In a voice vote, the House of Representatives has passed a previous Senate bill imposing sanctions on Venezuelan officials accused of human rights abuses.
The bill targets current and former officials who were involved in rights abuses during the February 4 protests, and President Obama is widely expected to sign it.
Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro was critical of the move, dubbing them “insolent imperialist sanctions,” and asking who the US Senate was “to sanction the homeland of Bolivar.”
The bill’s author in the House was Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R – FL), while the Senate version was by Sen. Robert Menendez (D – NJ). The bill allows the president to grant waivers to anyone sanctions for “national security” reasons, and the sanctions have a deadline of December 2016.
Wow, what hypocrites our elected tyrants have become but it doesn't surprise me.
Venezuela? Human rights abuses? The only thing that I know about Venezuela is that they were donating heating oil to poor Americans. Maybe that is their crime against humanity – depriving greedy Wall Street speculators in the oil business from scraping up a few more pennies.
We shouldn't be under any illusions that Venezuela is a fair and democratic society. My wife is Venezuelan so I follow their politics pretty closely. Nicolas Maduro and Chavez before him routinely jailed political dissidents and even a federal judge that ruled on a case in a manner that the government didn't approve of. Nonetheless, that's pretty small potatos compared to literally operating and overseeing a global torture program. Honestly, the hypocrisy of our government is mindboggling. Merry Christmas!
Looking at the names of the authors of this bill in the House and the Senate, it makes me wonder if Venezuela has done anything to upset and annoy the State of Israel? The two sponsors are rabid Israel supporters and it would not surprise anyone if this nasty little ploy is simple "pay back".
What a wretched pair of sponsors,If they are concerned about human rights abuses the Gaza Strip might be a good place to look.
Washington's evil and inhumanity is bottomless and limitless.
One year ago we said the next political deceptive move by USG, Obama move is going to be on South America starting with Venezuela and here we are. But every move by the USG at its core been planed deceptively, this sanction is no different, is just that all these sanctions make people stronger so as people's government, just look at east of Ukraine where people fighting for their freedom from neo fascism regime established by USG, look at Russia, look at Iran, all that sanctions will produce nothing but to empower us war machinery with more of USG deceptive politics depending more on a militarism system.
All Congress and the President know how to do is bomb, drone, torture, and sanction. What would happen to the US economy if the rest of the world had the guts to sanction us? This guy Menendez is a disgrace to this country as well as his own people (Hispanic surname).
Venezuela, the absolute best government in all of the American Continent.
Sadly, this commenter is in no way being facetious or exaggerating.
When a country where every petty official lives and breathes corruption still serves its people better than the wealthiest superpower in history, that speaks volumes about how far we are from the vision of the Founders. Venezuela has rampant individual corruption, but the US is a strategically corrupt machine that works to distort the truth everywhere, spread death and discord globally, and siphon the wealth of every nation into the hands of the richest. For all its faults, at least Venezuela has the political will to oppose this machine in its neighborhood and stand up for other victims around the world.
the nosepickers searching for another booger
At least antiwar.com readers get it! Now to work on the other 99.999% of Americans.
The evil has always showed itself as beautifull.USA tortures but give lessons to the world.