Protecting Venezuela’s Embassy and International Law

For more than a month, a particularly courageous group of people have dedicated all of their time and energies to protecting the integrity of the Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in Washington, DC, which was officially transferred to their care when diplomatic relations with the US were severed. Even in the event of […]

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A Desperate Empire Crashes in Venezuela

The April 30, 2019, coup attempt in Venezuela has come and gone. The coup has failed. “Failed state” theory just got a lot more complicated. No longer can the “failed state” designation apply only to those states targeted for recolonization after a prolonged period of destabilization and foreign intervention. Now “failed state” theory has to […]

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Fake Humanitarianism Fails its Big Test in Venezuela

There it is: Saturday, February 23, 2019, has now come and gone—and it’s not to say that “nothing has changed”. In fact, some important changes did occur, none of which were the ones hoped for by either the self-declared “president” of Venezuela, Juán Guaidó, nor the ones commanded by the President of the US, Donald […]

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Venezuela: The Next Move and the Final Word

Almost a month after Donald Trump recognized Juán Guaidó as the “interim president” of Venezuela, and the imperial media started to label Nicolás Maduro as the “disputed” president of Venezuela (as if that were a universally accepted statement of fact), nothing has happened to unseat Maduro. The intended coup does not appear to be advancing. […]

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A War for Oil: The US Economic War on Venezuela

A Bridge Too Far It resembled something from a post-apocalyptic setting in a movie: images of the blocked highway bridge linking Colombia to Venezuela, silent and desolate containers behind fences, not a person in sight, no movement. It was like a makeshift monument to a people’s understanding of how “humanitarian aid” is used by empire […]

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Trump’s Coup in Venezuela

Last year in our final report on 2018, we closed with this warning: “one of the things we must all look out for then are the prospects of a new war in 2019, with those at greatest risk being Iran and Venezuela”. Opening the new year and marking the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, […]

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Venezuela: A Call for Peace, by Nicolás Maduro

This is an Op-Ed by Nicolás Maduro, President of Venezuela, as published in the New York Times: CARACAS, Venezuela — THE recent protests in Venezuela have made international headlines. Much of the foreign media coverage has distorted the reality of my country and the facts surrounding the events. Venezuelans are proud of our democracy. We have […]

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Encircling Empire: Report #24—Regime Change

In this report, our first for 2014, the reader will find links and article extracts for a selection of some of the very best resources to have been published online, focusing on the topic of regime change, along with an extended essay on Imperialism and Democracy. Here we address the current cases of Venezuela and Ukraine, and […]

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Encircling Empire: Report #21—Search and Distort Missions

Encircling Empire Reports is a selection of essays, blog posts, and news reports covering a given time period, providing links and representative extracts or key passages from each resource, usually focusing on certain countries/continents and/or processes in each report. The focus of the reports ranges from imperialism discussed in broad strokes, to specific facets of […]

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Venezuela: What Does a Victory Mean?

With 99.12% of the votes counted, and a voter turnout of 78.71%, the numerical results of the Venezuelan presidential elections were much closer than anyone anticipated, though the final political result was as expected: Nicolás Maduro won 50.66% of the votes (or 7,505,338 votes), while the opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski lost with 49.07% of […]

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