President Maduro of Venezuela urges US diplomats to leave country within next 72hrs

[Strapped]

Why don't the people of Venezuela just deal with guaido

 

[loyola llothta]

Why don't the people of Venezuela just deal with guaido

he's backed by the west and trained under the US latin operation. if you do something to him now the west might use that opportunity to deploy military force and make the sellout some martyr in latin america

 

[loyola llothta]

bytchass moist dude

 

[loyola llothta]

 

[loyola llothta]

 

[Dr. Acula]

bytchass moist dude

Imperialist wars is where "Both sides" is correctly applied. Well, in addition to what we learned this week, that also protecting Israeli lobbying organization is a bipartisan affair. Though, one would argue the two are related.

 

[loyola llothta]

US Air Freight Company that Smuggled Weapons into Venezuela Linked to CIA “Black Site” Renditions

13 February 2019

The parallels between aspects of the Contra scandal and the current situation in Venezuela are striking, particularly given the recent “outrage” voiced by mainstream media and prominent U.S. politicians over Maduro’s refusal to allow U.S. “humanitarian aid” into the country.

Two executives at the company that chartered the U.S. plane that was caught smuggling weapons into Venezuela last week have been tied to an air cargo company that aided the CIA in the rendition of alleged terrorists to “black site” centers for interrogation. The troubling revelation comes as Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has rejected a U.S. “humanitarian aid” convoy over concerns that it could contain weapons meant to arm the country’s U.S.-backed opposition.

Last Tuesday, Venezuelan authorities announced that 19 rifles, 118 ammo magazines, 90 radios and six iPhones had been smuggled into the country via a U.S. plane that had originated in Miami. The authorities blamed the United States government for the illicit cargo, accusing it of seeking to arm U.S.-funded opposition groups in the country in order to topple the current Maduro-led government.

A subsequent investigation into the plane responsible for the weapons caché conducted by McClatchyDC received very little media attention despite the fact that it uncovered information clearly showing that the plane responsible for the shipment had been making an unusually high number of trips to Venezuela and neighboring Colombia over the past few weeks.

Steffan Watkins, an Ottawa-based analyst, told McClatchy in a telephone interview that the plane, which is operated by U.S. air cargo company 21 Air, had been “flying between Philadelphia and Miami and all over the place, but all continental U.S.” during all of last year. However, Watkins noted that “all of a sudden in January, things changed” when the plane began making trips to Colombia and Venezuela on a daily basis, sometimes multiple times a day.

According to Watkins’ analysis, this single plane had conducted 40 round-trip flights from Miami International Airport to Caracas and Valencia — where the smuggled weapons had been discovered — in Venezuela, as well as to Bogota and Medellin in Colombia in just the past month.

Publicly available flight radar information shows that the plane, although it has not returned to Venezuela since the discovery of its illicit cargo, has continued to travel to Medellin, Colombia, as recently as this past Monday.

Multiple CIA ties

In addition to the dramatic and abrupt change in flight patterns that occurred just weeks before U.S. Vice President Mike Pence prompted Venezuelan opposition member Juan Guaidó to declare himself “interim president,” a subsequent McClatchy follow-up investigation also uncovered the fact that two top executives at the company that owns the plane in question had previously worked with a company connected to controversial CIA “black sites.”


Indeed, the chairman and majority owner of 21 Air, Adolfo Moreno, and 21 Air’s director of quality control, Michael Steinke, both have “either coincidental or direct ties” to Gemini Air Cargo, a company previously named by Amnesty International as one of the air charter services involved in a CIA rendition program. In this CIA program, individuals suspected of terrorism were abducted by the intelligence agency and then taken abroad to third-country secret “black sites” where torture, officially termed “enhanced interrogation,” was regularly performed.

Steinke worked for Gemini Air Cargo from 1996 to 1997, according to a 2016 Department of Transportation document cited by McClatchy. Moreno, although he did not work for Gemini, registered two separate business at a Miami address that was later registered to Gemini Air Cargo while the CIA rendition program was active. McClatchy noted that the first business Moreno registered at the location was incorporated in 1987 while the second was created in 2001. Gemini Cargo Logistics, a subsidiary of Gemini Air Cargo, was subsequently registered at that same location in 2005.

21 Air has denied any responsibility for the weapons shipment discovered onboard the plane it operates, instead blaming a contractor known as GPS-Air for the illicit cargo. A GPS-Air manager, Cesar Meneses, told McClatchy that the weapons shipment had been “fabricated” by the Maduro-led government to paint his government as the victim. Meneses also stated that “the cargo doesn’t belong to 21 Air and it doesn’t belong to GPS-Air” and that it had been provided by third parties, whose identities Meneses declined to disclose.

Contras redux?

The revelation that the company that operates the plane caught smuggling weapons into Venezuela has connections to past controversial CIA programs is unlikely to surprise many observers, given the CIA’s decades-long history of funneling weapons to U.S.-backed opposition fighters in Latin America, Southeast Asia and other conflict areas around the globe.

One of the best-known examples of the CIA using airliners to smuggle weapons to a U.S.-backed paramilitary group occurred during the 1980s in what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal, in which the Reagan administration delivered weapons to the Contra rebels in order to topple the left-leaning Sandinista movement. Many of those weapons had been hidden on flights claiming to be carrying “humanitarian aid” into Nicaragua.

The parallels between aspects of the Contra scandal and the current situation in Venezuela are striking, particularly given the recent “outrage” voiced by mainstream media and prominent U.S. politicians over Maduro’s refusal to allow U.S. “humanitarian aid” into the country. Maduro had explained his rejection of the aid as partially stemming from the concern that it could contain weapons or other supplies aimed at creating an armed opposition force, like the “rebel” force that was armed by the CIA in Syria in 2011.

Though the media has written off Maduro’s concern as unfounded, that is hardly the case in light of the fact that the Trump administration’s recently named special envoy in charge of the administration’s Venezuela policy, Elliott Abrams, had been instrumental in delivering weapons to the Nicaraguan Contras, including hiding those weapons in “humanitarian aid” shipments. In subsequent testimony after the scandal broke in the 1980s, Abrams himself admitted to funneling weapons to the Contras in exactly this way.

With the recently uncovered illicit weapons shipment from the U.S. to Venezuela now linked to companies that have previously worked with the CIA in covert operations, Maduro’s response to the “humanitarian aid” controversy is even more justified. Unfortunately for him, the U.S.-backed “interim president,” Juan Guaidó, announced on Monday that his parallel government had received the first “external” source of “humanitarian aid” into the country, but would not disclose its source, its specific contents, nor how it had entered the country.

The original source of this article is MintPress News
Copyright © Whitney Webb, MintPress News, 2019

 

[loyola llothta]

# Blocking A dispatch of 200 thousand units of medicines for chronic diseases (such as hypertension) that a private company of # Venezuela had bought in Qatar, and that had to arrive today in the airline Iberia, was returned by the authorities of # Spain without explanation

 

[loyola llothta]

 

[loyola llothta]

 

[loyola llothta]

# Cuba denounces movements of special operations forces # US from airports in Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic and other Caribbean islands, without knowledge of their governments. The preparation of a military aggression against # Venezuela continues with a humanitarian pretext.

 

[loyola llothta]

Actor Danny Glover on blocking the US to # Venezuela : "You take the billions of dollars, which legitimately belonged to Venezuelans, impose sanctions so they can not use their own money and resources, and then come to save them."

 

[Strapped]

 

[Strapped]

Imperialist wars is where "Both sides" is correctly applied. Well, in addition to what we learned this week, that also protecting Israeli lobbying organization is a bipartisan affair. Though, one would argue the two are related.

Gillum drank the koolaid

 

[loyola llothta]

Citi May Liquidate over $1 Billion in Venezuela Gold within Weeks
16 February 2019

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.

As Reuters reported then, the deal would make more foreign currency available to President Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government as the OPEC nation struggled with soaring consumer prices, chronic shortages and a shrinking economy worsened by low oil prices.

As Reuters further added:

“former central bank director Jose Guerra and economist Asdrubal Oliveros of Caracas-based consultancy Ecoanalitica said in separate interviews that the operation had been carried out. A source at the central bank told Reuters last month it would provide 1.4 million troy ounces of gold in exchange for cash. Venezuela would have to pay interest on the funds, but the bank would most likely be able to maintain the gold as part of its foreign currency reserves.”

Needless to say, the socialist country’s economic situation is orders of magnitude worse now, and in addition to a full-blown blockade of the country’s only key export, petroleum, the president has a simmering, US-backed coup to contend with as well.

Fast forward three years when Venezuela’s gold swap with Citi is about to mature, and according to lawmaker Angel Alvarado, advisor to Venezuelan opposition leader and self-proclaimed president, Juan Guaido, Citi would be entitled to keep the gold if cash-strapped Venezuela does not pay the loan when it expires in March. Considering the country’s financial dire straits, the last thing Venezuela can afford is to pay Citi to reclaim ownership of the collateral.


As a result, on Friday, Guaido’s advisors asked Citibank not to invoke the guarantee and not to claim the gold put up as collateral for the 2015 loan made to the government of President Nicolas Maduro if his administration does not make payments on time, Reuters reported, citing a Venezuela lawmaker. Opposition leaders have claimed that Maduro usurped power last month when he was sworn in to a second term after a disputed election widely described as a sham.

“Citibank has been asked to stand by and not invoke the guarantee until the end of the usurpation,” Alvarado said in an interview. “We don’t want to lose the gold.”

Confirming what we reported back in 2016, a finance industry source told Reuters that the gold is worth $1.1 billion.

While it is unclear whether Citi will comply with the requests, there is now a non-trivial possibility that the US bank may find itself liquidating over $1 billion in Venezuela bullion in the open market, an operation which could potentially send the price of the precious metal sharply lower.

Meanwhile, far from pushing to reclaim its gold, Maduro has only been selling more of it, as Abu Dhabi investment firm Noor Capital confirmed when it said earlier this month that it bought 3 tons of gold from Venezuela’s central bank, but would halt further transactions until the country’s situation stabilizes.

Guaido has also asked British authorities to prevent Maduro from gaining access to gold reserves held in the Bank of England, which holds around $1.2 billion in bullion for Maduro’s government. So far the British central bank has refused to comply with Maduro’s demands to remit the gold back to Venezuela, although when asked for comment, the BOE said it does not comment on client operations.

Meanwhile, Hugo Chavez, who spent the last years of his life repatriating Venezuela’s gold is spinning in his grave.

The original source of this article is Zero Hedge
Copyright © Zero Hedge, Zero Hedge, 2019