, Human Rights are violated. Let's analyze the figures of the guarimbas of 2017: 131 people killed, 13 of which were shot by the security forces (made up of 40 members arrested and prosecuted); nine members of the different police and Bolivarian National Guard killed and five people burned alive or lynched by the opposition. The rest of the dead were mostly killed while manipulating explosives or trying to bypass opposition barricades. In Venezuela there is no freedom of expression. The images of these days of Guaidó giving statements surrounded by microphones of national and international media belie such claim. The international community is concerned about the state of democracy in Venezuela. The international community, represented by the United States and the Lima Group, is not concerned about the prisoners tortured in Guantanamo; he is not worried about the human rights defenders who are killed every day in Colombia; he is not worried about the caravans of migrants fleeing the doctrine of the neoliberal shock in Honduras, and he is not concerned about the relations of Bolsonaro's children with the paramilitary militias that murdered Marielle Franco. No, nobody judges the serious violations of human rights in those countries of the Lima Group and its ally the United States. What is hidden behind that concern is not called democracy.

By Katu Arkonada Expecialist political scientist in Latin America www.jornada.com.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Among the main objectives of the various imperial invasions and bombings, dismissing any chance for peaceful political solutions to internal conflicts that began in some African nations, were impeding the process of consolidating unity among African peoples, and consequently, undermining the progress of their union with Latin American and Caribbean peoples. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, neocolonial strategy has been to divide the world's most vulnerable nations, so as to subject them to an enslaving relationship of dependency. For that reason Venezuela was radically opposed to the foreign military intervention in Libya from the outset.â&#x20AC;?

Letter from Hugo Chavez to Africa 10 April, 2013

EDITORIAL TEAM: Jose Avila, Keyla Castillo, Milka Aweyo, Fredrick Kasuku, CONTACT: UN Crescent, Opposite Diplomatic Police Gigiri, Nairobi Kenya, P. O. Box 2437- 00621, Tel: (+254 - 20) 712 06 . 48 / 712 06 . 49