3rd Special Bulletin "False Flag Attack in Venezuela" 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 3, 2019

False Flag

attack in Venezuela

Content 1) Editorial 2) Political landscape to understand the Venezuela situation 3) ‘The Hit Reality Show’ This is not the so called Humanitarian Aid 4) Situation on Venezuela-Colombia border amid the so called US Humaniterian Aid delivery 5) President Nicolás Maduro speaks to Anelise Borges of Euronews 6) Insights of Trump's speech against Venezuela in Florida 7) The BBC's Orla Guerin interviewed President Nicolás Maduro in Caracas. 8) "Neutral" liberalism with Venezuela 9) Financial blockade: Chronology of a strategy to destroy Venezuela 10) President Maduro speaks during an interview with Associated Press Vice President 11) Reuters propaganda to damage RussiaVenezuela relations 12) Bolivarian Venezuela, Pope Francis 1 and the war termonuclear

Editorial For the first time since the height of the Cold War, the United States feels threatened. But now it is more serious, because it is not just a country that worries (formerly the USSR) but the huge upheaval of the global geopolitical board that has seen emerging powerful new centers of power (China, Russia, India, Turkey , etc.) to which the US has no answers: either to appeal to violence or to threaten it. It is a tiger primed because it lost in Afghanistan, it lost in Iraq, it has not been able to Iran, it lost in Syria, it is losing in Yemen and its only victory, horrible, filthy by its lies and its cruelty, was Libya. They want another, on the America continent. For their part, the legitimization of a war in Venezuela by local anti-Chavism as a legitimizing factor, in strictly political terms, isolates them from most of the positions of the international community on Venezuela that reject a war, but they bring them closer to the positions more recalcitrant in Washington. On the alleged "burning of humanitarian aid by Maduro", consolidating that false flag attack, Mike Pompeo soon pointed out that Washington should make good offices for the "suffering Venezuelan population". This suggests that the risk that, in the future, rhetoric and the creation of warlike conditions may accelerate. In this sense, the Chavismo on February 23th reaffirmed its position of strength, exposed its hegemony over the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB) and the integrity of the institutional fabric of the military sector and managed to manage, with the least possible balance, the that it was in fact an attack against its borders promoted by the United States and its satellite governments.

Poli�cal landscape to understand the Venezuela situa�on Negative balance

Injection of authority and Russophobia

Almost a month after the self-proclamation of Juan Guaidó as "president in charge", the balance with respect to the initial objectives in the institutional and military fronts is negative.

At a certain point, the sense of vertigo under which they operate, with total improvisation and false steps, also reﬂects the problems in the chain of command that subordinate them to Washington.

Without FANB generals to accompany Washington's attempt to force Maduro out of power, and with a "Statute of the Transition" issued by the National Assembly with few practical eﬀects on the country's political reality, his ﬁgure wears down between calls for military rebellion and take for granted the entry of "humanitarian aid" for February 23.

The leap back of Elliot Abrams last week aﬃrming that it can not be predicted if Maduro will fall, the refusal of the Congress to authorize the use of military force, the permanent bellicose speech of John Bolton and the pragmatic consensus for peace in Venezuela at scale international, they stage in their own way the internal war between the west wing of the White House and the Democratic Party, which is devouring Guaidó.

Knowing that his role is ephemeral and circumstantial while Washington's war cabinet continues to mature the conditions of military action, the so-called "promise of Venezuelan youth" on January 23, one month after its rise in the market as an electoral product, you see your 2.0 leadership in danger in a new "D-Day" where antichavism puts all the bets.

The "humanitarian aid" presented as a turning point and as a story to tear down the "Berlin Wall on the Tienditas Bridge" represents the injection of authority that they need to print to their "interim president" to keep it on the agenda, but also how the discourse of the Cold War and Russophobia becomes a declaration of purpose of the intervention against Venezuela.

But perhaps the image that more clearly reﬂects the negative balance in adding military support against Maduro, was the urgency to burn the cartridge of the former counterintelligence chief, Hugo Carvajal, who in 2017 had already marked a stance against the Venezuelan government, blaming Maduro by the violent protests and marking distance with the proposal of a Constituent to catalyze the conﬂict.

Marco Rubio in Cúcuta and psychological operations that reveal the plan

A defection presented as "novel" and last minute, when its antigovernment stance has been known for two years, took eﬀect for a few minutes and now it seems that it adds a new problem to the management of the coup: managing the costs of integrating into the story of "freedom" to a ﬁgure detested by the opposing base.

Over the weekend, the media industry shifted its attention to the border. One of the reasons was the visit of Senator Marco Rubio and his dream team. Its deployment by the sheds managed by USAID with the Colombian government was close to that of a political meeting with which it gave a political and "directive" face to the arrival of three South Command airplanes and the presence of the head of USAID.

The one of Carvajal leaves them in the same place: a military pronouncement without visible capacity to mobilize troops in favor of Guaidó and the "humanitarian aid".

The joint statement of Craig Faller with the general of the Colombian Navy Luis Navarro Jiménez, to which the previous negotiations with Brazil, Curazao (Holland) and Puerto Rico, suggest that the next step is for the Southern Command to assume the "help" humanitarian "as a bureaucratic task in the name of" parallel government ".

As a message to Congress for a resolution that did not contemplate the use of military force meant a political defeat for Rubio, the Republican senator tried to demonstrate authority to become directly responsible for the operation of "humanitarian aid". The images of the planes landing in Colombia symbolized that moment of personal oﬀensive of the oﬃce boy of ExxonMobil.

The distant position of the Brazilian government placing the "humanitarian aid" in Roraima, waiting for Guaidó to resolve its income, will elevate the role of Cúcuta and the Dutch Caribbean island as lines of geostrategic pressure towards Venezuelan territory, pointing towards the Gulf of Mexico. Venezuela as a critical artery of the Venezuelan energy trade. This would imply bringing to the territory the strategy of strangulation of the Venezuelan economy.

This was reinforced by the attempt to capitalize media outlets of some protesters with which it was intended to give a feeling of supposed widespread support to the "caravan" of deputies of the National Assembly, who are heading to Cúcuta to seek "humanitarian aid" . The senator wasted no time in using an attack between a GNB cashier and a driver after the arrest of the "caravan" on the La Cabrera bridge, which connects the state of Aragua with that of Carabobo, to suggest the lynching of the uniformed.

Elections disappear

In the panorama of means and in the common language used by the spokesmen of the war against Venezuela, the demand for elections has been completely displaced. The discourse that exercises most weight to delimit the course of its political action in these hours is one of military orientation, harassment and harassment, represented by the head of the Southern Command, in turn fed by the psychological operations that John Bolton and Mike Pompeo they direct against the FANB.

Later, he shared a confusing video on Twitter to get the message that "the regime shoots at demonstrators" in Barinas, without bothering to investigate where the detonations came from. Thus, he denounced the false ﬂag operation that could come in the coming hours to claim dramatically for a military action against Venezuela, under the umbrella of the government attempts against "peaceful demonstrations."

The Southern Command laboratory and the Brazilian position

On February 23, following the harsh legal account of the opposition, it should be the big day for the holding of elections, for which the deputy Juan Guaidó, stretching several gum articles of the Constitution, was "forced" to assume as "president in charge" a month ago.

But the express presence of Rubio, with the aim of keeping oxygenated the feeling of triumph that they try to impress on the audience, also served as a previous institutional step to mobilize the Southern Commando apparatus.

The change of priorities towards the generation of a "casus bellis" from the border that gives a twist to the situation and place the military option as the only possible option, shows that the electoral vindication, following the manual of Gene Sharp, are resources for escalate in the operation of fund: guarantee the permanence in the time of a parallel government tutelado by the big transnational corporations.

Spun oﬀ the US presidential command, his boss Craig Faller traveled to Brazil, Colombia and Curacao, where he seeks to insert the Southern Command as a preventive weapon for the operation. A role of the rearguard where it would act as a resource of last resort according to the variables that are developed over the weekend. In 2018, the Southern Command carried out three military exercises under the "humanitarian relief" scheme, together with Brazil, Colombia and other Latin American countries articulated in the Lima Group. Seen in retrospect, February 23 is the fact that it consumes the agenda modeled by the Pentagon, in the voice of John Kelly, when in 2016 it glimpsed that the United States was going to have to respond to the "Venezuelan humanitarian crisis" concerning the former head of the Southern Command.

The lesson of Iraq and Libya and the dismantling of a coup by the CIA

The recent dismantling of a coup orchestrated by the CIA and managed at the operational level by former colonel Oswaldo García Palomo, Julio Borges and the Colombian government for the ﬁrst quarter of this year, represented a brake on the development of the "military option" that It's always on the table for Trump. 4

Unlike the soft coup of 2017, the approach from this "humanitarian troop" is apparently defensive and aims to automatically hold the FANB responsible for any uprising. The homologated use of white color as clothing and identification garment, beyond giving a private Red Cross stature to the USAID business project with Popular Will, is also a useful resource for, at the time of a "massacre" like the many times planned by the United States, highlight the image of bloodshed. The instrumentalization will depend on it. The false flag operation that could be forging measures its impact between more passive and humanitarian provocation action. And the advertising hook is that, supposedly, Chavism prevents a "humanitarian aid", which, according to the data presented by Guaidó, does not cover even 1% of the population. The simile with the Syrian "White Helmets" is on purpose, but its use on the border as a ring of civil protection for armed groups will depend on the ability to mobilize paramilitaries. A letter always latent and that from Óscar Pérez indicated the new method to follow. For something, Trump made him a central figure in his campaign in Florida.

Neutralizing this operation, which sought to favor an internal uprising that was linked to external military action at some point in its development, had as an immediate political message the cohesion of the FANB and the practical capacity to protect the security of the State and the country. The fact contrasted with the false image of "failed state" imposed from the corporate media and stopped the maturation of two key preconditions for a military adventure, according to the lessons that expose the bloody interventions against Iraq and Libya.

The Russian warning that the United States has mobilized special operations forces to the border, within the framework of a provocation agenda or to arm the opposition, can come here.

Those preconditions are given by the breakdown of the military apparatus to configure an armed conflict and the precipitation of a civil war of low intensity that deconfigures the country, both are still undeveloped in Venezuela by the preventive action of Venezuelan intelligence and the hard nut to crack. which implies the civic-military union. Without these preconditions, high political costs reduce the effectiveness of an intervention.

Premeditatedly, the United States opens the game, stimulates and ﬁnances through little visible channels the emergence of the "Venezuelan Rambo" that, in its upset doctrine of foreign policy, will expel the Russians from Venezuela and return freedom. Libya and Kosovo, to reduce a macabre list in excess, are the glaring examples of how badly a country ends when Washington employs gang and criminal logics (all the time), in complicity with denationalized elites, to seize power.

The "humanitarian troops": projection of a false ﬂag

Recently Secretary of State Mike Pompeo thanked NGOs and the private sector for the "humanitarian aid" given to Venezuela. This discourse of business management was the end of a process that had been taking place last week with the creation of a volunteer structure, articulated in the "Coalition of Aid and Freedom" and "Rescue Venezuela", which act as the mobilization arm of USAID.

Concert Aid Live and neoliberal laboratory

As an asymmetric resource and political weapon to reshape societies, cultural warfare crosses the Venezuelan conﬂict. The concert "Live Aid", promoted by the billionaire Richard Branson, picking the most pop of the pop industry for the Latin market, has raised the political and doctrinal discourse boring talk of several employees of the Florida music lobby, at the same level that Sebastián Piñera, Iván Duque and Luis Almagro.

The assembly of the movement led to a "troop of humanitarian combatants" dressed in white, in charge of mobilizing aid from the border and serve as the ﬁrst line of shock with the objective of provoking the BANB. As an artiﬁcial construction, this "movement" represents a cover to conceal actions of chaos or technically organized violence, but it also aims to overwhelm and inhibit the action of the State's security forces. 5

The commercial orientation of the event and its instrumentalization to simulate that the base of support for humanitarian intervention is massive, is so evident that it does not require further analysis. However, the intention to do it one day before February 23, as well as its

A laboratory that seeks to reshape Venezuelan society based on the food dependency of USAID, proposing an economy protected by the transnationals, with a political and social system monitored by the United States, after planned destruction of its collective and patriotic vocation.

global coverage, is part of a cultural operation that seeks to dilute the border and make the war in Venezuela an extension of pop culture. The prelude to "freedom in Venezuela" is accompanied by songs by Paulina Rubio and Maluma, an evident demonstration that the managed socio-cultural atmosphere tries to ﬁll with frivolous products a process of deep undermining of Venezuelan society, through sanctions and ﬁnancial blockade.

At the end of this note, the opposition media took it for granted that the GNB, without verifying or contrasting sources, assassinated an indigenous Pemón, and wounding others, following an irregular situation in the limits with the Brazilian state of Roraima. Immediately afterwards, the spokesmen of the war against Venezuela ampliﬁed the intoxication of the act, using it as testimony that the use of force must be used to guarantee the entry of "humanitarian aid".

And this seems to be the ideological (neoliberal) project that delineates the deep features of the regime change against Venezuela, a maneuver that underpins the destruction of its political and social pact, along with the theft of its natural resources, before which the "humanitarian aid "It comes to close the proceeding of the intervention with the intent of returning to Venezuela to its status as semi-colony before Hugo Chavez.

A movement complemented by the "order" of Juan Guaidó that the borders are still open according to him, and that any extrapolitical action against Venezuelan sovereignty will have the approval of the "parallel government". That is why they have raised February 23 as a turning point in the face of the impossibility of achieving regime change.

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‘THE HIT REALITY SHOW’ This is not the so called Humanitarian Aid

The much-publicized February 23 presented as the breaking point of the Venezuelan situation, through the political operation of "humanitarian aid", began early in its operational aspects. It is a riáliti blow, which instrumentalizes social networks to create a parallel reality under the premises of a "pop rebellion", in order to cover up the heavy and aggressive aspects of the coup.

Olivares. The false positive feature was evident, to the point that they shouted "it's one of ours, do not shoot", evidencing the planned nature of what happened. This is the ﬁrst push and oxygenation maneuver of the "humanitarian aid", since until now, Juan Guaidó has not managed to get military commanders aﬃliated with the insurrectionary agenda of the United States.

The agenda of the day brings with it, from the beginning, several operations of romolque, oxygenation and blows of effect with which they will seek to keep the subject on the card, as high as possible, to precipitate the conditions of a violent confrontation in different scales artificially planned : "Colombia vs. Venezuela", "Pemones vs. State", "FANB vs. peaceful protesters (" humanitarian combatants ")". Another element is that the protection of Juan Guaidó by the Colombian government places the security of the Venezuelan State in a critical situation.

The narrative cover of the provocation is drawn (11:30). From the Colombian side of the Tienditas bridge, which today has been stripped, Juan Guaidó held a press conference with the president of Colombia, Iván Duque. In this conference, the dolphin of Álvaro Uribe Vélez stressed that the "humanitarian aid" was given to Guaidó to be admitted to Venezuela along with the group of "volunteers" formed for that purpose. Duque said that "not allowing the entry of humanitarian aid could constitute a crime against humanity," in addition to holding Venezuela responsible for any act of violence that could happen.

By how the day begins and by its own scale of importance, the writing of Mission Verdad will address the most relevant maneuvers on the border chess board and how it is reproduced within the country and in the media landscape. After the concert "Venezuela Aid Live", the operators of the war against Venezuela begin to work formally, and so do we.

Guaidó, according to his landfill figure of all information operations, put as an example of "transition" the case of the three soldiers who deserted in the morning hours while asking other uniforms to imitate their attitude, like the Chavistas located on the Venezuelan side of the Tienditas bridge. On the other hand, the reports indicate that the opposition demonstrators meet with Venezuelan flags for what will surely be the staging of an informative operation, where the supposed "peaceful character" of the attempt to invade Venezuela by force will be hierarchized. In the

Morning data (8:30). After crashing a tank against the bars that divide the Simón Bolívar bridge, three GNB troops passed to the other side of the border being received by the deputy José Manuel 7

Expectational, disinformation and attempted pressure against security forces (12:55). The "humanitarian operation" is projected through the voices of Juan Manuel Olivares and the deputy Gabriela Arellano. The ﬁrst is located on the Colombian side of the Simón Bolívar Bridge, speaking through a loudspeaker so that the uniformed of the PNB allows the "entry" of "humanitarian aid". Arellano does the same from the Venezuelan side of the Ureña bridge where there were acts of violence a few minutes ago. Both Arellano and Olivares project the entrance of a truck from Brazil as an attempt to persuade the uniformed to let them pass, given the "irreversible" nature of the events. However, ﬁnancial media journalist Bloomberg, Patricia Laya, reports that the truck did not go through Venezuela's customs controls, while CNN denied that Venezuela's border points have been opened to receive "humanitarian aid."

early hours of the morning, from Ureña, Venezuela, the opposition supporters have sought, in that sense, to overexpose an "excessive repression" of the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB) when they tried to break the closure of the border on the Simón Bolívar Bridge , step desahilitado for security reasons. All of that preﬁgures, again, the narrative that they will seek to project internationally when they try to confront Venezuelan security forces.

First provocations against uniformed of the Bolivarian National Police (13:20). The group of "humanitarian volunteers" located on the Colombian side of the Simón Bolívar bridge attempted to cross the police fence, under the deputy Juan Manuel Olivares. With hands raised, ﬂags of Venezuela and singing the anthem, the group quickly backed down after tear gas bombs were thrown. Once again, the Venezuelan media for information, funded by the State Department, reported the alleged delivery of a uniformed Special Forces Force of the PNB, a unit constantly attacked by the media for its role of containing violent cells from January 23. Once again: we try to project, as in the morning, the dissidence of the uniformed in terms of pressing to break the unit of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces. In spite of that, as with the humanitarian truck of Brazil, it is diﬃcult to verify the veracity of this defection that would be minimal if it is understood that in Venezuela there have not been important military pronouncements against the constitutional order.

Violence begins with a call to the military barracks (12:20). From Caracas, the deputy Miguel Pizarro of Primero Justicia announced that by order of Guaidó opposition supporters are summoned to protest outside the military barracks and initiate the entry of "humanitarian aid" across borders. Again, as is the tone of the day, Guaidó's parallel ambassador in Brazil, María Teresa Belandria, announced as a victory the supposed entry of the ﬁrst truck with "humanitarian aid" from the Brazilian state of Roraima, information that has not been conﬁrmed by no independent source. Belandria acts from Brazil only with the support of Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo, but without visibility of the Brazilian military, opposed to the "humanitarian operation". Both Belandria, a former professor at a US Department of Defense university, and Ernesto Araujo, represent the closest allies to Trump in Brazil. While this is happening, on the Simón Bolívar bridge, which borders Colombia, acts of violence are recorded from the side of Venezuela by opponents, while on the Colombian side a group seeks to break with a cordon of the Bolivarian National Police (PNB). . The deputy Juan Manuel Olivares, meanwhile, announces from the Simón Bolívar bridge the progress of a volunteer group shielding the trucks with "humanitarian aid" to press for their entry. 8

They try to launch trucks against police fences (14:10). After the ﬁrst attempt to cross on the Simón Bolívar Bridge, in Ureña, the group of "humanitarian volunteers" threw themselves at the police fence on the Venezuelan side with four trucks full of civilians. In one of the photos published by the New York Times journalist, Nick Casey, he shows a clear search to use civilians, as women and children, of human shields to project acts of repression against what they have called a "humanitarian avalanche" " While this is happening, social networks project the meeting of Guaidó with the four Venezuelan soldiers who crossed into Colombia in the morning, and the journalist Madeleine García reports the overﬂight of Colombian drones on the Venezuelan side in a clear

provocation. Arriving at 2 pm, while this is happening, in Caracas a march made by Chavismo is on Urdaneta Avenue near the Miraﬂores Palace, where President Nicolás Maduro is expected to deliver a speech.

to the military civic union of Chavez." In addition, he aﬃrmed that in 30 days, Juan Guaidó has not "done anything" and wondered why he did not call elections if he has the power. He also criticized that the opposition lends itself to an intervention in Venezuela and maintained that Trump hardly wants to collaborate with the country with a "false humanitarian aid", a pretext to intervene. Finally, he announced the breakdown of diplomatic relations with Colombia for lending its territory to attack Venezuela. In this context, he gave a period of 24 hours for the Colombian consumers to leave the country. The political picture at this moment reﬂects a chavismo mobilized en masse in Caracas in support of Maduro, while the opposition is scattered in mobilizations in Caracas and Colombia to force the entry of "humanitarian aid".

Psychological operation and armed violence in Santa Elena de Uairén (14:45 pm). After clashes promoted by violent groups in the city of Santa Elena de Uairén, with the excuse of giving entrance to the "humanitarian aid", the media have reported a murder. Disinforming about what happened and transferring the absolute responsibility of the fact to the FANB, the handling of the situation aims to generalize the idea that the FANB represses peaceful protesters. This is linked, in the framework of a pincer operation, to what happened earlier in Ureña, with the aim of pressing from both sides of the border to inhibit the capacity of action of the FANB. Juan Guaidó from Cúcuta tried to shield the story, asserting that people are being massacred in Santa Elena, thus shaping the final goal of the day: adding the largest number of military defections to show authority. An objective that still can not be consolidated. President Nicolás Maduro affirms that the "coup is defeated" and breaks diplomatic relations with Colombia (15:22). In a massive ceremony on Urdaneta Avenue (Caracas), near the Miraflores Palace, the President affirmed that the "coup was defeated thanks

Another false positive and insurrectionary elements (15:50). On the border side of Colombia, two trucks allegedly carrying "humanitarian aid" were torched without further details except for the automatic transfer of blame to the Venezuelan State security forces, in an attempt to create another false positive due to the inconsistency of the species. On the other side of the border, there are no oﬃcials or soldiers of the FANB who could have made such a belligerent action. Also, in La Grita (Táchira state), an insurrectional group ("peaceful protesters") took control of a GNB tank, which could be used for other

the day announcing the entry of most humanitarian aid."

mounts of false ﬂags, as occurred in the city of Caracas. couple of weeks with the hijacking of a vehicle of the FAES, or for terrorist acts against the population and the state security forces.

Balance of paramilitary violence and the (violent) metamorphosis of "humanitarian volunteers" (20:30). Disarticulated the outbreaks of violence in the area near the bridges that connect the Colombian-Venezuelan border, and in Roraima and Santa Elena de Uairén on the southern side, the State Protector Táchira, Freddy Bernal, oﬀered a report on the violence generated by cells armed with anti-Chavism in diﬀerent points. Bernal also made reference to a group of paramilitaries that tried to take the La Grita bridge, in the Táchira state, an action that was repelled by the organized people and REDI in the area.

New aggressions on the Colombian side (16:10). Social networks are already running images of what happened before and after the ﬁres of "humanitarian" trucks: a group of terrorists, with the obvious loss of the oﬃcials of Migration Colombia, threw blunt objects and Molotov cocktails towards the Venezuelan side, guarded by the FANB. The hypothesis that some bombs could have fallen on the transport in question takes terrain, as well as the advance of the confrontation via irregular violence.

This fact confirms not only the strength of the FANB to dismantle technically organized threats to take strategic points of the border, but also how the metamorphosis of "humanitarian volunteers" in armed cells was premeditated to achieve the necessary balance of violence that would allow export the matrix of "repression to peaceful protesters". What emerges from here, as the hours progress, is the use of informative manipulation in the field to impose a story of "crimes against humanity" against the Venezuelan State, but also the rapid deterioration of the "civil phase" of the humanitarian aid "with the objective of precipitating conditions towards the shipment of arms, financing and creation of an irregular armed component that takes charge of making" effective "its entry into Venezuelan territory. The political discourse of the opposition actors of the last hours tries to remedy the failure of the operation, demanding a military intervention.

The opposition accuses the government of crimes against humanity and reveals the "thesis" of the armed groups (16:42). The fire of the gandolas in the bridge of Ureña directly has been homologated as a "crime against humanity" and violation of the Geneva Convention, according to the statements of Juan Guaidó. The lack of images about the reasons for the fire, plus the fact that opposition supporters walked with gallons of gasoline near them, shows what could be a false positive to swell the failed state file against Venezuela. In addition, the accusations launched at a press conference by the leader of Voluntad Popular, Juan Andrés Mejía, on the fact that the fire was caused by "armed groups" and members of the PNB. This matrix of opinion on the outbreaks of violence is also projected on the clashes in Santa Elena de Uairén, where uniformed personnel clashed with members of the Pemón guard who on Friday had another episode against members of the GNB. Opponents attack the deputy Juan Manuel Olivares for confusing him with a "collective" (18:25). Almost closing the day in the streets of Colombia, opposition protesters again tried to enter Venezuela with the "humanitarian aid" trucks. The operation, however, was aborted when allegedly violent opponents of the so-called Resistance began to beat a citizen for being "collective." In the middle of this tumult, the deputy Juan Manuel Olivares, who in the Simón Bolívar Bridge was in charge of ordering the offensives from a loudspeaker, was assaulted by opponents after being mistaken for a "collective". The episode is nothing more than a metaphor for a day like today where the inability to enter the trucks was replaced by a broad media noise, focused on the alleged repression of Chavismo paramilitary groups, as they commonly say in this type of context, and the Burning trucks with "humanitarian aid". Even the deputy Miguel Pizarro in his last speech of the day said that he "would have liked to have reached the end of

The pretext for a force maneuver (21:00) is set. In a press conference, Colombian President Iván Duque, who represents one of the public figures and leaders of the "humanitarian aid" operation, institutionally reinforces the information operation built in the afternoon with the burning of "humanitarian trucks" located on the Colombian side of the border and guarded by violent opposition cells, who were ultimately responsible for the fact according to the photographic records that abound in social networks. This operation of false flag has sought to impose itself as a symbol and narrative axis of the day, under which information flows are oriented towards the creation of an express file of alleged violation of human rights and the Geneva Convention, to enable the institutional steps that lead to a humanitarian humanitarian intervention, from the paradigm of the "responsibility to protect", which would try to overcome the veto of Russia and China in the UN Security Council. Faced with the failure of the operation, those who manage the war against Venezuela outside borders (Elliott Abrams,

For this, finalizing his statement, he asked the countries of the Lima Group to have "all the options on the table", and announced that he will be present at the next meeting of the group this Monday in Bogota. This closure shows the failure of the coup 2.0, led by Guaidó, however, the similarity of his statements with that affirmed by Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and Marco Rubio, throw an immediate picture quite dangerous. On Friday, Cuba's foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez, launched a complaint that the United States is pressuring the members of the Lima Group to sign a declaration eliminating the figure of a "transition without the use of force." That, in a week where Guaidó spoke of deaths that are an "investment in the future", lights up the alarms about the latest collapses until today's failed regime change in Venezuela.

Ivan Duque, John Bolton, Marco Rubio, among others) seem to look for the most crazy and perverse variant to reverse the political and media costs of not having achieved the income of "humanitarian aid". A situation that confirms the improvisation and the action on the emptiness of the operators of the war against Venezuela. Guaidó returns to talk about "human costs" and asks the Lima Group to put all options "on the table" (21:15). Visibly angry by the photos that Diosdado Cabello shared of the antichavist bunker today, Guaidó transferred the responsibilities of the "humanitarian operation" failure, reflected in his long face in the photos, to those in Miraflores for "burning food in front of to hungry and medicines to the sick ". His speech, in addition, was directed in this context to project two matrices of opinion aimed at establishing an image of force and advance of the pressure on the Venezuelan military corps. According to Guaidó, 80% of the Venezuelan military are against Maduro, and his orders to "massacre the Venezuelan people", both matrices repeated to the point of being fed up by the "deserting military". From this perspective, the self-proclaimed, like Duke, stressed that today was a before and after for the international community in the face of a "dictatorship that burns food and medicines, in addition to repressing their people."

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The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela denounces the False Flag opera�on at the Venezuela - Colombia Border

The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela denounces to the world that the United States Government, together with a group of subordinated countries, is conducting a fierce campaign to overthrow the Government of Venezuela and the Constitutional President, Nicolás Maduro Moros, in clear violation of the principles of elementals of Public International Law. On February 23, in an unprecedented propaganda action, the Trump administration tried to force illegally into Venezuelan territory some shipments with presumed help, without the consent of the authorities of Venezuela, with the aim of generating chaos and violence, by pretending to violate the territorial integrity of the country. The false flag operation that tried to deploy last weekend, which was recorded by multiple media and rejected by the United Nations and the International Red Cross, was intended to facilitate foreign military intervention from neighboring countries, as part of the attempted coup d'état openly promoted by the US government against the legitimate authorities of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Once again, the US regime failed miserably in its efforts to activate an interventionist military plan, in spite of the continuous attacks undertaken from Colombian territory against Venezuelan security personnel who guarded and protected the national sovereignty with stoical prudence. Venezuela denounces that the aggressors had the support and protection of the authorities of the Republic of Colombia. Today, the vice president of the United States, as the declared leader of the group of cartelized countries against Venezuela, announced the alleged adoption of new unilateral coercive measures against elected governors of the country, and has tried to turn orders for other countries to join the rude robbery method that Washington has already implemented against the assets of the Republic, including the properties of PDVSA, whose value is estimated at 30 billion dollars. Venezuela calls on the international community to close ranks in defense of the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, since its violation endangers international peace and security. The defense we make today of multilateralism and international law will be the guarantee of tomorrow's peace. The People of Venezuela defeated the most powerful empire of that time 200 years ago and will defeat any imperialist pretension today. Venezuela is irrevocably free and independent and demands respect for its sovereignty, self-determination and integrity. Venezuela denounces Trump's propaganda campaign to overthrow the Bolivarian Government. www.mppre.gob.ve

Situa�on on VenezuelaColombia border amid the so called US Humaniterian Aid delivery the Red Cross logo, and that entity had to pronounce itself in this regard, pointing out the violation of the international treaties that protect the organization, which we know, as well that the United Nations (UN), were not participating. The propaganda and "humanitarian" marketing was achieved.

The 23 of February passed as one of the most dangerous days because it is a high risk of assault to the Bolivarian Republic, through the open declaration of undermining the territorial integrity of Venezuela in the border areas with Colombia and Brazil. As is well known, the day was planned as a new zenith for antichavism in Venezuela and abroad for two basic practical purposes: 1) Juan Guaidó would make eﬀective his temporary presidency, since his intentional admission of alleged "humanitarian aid" to Venezuela would deﬁne his position at the helm of the FANB. 2)The Venezuelan and foreign antichavism had this date as a cap for the betrayal of the FANB against President Nicolás Maduro, therefore, they expected mutinies and public pronouncements of high and middle commands in the FANB, thus generating an accelerated cycle of coup d'état and commotion .

But the civil and pacific scheme of "aid" income was quickly exhausted with the anti-Chavez violence registered in the borders with Colombia and Brazil. It remains that the Colombian side had all the cameras and attention, and the type of violence used was of low intensity. Meanwhile, the side with Brazil seems the blind spot of escalation to a violent phase with "humanitarian" purposes, because of the ambiguity of the events in place and the balance recorded on Saturday night of five human losses. The burning of three gangs with alleged humanitarian supplies, demonstrated by opposition factors in the Francisco de Paula Santander bridge in Ureña, was the most important propaganda input. They consolidated a very important false positive. In the place they were habitual suspects of the violence in Venezuela of 2014 and 2017, namely, José Manuel Olivares, Gaby Arellano and Vilca Fernández, all with a history as operators of violent events in the field. Although unlikely, the narrative that the "government of the usurper Maduro" burned humanitarian aid, is consolidated.

But it is essential to go deeper into these events underlining that such objectives that the Venezuelan opposition did not achieve were fundamentally tactical, while there are other strategic objectives partially fulfilled and the result is yet to be defined. Unconsolidated factors The alleged entry of "humanitarian aid" to Venezuela sponsored by USAID and allegedly requested by Juan Guaidó was the subject of a very significant hyperpropaganda, along with a concert with "charitable purposes", including Venezuela Aid, through the appearance of world figures of show business and some presidents. At the same time, the deployment of trucks from Colombia to Venezuela had the unauthorized use of

On this day, there were apparent desertions of at least eight oﬃcials of the FANB, who crossed the border to place themselves under the orders of Guaidó. All low-ranking and in addition to them, uniformed factors that do not belong to the FANB. The latter is still to be 13

fully determined. However, the blow to Maduro and the mutiny of high command did not occur. Chavismo reinforced its position of dominance.

positions of the international community on Venezuela that reject a war, but they bring them closer to the positions recalcitrant in Washington.

Guaidó's position is in jeopardy by violating the restriction that the Supreme Court of Justice made to leave the country, once President Maduro ordered the closure of the border. Its position in the political fact is exposed in a clear way. It is an irrelevant factor in internal politics, it does not have a government to exercise and its position is facing the Venezuelan external front as a legitimating factor of interference. For that was created and those functions fulﬁlled.

On the "burning of humanitarian aid by Maduro", consolidated that false flag attack, Mike Pompeo was quick to point out that Washington should make good offices for the "suffering Venezuelan population". This suggests that the risk that, in the future, rhetoric and the creation of warlike conditions may accelerate. For its part, the Chavismo this February 23 reaffirmed its position of strength, exposed its hegemony over the BANB and the integrity of the institutional fabric of the military sector and managed to manage with finesse, and with the lowest possible balance, what was in fact an attack against its borders promoted by the United States, Colombia and Brazil.

At the end of the day of February 23, Guaidó fulﬁlls the constitutional term of his supposed transitory presidency without having the power to call elections, remains as a "president" without troops, in a foreign country and without the possibility of entering the country without having to face prison.

Chavismo ended up reaﬃrming his position as a factor of law and fact in internal politics, now placing Guaidó in an uncomfortable position.

Reactions and short-term referrals The burning of trucks in the border crossing and the multidirectional violence in the Venezuelan borders, such as the entry of "aid" that did not become eﬀective, were constituted as a "cause of war" and intervention, at least as a narrative and extremely important input. propagated That was the strategic conquest of local and foreign antichavism.

From this derives an immense frustration between the support base for the coup plot in progress, as well as other opposition forces that do not have a position homologous to that of the White House and of Guaidó himself on the coup, and these elements lead again to the opposition within Venezuela to another impasse, in which, this time perhaps as never before, they are strictly dependent on the eﬀorts of Washington to put an end to Chavismo.

The presentation of the case as "the ﬁre of a convoy of international aid", as alleged violation of the Venezuelan State of the Geneva Accords, will be essential components not only to tyrannize the Chavism, but as a subjective factor that contributes to the attempt to break the integrity of the Venezuelan institutions and the FANB in the future.

For Chavismo it will be essential to report outside of Venezuela the attack with false flag that was on the borders, also to continue warning of the risks of new pre-war skirmishes. It must also reaffirm its position in the legitimate exercise of power, to sustain the Republic and to refine political fronts that allow a distention. Stop escalation will be the objective on the external front.

On the night of February 23, Guaidó declared that given the "seriousness" of the events, he "made the decision" to ask the international community to use "all options" to overthrow Maduro. He ﬂirts with the war factor sustained in the humanitarian narrative.

For purposes of internal politics, as it has already done, the political directorate of Chavismo will continue to amalgamate political stability through a cohesion in its institutional integrity and integrity, while avoiding and containing the harsh actions of local adversaries through the management of the irritation generated by the objectives that the opposition did not manage to consummate. The ﬁrst hours after February 23 will be key to this, since the containment of external threats lies in the preservation of peace and internal stability.

Such a statement can be understood in two ways. Either he is doing a damage control by managing the pressures of his followers and colleagues in what was a thunderous tactical failure, or on the other hand, he is contributing signiﬁcantly to the legitimacy of the war in Venezuela, based on his supposed attributions foreseen in the "Statute of transition" in which you could request an intervention. The legitimization of a war in Venezuela by Guaidó and local antichavism as legitimating factors, in strictly political terms, isolate them from the majority of the

www.misionverdad.com

'It is not possible to have two presidents in a country':

President Nicolás Maduro speaks to Anelise Borges of Euronews Euronews' Anelise Borges travelled to Venezuela to understand what is happening and to interview the man at the centre of the storm, President Nicolás Maduro. Full transcript of the euronews interview with President Nicolás Maduro Anelise Borges: "Mr President, thank you very much for speaking to us here on Euronews. Today yours is a country at a crossroads, a country with two presidents. What exactly is happening in Venezuela?"

instigated by the US government inside Venezuela. The United States used all its political, diplomatic and economic power to try to install a puppet government in Venezuela, something which is unprecedented in our history.”

President Nicolás Maduro: “It is not possible to have two presidents in a country. In Venezuela there is only one president under the constitution elected by popular vote, according to Venezuela’s political institutions. And this president, is this humble worker sitting here, Nicolas Maduro Moros. There is a coup currently taking place; it has failed; we have neutralized it. This was

Anelise Borges: "But the US, the EU and several other Latin American countries have recognised Juan Guaido as the interim President." President Nicolás Maduro: “This violates all the rules of the United Nations charter that prohibit interven15

and this is deplorable. I believe in dialogue, I believe in words, I believe in diplomacy. The president of the United States is very badly informed about Venezuela. He has stereotypical viewpoints that have led him to make erroneous decisions. They have taken him down a dead end, and now he has to try to escape this path. When he does, Venezuela will always be ready to engage in constructive dialogue with the United States in order to have respectful relations."

tion in internal aﬀairs, violating the very precepts of the Venezuelan constitution. This is part of an attempt to dominate, conquer and create a neocolonial relationship with Venezuela. In any case, who decides the political life of a country, who elects the presidents inside all the countries of the world - popular sovereignty in Venezuela is no exception. They can say whatever they want – Donald Trump’s government, the extremist administration in the White House and its satellite governments – but in Venezuela it is the people who are sovereign and who decide. No foreign government decides what we do here.”

Anelise Borges: "Do you believe in dialogue here in Venezuela as well? Are you available, ready to talk to Mr Juan Guaido for example?"

Anelise Borges: "But it’s also a people that is divided. I want to focus ﬁrst on the international pressure. You are under unprecedented international pressure. How do you sort this out? We all know your foes. But who are your friends today?"

President Nicolás Maduro: "I have made more than 400 calls to the opposition for dialogue. The Opposition goes much further than the man they have put up as the presumed interim president, far beyond. This man is there by circumstance. I am willing and ready for dialogue with the Opposition, as a whole, or with parts of the Opposition whenever, wherever. And I truly believe, Anelise, I’m convinced that the only thing that can help Venezuela this year, and in the years to come, is honest dialogue, with an open agenda, and that we make comprehensive agreements for the good of Venezuela, for the prosperity of the country."

President Nicolás Maduro: "I think we have many friends in the world. In Africa, recently during the meeting of the African Union, a set of interesting pronouncements were made. In Asia, great powers like China, and the greatest powers today in Eurasia, the Russian federation, Turkey. In Latin America, the Caribbean countries, more than 14 countries, the Petrocaribe…in any case, this is a global battle. Who turned the battle for Venezuela into a global battle? The interests of the extremist elite which governs the United States. I always say, Anelise, if Venezuela produced potatoes and vegetables, and exported potatoes and vegetables, it wouldn’t be a centre of geopolitical interest for the extremist elite of the United States who wish to dominate it, would it? But because Venezuela has the biggest proven oil reserves in the world, the biggest proven gold reserves in the world, the fourth largest gas reserves, strategic mineral reserves such as coltan. Venezuela has always been of geopolitical interest, especially in the last 20 years when commander Chavez wrestled back control of our natural resources. The real interest of the elite in the United States is not democracy, they are not interested in democracy in the world, their only interest is to plunder our wealth. This is their real interest.”

Anelise Borges: "One of the main conditions of this dialogue could be for you to allow humanitarian aid into the country, something that you said you won’t do. You won’t let these items come into your country, you believe it’s foreign intervention, it’s an attack on your sovereignty. Meanwhile it’s also a current mechanism, a lot of countries have that and Venezuela is a country that has great needs at the moment. Don’t you think it’s wrong to make politics out of this particular issue?" President Nicolás Maduro: "It is wrong to use the concept of humanitarian aid as an ideological political issue, as a way to humiliate a country. And that is the mistake made by the Venezuelan Opposition, and also the Trump administration: to want to humiliate a country. They froze more than 10 billion dollars abroad. It means our accounts are under scrutiny abroad. It’s almost as if they are preventing us from importing medicine and food supplies - because they go after our money in foreign accounts in every corner of the world. And after they freeze 10 billion or more dollars, they come to tell us that they are going to give 20 million dollars in contaminated food, rotten food. It’s contaminated."

Anelise Borges: "You have requested a meeting with Donald Trump: is it to try to sort out this crisis?" President Nicolás Maduro: "When I asked for it, the situation was diﬀerent. I believed, I always believe that you can open paths of dialogue and through dialogue it is possible to ﬁnd an understanding on how to live together – peaceful co-existence, respect. But it is impossible. They have killed any possibility of dialogue, of rapprochement, they have killed it. The White House has given an order that there should be zero dialogue

Anelise Borges: "Contaminated? Why contaminated? Do you have proof that this food is contaminated, this aid is contaminated? You think so?" 16

President Nicolás Maduro: "Our country is the focus of aggression of the most powerful empire in the world, they are going after accounts, they are blocking our accounts, they are hounding our commercial ships, now they are going after our oil. They have just expropriated a seven billion dollar company in the United States. Our country is still standing. Our country is working, we are facing the future and ready for the future. The people of this country are conscious. If they weren’t conscious, if they didn’t have values, if they weren’t revolutionary, the Bolivarian revolution would have disappeared a long time ago. Commander Chavez was often told, you have already lost the support of the people, but he won not just once, but two, three times. I’ve been told the same thing since the first day that Commander Chavez left me in charge. So, here I have broad-based support. It is moral and spiritual. This is profound political support. These same people who you say are suffering, who have conscience, they know what they are fighting for and they know that their only hope for a dignified country, where we don't become a colony, is the Bolivarian revolution. Rest assured, if we hadn’t won numerous elections in the last 18 months. We have won six consecutive elections. And if we had elections today, I can assure Anelise, if we had elections today for the national assembly, which are currently on hold, the Bolivarian forces would win again."

President Nicolás Maduro: "Well, information has come out of Colombia itself. It’s food that has not been… is full of carcinogenic chemical elements …. that has not had the required tests. And it has already caused several cases of food poisoning in Colombia itself. Now, beyond that they have politicised the concept of humanitarian aid. If you want to help our country, I tell Donald Trump, I tell Mike Pompeo, I tell the governments that are behind this “show”: release the accounts that are held hostage, release the gold that they have stolen and Venezuela has enough resources and everything else to import everything we need. Stop this gruesome “show” of trying to suffocate Venezuela and then offer us only crumbs. We are not anyone’s beggars." Anelise Borges: "The situation is very difficult in Venezuela today. There are shortages of medicine. I have visited a couple of hospitals and I have spoken to doctors who have told me that it is not easy to work today to try and help Venezuelans. We have seen the queues for food in the last few years. Do you recognise at least that you do have a problem in your country, a serious problem?" President Nicolás Maduro: "Tell me a country in the world, or the third world that has no problems. Tell me a country that has no difficulty in overcoming poverty. A Latin American country. I give you the example of our neighbours Colombia... but you do not go to Colombia with a magnifying glass. 70% of poverty in Colombia, 30% of misery. People have been leaving Colombia for years. More than 15 million Colombians have emigrated, but no one shines a spotlight on that. Why do they put the spotlight on Venezuela's problems? To justify a story, a script that justifies intervention in our country, the domination of our country. Why did they put the spotlight on Libya and then leave it five or six years ago? Because the situation in Libya was serious and it had to be bombed, because the situation in Iraq was serious and they invented weapons of mass destruction. No one can tell us that I have weapons of mass destruction, that I have rockets pointing at the United States. They make up our story." Anelise Borges: "You talk about the experience of people in the barrios, in the most modest areas of Caracas and other parts of the country. These are people that supported the revolution, that supported your mentor Hugo Chavez, that supported you. Many of them however have been talking about extremely difficult circumstances. Several of the people that I’ve spoken to Mr Maduro in the last few years that I’ve been coming to Venezuela have told me that they used to support you but it’s become too difficult for them to continue to do so. How does that make you feel?"

Anelise Borges: "These last elections have been contested by several countries around the world. I want to go back to that in just a minute because I want to bring something back. You said, and you have said that repeatedly, that you were, that Venezuela is the victim of an aggression by the United States, that you are waging an economic war. Do you take any responsibility though for what’s happening in the country. Do you think there has been any mistake on the part of your administration in terms of where Venezuela is now?"

President Nicolás Maduro: "Of course, I assume responsibility, otherwise I wouldn’t be in government, I wouldn’t be the president of this country and I wouldn’t be the leader of this powerful revolutionary movement – the Bolivarian movement. I assume all the daily economic, political and educational responsibilities of the people. Every day I am governing for the people. Our method is one that is from the bottom up, which is inclusive of social movements. All sectors: women; youth; the working class; professionals. Before coming to this interview, for example, I attended an event which had more than 100,000 young people to talk about youth issues. I take full responsibility. Mistakes? Tell me who hasn’t made any mistakes. The only mistake I haven’t made, and will never make, is to betray my homeland, or to yield, surrender or

the same as the voice of anyone in the world."

kneel before Donald Trump. I will never do that. We won’t give up. We will carry on working to solve problems and overcome the mistakes. Rest assured, Anelise, that Venezuela will keep moving forward. We have realised that we have more freedom and independence than we thought from the empire in the north, its European subordinates and some governments in Latin America. We are far freer and independent. There is another world. A new multi-polar world has emerged. There are new poles of economic, social and military power in the world. There is no longer a unipolar world in which a single empire dictates and orders and the whole world obeys. No! There is another world and Venezuela is building this new world and we will continue to walk this path in peace. The coup that they have tried to impose on Venezuela and the US’ intervention will fail and be defeated. Sooner rather than later they will have to sit for talks around a table, show respect and respect the rules of international law."

Anelise Borges: "Once again, it really sounds like there are two poles, or multiple poles, but it sounds like a conﬂict, it sounds like a battle, a battle for inﬂuence, a battle for power. But in this, Mr President, as unfortunate as it may sound, the feeling is that the Venezuelans, the ordinary Venezuelans may be the biggest losers." President Nicolás Maduro: "I agree with you. Who is harmed and damaged by international sanctions, by the economic blockade? Who is harmed by this whole global campaign? The people of Venezuela, who have the right to live in peace. I believe that Federica Mogherini, the European Union and the leading governments of Europe have made a mistake with Venezuela. They have heard only one side. They have bowed to only one side. They have not listened to the whole country, which cries out for peace, dialogue, understanding, respect... and they have not listened to us, those who have a voice of real, true power. I believe that Europe has uncritically bowed to the wrong policy of Donald Trump, who has kicked NATO, who has kicked the governments of Europe, who has kicked the European Union, who has simply twisted their arms and forced them into a policy that has harmed Venezuela. Almost one million European migrants live in Venezuela: 300,000 Italians, 300,000 Portuguese, 300,000 Spaniards...almost one million European migrants. And the European Union has abandoned its migrants here and has put us on the verge of a military invasion of the United States. Donald Trump announced it a few days ago: I have the military option over Venezuela. I believe that the European Union has to listen to the whole country, it has to learn to listen with balance to all and it has to rectify its policy on Venezuela."

Anelise Borges: "You’re talking about I imagine your poles of power, including for example Russia, Turkey, China, that are very important allies to Venezuela today. How big of an importance do you attribute to them. How grateful are you to have them on your side?" President Nicolás Maduro: "A great importance not only for Venezuela, but for the world. The People's Republic of China is the great economic power of the 21st century, in addition to being a great political power. It has already demonstrated that it can be a great power without being an empire, without establishing relations of domination, blackmail, neocolonial relations with the countries of the world. We have a relationship of extraordinary cooperation, of strategic partnership with China, of respect, of mutual benefit that has had great benefits for development and the economy in the last 15 years. With the Russian Federation as well. Russia recovered. Russia is a major international player. It is a first-rate political, economic and military power and with President Putin we also have close cooperation. I believe that these two powers, next to middle powers like Turkey, like India, like Iran, among others, like South Africa... will determine the future of humanity. The future of humanity cannot be everyone kneeling to the American empire. Not a unipolar world. It has to be a world where we are respected, above all small countries like Venezuela. A country of 30 million inhabitants with great natural wealth. We aspire to be a dignified, sovereign, independent country... not a colony nor to be dominated by blackmail, the imperial cry of the north. We aim for a 21st century of a multicentric, multipolar world, where the voice of the little ones is worth

Anelise Borges: "You mention migrants, you mention people coming to Venezuela. We have also seen the pictures of hundreds of thousands, the UN says three million, Venezuelans leaving this country. I have heard you before on this point and you have said it’s a fabrication, it doesn’t exist. Have you seen the pictures though and how do they make you feel, of those people crossing the bridges and ﬂeeing to Colombia or other countries?"

President Nicolás Maduro: "I have never said that it is not so; it is a reality. There is a group of Venezuelans who during the last two or three years, for reasons linked to the economic war, have decided to seek new options in our country. It could be between 600 and 800 thousand Venezuelans. Several thousand of them are returning in the Plan Vuelta a la Patria because they found those countries xenophobic, labour slavery and

conditions that they did not think they would find and they have returned to the country. Now what I can tell you is that those images that you say are repeated are the greatest manipulation that has ever been done. You can go today to the main bridge that connects Colombia and Venezuela in Cúcuta and San Antonio del Táchira and I can show you, the journalistic teams can take you to see that they are images of a great flow of Colombians coming to Venezuela, of Venezuelans going to Colombia, of 'vene-colombianos' of 'colom-venezolanos'....they are families that leave Colombia, that leave Venezuela and that have a flow of 30, 50 thousand, sometimes they reach 60 thousand people that cross for commercial trade, for business activities, for family activities...and they have taken those images to say that 3000, 5000 Venezuelans are leaving."

President Nicolás Maduro: "We're taking care of it because it's a brutal war. On August 20 last year I took a decision to make a currency devaluation and we managed to take a big step towards the recovery of the sovereign bolivar, in the recovery of workers' wages. Then we have been battling hard in the months of September, November, December, January and February and this year we have the goal of controlling the induced hyperinﬂation and of increasing the value of the Bolivar, and to position the international 'cryptocurrency' that we have set up, the Petro. As a monetary policy, we pay attention to workers' salaries; we help six million families with a direct subsidy. Tell me a country that does that. It doesn't exist, but it does in Venezuela, which is working for justice for equality, for socialism.If it wasn’t like that, Anelise, the revolution would have ended. The revolution exists because reality serves the people. Here there are no orphaned people, here there are no abandoned people... there are people under attack, of course. Tell me which country in the world would withstand the economic aggression of the most powerful nation in the world. Who would withstand it? Having their accounts frozen, their accounts put under scrutiny, and forbidden to import what they need... Venezuela is making a heroic, truly admirable eﬀort. I admire the heroism of the Venezuelan people, how they have faced all these circumstances and we are going to move forward, rest assured."

Anelise Borges: "According to UN agencies some two thousand Venezuelans stay on the other side, don’t come back. Again, you mentioned it, several of them have gone because of the hardships in your country. I want to bring back the question of how diﬃcult things are, because some people say that you might not understand – because you are a President and you might be sheltered from the harsh realities that they are experiencing. We had actually brought some money to ask you if you knew how much 2,000 bolivars can buy today. What 2,000 bolivars can actually buy today. Do you know that?"

Anelise Borges: "I’ve got one last question Mr President. How do you think you will go down in history?"

President Nicolás Maduro: "If I didn't understand the situation in my country, I wouldn't be president ….elected and re-elected. I understand because I come from the people. You should know, Anelise, that I was not educated at Harvard or at another American school. I don't even have an important family name, noble blood. I am a worker, a man of the people and every day I am with the people. I have permanent contact and I know exactly what's going on, that's why I take care of the job. Venezuela has one of the lowest unemployment rates in Latin America and the Caribbean, that's why I take care of pensions, that's why I take care of the permanent salary, that's why I take care of the mother's right to assistance. We have one of the most advanced social policies. Why do you accuse me of not understanding?" Anelise Borges: "No, I’m not accusing you. I’m just asking you. I wasn’t accusing you. I was just curious to know if you knew how much, what 2,000 bolivars can buy. And I will tell you, 2,000 bolivars can buy a coffee. Toilet paper is costing around 13,000 bolivars. It’s a lot of changes. This money last year could buy much more. I think the most important question here is not really that. It’s - can you fix it? Can you fix the situation in this country today?"

President Nicolás Maduro: "I don't know, but what I'm sure of is that I won't be remembered as weak, a coward, or a traitor. I am clear about my role. And every day I am filled with courage, with passion for my homeland, for the love that moves me. Love moves me, Anelise. I am not moved by the desire to be a tycoon, to enrich myself personally or to enrich economic groups. We are moved by an idea of homeland, the homeland, your history over 200 years. I am sure we will continue to write it. Then, the future? Well, let them remember me, hopefully objectively for what I was, for what we are, but rest assured that we are going to move forward with great skill, with much perseverance, defending the rights of our country in the face of the aggression that the West is hiding. The West hides an aggression, Anelise. Reflect. Please reflect as a young journalist. You haven't asked a single question about Donald Trump's aggression, about the threats of military invasion because they hide it. It would be a tragedy, it would be a worse tragedy than Libya."

Anelise Borges: "Are you afraid that that could actually happen?"

sanctions and then try to blame the political model, the Bolivarian Revolution. We are the object of the most brutal aggression. The United States is focused on a single objective in the world: to destroy Venezuela, to colonize Venezuela, to destroy the Revolution. It has not been able to, nor will it be able to. And here peace will prevail, rest assured. We will continue to see each other in the years to come. And you will see a new era ﬂourish in Venezuela. We are going to make it possible."

President Nicolás Maduro: "When the extremist president of a country, like Donald Trump, continually threatens a military invasion, one has to worry." Anelise Borges: "Are you getting ready?" President Nicolás Maduro: "No one in the world is ready. In the ﬁrst place, we are preparing ourselves to defeat their threats. I make an appeal to the people of Europe, I make an appeal to all right-thinking people, I make an appeal to you to reﬂect... the noble people of Venezuela have the right to be respected, they have the right to peace. Do not hide the aggression of the United States behind the problems they themselves create. They create a problem with aggression,

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

Insights of Trump's speech against Venezuela in Florida In an event with the "Venezuelan Diaspora" assembled in an auditorium of the International University of Florida, President Donald Trump issued a speech that had been announced with high expectations.

entrusted the course of US foreign policy towards Venezuela under a hard line approach.

A few days from February 23, date in which anti-Chavez and Washington seek to resume the oﬀensive using the umbrella of "humanitarian aid" from Cúcuta and possibly other border points, the Trump pronouncement was expected to consolidate the bellicose rhetoric of the past days and oxygenate the mood of the opposition base.

In the course of his words, he dedicated a large part to criminalizing socialism by using it as a factor of polarization against the Democratic Party.

Internal politics, absurdities and forced comparisons

Although he cataloged the Latin American region as an area where socialism was in its "twilight", the real interest was in sending a message for US internal politics: to use the ﬁgure of Maduro, and the alleged failure of the socialist model in Venezuela, to terrorize the electorate before an eventual victory of the Democratic Party in 2020.

The intervention of the US president lasted about 30 minutes, the event took place under the guise of an election campaign with the intention of keeping the increasingly inﬂuential Venezuelan electoral mass in the state of Florida happy.

In the absurd logic of Trump, the Democratic Party is the simile of Nicolás Maduro on US soil, so the forced departure of the Venezuelan leader would be an extension of his internal political clashes. A direct message to the electorate of the Cuban-Venezuelan "diaspora", which according to his calculation will vote en masse for him so that what happens in Venezuela will not be repeated in Florida. This reasoning is only understood there.

The 2020 presidential election is just around the corner and Florida can once again be the turning point. Trump began his speech by greeting Senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, Representative Mario Díaz-Balart, OAS Ambassador Carlos Trujillo and National Security Advisor John Bolton, in whom he has 21

In the same line of demonization of the leadership of President Maduro, raised the level of slogan that "the United States will never be a socialist country." Thus, placing in a binary scheme the pre-electoral confrontation in which he is submerged, he also took to the maximum his own contradictions, since to assume himself defender of the free market in front of the "socialist ideas" of the opposing side is radically opposed to his protectionist and war policies commercial.

The mention of Perez in the middle of Trump's speech, who also granted a brief right of speech to his mother, seems to have the copyright of John Bolton. A message that, while legitimizing terrorism and irregular war as valid resources to confront the Venezuelan government, also enhances the role of Florida as a logistical base for the failed assassination of August 4, the preparation of the coup of the former Colonel Oswaldo García Palomo and the ﬁnancing of terrorist agendas.

With a speech that touched the religious, highly decontextualized, Trump predicted that "for the ﬁrst time in history there will be a free hemisphere of socialism," referring directly to Latin America. The supposed resurgence of the continent after the application of the soft-coup method in recent years against the progressive bloc, contrasts with the return to a semi-slavery economy in Brazil, the growth of poverty in Argentina, the caravans of Central American migrants and the State terrorism that cries daily in Colombia.

From Florida just resources and support of all kinds have been managed so that the mercenary agenda is imposed as a breaking point of the Venezuelan conflict, for this reason the mention of Óscar Pérez in the auditorium was not only intended for a specific audience, receptive to this type of messages, but also to emphasize that the letter of professional and mercenary violence is active to be used. The metamessage is the following: to stimulate the emergence of another figure as Óscar Pérez will have the support and legitimacy of the United States. Recall that a couple of months ago, President Nicolás Maduro denounced that John Bolton was behind a plan to assassinate him and in the creation of a false positive with mercenaries hired to enable an intervention, after the simulation of a coup d'état.

All situations that are not the result precisely of socialist policies, but consequences of coups, judicial and military interventions and the extreme plundering of a capitalist system in crisis that exports its contradictions to the Latin American periphery.

A tailored discourse and exaltation of terrorism (Bolton's hand)

Calls for a military coup, "humanitarian aid" and other paradoxes

Trump also used phrases and commonplaces designed speciﬁcally for the audience in front of him. Expressions such as "Maduro is a Cuban puppet" were used to raise the spirits of the fans in the audience, gain some more applause (and votes) and achieve the ovation they so badly needed to distract attention from their most recent failure to obtain funding. in Congress to expand the wall with Mexico.

As usual, Trump said that all "options are on the table", indirectly referring to the use of military intervention to force a change of government in Venezuela. He called on the military to withdraw his support to Maduro, allow the entry of "humanitarian aid", at the risk of "losing everything they have" if they do not accept the amnesty proposed by the artiﬁcial government of Juan Guaidó.

An audience that has organic leaders as extremist spokespersons like Luis Almagro or María Corina Machado, welcomed these demagogic clichés. In the same line of contact, he also qualiﬁed the former CICPC Óscar Pérez as hero, who was discharged last year after forming a paramilitary-type cell that attacked Caracas' institutional buildings with shots and grenades, placing life at risk of workers and children of a preschool at the capital's headquarters of the Supreme Court of Justice.

His summons to the military uprising was accompanied by a discourse of fear to the FANB, indicating that "they would have no escape" if they continue to support Maduro, as if it were a particular decision and not a mandate of the Venezuelan Constitution after the elections of May 20, where Nicolás Maduro was reelected as President and Commander of the FANB. Paradoxically, after trying to intimidate the Venezuelan military high command, he recognized its importance to "restore democracy" and as a strategic factor for the change of the regime.

His short career as "Rambo criollo", camouﬂaged in an evangelical posture mixed with a self-help speech, had its last action with a terrorist attack on a military barracks in Los Teques, Miranda, where he subjected members of the Bolivarian National Guard and took over of various weapons. 22

In summary, Trump assumed that the FANB maintains its current chain of command and that without its break, so promoted by its cabinet of war against

Venezuela, Juan Guaidó has little chance of exercising a practical power that makes viable the extraconstitutional exit of Nicolás Maduro. power.

In Trump's National Security Strategy, Latin America is an area that is projected as exclusive, where the United States intends to promote state, judicial and economic reforms that block the presence of China and Russia and direct the ﬂows of raw materials to boost the program "America First".

Thus, he acknowledged that the eﬀectiveness of US support for the "parallel government" of Guaidó, the crude economic and ﬁnancial sanctions against the country and the strategy of provoking a military confrontation using the "humanitarian aid" coverage, ultimately depend of a variable that escapes its control: the FANB.

The strategy of soft coups to the Latin American political class, justiﬁed under the coverage of the "anti-corruption struggle" in recent years, forms the practical application of this strategy by achieving a realignment of the countries formerly governed by progressivism and the political center towards states. United. The result has been an undermining of the power of the nation-states of the continent, under which they try to hinder the rise of China and Russia as strategic partners.

National Security Strategy and the breakdown of the Alba axis Trump's speech was an adaptation of the National Security Strategy for Florida consumption. This document that governs US foreign policy stresses that, in a hypercompetitive world, where its hegemony by China and Russia is challenged, the United States is enabled to use all its political, economic, ﬁnancial and military resources to maintain geopolitical supremacy and defend the American lifestyle.

However, the National Security Strategy as a paradigm is fed in turn by the doctrine of full spectrum domination and the Pentagon training circulars on unconventional warfare. It conﬁgures an aggressive foreign policy concept, of a military nature, where economic sanctions, the expansion of military bases, selective judicial persecution, the undermining of the economic power of the States and the use of mercenaries to "ﬁght against organized crime", they are mechanisms to control the region geopolitically.

In this strategy, presented in 2018, which breaks with the previous Bush and Obama for returning to a Cold War language with protectionist ideas, draws a world in which the United States has as a strategic objective to reduce the presence of China and Russia in areas of geostrategic interests to extend the lifetime of their hegemony. One of those areas is, logically, Venezuela, which in recent years has expanded its relations with the two Eurasian powers in areas ranging from the ﬁnancial to the military.

Although Trump omitted to make direct references to China and Russia, the speech was an exposition of the master lines of the National Security Strategy that justiﬁes the exceptional and unipolar action of the United States in areas where there are strategic resources for its recomposition.

For that same reason, and using the narrative of the "troika of tyranny" of John Bolton, Trump said that the overthrow of the constitutional government of Venezuela is also a shot for elevation to Cuba and Nicaragua, these three countries making up the center of gravity of the ALBA axis as a counterweight to the US hegemony in the region. The blow is three-way.

A deﬂated speech for the 23F

Trump keeps the "military option" on the table without a clear and eﬀective route that makes it viable.

While Marco Rubio and other congressmen are in Cúcuta to manage the entry of "humanitarian aid" on February 23, Trump's speech seems not to have met the expectations announced from the beginning.

In this sense, on February 23 an attempt is made to draw a turning point, where Trump's speech, Marco Rubio's electoral campaign in Cúcuta and the coordinated work between USAID and the Southern Command, constitute a provocative maneuver to encourage a military confrontation against Venezuela. But precisely Trump's speech, ﬁlled with clichés and phrases, highlights the urgency to recover the oﬀensive, the inability to convince Maduro to surrender, the little consensus with which military intervention and the rearticulation of Chavismo count. as a political bloc and a factor of order and peace within Venezuelan society.

In his ﬁnal words, beyond the explosion of emotion, there was a certain disenchantment with the United States' own capabilities to crystallize a change of government in Venezuela in the short term. Trump made reference to that "someday" the freedom will return to Venezuela, reducing the opposition mood on the imminent exit of Maduro. A few days from February 23, Washington has failed to manufacture the two preconditions necessary to implement the regime change: the military fracture or a civil war scenario that triggers the "humanitarian intervention". For that reason, Trump's commonplaces were a compensation mechanism to try to disguise the complications in order to remove Chavez from power with the lowest possible political costs. The ﬁgure of Guaidó, however, as time goes by, reveals the inability to exercise real power in the Venezuelan territory and state.

www.misionverdad.com

Live Caracas

The BBC's Orla Guerin interviewed President Nicolás Maduro in Caracas. Orla Guerin, BBC News As we sit here, there is US aid across the border in Colombia. We have met many people here who tell us they are desperately in need of aid. Why not allow it through?

they have, we tell them no - Venezuela has dignity, Venezuela produces and works and our people do not beg from anyone. Guerin You say the humanitarian aid is a show, but are you actually saying that the hunger is a show? We have seen it with our own eyes. I have met a mother of ﬁve who told me that her children go to bed every night with nothing to eat, and just a short drive from here, we have actually seen people reaching into the garbage with their hands to ﬁnd food to eat. Are you honestly saying there is no hunger in Venezuela?

President Nicolás Maduro First of all, it's a show, that the United States government has set up with the compliance of the Colombian government to humiliate the Venezuelans. Venezuela is a country that has the capacity to satisfy all the necessities of our people. Venezuela is a country that has problems like any country. We are in a battle that has been going on for many years, a successful battle, to reduce poverty, misery, in order to increase the job capacity, to establish a social security system to protect 100% of our pensioners, in order to establish a public health system that reaches all the Venezuelan population, to establish an educational system, that reaches 90% of our girls, boys, and our young.

President Nicolás Maduro I am telling you that the BBC in London has created a stereotype - the American media also - of a Venezuela that doesn't exist. We have 4.4% of what we call extreme poverty, misery. Of course this is still something that we have to overcome, but we came from 25% of extreme poverty, and we have reduced all the indexes of inequality. Venezuela today currently has indexes recognised by international organisations in the highest levels of social equality in social investment. Do we have problems? Yes. But Venezuela is not a country with hunger.

Venezuela is a country that has dignity, and the United States has intended to create a humanitarian crisis in order to justify a military intervention - "humanitarian". And this is part of that show. That's the reason that we, with dignity, tell them that the miniscule crumbs that they intend to bring with toxic food, with leftovers that

Venezuela has the highest levels of nutrients, has extremely high levels of access to food and that 25

are coming back. In any case I can tell you that Venezuela is a country that oﬀers opportunities in areas such as social development, social protection, social security, and that is why that, despite the economic blockade and the economic sanctions, and the economic persecution, Venezuela is still a country that receives immigrants. That's the truth.

stereotype, that stigma that they have tried to put on us, has only one objective: present a humanitarian crisis that does not exist in Venezuela, in order to do an intervention. In any case I tell you, the United States, Donald Trump's government, has sequestered $10bn (£7.75bn) of bank accounts that belong to us. They have sequestered billions of dollars in gold in London that are ours - that is money to buy supplies, raw materials, food, medicines. They have sequestered $1.4bn for many months, that we are going to use to buy food, medicines in Euroclear.

Last year, in December 2018, you know how many Colombians came? 120,000 Colombians came to set up in Venezuela, which led us to the number of 5.8 million. That's the truth that nobody says. The thing is that the script is established in the West to disﬁgure the Venezuela situation, and justify any intervention, any aggression, as is happening right now.

It's very simple: if you want to help Venezuela, release the billions of dollars in resources that belong to us. So don't come with a cheap show, a show of indignity, of humiliation, where they oﬀer $20m dollars in food that is toxic, and rotten.

Guerin But with respect, President Maduro, you can see every day at the border with Colombia large numbers of people leaving here. Even if we accept your ﬁgure that only 800,000 have gone, that's almost a million of your people who have left. Yet you are saying there is no humanitarian crisis.

Guerin I know your position, President Maduro, is that there is no humanitarian crisis in Venezuela. If that is the case, why have more than three million of your people left? That's one tenth of the population. The Unites States says people are leaving at the rate of 5,000 per day. If there is no crisis here, what is driving them from their homeland?

President Nicolás Maduro You have to see that economic war that we have been enduring, the financial persecution. Every single account that Venezuela has in the world has been traced. That has had an impact on the economic reality. And of course, some Venezuelans thought - because of the social media campaigns - to go and find an alternative type of job abroad. The educational level of the Venezuelans that have left is very high. There are a lot of university professionals that have left, people of a very good level have left, workers qualified to a high technical standard, and looking for alternatives abroad, they found even worse situations. And you can almost be assured that the majority of these Venezuelans that have left due to the economic reasons are going to come back.

President Nicolás Maduro You all have a problem, in the Western media, that you take it as a fact any lie that is broadcast. All that emigration campaign that has been said about Venezuela has been exaggerated. Venezuela is a country that receives immigrants, and you don't show that and you don't broadcast it. Venezuela has here 5.8 million Colombians, that have immigrated due to the war in Colombia because of the violation of human rights, and because of the misery. We have more than 300,000 Italians, more than 300,000 Portuguese, more than 300,000 Spaniards, more than a million Arabs, more than 300,000 Ecuadoreans, more than 300,000 Peruvians, There are more than 10 million immigrants coming every year to Venezuela.

Venezuela has the problems that any country could have, in the South, in the Third World, in Latin America. We have made a lot of progress in our social indexes, that is a reality. Venezuela is a country that has the highest measures of social advancement on the whole continent.

Now, due to the economic war there is a new phenomenon of migration. We have the oﬃcial numbers that show no more than 800,000 Venezuelans have left in the past two years, due to economic reasons, trying to look for new alternatives. Many of those Venezuelans were shattered because they encountered situations they did not expect like racism, discrimination, labour slavery, and thousands

Now we have problems, yes, of course we do. If we have the most powerful empire in the world, Orla, the most powerful empire in the world, targeting all our accounts, freezing all our assets abroad, going after every ship that comes to Venezuela bringing products, of course that has brought considerable disruption. We have confronted it, and rest assured, we will overcome.

because he himself has to rent surgical equipment. These are people that we have met and have heard their stories first hand. What do you say to them? President Nicolás Maduro That we are putting up a huge fight. Of the $1.4bn that was sequestered in Euroclear, half of that was to bring medicines to fight diabetes, to fight cancer. The money was frozen over there, and then we started looking via Portugal, and then they froze over $2bn with which we had bought substitutes for these medicines. In spite of all that, we brought medicines into the country. It's a huge effort. No country has endured what we have endured.

Guerin You say some of the problems here could be seen in other countries, but with respect, Mr President, you have a hyper-inflation rate last year of 1,000,000%. Nowhere else in the world is experiencing hyper-inflation like that. When you came to power, just before you came to power, the inflation rate here was 20%. So are you saying that the complete economic collapse here has nothing to do with you? President Nicolás Maduro I'll tell you again: you take as reference anything that comes in the Western media. I invite you to look at Venezuela in depth. Of course we have problems of an economic aggression, but 1,000,000% inflation, no country in the world would survive that, Orla. So you take as truth: you don't even question any number as long as it's against Venezuela, you don't question it. You are completely non-critical of the lies that are being said about Venezuela.

Guerin But the people can't afford to buy it. There may be medicine but we have met people who say that two boxes of antibiotics costs a month's salary. President Nicolás Maduro You are first talking about specific cases - some people that had surgery, and some people that are being taking care of. You can rest assured that the Venezuelan social health system will reach them, and rest assured that everything that has to do with the medical system, we have a primary system of medicine distribution, that no other country in the world has. We have the family doctors, we have more than 30,000 doctors distributed in the communities, in the barrios, and the doctor not only takes care of his clinic, he goes from house to house. In the clinic and in the visits from house to house, he takes the medicine directly to the person that needs it. That gives us very extensive coverage and we have been managing with a huge effort - with the economic blockade, with the economic persecution - we have been stabilising the pharmaceutical industry, the national pharmaceutical industry, and we have been regulating with a huge effort, three times what a country that is not blocked has to do, in order to regulate the supply and sale of medicines, in the private system.

Well, that's the way you are, that's the way BBC is, that's the way CNN is. You are the Western media, because you are in the script, to intervene in our country. Why is Venezuela so interesting for the West, why is it so interesting for the United States? If we produced potatoes, if we produced parsley, if we produced apples, maybe we would not even exist on the geopolitical map. But because Venezuela produces oil, and it's the largest oil reserve in the world, because Venezuela has the fourth-largest reserves of gas, because we have and are now certifying the largest gold reserves in the world, Venezuela is important. Venezuela is leader of Opec, Venezuela presides nowadays in Opec, so it's important to throw stuﬀ at Venezuela, to make attacks of all sorts - social, economic, political, military - to surround Venezuela in order to create a situation the way they did with Iraq, with Libya. But Venezuela is not Iran or Libya, Venezuela has its capacity. We will confront all these issues and be assured that all those campaigns of media aggression, of lies, we will slowly start to conquer them with reality. Guerin You think we have a preconceived idea. I came to Venezuela for the ﬁrst time two weeks ago. We have had a chance over those two weeks to see living conditions for ourselves. We have met with a young cancer patient whose mother was told she had to pay for his biopsy herself, and she told us it would take two years to earn the money. We met a young patient with tuberculosis, who was getting no treatment because there are no medicines. We met a young man with a brain tumour who told us he has been waiting a year for an operation

Guerin But we stood in a hospital not far from here and we saw ourselves that they didn't have insulin, they had not had it for ﬁve years. They didn't have basic medication. This is a public hospital in Caracas, not in a distant part of the country.

President Nicolás Maduro I'm not talking about the interior of the country, or about Caracas, I'm talking about the entire country, which is affected. So they choke us and they ask us, why are we suffocating? That's your question. You don't question anything. The financial persecution, the blockade, the mental scheme that you bring, from the

President Nicolás Maduro It's not that I agree, it is that you are lying. It's not that I agree or you agree. You bring an image, you are a person, that expresses a dogmatism, of the West, against Venezuela. You are dogmatic: you are not capable of checking yourself, and seeing if one thing is true, or not. You are dogmatic. You have no critical sense. There is only one way of thinking. That's how you call it - it's called one way of thinking.

West, from London, simply is just to finish killing the person who is being choked, and kicked. And our scheme is different. Our scheme is one of resistance to take care of the people. You come to justify all the persecution, and the social consequences of that persecution. Because if I had my money secured, the money of the country, in a bank account and then it's sequestered, and that money was to bring medicines, then you come and say that there are no medicines in the country. Why don't we have medicines? And then you should also ask, why did it happen? Try to change your mental scheme. Why is Venezuela the geopolitical centre of the world? Why Venezuela, and why is it not any country in Asia, or Latin America, or Africa? Why? Ask yourself. Because they want to conquer us, colonise us. They won't be able to - we are solid, legitimate, and popular. People that are suffering know the reasons why, and they are conscious of the protection that we give them, and they support this revolution. If that were not the case, we would not have been here for 20 years, winning 23 elections out of 25. You have to ask yourself, why the mental schemes that you use, why the script that you bring from the North, does not work in Venezuela. Why?

Guerin President Maduro, these are facts. These countries have now recognised the opposition leader here as the president. What do you say to them? President Nicolás Maduro First of all, it's not 50, not even the European Union. It's not my duty to say. It's about 10 countries - governments, not countries, governments - that are in alignment with the politics of Donald Trump. What you have to ask yourself is where does all this political aggression come from? Where does this coup d'état scenario come from? Where does it come from? Trying to impose on Venezuela a government that nobody has elected, a government that declared itself in a public square, absolutely unconstitutional and irregular. Where does it come from? From the White House. Who conducts it? Donald Trump. The extremists of the White House have taken it upon themselves to carry out a coup in Venezuela. And we have rejected it and the entire world has rejected it. Now a Western campaign continues in a rushed way, I would say in an evil way. Donald Trump's politics continue. I would tell the world - Europe, London, the United Kingdom - ask yourselves, if you are not being led to a road with no exit, to failure, as you are letting Donald Trump lead you to a completely extremist illegal politics that violates the United Nations charter. And it has no support in Venezuela.

Guerin But your election victory last year is disputed by many people. There are now more than 50 governments that have recognised Juan Guaidó as the interim President of Venezuela. President Nicolás Maduro Fifty, where did you get that number from? Where do you get your numbers from, really? You bring a mental picture that you should check. You should check, I am not going to tell you more because really it's up to you, if you are an objective journalist, stable, or you only come here to verify your war campaign, the BBC's war campaign, and the western campaign against Venezuela.

It has already failed, that politics of trying to impose a government that nobody elected. In Venezuela according to this constitution, the sovereignty resides in the people and is non-transferable. It is non-transferable. And only through the people's vote you can elect a president in Venezuela. That's like someone comes to a public square in London, and proclaims himself Queen of England, or proclaims himself prime minister, and then three governments come and recognise it. That's outrageous. It's one of the biggest political outrages in international politics. In Venezuela, the people vote, and according to this constitution, only the people can put you in power and remove you.

Venezuela is a noble country. Venezuela has the right to peace. It's not right that we are enduring this campaign of war. Venezuela does not want war. Venezuela does not want the result of all these campaigns that you conduct, that one day troops will come, in order to conquer our country. Venezuela wants peace, and respect, and for all of you to stop lying daily, please. Guerin But do you dispute the ﬁgure? Do you dispute that 50 countries have now recognised the opposition leader Juan Guaidó?

held: presidential elections, for governors, for mayors, for parliament, referendums.

Guerin You say it's up to the people to decide. Why not call a new presidential election, a free and fair and credible election, and let the people have their say? It seems as if your country now is very divided on the question of who should be president.

Guerin But many would say they have not always been fair, particularly the last one. There are allegations of ballot stuffing, and opposition candidates were not allowed to take part. It was not a level playing field in the last election, and this is why many would say that your victory in that election is in doubt. If you are confident now of a new victory, why not have a new election?

President Nicolás Maduro Well, there could be a debate in any country - who should be prime minister, who should be president but every country has an electoral schedule. They have rules, electoral rules. Venezuela in the last 18 months has had votes to elect 23 governors, and we won 19. We have 335 municipalities, and out of 335 we won 307. We have chosen, and we have gone to the polls six times in the past 18 months, and on 20 May of last year, we had an election based on the constitution, for president of the republic, and I won with 68% of the vote. The opposition since then, the government of the United States, has boycotted this election.

President Nicolás Maduro What is the logic, reasoning, to repeat an election? There has not been even one legal question internally to the electoral authority, which is the highest authority that regulates the elections, within the judicial branch. What there have been are political questions, and from whom? From the government of the United States. The government of the United States, since January 2018, four months before the elections were held, Donald Trump said we are not going to recognise any results of the presidential elections held in Venezuela. And still we hadn't even set the date. Listen Orla, please, it's a war. I pray that God enlightens you, and enlightens the opinion of the audience watching the BBC. It's a political war, of the United States empire, of the interests of the extreme right that today is governing, of the Ku Klux Klan, that rules the White House, to take over Venezuela, and they have positioned a political strategy, communications, diplomatic, warmongering, in order to take over Venezuela. And we, with the truth in our country, we are dismantling all that manipulation, all those lies that are repeated day after day.

Because they knew that there was no candidate from the opposition that could beat me in a presidential election, and they positioned this coup d'état a year ago. Venezuela already had its election. The election that's still pending - and we will probably bring it forward - is the parliamentary election. That's the organism of the democratic institutions in Venezuela that has not been re-legitimised. I completely agree that we should bring that election forward, the parliamentary election, and the elections for the president of parliament. Look at this: there is a very important element.

Guerin Do you really think the Ku Klux Klan is ruling America?

Our constitution allows a feature called a recall referendum. It's one of the few places in the world where it exists. It means that in the middle of the term of any popular election, the people could activate a recall referendum.

President Nicolás Maduro I believe that the extremist sector of the white supremacists of the Ku Klux Klan lead the United States. I believe it's a gang of extremists.

The opposition has that option left, in the year 2022, to start the process of a recall referendum. Let's respect the rules of the game. Let nobody impose worldwide blackmail, international blackmail, so that Venezuela breaks its rules, or electoral regulations.

Guerin Are you calling President Trump a white supremacist? President Nicolás Maduro He is, publicly and openly, and he has stimulated the fascist tendencies - neo-fascists, neo-Nazis - within the United States, in Europe, in Latin America.

Guerin Could you win a presidential election now? President Nicolás Maduro I already won it. And nowadays all the polls say that the Popular Bolivarian forces that I represent - that we represent - we have the social majority, cultural, political, electoral. We have won. You should know, in 20 years, we have won 23 elections out of 25 that we have

It's an extremist sector that hates the world. They hate us Latin Americans, Central Americans, Mexicans, Venezuelans. They hate us, they belittle us, they hate the entire world, because they only believe in their own interests, and in the interests of the United States.

neighbours here in Latin America. It's also large powerful countries in Europe.

So in this battle that we are leading for Venezuela, I tell you, it's a battle that goes beyond our country, the battle to respond. Look at this: Donald Trump threatened us with a military invasion, just a few days ago. He said he was going to send the United States army into Venezuela.

President Nicolás Maduro It's unfortunate that Europe, after being kicked by Donald Trump, is now behind Donald Trump - some countries, some governments are behind Donald Trump in a completely illegal policy that has no reason to be. I have been in meetings very frequently with European Union ambassadors, and I have read them the constitution, and I have demonstrated that they are outside of the international rules of the game, of respect. Everything that they say is a lie. Well, I really hope from the European countries, even those who have gone in the wrong direction, and those who are just waiting, observing, I hope for more from them. I hope that they listen to us. They only listen, as I told them, to one version. The statements and the communications from the European Union, are a complete reproduction of what the Venezuelan extreme right has said. It can't be.

Why? What is the reason, the pretext, the motive to declare war against Venezuela, which is a peaceful country? I call upon the people of the world, to wake up, open your eyes, to see that it is an aggression against the peaceful country. That Venezuela has problems like many other countries in the world, but only in peace can we solve our problems. And if you really want to help Venezuela, you have to support peace. Say no to the intervention, tell the United States, hands off Venezuela, and support Venezuela in its own efforts to resolve its own problems through dialogue. Guerin You say to the Americans hands off Venezuela, and that's fair enough, it's your country. But do you think you are also facing criticism from Latin American nations? It's not only Washington that is criticising you at the moment, it's also some of your neighbours here in Latin America.

Orla, we are really a force that exists, with a historic background, and cultural background, with a political and democratic background. This Bolivarian movement that was founded by Commandante Chávez has an existing force, powerful, in Venezuela, that deserves to be heard. I tell Europe, listen more, open your ears, and please, follow the path of respect.

President Nicolás Maduro Well unfortunately some governments of the extreme right are now in power - Colombia, for example, Chile. They are governments - the one from Chile comes from the Pinochet tradition, President Piñera, Macri in Argentina. And now they form a bloc of extreme right. They have substituted the international policy of respect, tolerance, to impose an ideology, an ideology that has imposed great intolerance in international politics. And we have strongly opposing viewpoints. Well, they form a group of 11 countries. With the rest of the countries of Latin America, and the Caribbean, we have permanent relationships. We just had a meeting in Montevideo, a very important meeting that everyone should know about, promoted by Mexico, Bolivia, Uruguay, and the 14 governments from Caricom, from the Caribbean. They propose a mechanism for dialogue, to help Venezuela in four phases. These countries make up 17 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. They are currently working on a process of dialogue that I fully support, a dialogue with no secrets, an open dialogue, and that will allow Venezuela to deal with these issues in peace, and resolve them. Guerin But Europe is also questioning your legitimacy. It's not only the White House, it's not only some of the

Guerin How much of your gold is currently being frozen in the Bank of England? There are assets of Venezuela belonging to this country that you have been trying to access through the Bank of England. How much of your gold is currently frozen, and have you any chance of getting that? President Nicolás Maduro Well, in general, in England there could be more or less 80 tonnes. Legally, it's Venezuela's gold, established by the institutions. It's protected by the central banks. It's gold that belongs to the central bank of Venezuela. And I hope that international law will be respected. And the Central Bank of Venezuela is respected. And that hopefully the law will prevail. And that Venezuela is not robbed of the gold that legally belongs to us. Guerin What would you say to the British government and to Theresa May?

freedom in this country to do anything they want. But there has never been and never will be repression of that kind. Please.

President Nicolás Maduro In reality we have not had much of a relationship with the prime minister. If she would listen to me, I would tell her that she should open her ears wide and see the aggression and not be partners in crime in what could be an invasion, a war in Latin America. That the extremist group that is in the White House is willing to do anything, and in the name of Venezuela, I tell her look at the reality. Look into the heart of Venezuela. It goes beyond the information and the campaigns that are being waged daily against us. And that hopefully she has the opportunity that the UK and in general Europe could then propose a respectful dialogue between Venezuelans. There is a severe risk to peace in Latin America and the Caribbean. Venezuela will ﬁght if we have to, for our liberty and for our independence. We fought in the past and there were many English, Irish that were on the battleﬁelds of Venezuela. I am sending a message beyond Mrs May to the people of the United Kingdom, the people of England, to all the people of the United Kingdom, to have solidarity with us and support peace, and to enforce John Lennon's song, Give Peace A Chance. Give Peace a Chance and give truth a chance in Venezuela - that would be my call.

Guerin But there have been people killed in anti-government protests. Just last month, the United Nations said that as many as 40 were killed, about 26 by your security forces. People have been killed for protesting. President Nicolás Maduro What protests? They have not shown a single bit of proof of a campaign that lasted 15 days. I saw it, I watch international news and the international news was showing a Venezuela that was not on the streets. Of course, on 23 January there were big rallies. The opposition held a big march and so did we. And with those images and other images of confrontation on the streets, they ended up saying that there were enormous protests that lasted 15 days in Venezuela. I spoke to prime ministers and presidents from around the world who called me, on 25, 28, 29 January, on 1 February and they were asking me if there were big demonstrations in the streets. And I said no, Venezuela is working, Venezuela is in peace. Because they tried to show - look at this. In order to justify this coup d'état and ﬁnd international support, they had a plan to stir up the main cities in the country, but they failed. It's a small group of delinquents that went out to the streets, paid for by sections of the opposition and they were caught in the middle of their violent action.

Guerin You have said you are ready to ﬁght. Are you ready to take up arms against the US military if they decide to cross the border? President Nicolás Maduro They would not leave us any other option. We would have to defend the right of our country to exist. To defend our right to peace. I hope that doesn't happen. I hope that public opinion will be on the side of peace and they can see how noble the Venezuelan people are, and that we have a right to discuss our own problems in peace. And that nobody interferes with Venezuela. No-one. And that this extremist group that is in the White House is defeated by powerful world-wide public opinion. I have faith in that. I am a believer, I am a Christian and I always ask God to enlighten us and protect us. And I have faith that we are going to accomplish everything in peace.

Guerin There were many large-scale protests. We have seen some of those ourselves. We have also seen your supporters. But do you dispute that the opposition has been able to bring large numbers out and these people have said they are calling for change? President Nicolás Maduro Yes, I saw them. And they were given the right to protest and have big protests, the same for the opposition as for us. Venezuela is a dynamic democracy with people who support the revolution and people who oppose the revolution. Whenever they go out and march, they will have the right to do so. And I always say I hope they do it in peace. They have small violent cells of protesters that, when the demonstrations are over, the marches of the opposition, always try to have a confrontation with the police in order to cause disturbance. The opposition have all the freedom to march as many times as they want, with their slogans and demands and we are also going to mobilise our people. Fortunately our people have a dynamic democracy.

Guerin The opposition has talked about getting volunteers, getting people to the border to get the aid across. If they attempt to do that, would your troops ﬁre on your own people? President Nicolás Maduro We have never done that. We would never do that. We have never done that. The opposition has its tactics, its politics. They create their own shows. They have the

never been done with any country in the world before. And where are the armed forces? Are they going to serve Donald Trump? No. The armed forces are loyal. To the country and the constitution and recognising their commander in chief as the legitimate chief. I have a level of relationship that I inherited from Commandante Hugo Chávez, and that I have developed. So it is now a very deep, sincere honest and real relationship with all the oﬃcers, with the armed forces, with the soldiers. And that is a big strength that our country has.

Guerin Is there any set of circumstances in which you would give up power? President Nicolás Maduro It is not about me as an individual wanting to be in power, Orla, and it is not my individual choice to abandon power. I am part of a social, political and historical revolutionary movement and that popular movement placed me in this position of responsibility. Complying with all the constitutional steps, electoral requirements and the mandate that they gave me is very powerful. And I have to comply with that mandate with my life. I swore to do this. I swore in the national supreme court to give my life to uphold and enforce the constitution. That is the mandate. And I am going to go beyond words to the end of what is possible to do this.

Guerin How do you think Hugo Chávez would feel if he saw Venezuela today? President Nicolás Maduro He would feel motivated to fight for our country as he always did. Commandante Chávez had to endure very similar circumstances to these, very similar. George W Bush launched a coup d'état against him on 11 and 12 April 2002. He was kidnapped and they were going to kill him and Chávez did not hesitate, not even for one second, to defend his principles, his ideals and to fight to stay alive. So therefore Chávez is a huge inspiration for us. I always think, what would Chávez do in these circumstances? And that helps me a lot to find the right way forward, to know what to do every day.

Guerin Are you conﬁdent you still have the support of the army? There is a lot of intimidation in the army now people are being jailed when they speak out against you. President Nicolás Maduro Well, that is another of the myths that were created throughout this campaign against me. The national Bolivarian armed forces are structurally humane. they are Bolivarian. Democratic. Structurally institutionalised. And they are armed forces forged through their values and a new doctrine, a new concept with teaching academies, and with a university for permanent learning. It's a new type of armed forces. This is not just an army, just made up of a random group of people, nor is it a rebellious army. It is not an army in the style of Pinochet. Nor will it be. So therefore these armed forces are loyal to the constitution. Loyal. Firmly loyal to the constitution. Mobilised in defence. Preparing themselves to defend the country. With very high moral values. They are very conscientious. And loyal to the Constitutional Commander in Chief, who is Nicolás Maduro. I am the head of state and the head of government and, according to the constitution, I am the Commander in Chief. They are loyal because they have a conscience and they have morals. They are not rebellious armed forces. And they are not armed forces that will put themselves at the service of the interests of the United States, of Donald Trump's Empire of the United States. Donald Trump has given orders on Twitter. It's incredible, Orla. Donald Trump, John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence - they have commanded the Venezuelan armed forces to rise up in rebellion against the president of the republic. They have gone to extreme lengths and I am sure it has

Guerin One last question, if I may, about the Americans. If President Trump was to put 5,000 US troops on the Colombian border, how would you respond? President Nicolás Maduro He can put a million there if he wants to. If it's inside Colombia, he can bring a million tanks, a million planes, a million soldiers. It's not a problem. If they stay inside Colombia, there is no problem. We will defend Venezuela and we will make them respect Venezuela. And with the conscience of the world and the conscience of the decent people of the world, we must tie the hands of Donald Trump, prevent Donald Trump from starting a war in Latin America. Or from assaulting Venezuela. I appeal for solidarity. I appeal for the active solidarity of all people of conscience in the world, beyond any ideology. No to a war in Venezuela. No to an invasion of Venezuela. And that we all tell Donald Trump: hands oﬀ Venezuela. Venezuela wants peace, tranquillity, happiness. Guerin If a convoy comes through without authorisation, would you ﬁre upon it? If a plane comes in without authorisation, would it be attacked?

President Nicolás Maduro They should send a convoy with the dollars they have stolen from us. Send a convoy with the gold, with the 80 tonnes. Let it come, the convoy with money. It's our money. With that, we could solve all our country's problems.

President Nicolás Maduro We have diﬀerent scales of salary. Now this is a very Venezuelan issue. I don't think your audience is interested in that. You see, because if we had time to compare the jobs, social protection, social security, public health, and public education available to the Venezuelan people, then with time your audience would probably understand. So I can tell you in Venezuela we have a policy of social protection to generate jobs and our people will progressively start solving their problems and they won't want for anything. I can tell you that.

Guerin What would you say to the people who are hungry now, to the people who can't ﬁnd food, can't ﬁnd medicine, who are worried they won't have fuel? What do you say to them? President Nicolás Maduro I tell them, and more than that, I act. I generate jobs, the pension system, protect Venezuelan families, continue to protect Venezuelan families, continue reducing extreme poverty. We have made a commitment between 2017 and 2025 to reach a state of zero poverty and we are going to accomplish it. You will see that we will do it.

Guerin Have you heard from Jeremy Corbyn, the British opposition leader, during this crisis? Do you feel he hasn't given you enough support? He has been a strong supporter of Venezuela in the past. President Nicolás Maduro No, we haven't spoken.

Guerin A very last question: can you tell me how much a kilo of cheese costs in Venezuela?

Guerin And do you think he should have given you support?

President Nicolás Maduro It has diﬀerent prices depending on the region.

President Nicolás Maduro I think he should continue to be the leader that he is in the United Kingdom.

Guerin Because we have been told it is the equivalent of a month's wages and that is what it is costing people just to buy one kilo of cheese. www.bbc.com The opinions expressed in these articles are of the author and do not necessarily reﬂect the oﬃcial position of the Embassy

"Neutral" liberalism with Venezuela According to the newspaper El Observador de Uruguay, Pepe Mujica received several calls from officials of the State Department who told him about Donald Trump's intention to intervene in Venezuela. In those same conversations, the officials asked Pepe to intercede so that Chavismo would accept "free elections", an elegant figure to get out of power and avoid the aforementioned bloodbath that would be counterproductive for both the United States and Venezuela. According to Mujica, to the United States, like Maduro, they "do not give a damn about democracy". The previous paragraph describes perfectly what a part of regional progressivism, which is referenced with Mujica, considers what is happening in Venezuela, although it must be located in the context of a country like Uruguay with leaders accustomed to balance between the powers global and regional, not to be with one but with all. Old Pepe, an old fox of politics, turned into a messenger of some officials of the State Department, believes that the best thing is for Venezuela to abandon its sovereignty and accept elections totally supervised by a UN that in its diplomatic structure is organized by ex State Department officials. Chance, for example, says that in the figure offered by Mujica, the authorities of the UN electoral mission would be appointed by the Secretariat for Political Affairs, headed by Jeffrey Feltman, former undersecretary of State for the Middle East during the Obama Administration. So beyond considerations, the minor evil of Mujica is that Maduro comes out of power, establishing the same hygienic solution to remove Chavism from the power equation.

American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO), a kind of progressive festival, is far away, where the Venezuelan theme was swept under the carpet, leaving only as an exhibitor of the Bolivarian Republic an Edgardo Lander who a few days ago did not his feet trembled to go to recognize Juan Guaidó after his "self proclamation". Exposed, and ridiculous, in the light of events, the organizers of this event remain, as happens with anyone who holds an equidistant position on Venezuela.

This position that unites this washed-out progressivism with an umbilical cord that unfortunately is diﬃcult to cut from the politics of encirclement and asphyxia ordered by Trump, however much they want to accuse this Manichean aﬃrmation. At a certain point, Mujica works in this as the good cop in Washington so that Chavismo "get out of it". The problem for this thesis is that, in all its brutality, the threat of military intervention, together with the application of an oil embargo, already in operation since 2017, has ordered regional progressivism, be it fright, horror or own protection, alignments in favor or against the policy of the United States.

Because beyond the interested, and biased, position of Mujica, the reality is that there is an understanding that if in Venezuela a ﬁgure of intervention advances, supported by a parallel government, all the other processes in the region will be more brutal and with less possibility of resistance. The antecedent of a Venezuelan model for the intervention would leave a deep scar, in addition to ending an important retaining wall that serves to give more room for maneuver to other processes such as Bolivian, Cuban and Nicaraguan, among others, placed in the Look under the name of the "troika of evil", as if we had returned to the Cold War.

For the ﬁrst time, regional and global progressivism has before its eyes the exact dimension of extermination and persecution that this type of policy against Venezuela looks for outside the ideological blinders, and frames of debate imposed by the media campaign against the country. Trump gave verisimilitude to the Chavista story about the diﬀerent forms of war against Venezuela. Because there is a same process that in Venezuela is ahead, but has points of comparison with what happens in countries like Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua, among many others. An attempt to "extirpate", according to the very language of the White House, the corrupt, criminal and populist systems of power relationship of the attacked nations. As if it were a rebirth of the communist threat of the seventies, an old doctrine of anti-subversion, the bad guys are usually the PT, Kirchnerism, Chavism, Evismo, Correismo and Sandinismo. In this logic, the country that can be seen as the "model" of a post chavism is Brazil.

The most evident balance of this is having enhanced, in the first place, the importance that Venezuela represents as a geopolitical model of balance in the region, regardless of the favorable political position or not with respect to Chavism, as well as its resignification as a political movement of resistance against the United States with much more value than a false opinion matrix against Maduro. That is why the unintended result of Trump and company is to have created the objective conditions for a front opposed to its policy in the region, from a basic consensus supported by no to war, today taken as a global flag by allies and not allies of Chavez.

Governed by a puppet, created and protected by the media and the military, with the irrestrictive support of an army of institutional technocrats, whose best synthesis is the ﬁgure of Judge Sérgio Moro, today Minister of Justice of Jair Bolsonaro. A democracy tutored from abroad, where the leader with the most popular support can die in jail, and any kind of resistance is harassed, persecuted and demonized by the triad of intelligence services, media and judicial operators, today the real body that exercises the power as mandator of the banks and the corporations that plan the disarmament of Brazil as a powerful country to be reconverted into a simple regional gendarme of low relevance in the global order. The foregoing has caused the spiral of silence around Venezuela, as if it were a taboo subject, has been completely broken. The last Congress of the Latin

While in Venezuela, the war, which until now was invisible, has been exposed with all the threads of complicity, which has also strengthened the emotional bond of the Chavista people with the State and its institutions, against the risk that runs the existence same from Venezuela. What goes far beyond a presidency, a few ministries and the last apprentice of Donald Trump.

Article by: Roque Botello www.misionverdad.com The opinions expressed in these articles are of the author and do not necessarily reﬂect the oﬃcial position of the Embassy

Financial blockade: Chronology of a strategy to destroy Venezuela Sanctions against Venezuela are real and palpable mechanisms of destruction of the State, its identity and, with it, of Venezuelan society. They form part of a war strategy based on the application of diverse resources and sophisticated tools of ﬁnancial hegemony against fundamental nodes of our national life. Although in Venezuela there are no bombs falling down and no U.S. Marines are seen disembarking along the coasts, there is plenty of evidence of the resources of permanent aggression, nationally and internationally, used on the part of corporate and political sectors. In this context, since 1999, the internal domestic of anti-Chavismohave alternated between low-proﬁle mechanisms such as boycott or corporate disinvestment and forceful actions such as the April 2002 coup or the oil lockout. Since 2015, when the then president of the United States, Barack Obama, declared Venezuela as an "unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security of the United States," the political vanguard and leadership in anti-Chavismoof the transnational elite that governs in Washington became irrefutable, they gave greater hardness to a string of measures that have determined not only the destruction of the

national economy but also seriously modified the cultural perception of the issue. What is understood in its full dimension with the declarations of Jack Lew, former Secretary of the Treasury during the Obama Administration, who stated that "sanctions are the silver bullet of U.S. foreign policy because they are more effective and cheaper to subdue enemies than traditional power, because they have influence in the U.S. financial markets, the central nerve of the globalized economy". Sanctions, thus, are measures of siege to fortresses, as in the medieval era, updated to this new era of intelligent, technologized, globalized power, where each nerve that is connected to that power is functional to subdue their enemies, according to Lew. 2015: UNITED STATES ASSUMES COMMAND OF ANTI-CHAVISMO The financial blockade has mutated from the attack on the debt, through isolation by the US financial system, to the application of espionage techniques that chase after Venezuelan transactions and withhold funds destined for the import of food and medicines. Since then, Venezuela has suffered the effects of the fall in oil prices due to the fact that the United States 36

In this context of siege based on social discontent produced by the fall in oil prices, scarcity, shortages and a wave of looting, anti-Chavismowon the majority in the National Assembly and structured a higher plane, now from the National Assembly, for ﬁnancial aggressions against Venezuela.

agreed with Saudi Arabia to aggressively increase oil production in order to lower prices and affect important oil-producing countries such as Venezuela, Russia and Iran. In addition, the economy began to deteriorate due to a lack of income and by the activities of a company created in Miami in 2010, called DólarToday, which artificially devalued the value of the currency in order to induce an inflationary spiral. Venezuela lost approximately 60% of its national income that year.

2016: FINANCIAL SIEGE AND THE DEFAULT THAT DID NOT HAPPEN In April 2016, the International Monetary Fund warned of the "economic catastrophe" in Venezuela through a report, generating expectations of collapse, inﬂation and scarcity to legitimize the actions of economic warfare carried out by Fedecámaras and Consecomercio, the Venezuela's two main associations of the private sector.

The Executive Order (13692) signed by the Obama Administration in March 2015 initiated ﬁnancial blockade actions against Venezuela and, with it, the U.S. government made the economic attack against the country, legal. Based on the Emergency Law of International Economic Powers, activated at the constitutional level, to provide whichever administration with tools to "defend" itself from the threat.

The National Assembly, in contempt for incorporating three Deputies whose elections were demonstrably fraudulent, approved legal instruments in May and August that declared "null" the oil contracts, foreign investments and the emission of new indebtedness on the part of the country, trying with it to prevent fresh money from entering the State coﬀers.

Under this pretext, the White House placed its financial system, through the Treasury Department, on alert with respect to Venezuelan financial operations. With the excuse of blocking the mobility of unproven personal accounts, until then, of seven Venezuelan officials, this legal instrument has forbidden the use of the U.S. financial system to import food and medicine by the Venezuelan state. At the same time, risk-rating agencies, agencies created by the United States to destabilize sovereign countries, published a global map of "risky countries”. This is to supplement the economic-financial siege against the Venezuelan government's recovery plans, as a result of the fall in oil prices. Venezuela was catalogued by the French financial company Coface as the country with the highest risk in Latin America, similar to African countries that are currently in situations of armed conflict. The "study" was carried out based on the negative ratings of the three major U.S. rating agencies, Standard and Poor's, Fitch Rating and Moody's, which were largely responsible for the global financial collapse of 2008.

During 2016 and 2017, Venezuelan accounts in the United States were closed by large private banks, such as Citibank and JP Morgan, because Executive Order 13692 empowered the Treasury Department to use surveillance mechanisms for Venezuela's ﬁnancial transactions in the United States.

From 2015 onwards, the country-risk variable began to increase artificially in order to hinder the entry of international financing and, until the first half of 2018, these three major rating agencies have stepped up their attacks against Venezuela, omitting the on time Venezuelan debt payments, in order to push the country towards default and project a situation of insecurity for potential foreign investment.

With the excuse of protecting its financial system from "corrupt officials," the aim was to isolate Venezuela from the U.S. financial system and obstruct both its imports and the payment of foreign debt. Commerzbank, Germany's second-largest bank, joined in.

In July 2016, the country risk index EMBI, created by JP Morgan Bank, placed Venezuela with the worst score

scenario of violence was brought to an end. The country regained political and social stability in the face of a cycle of aggressions aimed at removing President Nicolás Maduro and destroying the current constitutional framework.

in the world (2640 points) below countries at war like Ukraine, even though the Venezuelan state paid 6 billion dollars in foreign debt that same year. In September, PDVSA made an oﬀer to swap US$7.1 billion in bonds in order to ease its payments, and the three major U.S. risk-rating agencies sought to frighten investors by declaring default if they agreed to Venezuela state-owned oil company's proposal.

2017 AFTER THE NATIONAL CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY ELECTION: INTERFERING VIRULENCE Between August and November were the most dynamic days of the aggression against Venezuela that year. When the guarimbasfailed, Europe entered the destabilizing game; in August the Swiss bank Credit Suisse prohibited its clients from making ﬁnancial transactions with Venezuela, as Julio Borges had requested in April.

In November, JP Morgan issued a false default alert on an alleged PDVSA debt default of 404 million dollars to generate fear in the ﬁnancial world and damage the image of the state-owned company. The US oil company ConocoPhillips also sued PDVSA before a Delaware court for its bond swap operation in order to frighten the participants and thus make the operation fail.

In an executive order, Trump prohibited the purchase of Venezuelan debt and the repatriation of dividends from CITGO, PDVSA's U.S. subsidiary, thus closing two key ﬁnancing channels for a Venezuela devastated by the guarimbas.

In this aggressive environment against the Venezuelan economy, inflation through the DólarToday effect closed at approximately 800%, according to figures leaked to some international agencies.

The U.S. then began executing an undeclared oil embargo. U.S. private banks, pressured by the Treasury Department, refused to issue letters of credit for the purchase of Venezuelan crude oil, thus negatively aﬀecting the nation's revenues.

2017: EMBARGO, VIOLENCE FAILS AND FURTHER DESTABILISATION In April 2017, the illegally elected president of the National Assembly, Julio Borges, demanded that more than 20 international banks cease their economic and ﬁnancial ties with Venezuela. In May, he declared the purchase of US$865 million in PDVSA bonds by the U.S. bank Goldman Sachs, "null”.

PBF Energy, one of the largest reﬁneries in Venezuela, had to give up its economic ties to the country as a result of the sanctions.

In his eagerness to coordinate financial and economic sanctions against Venezuela, and using the National Assembly as an instrument to legitimize the financial blockade, Borges met with the then White House national security advisor General H.R. McMaster. In this way the financial blockade prevented the country from importing food and medicines necessary for its survival.

In September, the Treasury Department, through its Financial Crimes Control Network (FINCEN), issued an alert called "red flags" that imposes a surveillance and control system on Venezuela's financial transactions to prevent the payment of food and medicines while, as a result of Trump's sanctions issued in August, CITGO began to have difficulties acquiring crude oil for its refineries and keeping its operations stable.

Supported by the United States and the OAS, Venezuelan anti-Chavismoundertook a new escalation of chaos and violence more intense and dangerous than that of 2014, which caused millions of dollars in losses to the country and left a lamentable toll of 130 dead and thousands injured. Likewise, the United States sanctioned more than 20 Venezuelan oﬃcials, representatives of all public powers and responsible for maintaining internal order, as a measure to feed the chaos of the violent street protests (guarimbas). As an extreme measure, President Nicolás Maduro called in May for the election of a National Constituent Assembly (ANC), whose election took place in July amid intense violence. More than 8 million Venezuelans participated in the election and with it a traumatic

In this context, some 300,000 doses of insulin paid for by the Venezuelan government did not reach the country because Citibank boycotted its purchase. At the same time, the disembarkation of 18 million CLAP food boxes into Venezuela was interrupted by the obstacles imposed by the U.S. ﬁnancial system, given that its authorities closed 52 Venezuelan bank accounts in entities such as Wells Fargo, East and City, because of their owners supposed links to the Venezuelan government.

While this was happening, regional elections were held with more than 11 million votes in the entire process. Chavismo won 19 out of 23 governorships in elections called by the ANC, in which anti-Chavismopolitical

parties such as Acción Democrática and Voluntad Popular participated. In spite of this, even though in the last three years Venezuela never stopped honouring its international commitments, in November the European company Euroclear, founded by JP Morgan, decided to withhold 1,650 million dollars that were destined to the purchase of food and medicine. The Americas Committee of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) declared Venezuela in default, ignoring the payment of 70 billion dollars in debt in the previous two years. While JP Morgan again increased Venezuela's country-risk to 2,989 points, the worst figure since 2014, when it stood at 1,458 points. Risk-rating agency Standard and Poor's declared Venezuela in "selective default" because it was unable to honour debt commitments because the sanctions limited the country's financial transactions in the U.S. payment system. With these manoeuvres they tried to open the door to the confiscation of PDVSA's assets. That same November the U.S. bond manager Wilmington Trust accused Corpoelec (Venezuela’s national electricity company) of not cancelling debt interest in the order of 27 million dollars, just when the country was experiencing a total blockade of means of payment in the U.S. financial system. So much so that a shipment of Primaquina, a medicine used to treat malaria, did not enter the country because of the blockade of a Colombian laboratory called BSN Medical, and 23 operations in the international financial system were returned: a total of 39 million dollars for food, basic supplies and medicines. In December, 19 other Venezuelan bank accounts abroad were arbitrarily closed by U.S. banks, preventing payments to creditors, while Venezuela's right-wing opposition decided not to participate in the municipal elections after its defeat in the October regional elections. Chavismo again won by landslide gaining more than 95% of all mayors. 2018-2019: A COLOSSAL AND MULTIFACETIC ATTACK In January 2018, the current CIA chief and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said at a conference at the American Business Institute that the financial sanctions against Venezuela had been coordinated by him directly with President Trump. At the same time, eleven Venezuelan and PDVSA bonds, worth 1.241 billion dollars, could not be paid to their creditors because of the obstacle of the

sanctions. The National Assembly (still in contempt) passed a motion in which it criminalized the Venezuelan cryptocurrency the Petro, confirming its desire to keep the country without sources of financing. In March, the Trump Administration, by executive order, declared illegal the purchase or other operations related to the Petroby U.S. companies and citizens. With this manoeuvre it legalized the agreement of the National Assembly affecting the initial pre-sale and the resources that would enter the country in a context where another 2,500 million of dollars belonging to Venezuela were retained in U.S. banks. Much of this money was to be used to pay international creditors. In that month, fifteen Venezuelan boxers were unable to travel to the 2018 Central American and Caribbean Games (CAC) qualifying event in Mexico due to the financial sanctions that prevented the processing of payments for logistics. Once this stumbling block was overcome, the next drama was that Colombia blocked its air space for these boxers to make the trip. The Colombian government blocked 400,000 kilos of food in CLAP boxes that would enter the country to strengthen this food program with which more than 6 million families are fed throughout the country. In April, the United States and Colombia created a financial intelligence group to block the import of food and medicines, internationalizing financial suffocation. And in May, the U.S. oil company ConocoPhillips executed a series of embargoes against PDVSA's assets for claims of a 2.4 billion dollar arbitration award demanded of the International Chamber of Commerce. This manoeuvre not only affected its existing capacity in the international arena, but also limited the country's income from the sale of crude oil, thus intensifying the damage to the heart of the national economy and seeking to further dissolve the social fabric that sustains part of the stability. This was joined by the Canadian-owned mining company Rusoro, which filed a lawsuit seeking to join the assets of CITGO and some of PDVSA’s as payment for an arbitration prize of 1,200 million dollars. The Canadian contractor SNC-Lavalin also sued PDVSA for more than 25 million dollars for alleged non-payment of debt, before a New York court. Thus, the United States reinforced its policy of financial suffocation and sequestration of Venezuelan resources by limiting both the sale of Venezuelan oil assets on U.S. soil and the settlement of accounts receivable, in 39

retaliation for the presidential triumph of Chavismo on May 20. In turn, the countries of the Lima Group agreed, following Trump's policy, to use the financial intelligence of their respective states to chased after Venezuela's transactions, accounts and financial operations. The result of all this was a sharp drop in imports, which went from 60 billion dollars a year between 2011 and 2013 to a total of 12 billion in 2017. One of the culminating points of this phase of aggression, without a doubt, is the embargo of PDVSA's company on U.S. territory, CITGO, announced by the director of the National Security Council, John Bolton, consistent with the imposition of an oil embargo against the country. This seeks to further damage the ability to obtain financing for Venezuela and, therefore, pay for imports, given that the effects of this virtual embargo are, according to The New York Times, immediately "atrocious", considering that in the first week of its imposition Venezuelan oil sales to the United States declined by 40%. Thus, the scenario of a "humanitarian crisis" that has been configured serves the interventionist pretensions that underpin Juan Guaidó's "interimship" in the framework of a definitive strategy to assault our resources and our national dignity.

DISLOCATING THE COUNTRY IS THE FUNDAMENTAL OBJECTIVE Historical data show that the financial blockade has set the stage for the intervention and international recognition of a parallel government (Libya case), create economic incentives for mercenary movements stimulated by the CIA (Yugoslavia case), weaken the armed force of a government not aligned with Washington and strengthen the firepower of paramilitary groups (Syria case), fracture the political-military high command using the precariousness of the population as a means of political pressure (Cuba case) or the affectation of the oil industry and internal conditions to impede energy development as a political weapon (Iran case). The financial blockade against Venezuela pursues the massive destruction of the national economy, the dismantling of the social achievements of the Chávez era and the affectation of the poorest population that since 1998 has proved to be the most solid political basis of Chavismoand, above all, the undermining of national confidence that the country's internal potential (its population and strategic resources) can provide the necessary resources to regain stability. In short: to deny altogether the right of a nation to self determine its own solutions in the face of difficulties, and to decide its own future beyond the decisions taken in a few offices far away from the country.

www.misionverdad.com

President Maduro speaks during an interview with Associated Press Vice President "I believe that the vast majority of the country wants economic recovery, economic stability, the vast majority of the country, say the polls, is very aware of the economic war that they have done to the country." Today, I tell you Ian more conscience for the economic sanctions that President Donald Trump openly against Venezuela, the sanctions against the oil company PDVSA, the expropriation of our oil company in the United States, Citgo, the trade persecution, you see what is happening Ian.

pushing forward. I have security, not only perceptive but the security we have lived for 20 years, where we have won 23 elections Ian in all seasons, we could say that we have played, we have won 23 championships of 25 with different differences, margins. "If today I tell you elections were held in Venezuela how it was proposed for the National Assembly, the parliament, the Bolivarian forces, be assured, we would have the majority vote of the people because there is a people that truly, well, suffer, fight , Is sacrificed; but he is aware that no one has taken his conscience "

Beyond a phrase made or not, if we have the support, the majority, or we have not had it or if we have it, beyond answering that punctual part of your question, I am going to answer it. awareness in the country of the damage done by the sanctions, the economic and ﬁnancial persecution that the US government has lashed out against Venezuela. s that bring the medicines, to try to stop our purchases of food, of raw material pressure; pressure directly from the White House so that no bank account of ours works. And if I am going to buy for example wheat or I am going to buy corn, necessary for the functioning of the economy and to satisfy our people, we simply freeze the accounts. We have frozen billions of dollars, billions of dollars to buy food medicines. But Venezuela is,

Q: With the current diplomatic and political confrontation in the country. Are you saying that you would be prepared to call an election and that you would be sure of your result? "The Bolivarian forces have a real livelihood, we have gone through all the tests, we have 6,500,000 militants in the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, we have a mobilized force, look, Ian, so do not show us in the American media. Every day in Venezuela there are large popular mobilizations to support the revolution, we have strength, we have electoral experience, we have 41

defends. What are your tactics in the coming weeks and months?

an electoral machinery and there is a people with conscience and aggression, the aggression that we have lived through President Donald Trump has raised that conscience, it has raised nationalism, it has elevated patriotism to much higher levels than we have lived these 20 years, it would take a great surprise in an electoral process in Venezuela, the forces that believe that they can win elections for us, would take A big surprise: a wave of patriotic nationalist consciousness has risen thanks to the aggression of Donald Trump.

"The strategy is to work for the country, to govern the country, the strategy is peace, which freely everyone expresses when they want to mobilize, to march, to express themselves, the strategy is justice, whatever justice is Your hands these cases of insubordination to the Constitution, these cases of violation of the Constitution, strategy and respect, achieve respect from the world to our country.That is the strategy.The strategy is to advance economic recovery. It's the strategy Now, for 20 years, we've gone through a lot of junctures, I tell you, I've been able to live them all, I'm still young, I'm 56 years old and I've been able to live all the joints, all of them, since I was an elected deputy, What I have had, and everything we have, we have obtained by popular vote, it must be said a lot because they say that I am a dictator, but since I have known myself since 99, 2000, I was elected deputy for the vote of the neighborhoods where I worked; Then they elected me constituent to the Constituent Assembly that elaborated this Constitution that was approved by the popular vote, then they elected me deputy and I was president of the Venezuelan Parliament. Well then I was chancellor of the legitimate and popular government of Commander Chávez, vice president of the Republic and then I was elected president by popular vote in 2013 and re-elected in 2018. So we believe that the path is electoral, the path of non-interventionism .

Q: What prevents you from calling a choice? You seem pretty sure you can win "Well, I raised the elections ahead of Parliament, I am waiting for a dialogue table with the opposition to be established." The Montevideo mechanism initiative, where Mexico, Uruguay, Bolivia and the 14 Caribbean governments are, will summon us to a meeting to put on the table a date and give early elections to the Parliament as a first step so that by electoral means we can resolve these issues, we among Venezuelans without the intervention of any foreign government, P: Presidential elections. Would you be prepared to make that bet? "The presidential elections have already been held in Venezuela, according to the Constitution, they are every six years, the elections have to be in 2018, by proposal, Ian, the opposition advanced the date, in the Dominican Republic we had negotiations and there We accept the proposal of the opposition because the elections had to be in November, December and the opposition said no elections and we accept that they are made in the first quarter and when we were going to sign the document, the elections were gone, they denied their word, They denied their signature and then the elections were extended until May 20. The presidential election was held in accordance with the Constitution, the institutions, so this policy of regime change that Donald Trump wants to impose on Latin America it has no legal basis in our country, constitutional, or a foothold in international law, simply the only institution, Ian, that is not relegitimized in the course of these years is Parliament. And I think that there we could direct a good option so that the Venezuelan people can express themselves freely and democratically. " Q: So, what is your strategy to try to break the deadlock with Mr. Guaido? It is a country with two rival centers of power. One has the momentum in terms of international support. You have an internal impulse, this could extend again and again and, without a doubt, it would affect the Venezuelan economy and the people it

I would tell the audience that listens to the people who are listening to us: The way is to tell Donald Trump to take your hands of Venezuela. If Donald Trump, tomorrow decided not to get involved in the affairs of Venezuela, Venezuela would shine, Venezuela would recover in an accelerated way, Venezuela would find solutions in the political dialogue; but the infected hand of Donald Trump harms Venezuela. They have made us a crisis and the extremist group that accompanies Donald Trump, imagine you, John Bolton, Eliott Abrams; the group of extremists that surrounds him has put him through a dead end. And it hurts Venezuela. I tell them from here out your hands of Venezuela Donald Trump and Venezuela reverdece, will get their own way among ourselves. Q: And yet, his critics say that Venezuela's problems have roots that predate the Donald Trump administration for many years, that this has been a gradual decline since the death of oil, which I think his critics also say is easy to blame external forces. Are you not responsible politically, economically for the current situation or do you regret it? Would you have done some things differently? 42

because it is not Nicolás Maduro, it is not a man e, I am circumstantial. It is a country project. We are now celebrating 200 years of a foundational historical discourse of the Liberator Simón Bolívar called the "Speech of Angostura", where he founded in Colombia the great everything that today we form Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador. We were one nation in Colombia, the Liberator told him. It's 200 years of a long struggle and all of us who have been in the front line, Commander Hugo Chávez, our father, the Liberator Simón Bolívar 200 years ago, and modestly today I, this worker who is here, I am a worker, I feel deeply man of the people, we are circumstantial. What matters is the destiny of the country and hopefully everything we do and everything I do personally, in the political, serve to lay solid foundations for the country to be a nation of peace, for the country to take the path of the prosperity of the recovery and for the country to consolidate its national independence, its national pride; I hope the eﬀort we make every day "

"I am very sorry and I have full responsibility for the things that do not work in the country, I have the maximum responsibility for being the President of the Republic, I have the maximum responsibility for the decline of PDVSA, the oil industry, it is my responsibility. As you know, in recent months there have been some radical measures to arrest PDVSA executives, to prosecute them through the courts, to punish some, but without a doubt the recovery of PDVSA has taken time and is now even more difficult. the persecution and blocking measures of the government of the United States, it is my responsibility, that is, I fully assume it, have placed people who violated the trust and who plunged the company, now also on my responsibility not to initiate a policy of accelerated recovery of the national productive process, not having achieved it because the policies have been set in motion, but often do not carry the speed, the need of the changes that the country needs. It is true that we have advanced in what is social protection, Ian, we protect 6 million families, 80 percent of the Venezuelan family, 6 million, we bring the market to your home, we sell you a subsidized market at 6 millions. In some cases, twice a month. It is a system of protection and those 6 million families, we protect them with special bonds called Households of the Nation, to the family and with extraordinary bonuses. That is, we protect the food, the income; but hey, that has served as a palliative. It has not been the definitive solution. I hope, assuming my responsibility for the mistakes that have been made, for the deficiencies that exist, I hope that with the Program of Economic Recovery, Growth and Prosperity, 2019 will be a year of true takeoff, of acceleration of the own economic recovery, to despite the sanctions.

Q: Describe a situation in which no individual is larger than the country. With that logic, would you ever consider for the greater good of Venezuela, as part of a political and diplomatic solution, to renounce power before the next elections?

Q: Do you fear for your political future given the international pressure on you personally? "I do not have fear, I do not see myself as the center of anything, I have no ego, I'm not self-centered, I'm not a vain, I'm not ambitious, I'm not a tycoon, I'm not here to do business and make a company rich or several I do not have those antivalores, I am here fulfilling a mission that Comandante Chavez left me and that the people have given me and I do it with the greatest honesty, with the greatest sincerity and the greatest national commitment, the greatest revolutionary commitment. I do not fear for myself, I never fear for myself, or when I was bombed with the drone and it exploded, I did not feel the minimum of fear, I am worried if, but for the destiny of the country, the fate of our people, the fate of our children, destiny and that makes me fill with an energy look in the morning, at dawn, in the afternoon Every day, 365 days a year, I am filled with a vital anguish, a strength of the destiny of the country

"I have a mandate, here the issue is not a man, my mandate is to govern and the mandate is democratic free, in free elections, in an exemplary democracy This conflict has, comes from far away let me tell you, at least 200 years of the conflict between the Monroe Doctrine, which today is hoisted by Donald Trump, who has tried to dominate and govern the entire continent, only Ian, let's review the Latin American XX century. State, American invasion, 50 years later they said that it was a mistake that Jacobo Árbenz was not a communist and that they took him out 1964, Brazil, Joao Goulart, 50 years after he was overthrown, with the participation of the US embassy, the government of the United States United, the State Department apologizes to the people of Brazil because it was a mistake, Joao Goulart was not a communist, 1973, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger crunch the Chilean economy, and overthrow and They kill President Salvador Allende. As time passes, they impose the worst dictatorship that Latin America has known, Augusto Pinochet. This is a historical conflict between Latin America that seeks its own way, its own model, its own independence and an elite that governs Washington and pretends to see us as its backyard. My struggle as a revolutionary, as a leader, as president and the struggle of our people is because our right to have our own political, economic, and social model prevails, through democracy, through constitutional means. That is the real battle we have. "

You imagine a war in Venezuela, an invasion of the United States to Venezuela as Donald Trump has said. You imagine the soldiers, the marines entering Venezuela. You imagine the Bolivarian soldiers fighting. You imagine the disaster and how Trump would fill his hands with blood for five generations, all his generations would be remembered by the blood they would pour here, you imagine that. I do not want that to be, I want there to be another kind of relationship and I hope, one day, it will be achieved. "

Q: Are you ready to contact the administration of the United States? He just spoke firmly against them and their objectives, but would he be ready to invite them to the table in Venezuela? Maybe Mr. Abrams or another representative, or have an intermediary to try to fix this confrontation? "You are from the Associated Press, you need a scoop, well I can tell you that with Mr. Eliott Abrams we have had two meetings already in New York, our chancellor met twice with Eliott Abrams, the first two hours and the second three hours A few days ago, I invited Eliott Abrams to come to Venezuela, in private, in public, in secret or if he wants to meet, for him to say when, where, how and I go, I know that Eliott Abrams is not very popular I know that he represents what interventionism is, the armament, that he was imprisoned for two years that took him out, I do not know where Donald Trump's government was and put him, well, they put him in charge of that mission, Well, let's talk, but I can also tell you, we have permanent relations with the business manager who stayed in a special way, James Story, in Caracas, we are negotiating the opening of US interests offices in Venezuela and Venezuela's interests office in Washington. I hope that ends well.

Q: Could you share the tone or details of Donald Trump's last message to you? And when will you return one? And under what circumstances? What would you propose later "Indirect people on their own initiative When I went to New York in September, he (Trump) declared on his own, I was flying Caracas-New York and we learned through social networks that Trump had just declared that a meeting was possible. with Maduro because those indirect ways were working, a Trump-Maduro meeting would have been very good, maybe he would hear first-hand the reality of Venezuela, because he is deceived and I am sure, all sources of intelligence, reports. All the people who heat his ear warms it up with manipulations lying, inciting and playing the drums of war, because it is not they and their children who go to war, but they are the children of the workers , the workers, the humble people of the United States, right, that meeting would have been good and I never closed the door, I hope that with the blessing of God, a miracle of recomposing relations and states will take place. United will stop intervening in Venezuela's internal affairs.

I want to establish oﬃces of interest, I want relationships of respect, I tell you more Ian, with President Donald Trump we have had indirect exchanges through people who have taken messages to him and have brought messages to me. All this I am revealing for the ﬁrst time; but every time I privately or publicly state that we have a Trump-Mature relationship of dialogue, conversation, communication, respect and understanding, in Washington they describe Maduro as broken, Maduro is weak, Maduro is casting pa 'after Maduro wants to save.

"Venezuela would be a paradise if Donald Trump got his hands out of our country" Q: And what happens then with Juan Guaidó, who currently, publicly at least, has the support of the United States and many other countries? Where do you see your destination? You said that you have violated the Constitution. However, he has not been arrested. The prosecutors have not gone looking for him. How do you see the development of his political career in the coming weeks?

When I say that I believe in dialogue, in the word, they misunderstand and see weaknesses where there is not. When I say that I want to talk to Trump, face to face, and I know we can understand each other, I say it from the strength of a revolutionary who comes from all battles and who is capable of everything for his country; So those are the problems that there are when one says yes to the word, yes to the dialogue, yes to peace, there they qualify and misinterpret what the political condition is really us. I would like to have respectful relations with the government of the United States. I believe that the 21st century, Ian, can not be the century of gunboats, of military invasions, of coups d'état. It can not be the century of interventionism, nor coupism, nor interventionism, nor invasions, nor war.

"Well I do not have that power, to be able to see the future, what I do believe is that he (Guaidó) is a circumstantial instrument that was put by the US Embassy, if you heard how the members of the State Department refer to. Juan Guaidó, almost referred to as an agent of the United States in Venezuela, is regrettable.He has violated the Constitution, several laws, he is of legal 44

age and knows the judicial responsibilities he has.In Venezuela there is a Judicial Branch, there is a Public Ministry and there is a public prosecutor's oﬃce, we have to respect the internal legality, we hope to see the results, in any case I believe that the political process is going to leave us great lessons 17 years ago, in April of 2002 there was a coup State in Venezuela, supported, promoted and recognized him, George Bush, George W. Bush, April 11, April 12, 2002, was captured, kidnapped Commander Chavez, they were going to assassinate him. world that recognizes The self-proclaimed president of the then Pedro Carmona Estanga was the United States of America. What happens is that the coup suﬀered a backlash, a peaceful national civic military uprising that returned to Comandante Chávez and the Constitution to the validity of power. What happened then with Pedro Carmona Estanga, oblivion. It was a circumstantial instrument, forgetting, exile, what will happen to this man, I do not know, let's hope. In any case, he has high responsibilities in crimes and crimes that he is already committing on a continuous basis. "

undermine him. But it is such a powerful symbol for the rest of the world when they see images of hungry people in need of medication, and drugs and food stranded on the border. What are you afraid to let that food in? "I do not fear it, I simply denounce it as a political campaign, biased, as part of a media war, Venezuela is not a country of beggars," Donald Trump wants to help Venezuela because it does not help the 40 million poor people in the United States, the 40 million hungry people in the United States, why it does not help Puerto Rico that abandoned it and went to throw toilet paper in. Why it does not really help its own people, those who do not They have houses, those who die of frozen cold, Donald Trump helping the world, you imagine, no, it's a media campaign, political, to humiliate Venezuelans, Venezuela has to solve their problems through work, You see, these numbers have frozen us 30,000 million dollars, they have kidnapped us, it is money from Venezuela in assets and accounts abroad and they oﬀer us 20 million humanitarian aid. d, that simply bares what this operation is "

Q: Would you ever consider as part of a national reconciliation, direct discussions with him and some unthinkable form of shared power to put the interests of the country ﬁrst?

"Venezuela receives, I tell you also as a scoop, Venezuela receives permanent humanitarian aid, humanitarian technical assistance from the UN and every time we are going to receive more support to guarantee the medicines, the food of the country; but in a non-politicized plan, in a plan that is not a show. In a plan that is sustained on the basis that Venezuela pays for its food, pays its raw materials, pays for its medicines. The United States is pursuing us, for example, an account in Euroclear 1,400 million dollars. We had a large batch of medicines ready to satisfy the country for a year and a large batch of raw materials for food. The account was frozen, the contracts were canceled and the money is already sequestered. He hangs us, steals our money and then says: grab these crumbs here and make a world show. Venezuela with dignity says: no to the world show, no. Whoever wants to help Venezuela is welcome, but we are able to pay for everything we need, we are not beggars of anyone.

"I believe in the national dialogue with the inclusion of everything, we have had it several times, on several occasions." In April 2014, in the midst of the violence and the insurrectional guarimbas of that time, I here in the presidential palace gave a process of dialogue with all the opposition, all the leaders came in. In November, October, November, December 2016 also, in November and December 2017, January and February 2018, we had several rounds ". "We have had experience, I am ready for a dialogue where all the opposition political parties, all the leaders of the opposition, all the political leaders and they include in their delegations the ones they want to include. Hopefully the dialogue will prosper and the drums of invasion will not continue to sound, the drums of war: here is a dilemma, a dichotomy to solve, or dialogue, diplomacy, understanding and agreements, and peace, or the Marines and the war is imposed, which of the two things we want, it is very easy to respond to dialogue and peace, and through dialogue and peace I am willing to make all the necessary sacriﬁces. " Q: If you are seeking to reduce tensions in the country, why not allow the humanitarian aid that is currently on the border with Colombia to enter? I've heard him say that this is a Trojan horse and that this is a campaign to

Q: What would your orders be the day you start bringing that help? Will you order the military to stop him? Could this situation escalate? Is it worth it for food and medicine?

"No good, very simple any import or any product that has to enter the country has to comply with the rules.Any airplane, boat or any truck that brings any product has to comply with the rules, ask for sanitary permits. on the border of Colombia they put a rotten, contaminated, carcinogenic food in. There is a little bit of intoxicated people in addition to what I told you, but

Commission that is chaired by a vice president in Russia and a vice president of ours in Venezuela. We have a map of integral cooperation, for example, from Russia, comes all the wheat that Venezuela needs for its normal development; with Russia we have a powerful military alliance for what is the defensive weapons system of the country, the whole defensive weapons system of the country in large part, since a blockade was decreed years ago, when George Bush, arms to Venezuela from United States, we have acquired them and were acquired at the time in Russia. We have a good relationship in terms of investment in oil, gas, petrochemicals and a new investment that will come for the development of gold, is what I tell you if with Russia being a superpower we can have good relations of respect, of equality, of winning, of winning; yes with China that a superpower, the first economic power of the 21st century, we can have relations of respect, of equality, of mutual benefit. Why the United States wants to get ahead in Latin America and see us as a backyard, why a relationship of respect in terms of equality is not possible, that investors act freely in Venezuela in the United States. Why economic cohesion, economic coercion, why economic persecution is what we have to ask ourselves. This conflict in Venezuela I see as a conflict for Venezuela and for humanity. Here Ian, we are talking now February 2019 and you will remember it for a long time, in Venezuela the fate of international law is being decided for the next years. It is almost like a third world war that we will decide in peace. In Venezuela, the future of peaceful relations on the continent and in the world is being decided and the world must understand that how the Venezuelan issue is resolved will be the rest of the relations of the 21st century of Latin America with the United States. "

any truck that wants to enter, any ship, usually has to apply for their legal permits and arrive at ports, airports, land customs with legal permits, whoever does not request that, simply can not enter the country in a peaceful and legal way they do not want. "Al Show do not call it humanitarian aid. I think it's good to put things in their place. That helps us humanitarian. Those are the crumbs of the United States Government Show to humiliate Venezuela. " "Crumbs of a show, do not help anyone humanely and harm anyone who can get involved in these alleged aids." Q: Let's talk a little about how you would ﬁnance the economic recovery of your country. It sounds complicated given the current sanctions, especially in oil. However, he has had a representative in India discussing new markets. Could you tell us how Venezuela could sell its oil and if Asia is speciﬁcally the destination you want? "In the main, Asia would be destiny, we have been building the Asian route for many years and it is a successful route and the Asian route demands more and more volumes and quantities of oil, we would like to produce oil with American companies in Venezuela, we have made negotiations with multiple companies in the United States and have the doors open to Venezuela, what happens is that the secretary of the Treasury, OFAC and John Bolton call them and forbid them to come and invest and produce oil in Venezuela Is that freedom of trade? Is that freedom of enterprise? I invite the oil companies of the United States to come to produce and I would like Ian to sell much more oil than we were selling to the United States. Now they wanted the oil ships to leave for the United States and they were not going to pay us, so we gave them the oil, stole the oil. bequeath the Trump administration in its madness, in its madness against a noble, peaceful country that wants to develop calmly like Venezuela. So the natural market is Asia, but the natural market of the United States, we keep the door open for investment, for production and marketing with American companies. "

"The conflict that is in full development is very important and we bet on peace, diplomacy, dialogue, overcoming through the word of the problems". Q: Do you expect Russia to increase its financial and political influence in Venezuela during this phase? Because another way of looking at it is that we are approaching a confrontation that is related to the historical proportions of the Cold War of the United States that support on one side and Russia on the other. Do you see a risk there, too?

Q: What about the role of Russia? Do you want to see more emphatic support or some concrete measures? What is the current conversation between you and the Vladimir Putin administration about the political path forward? "With Russia we have permanent, daily relations with President (Vladimir) Putin, good communications talks, with the Foreign Minister (Sergei) Lavrov, with the Mixed Commission. We have a High Level Joint

"Already a new cold war was imposed, the criteria that President Trump uses, the criteria of this crazy extremist, called John Bolton, the criteria of all that team that they call the Venezuela team, are criteria of the Cold War, including all Trump advisors come from the Cold War, from the 70s, 80s, they have the same strategic scheme, the same mental scheme. They say a thousand things about Venezuela that are all false and they

believe them, they believe them. Now we will continue to have good relations with Russia, with China, with India, with Turkey, with Belarus, with Iran, with the countries of Europe, which have, we have here a very large migration of Europe, more than a million migrants between Spanish, Italian, Portuguese. We have a migration of more than a million Arabs, among Syrians, Palestinian Lebanese; we have more than 5,800,000 Colombians.

We will continue to be open to the world at work and I hope that somewhere along the way, sooner rather than later, through peaceful means, through civilized and diplomatic means, with the support of American public opinion, Venezuela and the United States will we can understand respecting our independence, our sovereignty, our national pride, our dignity. We ﬁnish so fast. Good thank you. Very well thanks. Thank you.

www.20minutos.com The opinions expressed in these articles are of the author and do not necessarily reﬂect the oﬃcial position of the Embassy

Reuters propaganda to damage Russia-Venezuela rela�ons They are not tactical errors, false steps or mere clumsiness: the flurry of false news from Reuters regarding the oil issue between Venezuela and Russia fits perfectly in the framework of the most frontal escalation of the global corporations against Venezuela. This is the continuation of a media strategy that seeks, through friction, to achieve an attrition effect in Russian-Venezuelan relations and in the public perception of the support that the Eurasian giant has offered to the Bolivarian Republic. What is certain is that on January 28, the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions against PDVSA that implied the freezing of 7 billion dollars and the blocking of all payments made by US companies that buy Venezuelan oil.

Cold War against PDVSA On February 5, the agency in question alluded in a note the statements made by Rosneft, the Russian oil and gas company with the highest production. Titled "Rosneft is optimistic about Venezuela and sees an increase in oil production in 2019," the note frames Rosneft's remarks "in the midst of a power struggle between the National Assembly and pro-Moscow President Nicolás Maduro", The news, which referred to a presentation by Rosneft on its website, added that the company expects its production of crude oil and gas condensate to grow between 3 and 4.5 percent this year, depending on the implementation of a global oil production agreement in the ﬁrst half of the year. The same note reported that the principal amount of the debt of Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA with Rosneft constituted some 2,300 million dollars at the

end of the fourth quarter, which represented a reduction compared to 3,100 million dollars at the end of the previous three months. One way to delve into the campaign against Venezuela has been to add it to the Cold War speech against Russia, even though PDVSA has partnered with companies such as Spain's Repsol, US Chevron, Italy's ENI, India's ONGC and China's CNPC. among other. Any of these companies could declare regarding the figures of the state oil company without there being any type of journalistic notoriety beyond the fact in the framework of the recovery of oil prices. But above all: Reuters also uses a strategy of financial intelligence to pursue, and "reveal", the different ways in which the state oil company draws sanctions with the collaboration of "topos" located in the internal structure of the company. In the same way it does with the liquid sources of money made by the State, avoiding sanctions, as in the case of gold, whose route was recently "investigated" by the agency with the same purpose of functioning as a journalistic policeman of the United States. Sanctions to stop the collapse? Days later, on February 9, Corina Pons and Marianna Párraga (located in Mexico City and Caracas, respectively) reported at the same time on how President Nicolás Maduro "has supervised an economic collapse (...) that has left many Venezuelans malnourished and struggling to find medicines, causing the exodus of some 3 million Venezuelans, "and how the United States gave US oil companies working in Venezuela (Chevron, Halliburton Co, Baker Hughes of General Electric Co and Schlumberger NV) a deadline to stop all operations in the country. Nowhere in the note is there any connection between the so-called "economic collapse" and the sanctions against oil and financial activities, in general, of Venezuela. The central theme in that note was to note that, "according to sources and an internal document seen by Reuters," PDVSA was telling the clients of their joint ventures to deposit the proceeds of oil sales in a recently opened account at Banco Gazprombank. From Russia. However, that information was denied the following day by the same Russian entity that stated that the Venezuelan state oil company had opened accounts at the bank several years ago but none recently. More frozen truths of the account In his most recent fake news, Reuters reported that 49

"one source" said that Gazprombank had decided to freeze PDVSA's accounts and stopped the transactions to reduce the risk of the bank falling under US sanctions. The note described as "significant" the fact that a lender closely aligned with the Russian state was following suit because the Kremlin has been among the staunchest supporters of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. According to Reuters, it was a letter dated February 8 signed by PDVSA's Vice President of Finance, Fernando de Quintal, which indicated that the joint ventures where the Venezuelan oil company operates in the Orinoco Belt, in partnership with foreign companies such as the American Chevron, the French Total and the Norwegian Equinor, had to notify their customers that they would pay in dollars or euros to that bank account. The foreign partners had to formally confirm to PDVSA that they would continue in the oil projects, following the financial sanctions imposed by Washington against PDVSA. Add the note that Russian companies are in a quandary, caught between the desire to support the Kremlin line and support Maduro, and the fear that doing so could expose themselves to secondary sanctions by the United States that would harm their business. As usual, characters linked to journalism echoed this new lie. On the same day, the news was denied by PDVSA and official spokesmen pointed out that this was another attempt at manipulation by infomercenario sectors of anti-Chavezism. Some of these media executives such as Luz Mely Reyes, recently awarded for her "journalistic work" in the United States, have tried other media devices such as the government's accusation of kidnapping children last January, or on boxes with votes from the presidential election of 2013 in a CDI, which triggered a violent wave of antichavism whose balance was 11 murders and 78 injured. Decay of the attempt to fracture the Russia-Iran alliance The strategy of falsifying information seeking to damage international relations was already used by Reuters in 2018 against the Islamic Republic of Iran. The campaign began when Israeli experts from the cybersecurity companies FireEye and ClearSky accused Iran of having been spreading false news and propaganda on the Internet for several years through at least 70 apparently normal websites against 15 countries, including Israel, United, the United Kingdom, the nations of the Middle East and even Russia.

Representatives of the main Iranian media reported that "Reuters has gone crazy to publish such falsiﬁcations without evidence, trying to accompany Bolton and Pompeo in the information war aimed at denigrating the image of Iran and trying to start a ﬁght with Russia, his strategic friend and at the same time an ardent opponent of the United States in the international arena. "

The information claimed that more than half a million people per month visited Iran's fake media and were supported by more than 1 million social media users, although the authors of the report did not publish a full list of alleged "sites". of propaganda. " Reuters claimed that the NileNetOnline.com media was part of the Iranian propaganda machine and had more than 115,000 followers on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, but according to Alexa (a website traffic classification service), this project takes the place 4,674,732 in the world, which indicates almost zero traffic on the site.

Questions at closing It is worth asking why Reuters repeats a strategy against Venezuela against Venezuela, however its intentions to play to the psychological exhaustion of the Venezuelan population and public opinion are clear. The interests behind Reuters are more proﬁtable to lie than to rectify.

They also said that Iran created a website called Realnie Novosti, or "Real News", to promote its propaganda among Russian-speaking readers but Realnienovosti.com was only seen by 2 thousand 200 people per month and Alexa classiﬁed this site 4,478,657 in the world.

The isolation of Venezuela and the unreliable narrative is essential for their narrower support to fall, one of which is that of Russia. It is also worth asking what are the next steps in this continuous aggression of the true leadership of anti-Chavism now that there is no doubt about its role in the current Venezuelan political dispute.

Mohammad Ghaderi, editor-in-chief of the Tehran Times in Iran, said Reuters published false material paid for by a third party. "We have documents showing that Reuters receives money from Israel, the United States and Saudi Arabia for these false publications." This is part of the information war unleashed by Netanyahu and the gang Mike Pompeo and John Bolton to tarnish Iran's image and accuse it of All possible sins, therefore, the distributor of 'false news' is not Iran, [Reuters] is, "Ghaderi said.

www.misionverdad.com

He advanced his accusations against the agency stating that "all this report on exposing propaganda is false and a lie behind which are the Zionist lobby, the United States and Saudi Arabia." He said the goal was to open a gap between Russia and Iran and that "the fabrication of facts [used by Reuters] is bound to make Iran and Russia confront each other or at least harm their relationship, since Trump is not satisﬁed with the strategic alliance between Russia and Iran, the second objective is to create a false impression of Iran and use this to justify more sanctions or even some kind of military action. "

BOLIVARIAN VENEZUELA, POPE FRANCIS (1) AND THE WAR TERMONUCLEAR "Yes, I really am afraid. We are at the limit. One incident is enough to trigger the war ... " Pope Francis I that debt that reaches 105.5% above its GDP, that is to say Borón: "owes more than everything that it produces in a year. " And he adds that in 2030, the US economy will suﬀer a decline from 23% to 18%, while China will rise from 17 to 28% of the World's Domestic Product.

At the outbreak of World War III will detonate 15 thousand megatons of nuclear explosives, 1 megaton is equivalent to 1 million ton of dynamite. The devastating consequences will end life on the planet. The radioactive rain that will be triggered will immediately cover 40% of the earth. In the ﬁrst two hours of the attack 1,500 million people will die without knowing it. The nuclear winter comes with temperatures below 50 degrees Celsius. Under these temperatures in less than a month disappears photosynthesis and the extinction of all vegetation in less than six months whose inevitable result is the death of all herbivorous animals and the disappearance of food, and fruits and vegetables that cannot be eaten because they will be contaminated by radiation. Generalized famines ensue. It is precisely radioactivity that will be responsible for annihilating the rest of humans after the climatic chaos generated by the strong temperature diﬀerences between the sea and the continent. In short, it is the medium-term extinction of the entire human species. This is what Donald Trump challenged.

These ﬁgures make the white American supremacy in power pale. They do not admit that "a yellow" can overcome them in just 17 years. This troop of American extremists has worked with Trump, to take steps in the international arena under the slogan "Let's make America big again", which made possible the breakdown of the Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico ; the breakdown of the Nuclear Agreement with Iran and the re-establishment of sanctions against the Islamic country; and ﬁnally, the most dangerous step taken by Trump: the recent rupture of the Middle-range Missile Treaty that places the tensions between both countries at the same level as the missile crisis in Cuba in 1962, when the US dared to install missiles in Turkey threatening in this way the Soviet Union. On that occasion World War III was on the edge. A sneeze from one of the soldiers of a Yankee nuclear submarine and we were not here.

Two important factors, leads us to think that the fears of Pope Francis I, are not mere speculations. The ﬁrst is the colossal American debt that places it as the largest debtor in the world with 22 trillion dollars, "which increase at a rate of one trillion dollars a year with no prospect of repayment" according to the Dutch researcher Wim Dierckxsens; and the crisis in the international reserve currency, the petro-dollar crisis that has ruled the world economy since 1973. To top it all, its European allies have just signed on January 31 of this same year a new method to avoid the use of the dollar. France, Great Britain and Germany have opted for barter in their trade relations with some nations. Already Russia, China, Iran and Venezuela have opened their transactions without the dollar. The Argentine researcher, Atilio Borón, for his part, tells us that the collapse of US power is clearly seen by

It is both the delirium and the conviction of the American ruling class that the definitive decline of that power is coming, that one of its most impulsive captains, Ronald Reagan, who ordered the invasion of Granada and the bloody war against Nicaragua, predicted the coming of Armageddon. , before admitting any social or political change that would harm their class, just as the anti-imperialist struggle with the liberation of Iran and the overthrow of Sha Reza Pahleviyanki intensified; when Colonel Gaddafi wins in Libya and overthrows the pro US King Muhammad Idris al-Senussi; when Nicaragua crushes the Anastasio Somoza dictatorship financed by the US and insurges all of Latin America against US domination. 51

intend to return to their own country to the Wild West American law. The trap for rabbits of the vaunted "humanitarian aid" in Venezuela that is supposed of 20 million dollars, when the government of Trump has conﬁscated the company CITGO whose assets amount to 30 billion dollars, is nothing but a trick that reveals the true intentions of the American Empire, its puppets and its avid partners to share the Venezuelan oil booty. It is unusual for a government with so many "Think Tanks" to come to imagine that we Venezuelans are so naive to bite such a poisoned hook.

The continuous provocations of imperialism, now managed by the businessman, Donald Trump, give tangible evidence of the same neurasthenia suffered by the actor Reagan. Trump's record in business, the backbone of his launch as president, nothing less than the US of America, is not as brilliant as they would have us believe. It is full of inaccuracies, of failures. It is enough to review the data of Politi Fact, to verify the collapse of several of its companies, such as the Trump Taj Majal casino in Atlantic City that went bankrupt in 1992, as well as two more bankruptcies of casinos and hotel complexes that occurred in 2004 and 2009. It is probable that this man has thrown himself into politics trying to save his personal empire. This unfortunate attempt resembles the tragic accident of the flight of the Germanwings GmbH in 2015 that cost the lives of all passengers (149 people) and crew by a maniac co-pilot who decided to commit suicide in mid-flight by crashing the plane in the French Alps.

Venezuelan journalist Aram Aharonian links the puppet named by Trump as "interim president" to the sinister National Endowment for Democracy (NED), that is to say, a tentacle of the CIA, and with the team of the American Gene Sharp, promoter of the "revolutions of colors ", which already in 2007 was overwhelmingly defeated in Venezuela. The Hitlerian "Blitzkieg" (lightning war) lasted ﬁve years and left all of Europe in rubble with 60 million dead and another hundred thousand disappeared. In the current jargon, the so-called "surgical intervention" in Venezuela is nothing more than a chimera before a cohesive army, strengthened, warlike, anti-imperialist, with an antiaircraft defense of greater power and quality in Latin America, with more than 1 million 600 thousand militants in arms ready to face any aggression under the slogan of "prolonged war or people's people's war", and ﬁnally with the manifest help of both Russia and China.

As Pope Francis indicates, only "an incident is enough", a provocation, to unleash the nuclear hecatomb. And Trump has been playing irresponsibly with these ignition points. At this point, when the fierce wound twists in its agony and becomes more violent to prevent its inexorable death, it finds no corner in the world that can fire it, and resorts to all kinds of aggressions, murders, bombings, in short , to the destruction of entire countries without realizing, that these criminal acts can no longer be carried out with impunity. In a word, they are no longer possible under pain of putting the world back on the edge of the thermonuclear abyss.

Finally, a wealthy British businessman organizes a group of mercenary singers who lend themselves to any acrobatics with such dollars coming to him nearby. The Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has responded with another concert, but this time crying out for peace, along with a group of artists, aware of the danger that runs, that deploy the slogan "hands out of Venezuela", to avoid the bloodshed between brothers that can lead to a confrontation of even greater proportions and that would involve all the powers and the entire planet. And to dissipate in this way the fear that overwhelms our Pope Francis I.

It is necessary to mention that two great powers, China and Russia, rise up against the despotisms of this sick and insatiable State. But also, we are witnessing the awakening of the conscience and thinking of sensible Americans, and the emergence of numerous social and political organizations in their own country, which consider President Trump as a threat to the survival of the species on the planet. and begin to rise up against the excesses and outrages of him. On the other hand, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela lives in the ﬂesh one of the wildest adventures of this crazy businessman who drags other imperialist countries in this risky run, trampling the entire international legal establishment, endangering the global coexistence to deliver in hands of a group of extremists who

By Alfredo Lugo Venezuelan Interllectual

â&#x20AC;&#x153;I have always said, heard, that it would not be strange that there had been civilization on Mars, but maybe capitalism arrived there, imperialism arrived and finished off the planet. â&#x20AC;? Hugo Chavez, 2011

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