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  1. #1
    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
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    Venezuela ousts CNN as tensions flare with the Trump administration

    Sounds like Venezuela should perhaps be put on the travel ban list...
    Venezuela ousts CNN as tensions flare with the Trump administration


    Sarah Lee
    Feb 16, 2017 1:35 pm

    Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro speaks during a press conference with international and national press at Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela, Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2017.(AP/Ariana Cubillos)


    The Venezuelan government shut down CNN’s feed of their Spanish-language channel Wednesday as the relationship between the government and President Donald Trump’s administration appeared to be deteriorating.

    According to a Washington Examiner report quoting the Associated Press, President Nicolas Maduro said he wanted CNN out of Venezuela due to what he called their “direct aggressions” against the country.

    Maduro was upset over a CNN report that alleged Venezuela’s embassy in Iraq was selling passports and visas to potential terrorists. Those allegations link Venezuela’s new Vice President Tareck El Aissami
    to as many as 173 Venezuelan passports and IDs issued to Middle Eastern natives, including people allegedly connected to the terrorist group Hezbollah, according to CNN.

    “I want CNN well away from here. Outside of Venezuela. Do not put your nose in Venezuela,” Maduro said Sunday. He also called CNN an “instrument of war after their report on the passport story aired and said that Venezuela would respond “firmly” to those who “tangle” with them.

    The Trump administration also sparked the ire of Maduro when the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Maduro’s El Aissami, whom they accused of being behind the passport racket as well as being a prolific drug trafficker. The Treasury Department froze the U.S. assets of El Aissami and the businessman, Samark Jose Lopez Bello, and banned U.S. nationals from doing business with them, Yahoo News reported.

    Meanwhile, the Trump administration has been actively prodding Venezuela to release a prominent political prisoner, Leopoldo López. Trump met with Lopez’s wife and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) at the White House Wednesday. He even tweeted a photo of the meeting while calling for the dissident’s release.

    Lopez is the leader of a political group that opposes Maduro and is currently serving a 14-year prison sentence for allegedly “inciting unrest” as part of anti-government protests that left 43 people dead in early 2014.

    In an address Wednesday, Maduro said he wanted to avoid confrontation with the Trump administration but warned that Trump should not repeat the mistakes of George Bush or the “Clinton-Obama clan.” Venezuela has been critical of the U.S. for years and the two nations have not shared ambassadors since 2010.
    http://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/02...dministration/



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  2. #2
    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
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    US sanctions Venezuela vice president over drug trafficking
    Published February 13, 2017 Associated Press


    Feb. 1, 2017: Venezuela's Vice-President Tareck El Aissami, right, is saluted by Boilivarian Army officer upon his arrival for a military parade at Fort Tiuna in Caracas. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)


    WASHINGTON – The Trump administration decreed sanctions against Venezuelan Vice President Tareck El Aissami on Monday, accusing him of playing a major role in international drug trafficking.

    The announcement, made on the Treasury Department's website late in the day, is bound to ratchet up tensions between the U.S. and its harshest critic in Latin America. El Aissami is the most senior Venezuelan official to ever be targeted by the U.S.

    The U.S. government is also sanctioning Samark Lopez, a wealthy Venezuelan businessman believed to be El Aissami's main front man. As part of the action, 13 companies owned or controlled by Lopez, including five in Florida, will be blocked and both men will be barred from entering the United States.

    There was no immediate reaction from El Aissami, but he has long denied any criminal ties.

    The move comes a week after a bipartisan group of 34 U.S. lawmakers sent a letter to Trump urging him to step up pressure on Venezuela's socialist government by immediately sanctioning top officials responsible for corruption and human rights abuses as well as El Aissami for his purported ties to Hezbollah.

    In the wake of President Nicolas Maduro's crackdown on dissent following anti-government protests in 2014, the U.S. Congress passed legislation authorizing the U.S. president to freeze the assets and ban visas for anyone accused of carrying out acts of violence or violating the human rights of those opposing Venezuela's government. Monday's sanctions were imposed under rules passed during the Clinton administration allowing the U.S. to go after the assets of anyone designated a drug kingpin.

    El Aissami, 42, has been the target of U.S. law enforcement investigation for years, stemming from his days as interior minister when dozens of fraudulent Venezuelan passports ended up in the hands of people from the Middle East, including alleged members of Hezbollah.

    Venezuela's top convicted drug trafficker, Walid Makled, before being sent back from Colombia in 2011, said he paid bribes through El Aissami's brother to officials so they could turn a blind eye to cocaine shipments that have proliferated in Venezuela during the past two decades of socialist rule.

    El Aissami was named vice president last month as Maduro struggles to hold together a loose coalition of civilian leftist and military supporters whose loyalty to the revolution started by the late Hugo Chavez has frayed amid triple-digit inflation and severe food shortages. Recent polls say more than 80 percent of Venezuelans want Maduro gone.

    El Aissami is feared by many in the opposition for his association with Venezuela's intelligence services from his long run as interior minister under Chavez. Since El Aissami became vice president, Maduro has handed him control of an "anti-coup commando unit" to go after officials and opponents suspected of treason.

    A former Obama administration official said the decision to sanction El Aissami was months in the making and involved several U.S. federal agencies. But it was held up last year, at the insistence of the State Department, for fear it could interfere in a Vatican-backed attempt at dialogue between the government and opposition as well as efforts to win the release of a U.S. citizen, Joshua Holt, jailed for months on what are seen as trumped-up weapons charges.

    "This was an overdue step to ratchet up pressure on the Venezuelan regime and signal that top officials will suffer consequences if they continue to engage in massive corruption, abuse human rights and dismantle democracy," said Mark Feierstein, who served as Obama's top national security adviser on Latin America.

    The talks between the opposition and Venezuela have since collapsed. The opposition blames Maduro's administration, saying it didn't follow through on a pledge to release dozens of activists that government opponents consider political prisoners. The opposition also says Maduro didn't set a date for regional elections that his opponents are favored to sweep after the government suspended a recall referendum against the president in October.

    "The sanctions in and of themselves will not bring about a democratic transition," Feierstein said. "That will require the Venezuelan opposition to remobilize its followers and U.S. diplomatic efforts to marshal governments in the region to isolate Maduro."

    Tensions between the U.S. and Venezuela have been on the rise for years. The countries haven't exchanged ambassadors since 2010.

    But Trump mentioned the country only briefly during the campaign, and amid uncertainty on whether he would break from the Obama administration's policy of relative restraint, Maduro had adopted a softer tack. After blasting Trump as a "bandit" and "mental patient" during the campaign, Maduro has remained quiet since.

    "He won't be worse than Obama, that's the only thing I dare to say," Maduro said last month in an appeal to supporters to withhold judgment on Trump.

    In the wake of a travel ban against top Venezuelan officials in 2014, Maduro ordered the U.S. to slash staffing at its embassy in Caracas, accusing diplomats of conspiring to overthrow his government.

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  3. #3
    Super Moderator GeorgiaPeach's Avatar
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    Do not care for the tactics of CNN with their frequent "Fake News" stories and continual making mountains out of molehills on many things. The CNN report on the alleged passport and visa fraud in Venezuela exposes the real problems in immigration and why greater scrutiny and extreme vetting are necessary. A long, long pause is more than justified.
    Matthew 19:26
    But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.
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  4. #4
    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
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    I saw that CNN report on Venezuelan fake passports and thought that was actually a good investigative report. The problem is, you don't know if it's true or not. You see CNN involved so deeply with this "fake news" and vendetta against Trump, they lose their journalistic integrity. For all we know the guy they interviewed is a CIA dude who fabricated the whole thing to create further dispute between the US and Venezuela.

    You just don't know any more what is true and what isn't. So what we do know is we have to control our borders and as you so correctly state GeorgiaPeach support our President on EXTREME VETTING.
    A Nation Without Borders Is Not A Nation - Ronald Reagan
    Save America, Deport Congress! - Judy

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