In its prolonged freezing of Venezuelan assets, the UK continues to withhold 31 tons of its gold stored at the Bank of England, with a new Supreme Court ruling supporting the seizure.
The recent decision, CNN reported, “ruled that recognition of heads of state and government was solely the responsibility of the British government, which had recognized [opposition leader Juan] Guaidó as Venezuela’s Constitutional interim President.”
Like most duplicitous corporate media, CNN pushed the narrative that Nicolas Maduro isn’t actually Venezuela’s elected president (he “claimed” the “widely disputed” election). But, as I wrote in March, he is president, and “Venezuela’s election process has been recognized as transparent and effective, with former US President Jimmy Carter in 2012 calling it ‘the best in the world.’ On the other hand, the Venezuelan opposition, as well as Western nations, have interfered with and attempted to sabotage elections.”
In any case, the UK court, drawing on the ‘one voice principle’, decided that because UK leaders like Boris Johnson regard the unbeloved Guaidó as ‘interim president’, he therefore, inexplicably, is – in spite of most of the world not recognizing him as such.
So, Venezuela’s “31 tons of gold deposited at the Bank of England,” remains captive.
Meanwhile, script-reading legacy media are echoing one another in claiming that Venezuela has no right to its own gold, disingenuously promoting the false premise that Guaidó is Venezuela’s president.
The BBC ran with: ‘UK Supreme Court denies Maduro claim to Venezuelan gold’.
Fortune Times gushed: ‘UK Supreme Court thwarts Maduro’s bid to control $1.9bn Venezuela gold.’
How very benevolent of the UK courts to thwart the dastardly elected president of a nation whose population it is allied with the US in relentlessly punishing.
As any good stooge of imperialism does, Guaidó – the Western puppet previously-unknown to the world, and largely unknown within Venezuela before his self-appointment as ‘president’ – pops up when needed, aka when the US and allies want to hurt the Venezuelan people even further.
In a March 2021 article, I opined, “You would have to have been offline or in a coma for the past couple of years to not be aware of some key facts about ‘interim president’ Guaidó. Venezuelans didn’t vote for Guaidó to be president, he hasn’t even stood for president. Venezuelans voted for Maduro. Guaidó named himself ‘interim president’, to the support of only roughly 50 countries – leaving a glaring nearly 150 countries not recognizing this Western-groomed stooge as Venezuela’s leader.”
Contrary to the UK’s re-recognition of this man as the president of Venezuela, as I noted, even the EU dropped its recognition of Guaidó as interim president.
On-the-ground support for the non-president?
In 2019, I spent several weeks in Caracas, refuting Western pundits’ and media claims that there was chaos following a series of power outages. During that time, I observed protests in support of the government, and sought out the supposedly-massive protests in support of Guaidó (spoiler, I couldn’t find them, in spite of scouring the city on a motorcycle taxi).
In one particularly massive pro-government protest, Venezuelans spoke of media lies about their country and also how they wanted the “Western puppet” Guaidó to be arrested.
“They make it up, it’s all lies, all lies. The only president we recognize is Nicolas Maduro. And we want this man, Juan Guaidó, to be arrested immediately.”
In an encounter another day, a woman unleashed, “We didn’t vote for you, Guaidó. We’re not a North American colony. We’re not Colombia. Respect Venezuela. The US wants to steal our resources. Trump, stop f**king us over.”
Up in the hills of Petare, riding on a friend’s motorcycle, wherever we went, we met people who spat on Guaidó and on the West’s lies about Venezuela.
This latest UK court ruling to continue denying Venezuela its gold – and deny the nation a means of providing relief to its uber-sanctioned population, which struggles to get enough food to eat because of it – is not surprising, giving the West’s history of attempting to overthrow Venezuela’s leaders and destabilize the country.
It needs to be underscored that the same politicians, pundits and media which promote Guaidó as a Venezuelan leader, much less president, and whitewash the UK’s theft of Venezuela’s gold, systematically downplay the deadly sanctions against its people.
RELATED ARTICLES
- UN says 70% of Gaza's population faces Catastrophic Hunger
- Europe to Begin Food Crisis War Games
- EVs pollute 1850 times more than Fossil Fuel cars according to new study
- UK Warns that China is Preparing for Total Nuclear War with the West
- Poverty in Argentina soars to record high despite Milei's Shock Therapy
Loading ...
Dear EU Times writer of the article “UK Tells Starving Venezuelans: Your $1.7 billion of Gold is Now Ours”,
I am Venezuelan, have lived through Hugo Chavez’s regime from 1999 until 2008, then lived in Panama from 2008 until 2018, returned, spent time living in Venezuela for 6 months and had to leave. My mother-in-law still lives there. I still have friends living there. So, I know the day-to-day of that country.
When you say:
In 2019, I spent several weeks in Caracas, refuting Western pundits’ and media claims that there was chaos following a series of power outages. During that time, I observed protests in support of the government, and sought out the supposedly-massive protests in support of Guaidó (spoiler, I couldn’t find them, in spite of scouring the city on a motorcycle taxi).”
I would like to remind you that you have seen people that are enrolled into the Venezuelan govt. and are forced, by roster in the communities or because they work in the govt., to go and parade around the city at every event. If these people don’t go, they don’t receive a C.L.A.P. box of food for the month. There are hardliners who are adept to the govt., but excluding this, the rest of the population, ore that 66%, would like to dump Nicolas Maduro who was picked by Chavez himself.
Venezuela has been using its money to buy votes and sympathy internationally. The govts. of Chavez and Maduro, under the mandate of Cuba, have destroyed the private industry, leaving millions unemployed, and have lost the oil boom that Chavez once enjoyed. Worse of all, they have become debt-trapped by China and Russia. Now oil is being sold at low prices per barrel to China on a daily level. The socialist regime has no respect for the environment or people: gold is plundered in eco-reserves in the Amazon jungle, young Venezuelan women are being thrown into prostitution, and saying that the US is responsible for sanctions is only partial. Barak Obama, a leftist US president signed the first sanctions against Chavez as far back as 2014 to 2016, so, from 1999 until 2014, why hasn’t the socialist govt. of Chavez invested all the money from oil boom into the rightful Venezuelan population? Please, go live in Venezuela for one year and live like a Venezuelan without being guided around by pro-govt. tour guides. Work from home in Vzla, walk around, do your cues at the supermarket at dawn, live without water or energy or internet for some days at a time, etc. Smell your toilet without flushing for days or without cleaning it, you know, the Venezuelan of life. Go to a real public hospital and see people being denied by public employees for XYZ reason, etc. On a daily level, for your information, more than 20,000 to 50,000 people are dying daily, and this doesn’t come from official Western news channels. This comes from the medical guild of doctors in Venezuela and on the ground level there. Add to that crime on a daily level. Malnutrition is rampant. Kids are dying and the govt. of Maduro clings to power buying weapons while water supplies are muddy in countryside cities. They have invited dissident guerrilla groups from Colombia who now roam parts of the country, like Tachira and Anzoategui states freely. Even in Apure State, they go to towns and villages and recruit young kids in order enlist more people into their guerrilla groups. What has the socialist govt. done? They have tried to talk with them, went into armed combat with them, and even lost soldiers. The latest: bounty hunters groups are used to kill those guerrillas. These bounty hunter groups are recruited from all sides (left and right). The Venezuelan military is infiltrated by Cuban intelligence and soldiers disappear on a monthly level if they even protest at the unfair conditions that they live in. Armed gangs or “militia groups” have been fighting the authorities in the capital of Caracas. As a result, deaths of civlians, National Guard, and police is on the rise every day. Lack of investment in fumigating the country has led to dengue, Yellow Fever, malaria, Zika, and Chingunkunya to run rampant. Children’s diseases and malnutrition kill children on a daily level. COVID-19? Hear the story from the doctor’s themselves when they see the horrors of having to see people waiting outside on the car parks of hospitals and now, ex-concert stadium like El Poliedro de Caracas. Where is the food, medical, and personal security of people emigrating the country every day? You say the elections were fair? Hey, the Smartmatic machines and software were rigged and used to perpretuate the actual regime, and have also been used in the 2020 US election. Even George Soros’ son has been photographed with Maduro. What is the relationship of these socialists from the Soros family with Maduro? Is it business to back this kind of socialist-narco dictatorships? Is this what you want to see financing the region? Do you want to know how many Hezbollah agents there are in Venezuela? (300,000 by 2016, only). The Chavez-Maduro regime has extended into the US, Spain, and will eventually seep into all of Latin America. Do you know want to imagine making a long line at dawn for a package of food? What if the doors of the market you lined up for are closed the minute you get to the door? Why hasn’t the Chavez-Maduro regime invested in its oil refineries, considering that the oil prices are recuperating today? Why is Maduro and his backers from Cuba and other socialist philanthropists investing in extending socialism across the region? To make people in all of Latin America live in Barrios or Favelas? Is that human dignity for you? That is malnutrition and crime and the answer of Maduro to the hate and hunger in a Barrio is a FAES or death squad for putting the Barrios and its millions of hungry people in check. Intimidation is the liberation of the people or Bolshe? Killing poor people who once dreamed of equality with socialism? Don’t worry, Chavez was killed with excess of anti-cancer medicine once he told his master Fidel Castro that Venezuela could not continue supporting Cuba financially. They took him out little by little within a year. Why? Chavez did not trust Venezuelan doctors and always went to Cuba for treatment. Ah, so socialists don’t care for their people when it’s not convenient. By the way, I am from the center politically and I am not pro-left or pro-right, so forget about labeling me as a rightist extremist. I am only a Venezuelan of Portuguese origin. Sorry, today I don’t live in Venezuela anymore, and I miss my friends and mother-in-law.
When you want to write an article, please live the experience of living in that country for a year. Don’t be guided by pro-govt. tour guides. It doesn’t give the real sensation of living in a place.
Going to a country to enjoy a few days or months backed by govt. cronies or tour guides will not give you the picture.
As for the British, they are right to keep the money of a ruthless dictatorial regime that will shoot a barrio boy 17 times on the face with rubber bullets until he loses an eye just because he protested about the lack of gas for cooking in his shanty district for about two weeks. This kind of protest is also done by the people that support the government of Chavez-Maduro. They are also hungry and are finally waking up to the bitter reality of a wrong choice in life. For you information, how can a govt. party cling onto power for 15 or more years at a time in Venezuela, Argentina, Nicaragua, and Brazil (in the case of Lula)? Are you aware of the influence of the Cuba-Venezuelan-Chinese-Iranian-Russian regimes in rigging democratic elections in those countries? Are you aware of how this is penetrating Europe Union through the ties of the PSOE of Spain with the Chavez-Maduro regime?
Hasn’t your country or most of Eastern Europe been divided by the Iron Curtain and hadn’t its populations been belittled, humiliated, occupied, and screwed by Russian or Soviet forces for almost 70-something years? Maybe you’re from Western Europe and you still haven’t lived the socialist experience. It’s a socialist lifestyle from the closed doors of a Socialist politician’s mansion outwards, but it’s a wealthy lifestyle from that politician’s mansion’s closed doors inwards. They don’t live the limited lifestyle that the Bolshe or People have to live.
The next time you write an article about Venezuela, please check your sources much better and closely and stop refrying or rehashing the same crappy news that the International Left provides. Be more professional and live the socialist dream of a lifestyle for one year in a neutral apartment near a Barrio. I hope that you can enjoy those ringing gunshot sounds of National Guard, FAES, or gang members several times a day instead of the cozy and blissful church bells of a nice European church or cathedral. Reality bites. Sociopath socialist.