VenezuelaSolidarityNetwork: US Hands Off Venezuela! Sign-on statement The election results, as announced by Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) and confirmed by the Supreme Court (TSJ), have been contested by opposition candidate Edmundo González. His claim is based on the publication of voting results posted on a private website. Gonzalez refused to present his evidence to the TSJ, leaving Venezuelans no constitutionally mandated means for recognizing his alleged victory even if it were valid. In advance of the election, the U.S. had announced that regardless of the vote count, if Maduro won, they would not recognize his victory. Accordingly, the U.S. anointed opposition figure Edmundo Gonzalez as Washington’s choice for president-elect.
Granma: Venezuela is the capital of anti-fascism A hundred Cubans arrived in Bolivarian Venezuela to attend the World Antifascist Festival For a New World, which has been taking place in Caracas January 9-11. René González Barrios, director of the Fidel Castro Ruz Center, “it is a great honor to attend this meeting, while the ghost of fascism is once again haunting the planet, perhaps with greater cruelty than before,” at the same time as imperialism is taking its toll on social processes that advocate justice. He said these are times in which “not only the sovereignty of Venezuela is being decided, but of all peoples.” While delegations from all geographical areas of the planet expressed their support for the anti-fascist battle that the Homeland of Bolívar and Chávez is waging against the extreme right at home and abroad, the leader of the opposition, María Corina Machado, called unsuccessfully to the people to take to the streets, just a few hours before the presidential inauguration.
Network in Defense of Humanity – Cuba: The Cause of Venezuela is Everyone’s Cause From the Cuba chapter of the Anti-Fascist International and the Network in Defense of Humanity we strongly reject the coup agenda being promoted from Washington against the government of the legitimate elected president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro Moros. We call on the peoples and all revolutionary and progressive forces to defend the Bolivarian Revolution, its achievements and its people as a closed bloc. The cause of Venezuela is the cause of all those who want a better and fairer world.
RT.com: ‘Mercenaries from Ukraine conflict’ captured in Venezuela – Maduro Venezuela arrested seven foreign mercenaries, including Ukrainians and Americans, who were planning to attack the country’s leadership. On January 7, Maduro said that the group included two Colombian hitmen as well as “three mercenaries who came from Ukraine.” Caracas also arrested two “very high level” US citizens, he added, later describing them as “two important mercenaries.” Since November, the Venezuelan authorities had captured 125 foreign mercenaries from 25 different countries who Maduro alleged had entered the country “to practice terrorism against the Venezuelan people.”
Venezuelanalysis: Venezuela Rejects US Interference Ahead of Maduro Inauguration, Breaks Diplomatic Ties with Paraguay The Venezuelan government has rejected the Biden administration’s latest “worn-out intervention strategies” by recognizing former opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia as “president-elect.” “The decrepit Biden administration, defeated and in retreat, once again resorts to worn-out intervention strategies, trying to artificially inflate insignificant political figures in Venezuela while ignoring the clear sovereign will of our people.”
US Treasury Department: US Announces $25 Million Reward for Arrest of Venezuela’s Maduro The Department of State is increasing the reward up to $25 million each for information leading to the arrest and/or convictions of Maduro and Minister of Interior, Justice, and Peace Diosdado Cabello, as well as adding a new reward of up to $15 million for Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino.
Orinoco Tribune: Venezuela VP: CLAPs Distributed 132 Million Food Boxes in 2024 CLAPs is a program launched in April 2019 to provide food to Venezuelan families at low prices, in a measure to counter US economic warfare. The program consists in directly delivering food boxes every month to Venezuelan households, in coordination with communal councils. In 2019, the US government launched a battery of unilateral coercive measures against Venezuelan and international providers for this key social and economic program. Vice President Rodríguez stressed that the Venezuelan government continues working with the private sector to ensure the production and distribution of food in the country for the most vulnerable sectors.
Peoples Dispatch: US Puppet Edmundo González tours the Americas pleading for foreign intervention in Venezuela Venezuelan opposition leader and former presidential candidate, Edmundo González, is on a tour of the Americas and has met with various right-wing Latin American heads of state as well as US President Joe Biden. The tour takes place just days before the swearing in of Nicolás Maduro on January 10.
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Nicaragua
Covert Action (John Perry): How the Human Rights Industry Manufactures Consent for “Regime Change” The “Human Rights Industry,” headed by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), has multiple layers, including UN “expert groups” and “rapporteurs,” regional commissions like the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, international NGOs such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, and tens of thousands of other non-governmental organizations. As the case of Nicaragua shows, the real purpose of most of the human rights industry is exposed. None of the US interventions [e.g., 2018, 2021], not even the unilateral sanctions which are contrary to international law, appears in any published “human rights” reports, despite the very obvious damage they have inflicted on ordinary Nicaraguans.
The UNHRC has just published its periodic review of Nicaragua’s human rights record. The country has made huge advances in social and economic rights since 2007 under its Sandinista government—but hardly any good news of this kind appears in the UN’s report. NGOs like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, or the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (an offshoot of the OAS) or the UNHCR itself, all utilize evidence provided by the local “human rights” NGOs, apparently without questioning its veracity. Nor do these bodies respond if a lay person points out the errors, omissions and outright lies promulgated by these NGOs.
In The Human Rights Industry, Alfred de Zayas makes the point that the real purpose behind such expert groups or commissions is “to denigrate and destabilize the targeted government to facilitate undemocratic ‘regime change’ as desired by one or more powerful countries.” As de Zayas says, such “experts” might even make a genuine offer of technical help in the field of human rights. But these groups are not really concerned with the rights of ordinary Nicaraguans, nor are they intended to assist the government. At best, they are concerned only with the rights of a small elite represented in the (mainly exiled) opposition groups. At worst, they demonize the government, aiding the process of manufacturing consent for Washington’s aim of regime change in Nicaragua.
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Cuba
The Grayzone (Danny Shaw): Will the Cuban revolution survive the storm of 2025? Cuba officially joined BRICS, but unless the country’s leaders embrace a strategic fiscal shift in the face of an asphyxiating US blockade, the prospect of state collapse – and the unraveling of over a half century of revolutionary social development – cannot be dismissed. The Cuban Revolution once guaranteed every citizen health care, education and basic social and economic rights. Now, Cuba has neither the foreign revenue nor a self-reliant economy to feed its people. Many Communist Party vets say these are their worst economic conditions yet. Every US policy has been calculated and designed to inflict regime change in Cuba, a euphemism for the complete overhaul of class relations. Visits back and forth between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Cuban counterpart highlight Cuba’s increasing resolve to build up their own Chinese style competitive state companies which would put an end to the food shortages. Cuba’s future does not run through Wall Street or the Beltway, it runs through Moscow, Beijing, Caracas, Tehran, Johannesburg and the other burgeoning centers of multipolarity. With the collapse of the anti-capitalist rival pole of the Cold War era, Cuba has been left to fight on its own. Multipolarity may be on the rise, but as the Western-backed genocide in Gaza and the setbacks suffered by the Axis of Resistance show, US hegemony has proven resilient.
Donate to help Cuba in this time of need Eight different organizations sending material aid. Also Code Pink (milk), and painkillers for hospitals
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Events
January 11: Witness against Torture anniversary of the 2002 opening of the US torture center in Guantanamo, Cuba. 15 prisoners remain; the cost of detention in 2019 was $13 million.
January 13: Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition monthly zoom meeting, 2:30 PM ET. Email NicaraguaSolidarityCoalition@gmail.com in advance to request Zoom access.
January 28-31: Havana, Cuba: VI International Conference for World BalanceThis conference cultivates partnerships and formulates actionable strategies to propel us towards a more equitable and just global community. Organized by the Office of the Martí Program and co-sponsored by UNESCO and Soka Gakkai International.
February 8, London: Latin America ConferenceThis will be the 19th annual Latin America Adelante! Conference.
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Delegations to Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua:
Bolivia
Feb 8 – Feb 17, 2025: Bolivia, 20 Years of Popular Democracy and Indigenous Self-Determination
Cuba
April 17-May 3: Puerto Rico Brigada Juan Ruiz Rivera to Cuba
April 26- May 3: The Nation: Havana and Trinidad
April 27-May 9: May Day Delegation Itinerary Draft
Different Brigades and Solidarity Trips to Cuba
Witness for Peace delegations to Cuba
Friendly Planet delegations to Cuba
Nicaragua
Casa Ben Linder Email casabenjaminlinder@gmail.com to apply:
20 February – 1 March 2025: The Bird Brigade: Birding in Solentiname Arquipelago
6-16 March 2025: Power & Protagonism: Women in Nicaragua
May 2025: Co-ops and Communities: Cooperative Movement in Nicaragua
June 2025: Global Health: Family and Community Health in Nicaragua
July 2025: Solidarity in Action: Nicaragua’s Popular Revolution
November 2025: Salud & Solidaridad: Hands-On Healthcare in Nicaragua
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This is also available at ChicagoALBASolidarity.org. If you have events to publicize, send them to venezuelaweekly@afgj.org or stansfieldsmith100@gmail.com.
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