At a high-level meeting in Rome this week, it seems that Russia reiterated a grave warning to the US – Moscow will not tolerate American military intervention to topple the Venezuelan government with whom it is allied.

Meanwhile, back in Washington DC, President Donald Trump was again bragging that the military option was still on the table, in his press conference with Brazilian counterpart Jair Bolsonaro. Trump is bluffing or not yet up to speed with being apprised of Russia’s red line.

The meeting in the Italian capital between US “special envoy” on Venezuelan affairs Elliot Abrams and Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov had an air of urgency in its arrangement. The US State Department announced the tête-à-tête only three days beforehand. The two officials also reportedly held their two-hour discussions in a Rome hotel, a venue indicating ad hoc arrangement.

Another dam operated by the Brazilian mining giant Vale is in imminent danger of collapse and has been assessed at the highest level of threat. The warning comes two months after a deadly dam burst that killed over 200 people.

On Friday, the tailings dam attracted the highest, ‘third level’ of threat, according to the Brazilian municipality of Barao de Cocais, located in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais. The dam was examined by independent experts, who said that the structure might collapse at any moment, the dam operator, mining giant Vale, revealed.

The US government is withholding US $5 billion which was meant for the purchase of medicines and raw materials used in medical production, President Nicolas Maduro claimed Wednesday.

Speaking from Miranda State, Maduro denounced that US authorities “have ‘kidnapped’ US $5 billion [in] one of the most criminal, brutal, fascist economic measures which has been seen in the economic history of the world.” “Trump is the person responsible,” he added.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza called on US President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence to step down "for the future of all humanity" in the wake of Pence's claim that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro "must go."

Pence wrote in his article for Miami Herald that Maduro should step down "for the future of Venezuela" amid a political crisis in the Latin American country.

"It's URGENT! For the future of all humanity, Donald Trump, Mike Pence, and company must go!" Arreaza wrote on Twitter on Friday.

A guest who appeared on right-wing commentator Tomi Lahren’s Fox News show appears to be very confused about Venezuela’s history, chiefly the years of Hugo Chavez’s term, despite it apparently directly affecting her own family.

Vanessa Rivera, a member of the ‘Network of Enlightened Women’, was part of a three-person panel of “conservative” contributors on the show to share their “inspirational stories of trials and triumphs on America’s college campuses.”

Part of Rivera’s rags-to-riches story appeared to begin with her mother fleeing a "socialist-ruined Venezuela". However, she proceeded to either confuse her family’s timeline, expose her lack of knowledge about the country’s history – or both.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on Tuesday against Venezuela’s state-run gold mining company Minerven, which is part of the Venezuelan Guayana Corporation (CVG) holding.

As part of the ongoing sanctions and attempts to destabilize the Venezuelan government, the U.S. government announced the new measure that aims to block state mining assets and prohibit U.S citizens from dealing with the company. The decision comes after Uganda said it was investigating its biggest gold refinery for importing Venezuelan gold.

The state-run ferrous metals mining company, and its president, Adrian Antonio Perdomo Mata, were included in the list of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and Specially Designated Nationals And Blocked Persons (SDN), adding to more than half a dozen rounds of sanctions against the Venezuelan people and assets.

The Trump administration is working to overthrow the government of Venezuela. They are not at this time doing this by military invasion, nor by funneling thousands of armed militants into the country, nor even solely with starvation sanctions and CIA ops. The first and foremost means of overthrowing Venezuela’s government currently being utilized by the United States government is the low-risk, low-cost plan to simply control the stories that everyone tells themselves about who is in charge in Venezuela.

Members of a local gang in the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro recently fired on police officers who were escorting a convoy of trucks transporting uranium to a nearby nuclear plant.

The Tuesday attack took place as the convoy and security detail drove past the gang-controlled Frade community, which is located some 19 miles from Angra dos Reis and the Angra 2 nuclear plant, the fuel's destination.

Eletrobras Eletronuclear, Brazil's government-run nuclear agency, explained in a statement that the series of events unfolded at roughly 12 p.m. local time after the police escort heard nearby gunshots. As a precaution, officers positioned themselves along the highway in order to guarantee the safety of the transport.

Reuters reports that Citigroup plans to sell several tons of gold placed as collateral by Venezuela’s central bank on a $1.6 billion loan after the deadline for repurchasing them expired this month.

As we detailed in February, back in April 2015, when Venezuela still had a somewhat functioning economy and hyperinflation was not yet rampant, the cash-strapped country quietly conducted a little-noticed gold-for-cash swap with Citigroup as part of which president Nicolas Maduro converted part of his nation's gold reserves into at least $1 billion in cash through a swap with Citibank.

Two days after Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido's "government-in-waiting" forcibly took possession of three diplomatic facilities in the United States with the blessing of Washington, and following what many observers speculate are a series of US aggressive maneuvers paving the way for military intervention, Maduro's security forces have begun arresting members of Guaido's staff.

According to Reuters Venezuelan intelligence agents have arrested and detained Guaido's own chief of staff, Roberto Marrero, as well as opposition legislator Sergio Vergara.

Brazil’s former president Michel Temer has been arrested as part of a sweeping anti-corruption probe, media reports say. Temer took the office in 2016 after the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff – also on allegations of corruption.

Russia is opposed to any efforts by the US to use ‘humanitarian aid’ as a pretext to intervene in Venezuela, Deputy FM Sergey Ryabkov told US special envoy Elliott Abrams, adding that Moscow will protect its interests there.

The diplomats met in Rome on Tuesday to discuss the increasing tensions between Washington and Moscow over the Donald Trump administration’s continued push for regime change in Venezuela.

“We strongly urged the US side… against any temptation to resort to military power. It includes our warning against, so to speak, hardcore massive military intervention, which can’t be excluded given the type of behavior we’ve seen on the US side in recent years,” Ryabkov told RT, where he appeared live after the talks.

What we are currently experiencing in Venezuela makes us painfully aware that no state is safe from Western “values”. Even Egypt, Syria, Iran, Ukraine and currently Venezuela and Gaza show us how perfidious this method is.

Last week Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ordered the last of the US diplomats out of Venezuela, saying their presence was a “constraint” on US policy toward the country. The wording seemed intended to convey the idea that the US is about to launch military action to place a Washington-backed, self-appointed politician to the presidency. Was it just bluster, designed to intimidate? Or is the Trump Administration really about to invade another country that has neither attacked nor threatened the United States?

On February 23 the U.S. created a 'humanitarian aid' stunt at the border between Colombia and Venezuela. The stunt ended in a riot during which the supporters of the self declared 'president' Guaidó burned the trucks that where supposed to transport the 'aid'. Even the New York Times had to admit that.

The riots also marked the day that Guaidó lost the legal argument he had used to make himself 'interim president'.

Guaido also lost his original legal position. He claimed the presidency on January 23 under this paragraph of article 233 of the Venezuelan constitution:

When an elected President becomes permanently unavailable to serve prior to his inauguration, a new election by universal suffrage and direct ballot shall be held within 30 consecutive days. Pending election and inauguration of the new President, the President of the National Assembly shall take charge of the Presidency of the Republic.

I filmed these scenes on March 10, but until now have been too busy and also lacking good enough internet to upload.

My objective in filming is not to say there is no poverty in Venezuela, nor to imply there is no hunger or shortages anywhere. However, when corporate media is flat out saying shelves are empty all over Caracas and the city is in crisis, well this is false. The scenes I’m seeing are much like I saw in 2010. I know there are differences since then and now, of course, but there isn’t the pandemonium MSM is attempting to claim is happening here. Also, this is not a wealthy area of Caracas, its perhaps lower middle class. I’ll film the wealthy areas where typically opposition live in coming days.

Listeners will likely know by now, that the late February story, complete with vivid video footage, about the forces of elected Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro burning trucks that were trying to bring the besieged country food and medicine was false. Weeks later, the New York Times (3/10/19) reported that the humanitarian trucks were not set on fire by Maduro’s forces, but instead by anti-Maduro protestors who threw a Molotov cocktail. The Times outlined how the fake story took root, passing from US officials to media that simply reported their claims as fact with no investigation—and does any of this sound familiar?

Folks like CNN‘s Marshall Cohen noted the Times debunking as if it were just an interesting development—a “classic example of how misinformation spreads,” Cohen said in a tweet. Except, as The Intercept‘s Glenn Greenwald pointed out (3/10/19), it was Cohen’s own network, CNN, that led the way in spreading the lie around the world.

We write to request your support for the bipartisan measure, H.R.1004 – Prohibiting Unauthorized Military Action in Venezuela Act, introduced by Rep. David Cicilline of Rhode Island. We respectfully ask that any floor consideration of legislation addressing the crisis in Venezuela include H.R. 1004, a critical safeguard against unconstitutional U.S. military action. The newly elected Democratic majority of the House of Representatives must make explicit in its first step of developing and adopting legislation on Venezuela that the Congress will serve as an effective counterweight to the militaristic and anti-refugee policies of the Trump Administration.

Venezuela's opposition-controlled National Assembly named an ad-hoc board of directors to state chemical company Pequiven on Tuesday, a move aimed at allowing opposition leader Juan Guaido to gain control of the country's assets abroad.

That allowed Guaido's allies to name a board of directors to Monomeros, a Colombian chemical company owned by Pequiven. The move resembled Guaido's naming of an ad-hoc board for state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela last month, allowing him to name new directors to U.S. refiner Citgo, a PDVSA subsidiary and Venezuela's most important overseas asset.

Veterans For Peace (VFP) calls on all members of the U.S. military to refuse illegal orders to intervene in Venezuela. Furthermore, VFP urges all U.S. military leaders to inform the president that they will order their units to stand down from preparations to invade Venezuela.

President Donald Trump has called on Venezuelan soldiers to disobey orders and join coup perpetrators headed by U.S.-backed opposition leader, Juan Guaidó. If they do not do this, President Trump threatened: “You will find no safe harbor, no easy exit and no way out. You will lose everything.”

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has made his geopolitical priorities clear, dropping by CIA headquarters for a clandestine chat on his first visit to the US before even meeting with President Donald Trump.

Bolsonaro’s visit was not published on his agenda and members of the press were barred at the door while the president and his justice minister, Sergio Moro, hobnobbed with the spooks at the agency’s Langley HQ.

US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joe Dunford issued a statement Monday denying weekend media reports that the US plans to leave around 1,000 troops in Syria, saying the reports are “factually incorrect.”

Dunford presented the current planned “residual force” as 200, saying that this hadn’t changed since February. The US announced 200 would stay on February 21, but on February 22 officially increased that number to 400.

It’s not clear from Dunford’s statement where the “incorrect” aspect of the new report, which came out of a Wall Street Journal, exists. That report suggested that the 1,000 figure was not yet finalized, but was being discussed. Dunford’s comments didn’t include any details on what is actually being discussed, but just that nothing was finalized.

Venezuela's opposition has taken control of three diplomatic facilities in the United States and will attempt to obtain further US-based assets in the near future, Carlos Vecchio, opposition leader Juan Guaido's envoy to the US, told reporters on Monday.

"Today, we are taking control over three facilities, three buildings. Two of them are located here in Washington, D.C., and the other one is the building in which the consulate services works," Vecchio said.

Vecchio explained that all three buildings are owned by the Venezuelan government. One of the two properties seized in Washington is a military building that belongs to Venezuela's Defence Ministry, the opposition envoy said.

US President Donald Trump has said that he is seriously looking at NATO membership or some other formal alliance with Brazil as he welcomed Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to the White House on Tuesday.

Bolsonaro made an unusual trip to the CIA headquarters yesterday, the first day of his trip to the US during which he hopes to articulate a pro-US stance and to expand trade ties and diplomatic cooperation.

Brazil's president was one of the first to throw his support behind Venezuela's pro-US opposition leader Juan Guaido after Trump declared support for him in January.

British photojournalist Alan Gignoux and Venezuelan journalist-filmmaker Carolina Graterol, both based in London, went to Venezuela for a month to shoot a documentary for a major global TV channel. They talked with journalist Paul Cochrane about the mainstream media’s portrayal of Venezuela compared to their experiences on the ground.

A massive power outage occurred again in various parts of the Venezuelan capital of Caracas and nearby localities, eyewitnesses of the incident told Sputnik on Monday.

The blackout is reported mainly by the inhabitants of East Caracas, namely the districts of Altamira, La Urbina, El Cafetal, El Rosal, Los Palos Grandes, and others.

In the municipality of Chacao, where a number of foreign embassies and large hotels are located, power outages were registered on Sunday evening. According to a Sputnik correspondent, as of 10.30 a.m. (14.30 GMT), there was no electricity in this part of the city either inside houses or on the street.

India's Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas has advised private refiners Reliance Industries and Nayara Energy to avoid making payments for Venezuelan crude imports through channels that are likely to be impacted by US sanctions.

New Delhi (Sputnik): In a major indication that India is in no mood to buckle under US pressure, New Delhi has already started the process to make sure that purchases of crude oil from Venezuela would not be impacted in the absence of a sanction-proof payment system.

A government official told Sputnik that making payments in India's national currency is being considered, but that the proposal is at the initial stage.

US General on #Maduro refusing to leave Venezuela: “He needs to understand that a bullet to the forehead may be his way out of #Venezuela. and we have that capability”

The Venezuelan people have been fueled by almost two decades of fierce hostility from the imperialism of the United States, its allies and lackeys. It has been attacked on multiple fronts such as economic war, media war, and electric war, in the context of continuous coup tactics and irregular, or hybrid warfare. But yet Venezuela has emerged victorious and with high morale after each attack.

The last two major attacks of the colonialist and neofascist government of Donald Trump against Venezuela have been a complete failure. But the gang of thugs in charge of the imperial policy towards Latin America and the Caribbean came to dream that the leadership of President Nicolás Maduro and the building of the Bolivarian revolution would implode on February 23, or that, in the worst case, it would implode as a result of the greater and more prolonged terrorist sabotage against the electro-energetic system of Venezuela. Or due to the two attacks together.

The situation in and around Venezuela continues to be extremely tense. Following the failed attempt at the end of February. of the so-called “humanitarian” invasion, and the unceasing provocative activity of the self-proclaimed “interim president,” this week a serious disaster came to Venezuela that has cost the lives of Venezuela’s citizens.

And it came about, unfortunately, the way we talked about during our previous briefing on March 7, through sabotage, just a few hours after our warning. Like the absolute majority of the troubles that have befallen independent Venezuela in recent years, this trouble came from outside. According to the legal Government of the country, led by President N.Maduro, as well as information from other reliable sources confirming this information, the Venezuelan power sector has been attacked from abroad.

The protesters are demanding that the US put and end to its involvement in Venezuelan internal affairs, lift the sanctions it imposed and rule out the possibility of military intervention in the country.

Hundreds of protesters gathered Saturday at Lafayette Square near teh White House to express their support for Venezuela's incumbent president Nicolas Maduro.

Hundreds of protesters are gathering in Washington DC to demand "No coup! No war! No sanctions!" on Venezuela, and show support for Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro against regime change efforts.

A large sea of demonstrators met at Lafayette Park for a march on Washington Saturday afternoon to show opposition to the Trump administration’s effort to overthrow Maduro and replace him with opposition figure Juan Guaidó, who has declared himself president with the support of the US, Canada, many European nations and other leaders.

Argentina’s federal police found guns and Nazi propaganda in the home of a father and son who allegedly threatened the Jewish umbrella group on social media.

The Jewish umbrella organization DAIA, had filed a police complaint with the Justice Department, and the police opened an investigation. They followed an internet protocol address to the home of the father and son in Merlo, a town west of the Greater Buenos Aires area.

In the home, police found guns, ammunition, Nazi-themed books, Nazi propaganda and Nazi memorabilia including uniforms, as well as Italian fascist flags and Nazi brochures. The father and son were arrested Wednesday.

Arrest comes amid commemorations for 1992 Israeli embassy bombing in Buenos Aires.

Argentinian intelligence officers arrested two Iranian nationals in Buenos Aires suspected of traveling on forged Israeli passports, local media reported.The pair, identified by local reports as Sajjad Samiel Naserani, 27, and Mashoreh Sabzali, 30, were arrested on Tuesday travelling on forged Israeli passports under the fake names of Netanel and Rivka Toledano.

Of course, officials are always keen to talk up attacking various nations, and that they are giving that impression now doesn’t mean an invasion is imminent. Rather, the US seems interested in giving that impression.

Still, concern about this is real, enough so that the House Foreign Affairs Committee is looking to prohibit the White House from attacking Venezuela without Congressional approval. The administration clearly hoped to force a regime change in Venezuela just through threats and rhetoric, but with that looking less and less likely to work, the talk of a war is only going to grow.

Halfway through Donald Trump’s presidency, Israel’s decades-long role in Central America is scaling new heights of military and political influence.

Israel has wasted no time securing valuable arms deals in this part of the world, deals that now account for nearly 20 percent of its arms exports. This scale of activity hasn’t occurred since the Ronald Reagan administration in the 1980s, when far-right rulers in Central America circled the wagons.

Tacit US approval for the purchase of such weapons has ensured Honduran and Guatemalan support at the United Nations for Donald Trump’s decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The changeover from Barack Obama’s two terms as president to Trump has heralded a resurgence of policy trends among the US, Israel and US-dominated Central American countries reminiscent of the transitional Carter-Reagan years.

A large US delegation stormed out of a United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs meeting on Thursday in Vienna just as Venezuelan foreign minister Jorge Arreaza began an address to the chamber.

The US said its representatives walked out together in order to protest the legitimacy of officials representing the Maduro government. The official Twitter account of the the U.S. Mission to International Organizations in Vienna announced the walk-out and posted a video of the protest which occurred during what it called "the world's most important drug control forum."

The international news agency Reuters has confirmed that Venezuela’s US-appointed coup leader Juan Guaidó and his right-wing economic advisers drafted a plan to privatize the country’s petroleum industry and open up the oil-rich South American country to foreign corporations.

This privatization scheme will be difficult to implement, however, given the Venezuelan government still remains under the control of its elected leftist president, Nicolás Maduro, and the coup attempt led by the Donald Trump administration has thus far failed.

The Grayzone reported on the opposition’s moves to try to privatize Venezuela’s oil industry immediately after the coup attempt began nearly two months ago, at a time when corporate media outlets were largely ignoring this key detail and instead portraying the conflict as a supposed “humanitarian crisis.”

President Nicolas Maduro has been stepping up pressure on Western governments that support Venezuela's opposition leader Juan Guaido, forcing out all American diplomats and kicking out a German envoy.

Juan Guaido has escalated his rhetoric against Nicolas Maduro, claiming that Moscow and Beijing in fact do not endorse the country's government, despite their diplomats stating the opposite.

"They [Maduro's government] do not have any international allies; it is not true that Russia and China are with them. That's a great fallacy. No one is with them," the self-declared Venezuelan leader claimed at a rally in Caracas on Thursday.

Earlier, Swiss authorities denied having spoken to Juan Guaido after the opposition figure claimed to have held talks with the Swiss president on freezing Venezuelan state accounts in the country's banks. As it turns out, Guaido was duped by the same pranksters who tricked Trump's top aide on Venezuela into spilling the beans on Washington's plans.

Last week, Vovan and Lexus, the Russian telephone pranksters known for their trolling of politicians from around the world, struck again, releasing audio of their conversations with US special representative for Venezuela Elliott Abrams where, posing as Swiss President Ueli Maurer, they got him to reveal important details on the US-backed effort to overthrow the Latin America's country's legitimate government.

On 12 March, National Security Adviser John Bolton yet again issued threats against states and entities backing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Speaking to Sputnik, journalist and award-winning filmmaker John Pilger shared his views on the legitimacy of US sanctions and weighed the chance of the EU following suit.

The Trump administration has repeatedly signalled that it is ready to impose unilateral sanctions against countries that continue to support Venezuela's legitimate President Nicolas Maduro, despite Washington's attempts to legitimise self-declared interim President Juan Guaido.

"The United States will use its economic tools to constrict the ability for Maduro and his cronies to access financial resources and currency. This includes taking actions against financial institutions that are facilitating transactions for the illegitimate regime", National Security Adviser John Bolton tweeted on 6 March.

I was 23 when we invaded Iraq, and I wasn’t sure it was based on lies, but something deep down in me told me it was based on lies. Kinda like if your blind date shows up and you notice he has a 2004 flip phone.
It seems vaguely worrisome, and no explanation he can haltingly supply will put you at ease. Plus, anyone else who acts like it’s normal also becomes suspect.

The invasion of Iraq just felt like it was a lie to me. And it turned out that I was right, that it was a lie, and that the entirety of the mainstream media and our government were either wrong or lying and, most of the time, both.

Now our government and our media are trying their damnedest to lie us into another war, this one with Venezuela. They tell us the Venezuelan people are desperate for necessities like toothpaste, while independent journalists show piles of affordable toothpaste in Caracas.

Firefighters in Venezuela put out a blaze in a storage tank at an oil refinery that was caused by lightning on Sunday and led to the evacuation of people living nearby, a top official at state oil company PDVSA said.

While Venezuela struggled with the most massive blackout in its history, president Maduro said there is evidence that a US cyber-attack caused the blackout. Meanwhile, Trump administration officials continue the offensive against Venezuela and the NYT uncovers false reporting

Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution, which took off with the election of President Hugo Chávez in December 1998, frequently and even quite recently received praise for its social gains from the United Nations, international humanitarian organizations and economists. This aspect of the country’s story has been almost entirely written out of media coverage of the effort to overthrow the Venezuelan government by the US, Canada and their right-wing partners in Venezuela and the region.

Under Chávez, poverty in Venezuela was cut by more than a third, and extreme poverty by 57 percent (CEPR, 3/7/13). (These declines were even steeper if measured from the depths of the opposition-led oil strike, designed to force Chávez out by wrecking the economy.)

Washington has withdrawn its diplomats from Venezuela and Caracas has begun a new probe into self-proclaimed Interim President Juan Guaido for the power outages that, among other things, cut the capital’s water supply. A journalist told Sputnik that US moves, while backed by “disturbing language,” are a tacit admission of the coup’s defeat.

In a letter address to Congress Tuesday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asked for $500 million of "appropriate resources" in next year's budget for the Department of State to "respond to the crisis" or "support a democratic transition" in Venezuela.

Venezuela’s president, Nicolas Maduro, has hailed the nation’s armed forces for its loyalty and defeat of a US-led coup. Sputnik has discussed this with Alfred de Zayas, a former UN rapporteur to Venezuela and professor of law.

China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi has issued a stern warning against interfering in Venezuela's internal affairs and imposing more sanctions. Speaking in Beijing, Wang Yi said that external interference and sanctions will only exacerbate the tense situation and allow the law of the jungle to once again run amok.

This comes after Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said that an electric energy war, declared by the United States, will not succeed. Earlier the same day, local media reported that a blackout had hit 21 out of 23 of Venezuela's states, affecting millions of Venezuelans in what the national electricity supplier described as "sabotage" at a major hydroelectric power plant.

Shipping companies and insurers that take part in sending crude oil from Venezuela to Cuba have been “put on notice,” U.S. national security adviser John Bolton said in a tweet, following a declaration by the Venezuelan opposition-dominated National Assembly that all oil exports to Cuba must be suspended in the wake of the five-day blackout that wreaked havoc on the already struggling South American country.

“The Venezuelan National Assembly has decreed the suspension of crude exports to Cuba following the collapse of the national electrical grid. Insurance companies and flag carriers that facilitate these give-away shipments to Cuba are now on notice,” Bolton tweeted.

EL BOLSÓN, ARGENTINA – At the “end of the world,” spanning the southernmost regions of Argentina and Chile, lies the land of Patagonia, much of which remains a pristine wilderness that has inspired countless naturalists and would-be adventurers with its dramatic landscapes and natural beauty. For many, it is a place that still feels remarkably untouched and removed from the chaos of the modern world.

Yet, it is these very qualities, as well as the region’s great oil and gas potential and its abundance of glacier-fed freshwater reserves, that have placed it in the crosshairs of predators — predators armed with billions of dollars, powerful influence over Argentine politics and the country’s press, as well as alliances with controversial international financial organizations and key elements of the global Zionist lobby.

With Venezuela’s government ordering the withdrawal of the last of US embassy personnel, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tried to spin it as a positive for the continued efforts to impose regime change there.

Pompeo said that “time is drawing short” for Venezuela, while saying the presence of a US embassy had been a “constraint on US policy,” and one that no longer exists now that the staff is being recalled.

Exactly what this will mean from a policy standpoint is unclear, though clearly the administration wants to keep reminding everybody that military intervention is possible Elliot Abrams confirmed this in his own comments, saying that the option to attack Venezuela will always remain on the table.

Very moving, well worth a listen.

He correctly points out that the mainstream media are shameless liars, and that Americans should not believe the lies being told about Venezuela, which is being targeted with a disinformation campaign. We couldn't agree more.

Demonstrators are gearing up for major demonstrations in front of the White House in Washington March 16 to protest President Donald Trump's violent attempts to overthrow the democratically elected government of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.

“U.S. hands off Venezuela! NO to the coup — NO to sanctions — NO to a new U.S. war,” reads a statement by the Act Now to Stop War and Racism (Answer) coalition and some 150 other organizations and individuals behind the Saturday protest.

During an interview with Fox News on Thursday, Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton said that it would be great if the United States could get their hands on that Venezuelan oil, and that statement alone tells you everything that you need to know about why the US is trying so hard to interfere in Venezuelan affairs. They’ve been playing a long game with this one, and it looks like they might just win. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains what’s happening.

Well, we made it to Venezuela, but it wasn’t easy. The US has closed the Venezuelan embassy because they do not recognize the government. Therefore, it is not possible to get a visa. This might be one reason that the US closed the embassy. If you can’t get a visa and go Venezuela, you can not see for yourself what is going on and challenge their narrative. But six of us did make it and others are delayed but are getting in too. American airlines was the worst. If you were on American airlines for the first leg of you journey, they just would not let you on the flight.

China says it is ready to help Venezuela to restore its power grid. The South American country suffered a five-day blackout, with Caracas accusing Washington of cyber “sabotage.”

Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said Beijing had noted reports that the power grid had gone down due to a hacking attack.

“China is deeply concerned about this,” Lu said, adding that Beijing “hopes that the Venezuelan side can discover the reason for this issue as soon as possible and resume normal power supply and social order.

At least eight people were killed in a school shooting in Brazil’s Sao Paulo state, local media report, citing police. The suspects are believed to be two teenagers, who shot themselves after the rampage.

The deadly incident occurred on in the city of Suzano located in the southeastern Brazilian state of Sao Paulo on Wednesday. The attack was carried out by two “armed and hooded” teenagers, according to police. Local media reported that they turned their weapons on themselves after killing at least five students and an adult. 17 other people were injured.

Along with reports about the resumption of electricity supply “across the country” from Venezuela today, March 13, there are reports that the authorities of the Bolivarian Republic have plans to stop the potentially illegal and anti-state activities of the self-declared opposition leader, the U.S-proclaimed President Juan Guaido.

Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab has revealed this morning that Guaido is under investigation on charges of sabotaging the national grid.

The statement of the head of the law enforcement agency aggravated the confrontation between the current government headed by President Nicolas Maduro and the U.S backed pretender “interim head of state” Juan Guaido, who was recognized as such by the United States and about 50 countries in Latin America and Europe. Meanwhile, according to the Associated Press, doubts remain as to how decisively the Venezuelan authorities will act against the “instigator” of electrical sabotage.

Maduro: Two suspected of sabotage on Venezuela's power system detained. Caracas, Mar 12 (UNI) The Venezuelan authorities have detained two people on ... on the country's power system, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. ... They are being questioned," Maduro said

Nicolas Maduro’s staunchest international ally—Russia—reaffirmed last week its full support to the Socialist leader’s regime and his efforts to prevent what Moscow sees as interference in Venezuela’s domestic affairs.
At the same time, Russia, which vowed to defend its oil assets in Venezuela as early as the political crisis began in January, sees risks to its investments in the Latin American country and pledges to react “in the toughest way” possible within international law if those investments are threatened, Russia’s Ambassador to Venezuela, Vladimir Zaemsky, told Russian government-run newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta in an interview published this week.

SOURCE: THE GRAYZONE
THE US-FUNDED CANVAS ORGANIZATION THAT TRAINED JUAN GUAIDO AND HIS ALLIES PRODUCED A 2010 MEMO ON EXPLOITING ELECTRICITY OUTAGES AND URGED THE OPPOSITION “TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE SITUATION…TOWARDS THEIR NEEDS”
BY MAX BLUMENTHAL
A September 2010 memo by a US-funded soft power organization that helped train Venezuelan coup leader Juan Guaido and his allies identifies the potential collapse of the country’s electrical sector as “a watershed event” that “would likely have the impact of galvanizing public unrest in a way that no opposition group could ever hope to generate.”

The memo has special relevance today as Guaido moves to exploit nationwide blackouts caused by a major failure at the Simon Bolivar Hydroelectric Plant at Guri dam – a crisis that Venezuela’s government blames on US sabotage.

The political turmoil has been ongoing in Venezuela since late January, when opposition figure Juan Guaido declared himself the interim president, leading to recognition by the United States and its allies. Russia, China, Mexico, and Turkey have said that they recognise Nicolas Maduro as the only legitimate president.

On Tuesday, the European Parliament is holding a plenary session in Strasbourg to discuss the developments in the Venezuelan political crisis.

Marco Rubio is being criticized for a number of tweets he has posted over the past few days about the increasingly fraught situation in Venezuela.

The most glaring of these came on Sunday, when he confused a reporter on the ground in the South American country with an actual dam.

'Today another transformer explosion at the German Dam in Bolivar State caused another massive blackout,' wrote Rubio.

'The result? Critically ill patients have died, the #Caracas metro remains out of service & few if any flights have arrived at or departed from Caracas in over 20 hours.'

An blackout has covered most of Venezuela over the past several days after the country’s main electricity generator, the Guri Dam, failed. The Maduro administration alleges that the failure was due to cyber attacks and pointed the finger at the US government that has called for Maduro’s ouster. Venezuela’s Communications Minister reported that a cyberattack had taken place against the dam’s computerized system forcing its turbines to stop. Venezuela intends to present evidence of the attack to the United Nations Human Rights Commission and to other international bodies. Meanwhile, US-backed “Interim President” Juan Guaido is using the crisis to call for the armed forces to back his efforts in ousting the Maduro government and tweeted, “electricity will return once the usurpation ends.”

Concerns over the Trump administration's increasingly hostile policy in Venezuela grew Tuesday after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the U.S. was withdrawing all diplomatic personnel from the country.

Pompeo cited the "deteriorating situation" in Venezuela that escalated in January after the U.S. recognized opposition leader Juan Guaidó as "interim president," rebuking President Nicolas Maduro and coordinating efforts to overthrow the elected government.

Pompeo announces US pulling out all diplomats from #Venezuela pic.twitter.com/LAev9qtyqR

— Josh Lederman (@JoshNBCNews) March 12, 2019
The presence of embassy staff in Venezuela is a "constraint" on US policy? That sounds very regime changey to me. Buckle up just in case. pic.twitter.com/y1ckutYKG2

— Hawaii Delilah™ (@HawaiiDelilah) March 12, 2019

For nearly four days, much of Venezuela has been without power, bringing the country’s embattled economy to a near standstill. Though power is now returning, the outage saw U.S. officials and politicians blame the Venezuelan government for the crisis while officials in Caracas accused the U.S. of conducting “sabotage” and launching cyberattacks that targeted its civilian power grid as well as of employing saboteurs within Venezuela.

Although many mainstream media outlets have echoed the official U.S. government response, some journalists have strayed from the pack. One notable example is Kalev Leetaru, who wrote at Forbes that “the United States remotely interfering with its [Venezuela’s] power grid is actually quite realistic.”

US diplomats are undermining Venezuelan peace and stability, the nation’s Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza said, setting a deadline for them to vacate the embassy in Caracas. Washington vowed to hurry the evacuation of its mission.

American diplomats must “abandon Venezuelan territory in the next 72 hours,” with the countdown starting at the “zero hour” on Tuesday, Arreaza wrote on Twitter.

During the past few days, Venezuela was suffering a major blackout that left the country in darkness. The crisis started on March 7 with a failure at the Guri hydroelectric power plant, which produces 80% of the country’s power. Additionally, an explosion was reported at Sidor Substation in Bolivar state.

Since then, the government has been struggling to solve the crisis with varying success.

President Nicholas Maduro says that the blackout is the reason of “the electric war announced and directed by American imperialism.” According to Maduro, electrical systems were targeted by cyberattacks and “infiltrators”. He added that authorities managed to restore power to “many parts” of the country on March 8, but the restored systems were knocked down after the country’s grid was once again attacked. He noted that “one of the sources of generation that was working perfectly” had been sabotaged and accused “infiltrators of attacking the electric company from the inside.”

On Thursday, Venezuela’s Guri dam hydroelectric power plant was cyberattacked at 5:00 PM during the late afternoon rush hour to cause maximum disruption.

Up to 80% of the country was affected, damage done more severe than initially thought. Weeks or months of planning likely preceded what happened – US behind it? considerable expertise needed to pull it off.

On Friday, another cyberattack occurred, followed by a third one on Saturday, affecting parts of the country where power was restored, further complicating resolution of the problem, Maduro saying:

After power was restored to about 70% of the country, “we received another attack, of a cybernetic nature, at midday…that disturbed the reconnection process and knocked out everything that had been achieved until noon,” adding:

“(O)ne of the sources of generation that was working perfectly” was sabotaged again…infiltrators…attacking the electric company from the inside.”

The Hybrid War on Venezuela just took a dark turn – literally – after the US used cyber weapons and insider sabotage to attack the country’s power grid last week, cutting off most of its electricity and creating a chain reaction of negative consequences all throughout the Bolivarian Republic. According to unverified reports cited in one of RT’s recent articles on the topic, the Guri hydroelectric power plant – which provides 80% of the country’s power – failed (possibly due to a cyberattack), which was followed by an explosion at the Sidor Substation that was sustaining most of the country’s power in the aftermath of the aforementioned.

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido on Saturday called on citizens nationwide to travel to the capital Caracas for a protest against socialist President Nicolas Maduro, as the country's worst blackout in decades dragged on for a third day.

Addressing supporters in southwestern Caracas, Guaido - the leader of the opposition-run congress who invoked the constitution to assume an interim presidency in January - said Maduro's government "has no way to solve the electricity crisis that they themselves created."

"All of Venezuela, to Caracas!" Guaido yelled while standing atop a bridge, without saying when the planned protest would be held. "The days ahead will be difficult, thanks to the regime."

If you’re reading this blast, you’re aware of some of the ways the U.S. empire has manipulated in its latest attempt at a coup in Venezuela. In an act of brazen illegality, the Trump administration has barred the Bolivarian republic from being able to access its own money in foreign banks and has transported “humanitarian aid” that was embedded with materials that could have been used by the largely white supremacist opposition to ferment violence against the Venezuelan government.

Venezuela’s self-proclaimed president Juan Guaido has said that Venezuela’s expulsion of the German ambassador constitutes a threat to Germany. Sputnik spoke about the latest developments in Venezuela with Patrick Henningsen - Journalist and Founder of 21stCenturyWire.com.

Nicolas Maduro’s staunchest international ally—Russia—reaffirmed last week its full support to the Socialist leader’s regime and his efforts to prevent what Moscow sees as interference in Venezuela’s domestic affairs.
At the same time, Russia, which vowed to defend its oil assets in Venezuela as early as the political crisis began in January, sees risks to its investments in the Latin American country and pledges to react “in the toughest way” possible within international law if those investments are threatened, Russia’s Ambassador to Venezuela, Vladimir Zaemsky, told Russian government-run newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta in an interview published this week.

In the midst of a second nationwide power outage in Venezuela, the vast majority of the country is engulfed in a massive internet outage. The first electrical blackout, which swept across the nation on Thursday, left Venezuela with only two percent connectivity amid the ongoing presidential crisis. Most of the country has been offline since Thursday with limited or no connectivity being reported across large swaths of the South American nation. The NetBlocks Group, a private internet watchdog organization based in the UK, reported on Saturday that 96 percent of the country was offline:

Much of Venezuela is still in the dark — now four days running — after the worst blackout on modern record in Latin America enveloped the country last Thursday evening. And as of Saturday, Reuters reported at least 17 deaths at hospitals across the country attributable to the power outage, given many hospitals are now for days completely reliant on back-up generators to keep life saving ventilators and other medical devices going. Other reports have claimed multiple dozens of deaths across the country, especially in hospital neonatal units.

Embattled socialist president Nicolas Maduro has continued to blame the crisis on an act of "sabotage" by the United States at the Guri hydroelectric dam, for which he's mobilized troops to protect the national electricity system for the duration of the power outage.

Previously, Bloomberg suggested that Caracas shipped 620,000 barrels a day to India in the first half of February, which is 66% more than the average daily shipments a month earlier

US Special Envoy for Venezuela Elliott Abrams confirmed that Washington is pressing India to stop buying Venezuelan oil.

"We say you should not be helping this regime, you should be on the side of the Venezuelan people", Abrams told Reuter, adding that the White House had given the same message to other governments.

The longest nationwide power outage in world history is threatening to plunge Venezuela into even further chaos.

Shops, businesses, schools and hotels are closed because of the lack of power.

Communication and telephone systems have collapsed.

There are no flights from any of the country's airports.

There is no water in taps. People are queuing with bottles at mountain wells.

NYT’s Exposé on the Lies About Burning Humanitarian Trucks in Venezuela Shows How US Govt and Media Spread Fake News

EVERY MAJOR U.S. WAR of the last several decades has begun the same way: the U.S. Government fabricates an inflammatory, emotionally provocative lie which large U.S. media outlets uncritically treat as truth while refusing at air questioning or dissent, thus inflaming primal anger against the country the U.S. wants to attack. That’s how we got the Vietnam War (North Vietnam attacks U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin); the Gulf War (Saddam ripped babies from incubators); and, of course, the war in Iraq (Saddam had WMDs and formed an alliance with Al Qaeda).

Thousands of Venezuelans prepared to protest once again Saturday as opposition leader Juan Guaido cranks up the pressure on beleaguered President Nicolas Maduro and the lights came back on following an electricity blackout that caused chaos in the crisis-wracked country.

Both Guaido and Maduro, who are locked in a bitter power struggle for the right to lead the oil-rich South American nation, have asked their supporters to fill the streets of Caracas and other cities.

“I call on the Venezuelan people to make a huge statement in the streets against the usurper, corrupt and incapable regime that has plunged our country into darkness,” Guaido wrote on Twitter.

Marco Rubio, the neocon senator from Florida, considers a suspicious power outage across Venezuela to be funny. He would no doubt feel different if his mother was on a ventilator in a Caracas hospital—then again.