Activists who have been living in the Venezuelan embassy in Washington have called on the State Dept. and Secret Service to stop violent mobs from attacking them.
Activists who have been living inside the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington are reporting that violent protestors have been attacking both them and embassy property.
At the Venezuelan embassy, where @SecretService has sanctioned a right-wing riot. Am going to ask some officers why they won’t protect the embassy right now. https://t.co/pJwvcbFyj5
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) May 4, 2019
On May 2, two days after a failed coup attempt in Caracas, the activists “forced Juan Guaido’s shadow ambassador, Carlos Vecchio, to flee from a rally that was supposed to mark his triumphant entry into the Venezuelan embassy in Washington,” Blumenthal reported on The Gray Zone.
As the mob tried to break down the door to the embassy on Friday, a lawyer for the activists wrote the following:
Please share this letter to the US State Department widely and call secret service at 202-406-8800 and 202-287-0001.:
Dear Sirs,
At this moment, the violent mob that you have allowed to continually commit acts of violence against persons and property at the Venezuelan embassy is actively working to smash in the doors while your officers give permission to the assault and explicitly refuse to intervene.
As you know, and your officers have witnessed, members of this mob have physically attacked and made death threats to the peace activists who are inside and around the embassy. This presence inside the embassy, as you also know, is lawful, as the peace activists were invited inside the embassy by those lawfully in charge of the premises.
There has been no action that has divested them of the right to be inside the embassy or lawful process that could authorize removal.
Instead you are authorizing a vigilante group to attack the peace activists inside.
You must take action immediately to cease this assault, and ensure that there is no violence against the persons inside. They are in grave danger from the mob you have facilitated and authorized to besiege the embassy.
You are responsible for any acts of violence that will be committed against these peace activists inside the embassy.
Sincerely,
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Esq.
on behalf of the Embassy Protection Collective
A right-wing riot is underway outside the Venezuelan embassy as violent protesters egged on by Trump and Bolton are attempting to forcibly break and enter. No one knows how far they’ll go.
The @SecretService has refused to enforce the law.
Call them at 202-406-5708 x1
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) May 4, 2019
Check out my blog posting: “Venezuela: Coaltion of the Unabashed” (https://kiaskblog.wordpress.com/2019/05/05/venezuela-coalition-of-the-unabashed/)
Trumps surrogates demolish rule of law as officers of the law watch & do not protect the Law!!
There has been an unveiling of the US government and its evil and violent agenda over the past 2 years and turning the country into a 3rd world dictatorship is one of many items in that agenda.. allowing a mob to do damage to the Venezuelan embassy is the way they do business ..
All because the US coup in Venezuela failed! Washington is a symbol of treachery and destruction in the world.. even inside the country
It is an evil menace…that uses the olive state and the military instead of what most countries call
Diplomacy! This is the worst thing I’ve personally have seen in Washington ever..
this is what Trump and his warmongering lacked have done to the U S and people wonder why it is called the most violent ‘educsted’ Country in the world. Disgusting!
Not olive state.. police state!
And educated not eduscsted! Sorry.. am in a moving vehicle but wanted to get my reply out asap
It is time for a lawsuit against the police, SS and those trying to enter the embassy. The police and federal law enforcement will not stop harm to embassy protectors as well as any other person who may be subjected to stobe and laser light injury. They don’t even listen. The weird thing is, they might find they have a problem w/the lights as well.
It shows how ordinary people will too often side with those who care nothing for their welfare. The “authorities” are as expendable to war criminals as the protectors, as is Juan Guido and his minions.
“It is time for a lawsuit against the police, SS and those trying to enter the embassy.”
That is the point I don’t understand. Why is the legal team of the embassy protectors not going to some court and try to achieve some decision or verdict that would force the SS allowing supply delivering to the embassy? Is that not possible because the Secret Service can act legally above all law? Is it because International Law is not suable in the USA?
But the SS are committing crimes by itself and are not hindering the Guaido thugs from committing – above all International Law. I’ts personal assault and criminal injury. There must be a court having subject-matter jurisdiction.
Bajoran, no US court will issue a “verdict that would force the SS allowing supply delivering to the embassy” because the US judiciary are 100% corrupt, far beyond what the public wishes to know. They do not care at any time for law, only for superficial pretenses of legality, except in those rare “landmark cases” where the oligarchy would win legally, and cases that do not matter anyway. Law means exactly nothing in the US, it is no more than another US fraud industry.
Anyone who doubts that has some reading to do. But don’t bother reading the judgments available on internet: they quite shamelessly alter the facts and course of proceedings to sound plausible, as written by the crooked lawyers of oligarchy. You must know the facts of particular cases to see the extremity of corruption of the US judiciary. It is their job to protect the oligarchy that selects, appoints, and pays them for that alone.
Trump and his henchmen seem to thrive on creating turmoil all over the world. And one day chicken will come home to roost. Reminds me of a boomerang…
What scoundrels! – those egging on the violent right-wing mob – with a sophistry of law that excuses them!
It is the same story in France.
Destructive lawbreakers are never arrested.
In the US, politicians spout the 1820 Monroe doctrine ere.
New laws are written to criminalize regular everyday moms and dads suggesting improvements to the existing government.
Newspaper reporters like Julian Assange are imprisoned for reporting on war atrocities.
These are symptoms of a desperate military oligarchy attempting totalitarian control over cosmic powered biology manifest as human. Evolution is accelerating at an accelerating rate and crackpot capitalists and generals devise artificial intelligence weapons to kill life.
Occupying the Venezuelan Embassy by anti-coup protesters has now taken on greater meaning, because Zerohedge has just posted a copy of the USA’s official Govt plan by Southcom to overthrow the legitimate Venezuelan Govt of Maduro? It makes enlightening reading & the true goal of American Hegemony can no longer be spun as a Humanitarian intervention? The Twitter head, birdbrained moron Trump & his Administration psycho’s of War Criminal Abrams, Pompouspeo & Revolton Bolton have been exposed for the Fraudsters they are with the humiliating release of the Southcom Plan to take out Venezuela in what is increasingly looking like another failed, CIA, bumbling, bungled crime heist, run by amateurs? This incompetent American bunch couldn’t organise a booze up in a brewery & with every passing day of failure, Pompeo & his irk must cover their humiliated asses by blaming the “go to” pin the tail on the donkey villains of Russia & Cuba, for their hopeless Coup d’état failure! Hands off Venezuela you dumbo’s!
This is a new low, a true fascist action. Maybe Il Duce thinks if he can’t take over the country he can take the embassy. Who is giving the Secret Service orders????
Has anybody mention another notable incident of this kind? That time when the US was on the receiving end, when the student protesters seized the US Embassy in Tehran, I guess the neocons aren’t any better them the Iranian zealots but at least the Iranians had the excuse of being the injured party. Well I can definitely say the best thing about Trump is he sure does make empire look like shit.
Max Blumenthal and the activists legally inside the Embassy deserve our support
The rays of fascism peaking over the horizon. How far will Drumpf let them shine?
As long as he is in the White House!
We should be prepared: the next inhabitant
of that building will be as bad or worse!
The anti-Maduro, pro-Guido mob appears to be mostly Venezuelan-Americans. Many of them are indeed full of hate and resemble the kind of operatives in places like Venezuela, Nicaragua and Honduras hired to create chaos and terror.
Here are other recent articles on the embassy situation in Washington:
https://popularresistance.org/standoff-escalates-at-venezuela-embassy/
https://popularresistance.org/embassy-protection-collective-responds-to-tactics-to-drive-us-from-the-embassy/
That is my experience of Venezuelan-American expatriates, that most are like Cuban-Americans, hating the populists for expelling them or their parents from positions of unearned economic power and luxury. There is simply no basis for sympathy with their right-wingers.
If they had a case for greater economic efficiency with lesser economic controls in some sectors, that case would be popular in politics in their former country. If they had a case that broader democratic participation (in Cuba, as Venezuela has full participation), they would have to explain away generations of attempts by the US to replace their limited democracy with another dictatorship of the rich. But they have no such arguments, so they come to the US to conspire with the US dictatorship of the rich, to buy propaganda, steal democracy, and rent the US military for pennies on the dollar to overthrow democracies and install dictators.
Such fake advocates of “democracy” are criminals against the US and their country of origin, as well as violators of international law.
This is also a free speech issue. The govt. is using taxpayer dollars to prefer/help/enable one group of speakers over another. Police are paid by you and me, therefore the govt. may not engage in this behavior (among other reasons).
The police exist to protect the powerful. Yes, as a sideline they come when you call them to report a burglary or an assault (maybe), but in essence they are there to enforce the power of the state. And a situation such as this one makes that all perfectly clear.
According to Telesur English twitter, a member of the VN airforce has been killed. Details are emerging at the moment. check their feed for info.
Any detail on this right wing mob? Could be antifa, while not right wing they intimidate for the establishment constantly and seem to have a very cozy relationship with the police in my city.
X’cuse me?!!! Anti-“fa”… If not mistaken the “fa” is fascism… CLEARLY GOP PHILOSOPHY
What’s in a name?
In the case of “Anti-Fa,” as in many, the answer is Zero.
These folks are violent and scary, with their black clothing and their masks.
They are an organized street mob. They are not defending anyone’s rights.
They should all be sent home to their moms.
The word “fascist” is thrown around way too much.
I doubt that a single one of the Antifa fellows could provide a coherent explanation of what “fascist” means, or the origin of the word. Except for, m aybe, ‘right-wingerss.” (I am also disappointed that Morio resorts to the term “mostly right-wingers.” Surely he understands that concepts of left and right have rapidly decreasing usefulness, as supposedly right and left concepts increasingly merge.)
Antifa goons attacked an alt-right demo in C’ville, Va., overturning the First Amendment.
I have seen the videos.
A very “liberal” young woman of my acquaintance who lives in C’ville was shocked that the White nationalist folks were allowed to get a permit to hold their demo. She was shocked that the ACLU upheld their right to demonstrate on Free Speech grounds. Well, it’s freedom of expression for all, or none. hate speech is protected speech. Antifa speech is also a form of hate speech.
The knee-jerk assumption that right-wingers have no rights under the First Amendment is simply wrong.
Those who use the word “fascism” tend to be the ones to whom the term in the sense they use it usually applies…
I think antifa IS right-wing. It’s my understanding that they are for hire, often to act as provocateurs during peaceful demonstrations. And I am totally opposed to people being allowed in public to cover their faces so they are unidentifiable.
Antifa are Left Wing nut jobs who beat up Right Wing nut jobs. You have it ass backwards.
Thank you, Mara and the Embassy Protection Collective. You have made an important point that the US may not seize diplomatic property without violation of international law, and of course the same is true of its acts threatening Venezuela, and its acts of economic war.
Venezuela should advise the US that it will seize the US embassy in Caracas if the US seizes its embassy in Washington. Your presence in the embassy dramatizes the fact that this would be a fair trade, and thereby shows the falsehood of any pretense of using a later US embassy seizure as a pretext for war. You are also exposing the unprecedented corruption of the US government. Whatever happens, you are making an important and immortal stand, which history will recognize.
I wish that the right-wing fools who accept false mass media propaganda, such as those endangering the DC embassy, were matched by young college activists working on your behalf.
The young are mostly too easily fooled, uncertain, and uninvolved to act against corruption in government; they rarely examine the pretexts for war (unless required to fight in it) until they are in their 30s, when they are too dependent on the rich for employment to take action.
The right wing will always be tribalist imbeciles led by demagogic tyrants, because that is the natural organization of the least intelligent and most selfish. They are destroying their own world and know not or care not, as long as it pays indirectly through tribal dependencies.
I wish that the right-wing fools who accept false mass media propaganda…
You mean like the Russian Hoax which was perpetrated by the entire MSM except FOX News? You are such a tool.
That’s a good question Zhu and probably explains why there is only your comment. Whoever they are, they deserve the protection of our laws, which apparently they are not getting. I’m horrified by this letter and am wondering what in the world is happening in D.C. that the police are allowing this to happen!
Can some please explain to Marx, I mean Max, that Bolton doesn’t control the DC Police, but most Trump voters don’t like him anyway.
Expecting selective law enforcement officers to protect citizens in the post-Constitution* U.S.A. is very optimistic, if not downright naive. This is not to say that they shouldn’t try. Revolutions tend to generate martyrs or, rather, countering revolutions does.
The U.S. public have clearly learned nothing from the long history of selective law enforcement over the past decades, from the banal mob overwhelming Florida election offices following the 2000 (s)election to the more egregious total non-investigations of the heinous OKC and September 11th false flag crimes.
How will Americans react when a state-sanctioned mob chases a few hundred activists into a building, murders and rapes them, and then burns the building down (a la Odessa)?
How many people will perish propping up the precarious PetroDollar?
Latest fashion tip from the empire…Brown Shirts are in this year!
We can either choose to be the leaders we have been waiting for or continue emulating 1930’s Germany.
* Please see Continuity of Government, activated on the morning of September 11th, 2001 and, apparently, still running.
Venezuela expats? CIA greeblins?
The Emperor has no clothes on, and he doesn’t even care anymore ….
In fact no matter if someone doesn’t understand then its up to other viewers that they
will help, so here it takes place.
Don’t have to ask the State Dept. and Secret Service who is attacking. The US is aiding and abetting the attackers.
The US emerged from Cold War v1 on a straight trajectory through Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump to the tragic monster that we see today.
The rule of law is dead. They remake it to suit their evil purposes whenever they please. Those inside need a strategy to defend themselves. Time to get creative!!
This is what Iran did to the American Embassy.
If Occupy or Water Protectors engaged in this behavior (which they didn’t) they would be shot on site. The USG had planned to assassinate “leaders” of Occupy and they used methods of attack which were clearly designed to do physical harm. I contrast this with USG’s behavior now.
They are watching a crime taking place in plain sight. Normally, a capitalist govt. hates any destruction of private property and pulls out the full faith and credit of law enforcement to protect it. I must ask why they are allowing this particular private property to be harmed. It would appear the USG does not have a consistent capitalist position on the rights of private property!destroyed.
I also notice that the protesters are using some techniques that are used at Gitmo, the strobe light at night to keep people awake for example. Is see that one protester who broke in the embassy, seems to possess special skills for breaking and entering. Many of the protest leaders are rather chummy with the police and Secret Service. It’s almost as if the USG is directing the protest.
Whatever the case, we are seeing over and over again that law is now law, it is a weapon of the powerful to enforce their will. Law is only law when it applies equally to everyone. We see that nationally and internationally, law is a weapon. The govt. and it’s satellite lackeys are completely out front about their lawlessness. I’ve rarely seen it be this open, and never for so many events across the entire world.
Actually, end stage financial capitalism has to adopt a strategy of destruction to maintain the fiction of infinite growth. This can range from the destruction of a few buildings (three buildings in lower Manhattan spring to mind) all the way to world wars.
As for the rule of law, or lack of it, I suggest looking into Continuity of Government, another “gift” from September 11th, 2001.
There need to be videos of what is happening as, very likely the MSM will not report this to the public.
Ruthless government leadership top to bottom. Attracting ruthless vain opportunities pretending to be patriotic and Christian……
This should come as no surprise. The current Venezuelan government has a bad attitude and is insufficiently subservient. Off with their heads! (Just ask Revoltin’ Bolton and Pompous) Soon, I”m sure, we will see the words of Tom Lehrer played out:
When someone makes a move
of which we disapprove
who is it that always intervenes?
UN and OAS
have a place I guess but first
SEND THE MARINES!
I agree the unruly protest needs to dispersed and the protestors sent on their way. But I don’t see how you accomplish anything by referring to it as a ‘right-wing riot’. That kind of language makes people retreat to their ideological shelters and dig in their heels. It makes authorities less likely to take you seriously and more likely to consider you an activist crank.
Also, I’d like to see a little more background on who these protestors are, rather than just labeling them ‘right-wing’. Have you actually talked to any of these people to find out what their backgrounds are? Or why they are protesting? Heck, even a video of them refusing to talk to you tells us something about them. Maybe they are right-wing. Or maybe they are Venezuelan ex-pats who are legitimately concerned about the fate of their homeland. I have no idea, because nobody has made the effort to talk to them.
Would you prefer that they be described as “anti-democracy rioters” ? This is a bit non-descriptive and even redundant, yes? ( Aren’t all riots anti-democratic by definition?) Perhaps, we can agree that a more neutral and accurate term would be “anti-Maduro rioters” or “anti-pro-Maduro rioters”, although, as you stated, it is unclear at this point exactly what the politics of those laying siege on the Venezuelan Embassy actually are. I’ve read some reports describing them as “pro-Guaido protestors” which falls in line nicely with the narrative frame pushed by the U.S. government.
As Code Pink seem to be the most visible element occupying the embassy and they have historically been identified with the “Left” in the U.S., agreed? Thus, in the inane logic of U.S. political theater, any group countering them immediately falls into the “Right”.
I wholeheartedly agree that more background information about those laying siege on the Venezuelan Embassy would be very useful. It’s also a basic requirement of quality, un-biased journalism. If, in fact, someone does not want to identify who they are and why they are doing something, that can be very telling in and of itself.
In situations involving potential provocateurs I’ve found it can be useful to study footwear. Not infrequently, police intelligence provocateurs will get lazy and wear their work boots while inciting violence, as happened in a very well-documented case in Canada some years ago.
Getting a comment from law enforcement would also be useful, even if it’s “no comment”. Perhaps, if there’s a follow-up story, we’ll find out what their response was.
Be well.
Well now, would you really presume that violent gangs attacking your own home might be attacking for good reasons, and blame your wife for not interviewing them as they attacked her? Plainly they are aligned with the right-wing Venezuelans, and US economic imperialists and anti-socialists, or they would not be attacking its embassy, now would they?
anon42, Why label invaders and lawbreakers “right-wing” when their political persuasion is irrelevant to your complaint? As Steve says, ” That kind of language makes people retreat to their ideological shelters and dig in their heels”. Is ther immunity for crimes committed by “left-wing” criminals? Language like yours only expresses cluelessness and makes it very hard to get any results.
Steve,
There have been interviews. Go to maxblumenthal’s twitter and you will find the info you seek.
More:
https://www.rt.com/usa/458339-venezuela-embassy-standoff-continues/
To be clear, even if the people in the embassy were (or are, if you prefer) occupying the building unlawfully, the proper remedy for the lawful owners would be (or is) to go to court to secure an eviction order and have it executed by the competent authority, typically the local sheriff’s office (though in D.C. I believe that role falls to the U.S. Marshals Service).
That would be the case for any private property, completely independent of any political or diplomatic complications, which should only ratchet up the governmental concern that basic rights be respected.
The Metro cops and the Secret Service (which is responsible for foreign embassy security in DC) should be protecting the current, de facto occupants unless and until there is a formal order that they be evicted, in which case it is those agencies (and maybe the U.S. Marshals) who would be expected to execute such an order, not the property owners (if we allow for the moment Guaidó’s make-believe government to be such), or any foreign government (ditto), let alone a bunch of irregularly assembled thugs such as we see surrounding the Venezuelan embassy right now.
In any case, the cops should be preserving the peace. The kind of wild “self-help” the pro-Guaidó demonstrators are engaged in is antithetical to the most ancient and fundamental ideas of civic peace and order which we look to the state to enforce.
The fact that so-called law enforcement is tolerating/encouraging this riotous behavior on purely political grounds is a sign of deep rot in the state, from the senior political levels where this decision has been made, down to the street-level cops and agents who are blithely facilitating such gross lawlessness.
There’s plenty of history in the U.S. of police cooperating with, or at least tolerating mob violence (from lynch law, to Jim Crow’s final fight for survival, to the 1970 Hard Hat Riot in NYC) and playing along with blatant political chicanery (such as 2013’s “Bridge-gate” in NJ, which couldn’t have happened without the Port Authority police being willing to side with obviously fraudulent orders over the people they were supposedly sworn to serve), so we shouldn’t kid ourselves about how pure things have been in the past.
But – even without getting to the question of the U.S.’s obligations to a diplomatic property under international law – I think that what we’re now seeing outside the Venezuelan embassy is a significant new low, even more than the pro-coup policy itself, which is sort of old hat for Uncle Sam.
Good luck appealing to the police, they are part and parcel of the oppressive government of the US. These “peace officers” are actually the enforcers of the State Mafia of The US, and they will do whatever criminal deeds they are told to do by their Mafia bosses. We ask in vain for our rulers to obey principles of human decency – which they have long ago discarded.
It needs to be understood (and assumed) that the secret police and other state actors there are in place to ensure the embassy is NOT defended from the right wing mob. Make no mistake: they are on the side of the mob. Appeals to local unions and organised labour, as well as to the wider community, are needed for mass mobilisations to defend the embassy.
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Rioters? No.
They are just being like the “peaceful protestors” on the streets of Caracas.
Like them, maybe they get their energy cookies from the US (inter)national security state or joe biden too.
Hunter Biden must be licking his chops over the positions that will open up for Americans in the Venezuelan oil industry if the country is successfully overthrown by American aggression. I’m sure his dad Joe has already bookmarked this as another favor he can do for his offspring. Perhaps a lucrative plum for everyone in the Biden family this time?
I thought that story had died, never to return.
Wonder of wonder, it has arisen.
Can’t think how it was overlooked first time around, I seem to remember a press release from the White House at the time saying “no conflict of interest”. Kerry’s son in law in their somewhere?
The right wingers have been treated as police allies all along. Everything from the laws on assault, kidnapping and illegal confinement to noise and parking regulations ignored in their favor. Now you can add breaking and entering, and doubtless more assaults on the lawful guests and tenants.
This written by Chris Herz, arrested with Ariel Gold for trying to deliver groceries and medicines.
How could you possibly be ARRESTED for THAT? (I mean legitimately.) There is absolutely nothing illegal about delivering groceries and medicines, especially not to the LEGAL occupants of the building representing the wishes and interests of the legitimate owners–the elected government of Venezuela.
It seems that the American authorities are yet again instigating illegal violence to effect regime change in a foreign country.
They are encouraging the fascist protesters in the streets to commit violence (who are the ones who should be arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, damage to property, potential battery and numerous other charges cops can and do levy in similar situations), and they are illicitly empowering the local police to harass (and probably ultimately arrest) the legal inhabitants of the building.
As they did in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Iraq, etc, they are using naked aggression to impose their will on the entire population of another country whose free elections of their national government they want to negate. Why? So they can steal the state-owned oil reserves and sell them to American mega-corporations so all the profits can go into the pockets of private shareholders rather than the societal needs of the local population. It’s just more grand theft at the cost of mass murder on a global scale done the only way that Washington knows how.
That is the “morality” that Florida’s very own senator-of-sleaze Marco Rubio stands for, whom, I am sure, has had a major hand in fomenting the riots in DC, as he has interfered every step of the way in Venezuelan democracy. Just when you think it couldn’t be worse under Trump, you flash back to the fact that if not Trump the GOP nominee would probably have been sick little Marco. He was considered likelier to beat Hillary than Trump, so we would have been at war with Venezuela long ago under his “leadership.” I will vote for the Devil before I ever vote for Marco.
Who are the igilantes? US Trump fans? Venezuelans? Someone else?
Probably pretty white Floridans who have been bused there by bus driver Bolton.
No one good
Probably on somebodies taxpayer funded payroll