US warns Turkey against Venezuelan ‘blood gold’

Kurdistan 24 (K24 news)

Laurie Mylroie

WASHINGTON DC (Kurdistan 24) – The US Treasury Department’s Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing, Marshall Billingslea, visited Turkey last week. His primary concern was enforcing sanctions on Iran, but while there, he warned Turkish business leaders against trading in Venezuelan “blood gold,” Bloomberg News reported on Friday.

Venezuela has emerged as yet another point of dispute between Washington and Ankara, as the US recognizes National Assembly leader Juan Guaido, as the country’s legitimate president, and Turkey, along with Russia, China, and Iran, back Venezuelan strong man, Nicolas Maduro.

Close ties between Ankara and Caracas are relatively new, dating back to 2017. Maduro first visited Turkey in October of that year, while he was on a tour of foreign countries which included Russia and Belarus.

Following that visit, Bloomberg reported, a “mysterious” Turkish company, Sardes, “sprang into existence.” In January 2018, Sardes imported some $41 million of gold from Venezuela, “the first such transactions between the two countries in records that go back 50 years.”

That figure more than doubled in February, and by November 2018, when US President Donald Trump signed an executive order imposing sanctions on trade in Venezuelan gold, Sardes had imported some $900 million worth of the precious metal.

Virtually nothing is known about what happened to that gold, although Sardes apparently stopped its trading.

Trump’s directive was prompted, in part, by concern that the “Maduro regime and associated persons” were plundering “Venezuela’s wealth for their own corrupt purposes,” as the executive order explains.

At that point, Turkey was the biggest importer of Venezuelan gold, and another Turkish company appeared, almost immediately, to step in to replace Sardes in a maneuver organized by the Turkish government at the highest levels.

(Excerpt) Read more at kurdistan24.net …

Yup, Iran/Hezbollah Really Is In Venezuela

Founders Code

By: Denise Simon

Primer:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. military is prepared to protect U.S. personnel and diplomatic facilities in Venezuela if needed, the U.S. admiral in charge of American forces in South America said on Thursday.

“We are prepared to protect U.S. personnel and diplomatic facilities if necessary,” Navy Admiral Craig Faller, the head of U.S. Southern Command, said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

He did not provide any details on how the U.S. military might respond.

Elliott Abrams, Washington’s special envoy on Venezuela, said the aid effort was being coordinated with Guaido’s team but that the aid would not be forced into Venezuela.

“Let it in, that’s what we’re asking, let it in,” Abrams told reporters at a State Department briefing, calling on members of Venezuela’s armed forces to persuade Maduro to step down or to disobey his orders.

He said the supplies would be delivered to Venezuelans when it was “logistically safe” to do so.

Meanwhile:

Ghazi Nasr Al-Din fundraisers for and with Hezbollah. He also is a player in operational issues which includes a Hizbollah community center and operations office in Venezuela. He speaks Arabic and Spanish. Born in Beirut, Lebanon, he has been on the FBI Most Wanted List for several years.

 

$840M In Gold Bars Prepared For Loading Onto Russian Jet At Venezuelan Airport: report

Image via en.protothema.gr

Free Republic

About 20 tons of gold from Venezuela’s central bank was ready to be hauled away Tuesday on a Russian airline’s Boeing 777 that landed in Caracas a day earlier, a Venezuelan lawmaker wrote on Twitter.

(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com …

 

While the Media Accuses Trump of Collusion w/Russia, He’s Fighting Russia in Venezuela

Frontpage Mag

Daniel Greenfield

 

Obama colluded with Venezuela’s regime, the way that he had with Putin.

Nine years before the Socialist tyranny became a nightmare of mass murder, repression and hunger, he was pressing its tyrant’s flesh.

After several days of the US and Cuba trading warm words that have hinted at a détente after a half century of hostility, Mr Obama said that he was seeking “a new beginning” with Havana.

But it was his unexpected handshake and the smiles he exchanged with Mr Chavez that caught many at the summit by surprise.

Asked what he had said to Mr Chavez, Mr Obama replied with a smile: “I said como estas”.

Hugo Chavez, the socialist president of Venezuela, told state television: “I hope this doesn’t harm Obama, but if I was from the United States, I’d vote for Obama.”

Chavez, who like Obama is seeking re-election, also called the American president “a good guy,” reports Reuters.

“I think that if Obama was from Barlovento or some Caracas neighborhood, he’d vote for Chavez,” said the Venezuela leader.

It’s quite a contrast to how Chavez described Obama predecessor George W. Bush — as “the devil.”

Chavez predicted both he and Obama would win re-election, possibly leading to better American-Venezuelan relations. He said both he and Obama were battling the “extreme right” in their election battles.

“Obama’s atrocious statement on Chavez’s death” was a Washington Post headline in 2013.

While Obama had pandered to Russian clients like Cuba, Venezuela and Iran, President Trump stood up to them. And he’s doing it now.

Private military contractors who do secret missions for Russia flew into Venezuela in the past few days to beef up security for President Nicolas Maduro in the face of U.S.-backed opposition protests, according to two people close to them.

Russia, which has backed Maduro’s socialist government to the tune of billions of dollars, this week promised to stand by him after opposition leader Juan Guaido declared himself president with Washington’s endorsement.

It was the latest international crisis to split the global superpowers, with the United States and Europe backing Guaido, and Russia and China urging non-interference.

Yevgeny Shabayev, leader of a local chapter of a paramilitary group of Cossacks with ties to Russian military contractors, said he had heard the number of Russian contractors in Venezuela may be about 400.

Meanwhile the Democrats are doing everything possible to undermine America’s standing in the world and our foreign policy. Moscow no doubt appreciates the assistance that Pelosi and Schumer are providing it. Much as it appreciated Obama’s assistance.

That weird silence from Democrats over Venezuela’s massive rejection of socialism

American Thinker

By Monica Showalter

All over the world, nations and leaders are throwing expressions of support and praise for Venezuela’s leaders and people, who after many years of oppression and missteps, have come together with a courageous plan to non-violently shake off a detested socialist dictatorship that has left their country in ruins. Television pictures from yesterday’s demonstration covered the story in spades, showing the magnificent human spectacle to U.S. viewers.

Image via bodylanguagesuccess.com

 

President Trump and Vice President Pence have been right there for them. The Organization of American States and the Inter American Development Bank are loudly supporting them. The European Union is openly encouraging them.

There also are the skunks, such as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government, an official of which dismissed the millions-strong effort to shake off socialism and finally have food to eat, muggers in jail, a full roll of toilet paper and hospitals with sheets, running water and Band Aids as “an attempted coup.’

Then there are the Democrats, who are curiously, weirdly silent.

Venezuelans set fire to Hugo Chavez statue: It Has Started

American Thinker

By Monica Showalter

 

Operation Boot Maduro seems to be moving to stage two.

Following this week’s military mutiny, which was squelched, but not before locals ran out and attempted to defend the troops in pitched street battles, now at least sixty  – sixty! – neighborhoods in Caracas have erupted into riots – big riots, with people reported shot dead. Take a look at the series of tweets posted by Caracas Chronicles on its Twitter feed enumerating the names of the neighborhoods now in open revolt.

Here was its last tweet:

Caracas Chronicles @CaracasChron

#22E 11:45 PM Right now in Caracas, protests continue in Catia, Santa Cruz, El Amparo y el Cuartel. FAES agents are breaking into buildings and making arbitrary detentions in Pinto Salinas.

49

10:57 PM – Jan 22, 2019

And to underscore just what this nightmare was about, late last night angry Venezuelans burned the big statue of their late, unlamented strongman, Hugo Chavez, whose socialism – so praised at the time by Bernie Sanders and the Hollywood left — turned their formerly rich country into a wasteland. Someone needs to let Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez know about this vaunted socialism – and where it leads. Watch Chavez go up in flames:

Venepress @venepress

#ÚLTIMAHORA | Derrumban estatua de Hugo Chávez en San Félix #22Ene

6,689

9:44 PM – Jan 22, 2019

Yesterday, I did a pre-recording of a radio show with the highly recommended Conservative Commandos predicting that Catia and 23 de Enero would blow up (it will air today), and boy, I didn’t know the half of it — those places – and a lot of others – were at the bottom of the dynamite fuse and ready to go.

It’s important also to note that 23 de enero, or, Jan. 23, is an important anniversary in Venezuela – the anniversary of the overthrow of its military dictatorship in 1958. It’s considered an independence day in Venezuela and a whole neighborhood is named after it – one that is right now in open revolt. That is going to supercharge the activity that goes down today, particularly with big demonstrations scheduled.

All eyes remain on whether the soldiers are going to join the angry repressed people, who have no rights whatsoever, not even the right to food or medical care, in that socialist ‘sea of happiness’ as Chavez once called it.

Many think nothing is going to happen, despite that mutiny the other day. But watch this viral video from yesterday showing how soldiers are being treated under their Cuban-led socialist comrade rule. And note this list of incidents from the Associated Press.

That sounds like an open invitation for soldiers to join the revolt.

Naky Soto of Caracas Chronicles observes that Maduro seems to be scared and hiding, and his generals are nowhere to be found:

It’s curious that Nicolás hasn’t come up even in a picture, just as we didn’t see any member of the military high command that’s “willing to die for him.“ There’s been repression but also pot-banging: each tear gas canister multiplies the reasons for this political and social protest. In words of a Cotiza neighbor, who said she’ll protest “today, tomorrow, the next day (…) to kick that bastard out of where he’s holed up, entrenched, fat as a pig and we’re here starving, no way!”.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio issued a warning of what was going to happen next and his report is believable:

Marco Rubio

✔ @marcorubio

Tomorrow in #Venezuela expect Maduro to:
– Cut off internet
– Accuse protestors of violence with fake evidence
– “collectivos” militias to murder & repress
– Hacking social media accounts & websites to spread misinformation
– Arrest of legitimate leaders of National Assembly

10K

9:44 PM – Jan 22, 2019

He just threw in a rather scary warning to them:

Marco Rubio

✔ @marcorubio

#SEBIN officials in #Venezuela should reconsider the plan they have for tomorrow before it’s too late.

You are about to cross a line & trigger a response that believe me you are not prepared to face.

You still have time to avoid this.

19K

6:43 PM – Jan 22, 2019

A note of caution: Francisco Toro of Caracas Chronicles writes that maybe this leads to the democracy people want, but warns it also could end badly  – either the regime hangs on and the hellishness continues – or part of the military joins the people rioting in the streets, and part doesn’t, meaning, bloody civil war. He’s right on that, too, and his analysis is worth reading here.

Rubio also tweeted that President Trump is on the case and asked Rubio to cancel a Florida gig last night to meet with him in his office over Venezuela. Obviously, there is a plan, and as Venezuelans fight in the streets for their own freedom, the gears are turning.

 

Image credit: Venepress, via Twitter, screen grab

Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/01/venezuelans_set_fire_to_hugo_chavez_statue_it_has_started.html#ixzz5dRt2VnWP
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Venezuelan Supreme Court Justice Defects To America, Suggests President Maduro Is A Dictator

Hotair

John Sexton

 

If you’ve been following this story for the past year or so this won’t come as much of a shock. A Venezuela Supreme Court Justice named Christian Tyrone Zerpa has fled the country with his wife and children. Zerpa gave an interview to a news outlet in Florida and said he had remained silent about the legitimacy of the last presidential election out of concern for his family but says he can no longer continue to help President Maduro rule the country. From NPR:

Zerpa met a reporter in Orlando and told the outlet, “I think the president, Nicolás Maduro, does not deserve a second chance because the election he supposedly won was not a free election, was not a competitive election.”…

Zerpa said he did not speak out against the election results months ago out of concerns for his family’s safety.

Maduro’s Socialist Party “gradually but steadily” co-opted the Supreme Court and “turned it into an appendage of the executive branch,” according to the International Commission of Jurists.

There have been a number of opposition leaders who have been threatened or even imprisoned based on manufactured crimes, but Zerpa isn’t one of those. On the contrary, he was selected for the court because of his loyalty to the socialist party and had a close relationship with President Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores. From EV TV Miami (translation by Google):

In the past he served as deputy for the governing party, PSUV, and thanks to the protection of First Combatant Cilia Flores became one of the so-called “express magistrates” with the commitment to maintain loyalty to the regime.

“They chose me because I was one of the loyal, disciplined members of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela,” the now fugitive from justice told Carla Angola in the interview.

Zerpa revealed that it is Cilia Flores herself, who directs and controls the magistrates, for which she assured that there is no autonomy of powers. He even acknowledged that many of the decisions of the illegitimate TSJ are taken after a “call to Miraflores”.

Miraflores is the Venezuelan presidential palace, i.e. the equivalent of the White House. So what Zerpa is saying is that the country’s Supreme Court is now taking dictation from the First Lady. Venezuela has responded to this defection exactly as you’d expect, by accusing Zerpa of having fled to avoid charges of sexual harassment:

The president of the Supreme Court of Justice, Magistrate Maikel Moreno, pointed out that ex-Judge Christian Tyrone Zerpa was investigated on November 23, 2018, the date on which his file was sent to the Republican Moral Council, as a result of the repeated denunciations officials of his office had filed against him, for unseemly and immoral conduct to the detriment of a group of women who were working in his office, many of whom presented their resignations or had to be relocated to other areas of the institution, before their aberrant conduct, which can only obtain contempt and rejection of society.

Is any of this true? Who knows. What is certain is that the Maduro dictatorship has to come up with some excuse to discredit Zerpa and anything he says about how the government is currently being run.

But it turns out that Magistrate Maikel Moreno, who has been President Maduro’s main enforcer on the court, has a checkered past himself. Last year, Reuters did a lengthy investigation which found he had been arrested for homicide but never charged:

The 51-year-old bodyguard-turned-judge and his court have overruled virtually every major law passed by the opposition-led assembly.

Moreno’s past, however, remains unknown even to most Venezuelans. To trace his ascent, Reuters examined documents and interviewed associates, colleagues and friends of the chief justice in five countries.

The picture that emerges is of a jurist who, by leveraging personal connections and handling politically sensitive cases that other lawyers and judges rejected, endeared himself to Maduro and fellow members of the late Hugo Chavez’s “Bolivarian Revolution.”

In his rise to Venezuela’s top judicial perch, Moreno left behind a past that includes allegations he participated in extortion and influence-peddling rackets and his arrest in 1989 on suspicions of killing a teenager, according to government documents and people familiar with his history.

Reuters found no evidence Moreno was ever tried or convicted of any criminal charges.

Socialism always turns out to be a group of crooks clinging to power while everyone else starves.

Venezuela’s gun ban is working out perfectly for the socialist agenda

Hot Air

Jazz Shaw

 

While it may seem hard to believe, there was a time when the citizens of Venezuela were allowed to keep and bear arms. This wasn’t the distant past we’re talking about either. It was only in 2012 that the socialist government of Hugo Chavez enacted the “Control of Arms, Munitions and Disarmament Law.” When it was passed, the authors of the legislation pulled no punches, saying that the explicit purpose of the law was to “disarm all citizens.”

That bill was spectacularly successful, massively reducing the volume of privately owned firearms. Then, when the new tyrant, Nicolas Maduro took power and sent his swarms of federal troops and government “militias” out into the streets to crush any opposition to his regime, the unarmed populace had little recourse in the face of government guns. This fact is highlighted by a Venezuelan educator now living in exile in Ecuador. (Fox News, emphasis added)

As Venezuela continues to crumble under the socialist dictatorship of President Nicolas Maduro, some are expressing words of warning – and resentment – against a six-year-old gun control bill that stripped citizens of their weapons.

“Guns would have served as a vital pillar to remaining a free people, or at least able to put up a fight,” Javier Vanegas, 28, a Venezuelan teacher of English now exiled in Ecuador, told Fox News. “The government security forces, at the beginning of this debacle, knew they had no real opposition to their force. Once things were this bad, it was a clear declaration of war against an unarmed population.”

The unarmed population in question probably couldn’t afford to purchase any replacement firearms at this point even if it were legal. Keep in mind that most of Venezuela is so starving and impoverished at this point that families are renting caskets to display at funerals for their deceased loved ones and then burying them in plastic bags.

The effectiveness of the Control of Arms, Munitions and Disarmament Law was regularly highlighted by the government on state-run television. Here are a few of the items they featured.

• A program allowing citizens to voluntarily trade in their arms for electrical goods
• A tally of only 37 recorded voluntary gun surrenders
• Meanwhile, more than 12,500 gun confiscations were conducted by force
• Broadcasted displays of public weapons demolitions in the town square

Any of this sounding familiar to you yet? Government offers of gun “buybacks” (even if it’s in trade for goods)… mandatory gun confiscations… the destruction of weapons rather than having them go back into circulation? In case you don’t feel like clicking through, all of those linked stories in this paragraph come from events here in the United States, not in some foreign ****hole country.

If you’re watching what’s happening under expanding gun control programs in Democrat/socialist run blue states these days, consider the end game. And to do so, look no further than Venezuela. It’s really working out gangbusters for them, isn’t it?

Russia, China and Iran in Venezuela

NoisyRoom.net

by Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

 

Last week, I tripped across a very interesting article from the Middle East Forum. It’s written by Joseph M. Humire of the Gatestone Institute, where I also saw it. It’s very well written and I recommend both sites. It caught my eye because it covers a topic that has bothered me for a long time militarily… Venezuela.

At issue here is the fact that Iran, Russia and China have moved into Venezuela and are looking to use it as a military vantage point. They also want the oil there. Caught in the middle are the starving people of a once prosperous nation. They are pawns in a geopolitical chess match. Rex Tillerson just finished a tour of Latin America where he invoked the Monroe Doctrine, which Obama tried to kill off. He suggested the Venezuelan military could manage a “peaceful transition” from the authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro. Once again, this raised the specter of the US using a “military option” for Venezuela, where we would step in to stop the country from collapsing. Iran, China and Russia are sure to take a dim view of any move by the US and we should be aware they are there. Tillerson mentioned both Russia and China, but failed to mention Iran.

Socialism at Its Finest: Venezuela Facing Toilet Paper Shortage

The Daily Sheeple

Beginning in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, numerous Latin American countries underwent a left leaning shift that has been dubbed “the pink tide.” This moniker was created to contrast itself with the more extreme “red” socialism that stood for the abject failure of the Soviet Union.

It was supposed to be a more moderate form of socialism, perhaps more in line with the welfare states of Europe. In theory, it would have all the supposed benefits of communism, like equal rights, land reform, and cheap government services, but without the single party politics and death camps.

In practice, socialism has never had any of those supposed benefits, and if they do, they usually accomplish them by burying their country in debt and poverty. You can paint a fresh face on socialism, but it’s still the same vile system of exploitation that killed millions of people in the 20th century; and much like their hated rivals, the crony capitalist systems of the West (i.e. not truly capitalist in any sense of the word), their system still engenders an elite cartel of despots that lord over their impoverished people.

This supposedly moderate “pink tide” was led by Hugo Chavez’s gang in Venezuela, after he won the 1998 election. Within 6 years, the people of Uruguay, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, and the Dominican Republic had all elected leftist governments. Within a few more years, Paraguay, Peru, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Ecuador would follow.

But since the death of Hugo Chavez in 2013, the fate of the pink tide nations has never looked so bleak. Venezuela was the poster child of this movement, and their country is currently enduring one of the most devastating economic calamities in modern history. They just don’t understand that no matter what shade of socialism you create, it will always fall apart. In this case, Venezuela is facing one of the classic symptoms of a failed Soviet state. That is, shortages of basic necessities.