Maduro's July 30 vote to go ahead amid US blocked threat

Agencies
July 19, 2017

Washington, Jul 19: Venezuela's government has announced it will go ahead with a controversial election of a Constituent Assembly on July 30, despite a threat of economic sanctions by US President Donald Trump.

"Elections to the National Constituent Assembly is an act of political sovereignty. Nothing and nobody can stop it. The Constituent Assembly is happening" Foreign Minister Samuel Moncada said in a speech at the foreign ministry office.

Moncada vowed to carry out a "deep" review of Venezuela's relations with the US.

"The Venezuelan people are free and will respond united to the insolent threat made by a xenophobic and racist empire."

The new assembly Maduro wants to elect on July 30 would have the power to rewrite the constitution and detour the opposition-controlled legislature.

Following an unofficial vote on Sunday, in which millions of Venezuelans cast ballots to reject Maduro's proposal, Trump called Maduro "a bad leader who dreams of becoming a dictator".

Trump's administration is also planning targeted sanctions, likely against Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez and the Socialist Party's second highest figure Diosdado Cabello, for alleged human rights violations, US officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Those sanctions could be rolled out as early as Tuesday, one of the officials told Reuters, but may be delayed as Trump's administration reviews all its options.

The sanctions would freeze the officials' US assets and prohibit anyone in the US from doing business with them.

It would be the first phase of new actions the Trump administration is considering, including possible targeted sanctions against Venezuela's vital oil sector.

Venezuela is the third largest foreign oil supplier to the US, after Canada and Saudi Arabia, exporting about 780,000 barrels per day of crude.

Trump unpopular in Venezuela

While that could bankrupt the Maduro administration and worsen already grave food shortages, hitting Venezuela's energy sector could also raise US domestic gasoline prices, which would be unpopular with Americans.

Any sanctions by Trump, who is largely unpopular abroad, could also be used by Maduro to bolster his accusations that Washington is trying to sabotage leftism in Latin America, and could unite the ruling Socialist Party just as fissures were emerging.

On Monday, the opposition coalition called for a 24-hour nationwide strike and massive protests in the days to come to force Maduro to step down before the end of his term in 2019.

Maduro has repeatedly said the new assembly to rewrite the constitution is the only way to recover it economically and achieve peace.

Brazil, European Union, UN, and the Organization of American States have also demanded Venezuela drop plans for the assembly.

On Tuesday, a group of 100 Colombian and Chilean senators filed a lawsuit against Maduro at the International Criminal Court at The Hague, accusing him of murder, persecution, torture and forced disappearance.

Venezuela has grappled with deadly political and economic crises as low crude oil prices have forced the government to cut back or eliminate its socialist programmes.

The crisis has fuelled public anger and triggered massive protests that have left at least 96 people dead since April.

The opposition has run a vigorous campaign to try to push Maduro out of office through early elections.

Venezuela's opposition also blames mismanagement by Maduro, who has stepped up the nationalisation of businesses, employed the military to control food distribution, and imposed currency controls.

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News Network
April 29,2024

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At least 900 protesters have been arrested since the launch of pro-Palestinian demonstrations on university campuses across the US, where students are raging against the Israeli regime’s US-backed genocidal war on Gaza.

The Washington Post reported the tally on Sunday, the 10th straight day of the protests that began after Columbia University set up an encampment to demand cessation of the war and press the school to divest from Israeli financial interests.

The crackdown then started when university authorities called in the police, a move that sparked more than 100 arrests on the university’s Manhattan campus.

Two other highlights in the crackdown saw police forces rounding up roughly the same number of people at New York University and Emerson College in Boston.

Protests have also erupted across numerous other seats of learning, including Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and California State Polytechnic in Humboldt.

The ensuing countrywide counter-campaign of suppression has seen law enforcement resorting to riot control methods against the protesters.

The methods have featured “the same tools and tactics” that were deployed to confront the thousands-strong protests that sparked across the country after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd four years ago, the daily reported.

“At Emory University last week, Atlanta police said officers used ‘chemical irritants’ to clear an encampment, and a Georgia State Patrol officer was captured on video using a stun gun to subdue a man on the ground,” it said.

Academics have, meanwhile, been banding together throughout the US under the banner of Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP).

Earlier in April, the FSJP’s Georgia chapter called on Morehouse College in Atlanta, which invited Joe Biden as its 2024 commencement speaker, to rescind its invitation as a means of objecting to the president’s role in enabling the Israeli genocide.

At Biden’s behest, the United States has been providing the Israeli war with unreserved military and intelligence support.

The US has also vetoed several United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for an immediate ceasefire in the brutal military onslaught that has so far claimed the lives of at least 34,454 Gazans, mostly women and children.

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News Network
April 28,2024

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Campuses of several US Universities have been witnessing massive protests with the students seeking a ceasefire in Israel's war with Hamas. Police have arrested over 550 protesters and some universities are witnessing violent crackdown of protests by the ruthless cops. 

Law enforcement officials at the behest of college administrators have deployed tasers and tear gas against students protesters at Atlanta's Emory University, even though the protests have been largely peaceful, say activists and media personnel present at the spot.

Emil' Keme, professor of English and Indigenous studies, at the University said that the scene reminded him of the civil war in Guatemala as a teenager.

"Police immediately began to force people to move. I felt like I was in a war zone, with all the police and their weapons, the rubber bullets. We were pushed away," Mr Keme told the Guardian describing what happened as soon as cops entered the Emory campus.

“Police took the student next to me, pushed an older lady nearby and then pushed me.”

Student protesters say they are expressing solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, where the confirmed death toll has topped 34,305, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry. They want universities to cut their investments in everything tied to Israel and weapons that fuel the war in Gaza. That means funds run by BlackRock, Google as well as Amazon's cloud service, Lockheed Martin and even Airbnb.

Video circulated widely on social media shows two women who identified themselves as professors being detained, with one of them slammed to the ground by one officer as a second officer then pushes her chest and face onto a concrete sidewalk.

Atlanta police and Georgia troopers are leading a joint operation within the campus to dismantle the tents and camps the activists have set up at the school's quadrangle. Within minutes of the authorities entering the campus, 28 people, 20 of whom were "Emory community members", had been arrested, the institute said in a statement.

The school president said that the videos of police clashing with the students "are shocking" and that he is "horrified horrified that members of our community had to experience and witness such interactions."

The university's response was likely the quickest show of police force in response to a divestment protest among the dozens nationwide that have occurred in recent weeks. It was also probably the only one where pepper balls, stun guns and rubber bullets were used.

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News Network
May 3,2024

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US riot police have dismantled an anti-war and pro-Palestinian protest camp at the University of California at Los Angeles, a day after it was attacked by pro-Israel supporters.

At least 200 pro-Palestine protesters were arrested during the pre-dawn raid, led by a phalanx of California Highway Patrol officers carrying shields and batons, early on Thursday.

The protesters tried to block the officers' advance by their sheer numbers, shouting "push them back", while hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists who assembled outside the tent city were heard chanting "Shame on you" at the police.

According to estimates of local television station KABC-TV, 300 to 500 protesters were hunkered down inside the camp, while about 2,000 more had gathered outside the barricades in support.

The raid took place about a day after police watched on as pro-Israel groups violently attacked the encampment. Late Tuesday night, masked counter-demonstrators mounted a surprise assault on the camp, using sticks to beat the peaceful activists.

The assault went on for three hours into early Wednesday morning until police intervened and restored order.

The authorities’ slow response drew wide criticism from political leaders, including a spokesperson for California Governor Gavin Newsom who said "limited and delayed campus law enforcement response" to the unrest is "unacceptable."

The Pro-Palestine demonstrations began at Columbia University in New York City on April 17, and have spread across other campuses in the US in a student movement unlike any other this century.

US police arrested about 2,200 people during pro-Palestinian protests at college campuses across the country in recent weeks, the Associated Press reported.

A tally by the news agency recorded at least 56 incidents of arrests at 43 different US colleges or universities since April 18.

The students are calling for an end to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and demanding schools divest from companies that support the Israeli regime.

Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime's decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.

Tel Aviv has also blocked water, food, and electricity to Gaza, plunging the coastal strip into a humanitarian crisis.

Since the start of the offensive, the Israeli regime has killed at least 34,596 Palestinians and injured 77,816 others.

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