Venezuelan Embassy goes dark as standoff intensifies on streets of Washington

[yaesu]

Source: Washington Post

The sun had just dipped below the horizon Wednesday evening when the lights flicked off inside the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington.

Waves of cheers rolled up and down the ordinarily quiet street in the elite Georgetown neighborhood at the center of an intensifying standoff between backers of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó and left-wing activists who oppose U.S. intervention and support President Nicolás Maduro.

With no electricity, the activists who have been living inside the building are adjusting to the latest challenge in their month-long occupation of the embassy. Organizers with Code Pink, a left-leaning organization known for its theatrical and provocative protests, said the utility bills had been paid in full by the building’s owners: the Maduro-led Venezuelan government.

The group has been inside the embassy since April 10 at the invitation of Maduro government officials. About two weeks into Code Pink’s residency, Venezuelan and Venezuelan-American protesters began to gather outside. They have not left since.

Read more: Venezuelan Embassy goes dark as standoff intensifies on streets of Washington

[Blue_Tires]

1. I have lost total respect for Code Pink and any other "leftist" wannabes who

stand up to be counted alongside a fascist dictator...

It's moot anyway since we left Guaidó to twist in the wind...

[PupCamo]

2. never could stand Code Pink

[yaesu]

4. I'm more concerned with tRump nt

[yaesu]

3. we left Guaid to twist in the wind?

We is the tRump & corporate media & regretfully some very uninformed so called progressives believe the crap coming out of tRumps hole. There were roughly 500,000 pro Maduro demonstrators compared to 50,000 pro Guaidó demonstrators so I think the Venezuela people were the ones that left tRumps puppet twisting in the wind.

[Judi Lynn]

5. It's always startling to see "we" used at a progressive message board in less than progressive ways.

After you've seen it happen a few times over the years by the same element you have to hope no one sensible misunderstands.

Doing some research, learning to think critically goes a long way to give the enlightenment required to see past the tactics of perception management always in place whenever aggression toward leftist leaders is involved, and it's always involved toward ALL leftist leaders in the Americas, NO EXCEPTIONS.

Imperialism is dead wrong, will always be wrong. "We" don' t have the right to control ANY other countries, period. People in other countries, or this one, don't want to be "controlled" by foreign interests, or people the foreign interests have shoved down our throats.

That particularly applies in this country, as you clearly know. Thanks for your informed, civilized comments.

[Blue_Tires]

22. I'm right here, you know...

You love talking around me instead of AT me, don't you?

I know your game.

[Blue_Tires]

21. "We" being the United States

[Blue_Tires]

23. Whoever you are, you are not only grossly under-informed...

You're laying on your act way too thick...

Step your game up, kid

[Perseus]

26. Not true, the numbers were with Guaido, not Maduro

maduro and the regime are lousy at photoshop, but they still like to use it. Maduro's rallies, even when he gives people bags of rice, rum, and other things, when he dresses them with red t-shirts are just a few, not even the poor support Maduro anymore.

I think Maduro, and I have to assume Putin, have registered some people in DU, as they installed people in the embassy.

For all those who would like to learn the truth, just google about the marches in Venezuela, thousands of its citizens have lined up with Guaido, the only reason Maduro stays in power is because the military (Padrino) is packed with Cubans and now Russians, they have the fire power, but not because the people want him, because they don't.

It is a shame there are people at DU spreading lies about the Venezuelan situation. I am glad those people in the embassy are without electricity and hopefully without water, it gives them a taste of the daily lives of Venezuelans where the regime suspends water and electricity when they feel like it to keep people thinking about other things away from the corrupt regime, and sometimes they cut water and electricity for days.

People are having to install water tanks in their residences, even inside apartments so that when the water is turned on they can save for the coming days when the regime will turn the water off, people are having to buy electric generators to keep their refrigerators on when the regime decide to turn the electricity off to prevent the food from going bad.

I really hope the people in the embassy, and I understand that almost no one there is from Venezuela, start feeling the effects of not having water and electricity, it will give them a taste of what the regime is doing in Venezuela.

I have said it in the past, there are only two options for people who live in the USA and support Maduro, one is total ignorance of the Venezuelan situation, and the other one is that they are part of the regime living like royalty in the country they have vilified and despised through their rhetoric for years, but now they don't have the will to be subject to no water, no electricity and with the millions they took from the country are now enjoying their lives in Miami (El Doral), and Weston, FL.

Anyone who wants to do some research can go into public records and find out how many Venezuelan families live now in Miami, and if you look deeper, you will find that a lot of them paid cash for their $600,000.00 plus properties. Those are the crooks from the kleptocracy that rules Venezuela but don't dare to live in the mess they have created, so they are now residing in the "Evil Empire", that is how they always referred to the USA, the "Evil Empire"...nothing but crooks and hypocrites.

[yerop]

20. Exactly. All the sh*t going on in the world yet CodePink makes their stand with...Maduro???

WTF. Medea Benjamin looking to get attention. See needs medical attention.

[Judi Lynn]

6. There was an older man who attempted to deliver some food to the people claiming the Embassy

for the elected government of the country yesterday, and local policemen surrounded him, and slammed him to the ground long after they could see what he was doing, and bloodied his face as a bonus.

The electricity had been off there, already. Turning off the electricity, cutting off water, and land line phones in previous years, as well as setting fires around the buildings where government supporters are within are old tactics the opposition has been using, that and the practise of "guarimbas" (violent protests) have been utilized continually since Chavez was inaugurated, along with assassinations, and setting houses on fire with the residents inside.

For some reason, these hate-fueled crimes against the left never seem to get mentioned in US corporate media. You always have to read media from other countries to know it happens.

They've done a thorough job of forcing their bogus stories upon the gullible, the deficient, or the weakest ones among us, or those who know they can't outshout the criminally unbalanced thugs of the right-wing.

[Blue_Tires]

24. So are you ever going to get enough stones to address me and my points directly?

I'm going gray here

[yaesu]

7. Failed 'Coup' a Fake Corporate News Story Designed to Trick Venezuelan Soldiers and US Public

Foreign outlets, dutifully supporting Trump administration calls for regime change, reported that a widespread uprising was underway, even though Juan Guaidó’s coup attempt had little support.

Caracas—It began with a tweet.
In it, Venezuela’s self-declared president, Juan Guaidó, stands in front of a line of military vehicles and rows of Venezuelan soldiers in green uniforms. Beside them is opposition leader Leopoldo López, whom they have freed from house arrest, which stemmed from his role in the 2014 guarimba street protests in which dozens of people were killed.

Guaidó, dressed in a black suit and a white shirt, talks to the camera. “Today, the armed forces are clearly with the people,” he says. “The time is now.” He calls on the military to rise up and says they are in the streets. He insinuates that they have taken the Carlota military base in eastern Caracas.

https://www.thenation.com/article/venezuela-coup-media-guaido/

[Judi Lynn]

10. Outstanding information from The Nation, yaesu! It's great seeing a respected, honored US source

adding honesty to the storm of words which has been assailing us. This has been going on since before Chavez in Venezuela, and corporate sources here totally ignored the massacre by Carlos Andres Perez of desperate poor Venezuela who protested his slashing of everything the poorest of the poor, or the MAJORITY, needed for survival. He sent police, military, tanks into the barrios and blew them away. He always had complete support from the US, and he was a contemporary of George H W Bush. Caracazo massacre.

This article you posted is wonderful. It dovetails exactly with other information which has been shared from people who've been there, people who are NOT trying to overthrow the elected President, but are immersed in reality, as citizens.

I have to add this to the Latin America forum, with your permission, if it's OK. It must be seen by as many as possible, as the sane balance to a whole lot of B.S. loaded upon them by our right-wing.

Thank you!

[Blue_Tires]

25. I'll just leave this here because so many of the usual suspects have been notably absent

because their courage is how you say, selective??

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016231810

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1016&pid=231430

[angrychair]

8. To be very blunt

I see little redeeming value in either leader. Both are incompetent and serving their own self interests at this point.

It's the people of Venezuela that are and will suffer. Their options are a dictator with little idea how to run a country and a puppet of a very far right American government that only cares about making money from Venezuelan oil.

Lose-lose if you ask me.

[Judi Lynn]

9. Humanitarian Aid Blocked from Entering Venezuelan Embassy

Friday, 10 May 2019, 10:07 am
Article: David Swanson
Humanitarian Aid Blocked from Entering Venezuelan Embassy in Washington D.C.

By David Swanson


Two months ago, I heard a story. You heard it too, if you went anywhere near a television or a newspaper in the United States. The government of Venezuela needed to be overthrown because it wouldn’t allow in humanitarian aid.

The story was false, of course. The United States had imposed brutal sanctions on Venezuela for years, resulting in 40,000 deaths (with more being added every day) and sought to cut off electricity, and had no more interest in aiding humanity than ExxonMobil has in sunrises, children, and rainbows. There are many places on earth in desperate need of humanitarian aid, so that someone actually concerned about humanity would have had no trouble finding somewhere else to deliver their aid.

Not only that, but Venezuela was in fact busy allowing in tons of humanitarian aid (needed largely because of U.S. sanctions) from any nation or agency not attempting to overthrow the Venezuelan government. The United States was apparently trying to ship weapons in with which to take over Venezuela — an overthrow that the U.S. National Security Advisor said would be on behalf of U.S. oil companies.

The outrages and atrocities of the Venezuelan government are, of course, matched by those of dozens of other governments, including the U.S. government, and would be far outstripped by a U.S. war on Venezuela. Moreover, the U.S. wars and coups marketed as humanitarian that have ended up (shockingly each time) as devastating crimes against humanity have included Libya, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and dozens and dozens more. The only humanitarian wars that have ever benefitted humanity have been the imaginary ones that people at think tanks funded by weapons makers keep telling us should have happened but didn’t — as the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS) did on Wednesday citing Rwanda in the usual false manner.

More:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1905/S00049/humanitarian-aid-blocked-from-entering-venezuelan-embassy.htm

[McKim]

11. Thank you!

Thank you for posting this Judi Lynn. We need accurate information. I respect Code Pink and Veterans for Peace for their actions. They are heroes.

[Judi Lynn]

12. They work hard, and they take a lot of abuse from right-wingers.

They are very courageous, because the people who hate them are unscrupulous, and support violence against progressives.

They've been attacked, even in Miami, where they dared to protest Miami's protection of Luis Posada Carriles, a lifelong terrorist against post-revolution Cuban nationals, who co-authored a Cubana airliner mass murder, killing everyone on board a plane bearing the Cuban Fencing Team, returning from a tournament in a Latin American country, some of them children!

Luis Posada Carriles and his co-author of that mass murder, a fellow murdering terrorist, Orlando Bosch, have been honored as heroes in Miami from the first. Posada Carriles was a CIA operative in Iran/Contra in Central America, and both men have been involved in murders of political "enemies" their entire adult lives.

Same people ran after a little float bearing Code Pink, ripping signs off it, and throwing stuff, shrieking, etc., and those guys are dirty players, even murdering people who disagree with them.

Brave people:







Click for photo: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRMEw38-336nl1rA6cXdSovUMWPK1vJOPYmEtqGL3qhWzJMNsmd

Click for photo: https://s3.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080210&t=2&i=3099361&r=2008-02-10T055923Z_01_NOOTR_RTRIDSP_0_LIFESTYLE-USA-POLITICS-MIAMI-COL&w=1280





People could make far worse decisions for their lives than to protest evil, right?

Thanks, McKim.

[yerop]

13. Code Pink Putin Puppets. They take abuse from supporters of democracy, from liberals, progressives

and the sane.

[Judi Lynn]

14. They've been around for years, long before Trump was "elected."

The supporters of democracy, liberals, and progressives, all sane, are well aware of who the people are who hate Code Pink activists, and they are ALL right-wingers, every filthy one of them.

[yerop]

16. Wrong. Code Pink is aptly viewed as "useful idiots" with leftover politics from pro-Soviet days

and "ALL" their critics are not right wing. Why did Code Pink host pro-Putin stooges at the Venezuelan embassy? Are you saying anyone who opposes Putin is right wing? I guess you think the Democratic Party is right wing then.

[Judi Lynn]

17. You tied code pink to putin. Your slur.

Doesn’t work.

[yerop]

19. Code Pink literally hosted a speaker from Putin's Sputnik at the embassy.

and Code Pink is squatting the embassy with ANSWER, another organization that admires Putin.

[yerop]

15. David "Stop Demonizing Putin" Swanson.

Useful idiot.

[yerop]

18. the whole embassy squat is so embarrassing.

Their videos where they blatantly hope to be heroic victims of imperialistic oppression, where they keep hoping for a police raid that never happens... Pro-Putin idiots like ANSWER standing next to Code Pink. Nuff sed.