Venezuela

Brianna Griffith Download PDF flyer Protest in San Antonio, Venezuela against U.S. intervention. Credit — Gloria La Riva On March 18, The Cape Verde Supreme Court approved the extradition of Venezuelan government envoy Alex Saab to the United States. Saab was en route to Iran to secure food and medicine deals for Venezuelan public programs last year when he was arrested in Cape Verde, at the request of the U.S. government under Donald Trump. He has been imprisoned in Cape Verde since June 2020. Saab is appealing the extradition. The arrest of Saab is part of the U.S. government’s larger attack on Venezuela’s CLAP (Local Committees for Supply and Production) food distribution program. It is also a blatant violation of national sovereignty spanning several continents as the ...

Danny Shaw Download PDF flyer The author was part of an international team of observers who went to monitor the 23 gubernatorial races in Venezuela this past weekend. Contrary to everything the U.S. media has reported, what our delegation saw were fair and transparent elections. While the opposition and their international backers—Donald Trump, Luis Almagro and the European Union—cried fraud, the delegation witnessed  a vibrant, participatory democracy that many other countries, including the U.S., could learn from. Participatory democracy The Venezuelan National Electoral Council (CNE) invited 70 international observers. The United Socialist Party of Venezuela invited 18. We did not see anything like what the Western media reported. Quite the opposite! The delegation I ...

BY VIJAY PRASHAD – CARLOS RON Photograph Source: Eneas De Troya – CC BY 2.0 On December 6, the Venezuelan people will vote for a new National Assembly. Ordinarily, there is nothing unusual about this, nor would this be newsworthy outside Venezuela. Ever since the election of Hugo Chávez to the presidency in 1998, the Venezuelan people have been used to more than one national election each year (this legislative election is the 25th in 21 years); these have been the presidential elections, the legislative elections, and the referendums to strengthen the 1999 Constitution. On the surface, this is just another one of these elections that has served to deepen the meaning of democracy in Venezuela. But, these days, even the holding of an election is a contest between the Venezuel...

 by Sam Mcgill On 16 September, the Fact-Finding Mission of the UN Human Rights Council published a report on Venezuela, accusing state officials, including Socialist Party (PSUV) President Nicolas Maduro, of ordering arbitrary killings, torture and other crimes against humanity. This spurious report completely fails to mention the suffocating US sanctions against Venezuela, described as crimes against humanity by the former UN rapporteur Alfred de Zayas last year. Its extreme bias reflects the politicisation of the human rights industry and its role as a mechanism for regime change. Venezuela’s biggest ‘crime’ is opposing US interests in Latin America and daring to propose a socialist agenda. SAM McGILL reports. ‘An irresponsible fraud’ Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza...