 Hello and welcome to Around the World in 8 Minutes by People's Dispatch, where we bring you news from working class and popular movements across the globe. In our first story, we bring you updates from Venezuela, the United States and right-wing governments in Latin America are taking economic and political measures to overthrow the Bolivarian Revolution and President Nicolas Maduro. These forces seek to undo the social progress made by the people of the country, especially the working class since the Bolivarian Revolution. In the latest move on Monday, the U.S. Treasury Department announced new sanctions against Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA. According to a statement from the Treasury Department, all PDVSA assets under U.S. jurisdiction are blocked effective immediately and U.S. citizens and companies are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with the company. The ongoing coup against the government of Nicolas Maduro aims to grab power from the working class population and hand it over to the United States' back right-wing business elite. It attempts to steal the social welfare gains made by the state-run economy despite the brutal U.S. economic sanctions and enslave the working class through an international monetary fund-led neoliberal regime. Over the weekend, the United States convened a meeting of the United Nations Security Council in New York on Saturday to recognize Juan Guaido, a leader of the National Assembly of Venezuela, as the president of the country. The move failed due to resistance from Russia, China and other countries. Last week, Guaido declared himself the president with backing from the U.S. and right-wing governments of Colombia and Brazil. The move insults the people's democratic mandate, which elected Maduro as the president in May 2018 with 67 percent of the votes. The current incident in Venezuela is a reputation of the U.S.-backed coup attempt against President Hugo Chavez in April 2002 led by the U.S. coup expert, Elliot Abrams. The attempt failed as the people and Bolivarian armed forces stood behind Chavez. The coup was organized when Chavez nationalized the country's vast oil reserves, threatening the U.S. hegemony that has always viewed Latin America through the lens of the Monro doctrine. Abrams is also infamous for a series of regime change projects across the globe in the name of restoring democracy. A U.S. term for stealing the nation's resources for business interests. He was the deputy national security advisor to U.S. President George W. Bush and played a key role in U.S. invasion of Iraq. Abrams under Ronald Reagan supported the authoritarian governments in El Salvador and Honduras in the repression campaigns against dissenters. The creation of debt squads led to the execution of thousands of social leaders and communists during these campaigns. He also oversaw the arming of right-wing paramilitaries in Nicaragua known as Contras against the elected government. The recent interference by the U.S. comes after years of brutal economic sanctions against Venezuela to cripple the country's economy. In August last year, an assassination attempt was made against Maduro using explosive attached drones by Venezuelan right-wing elements. According to the former UN Special Rapporteur Alfred de Zayas, these sanctions are killing the people of Venezuela and such actions are crimes against humanity. During the sanctions as the modern-day equivalent of medieval era siege of towns, Zayas said that U.S. is engaging in economic warfare. Deepening its interference, U.S. President Donald Trump said that all options are on the table pointing towards a possible military intervention. In our second story, we look into the resistance by people in Japan's Okinawa against the expansion of United States military base in the area. Despite opposition from residents and the local government to the U.S. plan to construct a new military base in the Japanese island of Okinawa, the central government of Japan has proceeded with the construction. On January 28th, construction of a 135-metre-long sea wall began on one side of the planned construction site on the Henke Bay on the island's west coast. By springtime this year, the government also plans to construct another 515-metre-long sea wall next to the one currently under construction. Once erected, the two walls will be used as pyres for ships carrying landfill which will be dumped into the bay over an area of 157 hectares. This will be then used as a foundation to construct an offshore airbase with two 5,000-metre-long runways which will store and operate F-35 fighter jets and B-22 tilt-rotor aircraft. Residents of the island have been engaged in a relentless decades-long struggle to stop the new base from being constructed, repeatedly gathering at the construction site to obstruct the activity facing arrests and forcible evictions. One such recent action was on January 15th, when protesters holding placards calling for the US Marines to be removed from the island attempted to block the trucks carrying rock and mud to landfill the bay. Though the protests had remained peaceful, police forcibly carried away many demonstrators. Holding placards that said Okinawans will not give up, last month 70,000 Okinawans participated in a rally held in the capital city of Naha, chanting slogans vowing to stop the construction of the new base. In our last story, we look into the issue of increasing illegal Israeli settler violence in occupied Palestine. On Sunday, the United Nations envoy to the Middle East, Nikolay Mladenov, described the daylight killing of a Palestinian man by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank as shocking and unacceptable. On January 26th, a Palestinian man identified as 38-year-old Hamdi Nassan was shot in the back by illegal Israeli settlers accompanied by Israeli soldiers in the village of Almugir. He succumbed to his wounds shortly afterwards at a hospital in Ramallah on Saturday, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. He is survived by his wife and four children. The head of the Mugir village council, Amin Abu Alia, said that the settlers started shooting first and later on the Israeli army soldiers arrived and fired tear gas at the protesting Palestinians. According to the Palestinian Red Crescent, at least 30 people were injured, about six of whom were injured by live ammunition. Last November, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs documented more than 200 violent incidents since the start of 2018 attributed to Israeli settlers which caused casualties or injuries to the residents and damaged Palestinian property. The OCHA also said that this represents a 57 to 175% increase in the number of incidents of violence recorded since 2014 compared to 2016 and 2017 respectively. In all the cases, Israeli soldiers played the role of a catalyst in the crime by the settlers. Around 750,000 Israelis live in the occupied territories of East Jerusalem, West Bank and Gaza. Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land are illegal under international law. That's all for this episode of Around the World in 8 Minutes. For more stories and videos about people's movements, please check out our website peoplesdispatch.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.