Search form

You are here

  • Home
  • Venezuelan general defects as anti-Maduro rallies draw huge crowds


Venezuelan general defects as anti-Maduro rallies draw huge crowds

Opposition supporters take part in a rally against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's government in Caracas, Venezuela on February 2, 2019. (REUTERS/Carlos Barria)
Updated 03 February 2019
REUTERS:
Follow

Venezuelan general defects as anti-Maduro rallies draw huge crowds

  • Air force general Francisco Yanez is the first active Venezuelan general to recognize Guaido since he proclaimed himself president on Jan. 23
  • On its Twitter account, the air force’s high command accused the general of treason
Updated 03 February 2019
REUTERS:

CARACAS: A high-ranking Venezuelan general called on the armed forces to rebel against President Nicolas Maduro and to recognize the opposition leader Juan Guaido as the interim chief as huge crowds rallied against the head of state, adding pressure on Maduro to step down.
The military’s support is crucial for the embattled Maduro, who is deeply unpopular largely due to an unprecedented economic crisis that has prompted an exodus of millions, but claims he is victim of a coup directed by the United States.
The general’s defection came as tens of thousands of opposition supporters, many sporting clothes in the yellow, blue and red colors of the Venezuelan flag, turned out at rallies nationwide to protest against Maduro and show support for Guaido.
Washington, along with many countries in the western hemisphere, has recognized Guaido as the legitimate president, arguing that Maduro stole his second term, and imposed potentially crippling sanctions this week that are likely to further weaken the OPEC nation’s struggling oil industry.
While small rebellions against Maduro have broken out in Venezuela’s armed forces in recent months, there has been no large scale military uprising against him.
“People of Venezuela, 90 percent of the armed forces of Venezuela are not with the dictator, they are with the people of Venezuela,” General Francisco Yanez of the air force’s high command said in a video circulating on Twitter on Saturday.
“Given the happenings of the last few hours, already the transition to democracy is imminent.”
On its Twitter account, the air force’s high command accused the general of treason.
Yanez is the first active Venezuelan general to recognize Guaido since he proclaimed himself president on Jan. 23. Venezuela’s chief military attache to the United States also said he was defecting last week.



Canada and several Latin American nations have already officially recognized Guiado. Some European Union member states are expected to officially recognize Guaido next week, while others will likely take a more cautious stance of support.
“We are going to send a very clear message in all the municipalities of Venezuela and in each city of the world, we are going to give a demonstration of strength, in a pacific and organized manner,” Guaido tweeted on Saturday.
Mireanna Fernandez, a 20-year-old student at a protest in the eastern city of Ciudad Guayana, said before Guaido’s Jan. 23 proclamation she wanted to leave Venezuela, but now she had hope that Maduro’s government would end.
“I have no quality of life, I can’t go out onto the streets, my university is falling apart, they’ve closed classrooms, there are no teachers,” she said.
“It’s time they leave.”

Two decades of ‘Chavismo’
Maduro on Saturday will also hold a rally to commemorate the 20th anniversary of late socialist leader Hugo Chavez’s first inauguration as president in 1999.
“Today is the anniversary of 20 years of work, fight, advances and important achievements, despite the difficulties and imperial conspiracies,” the president said on twitter.
“Congratulations to all.”
Supporters of the “chavismo” movement founded by Chavez gathered in Caracas’ Bolivar avenue for the government rally on Saturday morning.
“For us Venezuelans, there is only one president — President Nicolas Maduro,” said Gregory Carrasquel, 35. “The other is someone who is being led to carry out a coup.”
“(US President Donald) Trump is imposing measures because he is the dictator of the world and thinks we are his slaves.”
Washington has imposed sweeping sanctions on state-owned oil firm PDVSA in the toughest financial challenge yet to Maduro, as the Trump administration openly seeks to push him from power.
Venezuela is suffering from hyperinflation, produce shortages and a mass migration of citizens to neighboring Latin American countries — a situation likely to be worsened in the short term by the new sanctions.
Guaido swore himself in as interim president in a direct challenge to Maduro’s rule, but still has no control over state institutions or any functions of day-to-day governance.
Maduro’s adversaries say he has run roughshod over democratic institutions, including the opposition-run congress, and destroyed the once-buoyant economy through a corruption-riddled exchange control system and arbitrary nationalizations.

Topics: Venezuela Nicolas Maduro Juan Guaido

Related

World
Struggle for control of Venezuela returning to the streets
World
EU parliament recognises Guaido as Venezuelan interim president

Germany marks 1989 Berlin Wall fall with ‘Preserve Freedom’ party

Updated 2 sec ago
AFP
Follow

Germany marks 1989 Berlin Wall fall with ‘Preserve Freedom’ party

Updated 2 sec ago
AFP
BERLIN: Germany marks 35 years since the Berlin Wall fell with festivities from Saturday under the theme “Preserve Freedom!” as Russia’s war rages in Ukraine and many fear democracy is under attack.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz — whose coalition dramatically collapsed this week — said in a message to the nation that the liberal ideals of 1989 “are not something we can take for granted.”
“A look at our history and at the world around us shows this,” added Scholz, whose three-party ruling alliance imploded on the day Donald Trump was reelected, plunging Germany into political turmoil and toward new elections.
November 9, 1989 is celebrated as the day East Germany’s dictatorship opened the borders to the West after months of peaceful mass protests, paving the way for German reunification and the collapse of Soviet communism.
One Berliner who remembers those momentous events, retiree Jutta Krueger, 75, said about the political crisis hitting just ahead of the anniversary weekend: “It’s a shame that it’s coinciding like this now.”
“But we should still really celebrate the fall of the Wall,” she said, hailing it as the moment East Germans could travel and “freedom had arrived throughout Germany.”
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will kick off events on Saturday at the Berlin Wall Memorial, honoring the at least 140 people killed trying to flee the Moscow-backed German Democratic Republic (GDR) during the Cold War.
In the evening, a “freedom party” with a music and light show will be held at Berlin’s iconic Brandenburg Gate, on the former path of the concrete barrier that had cut the city in two since 1961.
On Sunday, the Russian protest punk band Pussy Riot will perform in front of the former headquarters of the Stasi, former East Germany’s feared secret police.
Pro-democracy activists from around the world have been invited for the commemorations — among them Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and Iranian dissident Masih Alinejad.
Talks, performances and a large-scale open-air art exhibition will also mark what culture minister Claudia Roth called “one of the most joyous moments in world history.”
Replica placards from the 1989 protests will be on display along four kilometers of the Wall’s route, past the historic Reichstag building and the famous Checkpoint Charlie.
Also among the art installations will be thousands of images created by citizens on the theme of “freedom,” to drive home the enduring relevance of the historical event.


Berlin’s top cultural affairs official Joe Chialo said the theme was crucial “at a time when we are confronted by rising populism, disinformation and social division.”
Axel Klausmeier, head of the Berlin Wall foundation, said the values of the 1989 protests “are the power-bank for the defense of our democracy, which today is being gnawed at from the left and the right.”
Most East Germans are grateful the GDR regime ended but many also have unhappy memories of the perceived arrogance of West Germans, and resentment lingers about a remaining gap in incomes and pensions.
These sentiments have been cited to explain the strong support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in eastern Germany, as well as for the Russia-friendly and anti-capitalist BSW.
Strong gains for both at three state elections in the east in September highlighted the enduring political divisions between eastern and western Germany over three decades since reunification.
While the troubled government led by Scholz’s Social Democrats and the opposition CDU strongly supports Ukraine’s fightback against Russia, the anti-establishment AfD and BSW oppose it.
The AfD, which rails against immigration, was embarrassed this week when several of its members were arrested as suspected members of a racist paramilitary group that had practiced urban warfare drills.
On the eve of the anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s fall, government spokeswoman Christiane Hoffmann recalled that the weekend will also mark another, far darker chapter in German history.
During the Nazis’ Kristallnacht or Night of Broken Glass pogrom of November 9-10, 1938, at least 90 Jews were murdered, countless properties destroyed and 1,400 synagogues torched in Germany and Austria.
Hoffmann said that “it is very important for our society to remember the victims... and learn the correct lessons from those events for our conduct today.”

UK government appoints former Blair negotiator Jonathan Powell as national security adviser

Updated 09 November 2024
Arab News
Follow

UK government appoints former Blair negotiator Jonathan Powell as national security adviser

  • Powell, who was chief of staff to former PM Tony Blair from 1997 to 2007, was an architect of the Northern Ireland peace process
  • He faced criticism for his part in the UK’s decision to participate in the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq
Updated 09 November 2024
Arab News

LONDON: The UK’s Labour government has appointed Jonathan Powell, an architect of the Northern Ireland peace process, as its new national security adviser.

Powell, who served as chief of staff to former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair for a decade between 1997 and 2007, was deeply involved in the UK’s decision to participate in the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.

In 2014, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron appointed him the UK’s special envoy to Libya, in an attempt to promote dialogue between rival factions embroiled in the nation’s civil war.

Many political figures in the UK welcomed Powell’s latest appointment at a time of escalating international conflicts. Some expressed hopes that he will be able to help British authorities forge a positive relationship with Donald Trump when he takes over as US president in January.

However, Powell faced criticism for his role in the UK government’s decision to join the invasion of Iraq two decades ago, and for later promoting the need to engage in dialogue with extremist groups. In 2014, at the height of Daesh’s bloody occupation of large swaths of Iraq and Syria, he argued that UK authorities should open channels of communication with them.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Powell’s experience of negotiating the Northern Ireland peace agreement and his other work related to some of the world’s most complex conflicts make him “uniquely qualified to advise the government on tackling the challenges ahead, and engage with counterparts across the globe to protect and advance UK interests.”

Powell said he was honored to be given the role at a time when “national security, international relations and domestic policies are so interconnected.”

Topics: Jonathan Powell Tony blair Iraq war

Trump’s shunning of transition planning may have severe consequences, governance group says

Updated 09 November 2024
AP
Follow

Trump’s shunning of transition planning may have severe consequences, governance group says

  • Trump's transition team have yet to sign agreements required by the Presidential Transition Act, which mandates that the president-elect’s team agree to an ethics plan and to limit and disclose private donations
  • The delay is holding up the federal government’s ability to begin processing security clearances for potentially hundreds of Trump administration national security appointees
Updated 09 November 2024
AP

WASHINGTON: A good-governance group is warning of severe consequences if President-elect Donald Trump continues to steer clear of formal transition planning with the Biden administration — inaction that it says is already limiting the federal government’s ability to provide security clearances and briefings to the incoming administration.
Without the planning, says Max Stier, president and CEO of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, “it would not be possible” to “be ready to govern on day one.”
The president-elect’s transition is being led by Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick and Linda McMahon, the former wrestling executive who led the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term. They said last month that they expected to sign agreements beginning the formal transition process with the Biden White House and the General Services Administration, which acts essentially as the federal government’s landlord.
But those agreements are still unsigned, and the pressure is beginning to mount.
The delay is holding up the federal government’s ability to begin processing security clearances for potentially hundreds of Trump administration national security appointees. That could limit the staff who could work on sensitive information by Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.
It also means Trump appointees can’t yet access federal facilities, documents and personnel to prepare for taking office.
The agreements are required by the Presidential Transition Act, which was enacted in 2022. They mandate that the president-elect’s team agree to an ethics plan and to limit and disclose private donations.
In that act, Congress set deadlines of Sept. 1 for the GSA agreement and Oct. 1 for the White House agreement, in an effort to ensure that incoming administrations are prepared to govern when they enter office. Both deadlines have long since come and gone.
Stier, whose organization works with candidates and incumbents on transitions, said on a call with reporters on Friday that a new administration “walks in with the responsibility of taking over the most complex operation on the planet.”
“In order to do that effectively, they absolutely need to have done a lot of prework,” he said, adding that Trump’s team “has approached this in a, frankly, different way than any other prior transition has.”
“They have, up until now, walked past all of the tradition and, we believe, vital agreements with the federal government,” Stier said.
In a statement this week, Lutnick and McMahon said Trump was “selecting personnel to serve our nation under his leadership and enact policies that make the life of Americans affordable, safe, and secure.” They didn’t mention signing agreements to begin the transition.
A person familiar with the matter said that the congressionally mandated ethics disclosures and contribution limits were factors in the hesitance to sign the agreements.
Trump transition spokesperson Brian Hughes said Friday that the team’s “lawyers continue to constructively engage with the Biden-Harris Administration lawyers regarding all agreements contemplated by the Presidential Transition Act.”
“We will update you once a decision is made,” Hughes said.
The Trump team’s reluctance has persisted despite Biden’s White House chief of staff, Jeff Zients, reaching out to Lutnick and McMahon to reiterate the important role the agreements with the Biden administration and GSA play in beginning a presidential transition.
“We’re here to assist. We want to have a peaceful transition of power,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. “We want to make sure they have what they need.”
The unorthodox approach to the presidential transition process recalls the period immediately after Trump’s Election Day victory in 2016. Days later, the president-elect fired the head of his transition team, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and tossed out a transition playbook he’d been compiling.
But Stier said that, even then, Trump’s team had signed the initial agreements that allowed the transition to get started — something that hasn’t happened this time.
“The story’s not finished. But they’re late,” he said. “And even if they manage to get these agreements in now, they’re late in getting those done.”

Topics: US Election 2024 Donald Trump Partnership for Public Service Howard Lutnick Linda McMahon

Related

World
Donald Trump has sweeping plans for a second administration. Here’s what he’s proposed
World
Biden guarantees a ‘peaceful transfer of power,’ House control hangs in the balance

50 countries warn UN of ransomware attacks on hospitals

Updated 09 November 2024
AFP
Follow

50 countries warn UN of ransomware attacks on hospitals

  • The statement also condemned nations which “knowingly” allow those responsible for ransomware attacks to operate from
Updated 09 November 2024
AFP

UN: The World Health Organization and some 50 countries issued a warning Friday at the United Nations about the rise of ransomware attacks against hospitals, with the United States specifically blaming Russia.
Ransomware is a type of digital blackmail in which hackers encrypt the data of victims — individuals, companies or institutions — and demand money as a “ransom” in order to restore it.
Such attacks on hospitals “can be issues of life and death,” according to WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who addressed the UN Security Council during a meeting Friday called by the United States.
“Surveys have shown that attacks on the health care sector have increased in both scale and frequency,” Ghebreyesus said, emphasizing the importance of international cooperation to combat them.
“Cybercrime, including ransomware, poses a serious threat to international security,” he added, calling on the Security Council to consider it as such.
A joint statement co-signed by over 50 countries — including South Korea, Ukraine, Japan, Argentina, France, Germany and the United Kingdom — offered a similar warning.
“These attacks pose direct threats to public safety and endanger human lives by delaying critical health care services, cause significant economic harm, and can pose a threat to international peace and security,” read the statement, shared by US Deputy National Security Adviser Anne Neuberger.
The statement also condemned nations which “knowingly” allow those responsible for ransomware attacks to operate from.
At the meeting, Neuberger directly called out Moscow, saying: “Some states — most notably Russia — continue to allow ransomware actors to operate from their territory with impunity.”
France and South Korea also pointed the finger at North Korea.
Russia defended itself by claiming the Security Council was not the appropriate forum to address cybercrime.
“We believe that today’s meeting can hardly be deemed a reasonable use of the Council’s time and resources,” said Russian ambassador Vassili Nebenzia.
“If our Western colleagues wish to discuss the security of health care facilities,” he continued, “they should agree in the Security Council upon specific steps to stop the horrific... attacks by Israel on hospitals in the Gaza Strip.”

Topics: ransomware hospitals

Related

World
French police probe ransomware attack on Olympic venue
World
US infiltrates big ransomware gang: ‘We hacked the hackers’

China summons Philippine ambassador over new maritime laws

Updated 09 November 2024
Reuters
Follow

China summons Philippine ambassador over new maritime laws

  • Laws aimed at reinforcing Philippine rights to territory, resources
  • China unlikely to recognize laws, senator says
Updated 09 November 2024
Reuters

BEIJING/MANILA: China summoned the Philippines’ ambassador on Friday to express its objection to two new laws in the Southeast Asian nation asserting maritime rights and sovereignty over disputed areas of the South China Sea, its foreign ministry said.
China made “solemn representations” to the ambassador shortly after Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. signed the Maritime Zones Act and the Archipelagic Sea Lanes Act into law to strengthen his country’s maritime claims and bolster its territorial integrity.
The Maritime Zones law “illegally includes most of China’s Huangyan Island and Nansha Islands and related maritime areas in the Philippines’ maritime zones,” Beijing’s foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said, using the Chinese names for Scarborough Shoal and the Spratly Islands respectively.
Beijing has rejected a 2016 ruling by The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration which said its expansive maritime claims over the South China Sea had no legal basis, in a case that was brought by Manila. The United States, a Philippine ally, backs the court’s ruling.
Marcos said the two laws he signed, which define maritime entitlements and set designated sea lanes and air routes, were a demonstration of commitment to uphold the international rules-based order, and protect Manila’s rights to exploit resources peacefully in its exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
“Our people, especially our fisher folk, should be able to pursue their livelihood free from uncertainty and harassment,” Marcos said. “We must be able to harness mineral and energy resources in our sea bed.”
But Beijing said the laws were a “serious infringement” of its claims over the contested areas.
“China urges the Philippine side to effectively respect China’s territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, to immediately stop taking any unilateral actions that may lead to the widening of the dispute and complicate the situation,” Mao said.
China, which also has sovereignty disputes with the other countries in the region, has enacted domestic laws covering the South China Sea, such as a coast guard law in 2021 that allows it to detain foreigners suspected of trespassing.
Beijing, which uses an armada of coast guard ships to assert its claims, routinely accuses vessels of trespassing in areas of the South China Sea that fall inside the EEZs of its neighbors, and has clashed repeatedly with the Philippines in the past year.
Philippine officials acknowledged the challenges they face in implementing the new laws, with one author, Senator Francis Tolentino, saying he did not expect a reduction in tensions.
“China will not recognize these, but the imprimatur that we’ll be getting from the international community would strengthen our position,” Tolentino told a press conference.
The United States on Friday backed the Philippines.
“The passage of the Maritime Zones Act by the Philippines is a routine matter and further clarifies Philippine maritime law,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement.

Latest updates

Germany marks 1989 Berlin Wall fall with ‘Preserve Freedom’ party
OpenAI’s ChatGPT faces massive outage with thousands of users impacted
Syrian state news agency reports Israeli strike in Aleppo region
UK government appoints former Blair negotiator Jonathan Powell as national security adviser
Trump’s shunning of transition planning may have severe consequences, governance group says

Search form

Print Edition
Read pdf version Subscribe now
© 2024 SAUDI RESEARCH & PUBLISHING COMPANY, All Rights Reserved And subject to Terms of Use Agreement.