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For Immediate Release
May, 31 2020, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
AIUSA media office,Email:,media@aiusa.org,Phone: 202-544-0200 x302
Police Failing to Ensure Right to Protest, Endangering Lives
Rachel Ward, National Director of Research at Amnesty International USA (AIUSA), issued the following statement about the police response in cities nationwide to this weekend's protests.
WASHINGTON
Rachel Ward, National Director of Research at Amnesty International USA (AIUSA), issued the following statement about the police response in cities nationwide to this weekend's protests.
"U.S. police across the country are failing their obligations under international law to respect and facilitate the right to peaceful protest, exacerbating a tense situation and endangering the lives of protesters. In city after city, we are witnessing actions that could be considered unnecessary or excessive force. We call for an immediate end to any excessive use of force and for law enforcement to ensure and protect the legal right to protest.
"The use of heavy-duty riot gear and military-grade weapons and equipment to police largely peaceful demonstrations may intimidate protesters who are practicing their right to peaceful assembly. These tactics can actually lead to an escalation in violence. Equipping officers in a manner more appropriate for a battlefield may put them in the mindset that confrontation and conflict are inevitable. Police must engage in de-escalation, before the situation worsens. They should de-militarize their approach and engage in dialogue with protest organizers to reduce tensions to prevent violence or to stop it quickly as soon as it breaks out in order to protect the right to peaceful assembly.
"All unnecessary or excessive force must cease immediately, and all instances of potentially excessive or unnecessary force against protesters must be investigated and any officers who broke the law must be held accountable.
"Furthermore, we call on the federal government and U.S. cities and states to act swiftly and meaningfully to address the root cause of these protests and take immediate measures to stop unlawful killings by police of Black people and others. Officers must be prosecuted, all U.S. states must pass laws to restrict the use of lethal force as a last resort to prevent an imminent threat to life, and Congress should pass the PEACE Act to create a federal standard and incentivize state reform.
"Racism and white supremacy are fueling these killings and the police response to the protests. The federal government should set up a national commission to address all aspects of this crisis including killings by police, the right to protest, and ending discrimination. President Trump must end his violent and discriminatory rhetoric and policies.
"The U.S. government at all levels must ensure the right to protest as guaranteed by international law."
Amnesty International is a global movement of millions of people demanding human rights for all people - no matter who they are or where they are. We are the world's largest grassroots human rights organization.
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Economist Explains '$100-$150 Billion Per Year' Reason Trump Kidnapped Maduro
"The real goal of the Trump operation lies elsewhere: reclaiming Venezuela’s oil rents for the benefit of America’s economic elite."
Jan 05, 2026
A leading international economist said Sunday that the US invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of its socialist leader are about reasserting control over the world's largest petroleum reserves by Washington imperialists and Wall Street shareholders.
Gabriel Zucman—a professor at the Paris School of Economics and University of California, Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy—said on his Substack that the US invasion is motivated by the "$100–$150 billion per year to be captured by US shareholders of oil companies, should a new regime friendly to US interests take power in Caracas."
President Donald Trump and other senior US officials have openly vowed to seize Venezuela's oil, even while claiming that Saturday's invasion and abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife are about bringing Maduro to justice on dubious criminal charges, combating narco-trafficking, and protecting US national security.
"Maduro was a brutal and corrupt autocrat," Zucman, who also directs the independent EU Tax Observatory, continued. "But Trump has never had any trouble working with brutal and corrupt autocrats; such traits rarely trouble him."
Indeed, the Trump administration have provided military, financial, or diplomatic support to some of the world's most prolific human rights violators, from the Gulf monarchies to Egypt's military rulers to a sadistic dynasty in Equatorial Guinea and dictatorships in Central Asian countries including Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. All of the aforementioned nations sit atop major oil and natural gas deposits.
"The real goal of the Trump operation lies elsewhere: reclaiming Venezuela’s oil rents for the benefit of America’s economic elite—an arrangement that peaked in the 1950s," Zucman asserted, referring to a period in which then-Venezuelan President Marcos Pérez Jiménez ruled the country with an iron fist and was backed by Washington, largely because he let foreign oil companies exploit Venezuela's vast petroleum resources.
"In 1957, at the peak of this extractive regime, profits earned by US oil companies in Venezuela were roughly equal to the profits earned by all US multinationals—across all industries—in the rest of Latin America and in continental European countries combined," he continued.
"About 12% of Venezuela’s net domestic product—the value of everything produced in the country each year—flowed directly to the pockets of US shareholders," Zucman noted. "That was roughly the same amount of income received by the poorest half of the Venezuelan population combined."
"This is the 'golden age' the Trump administration wants to bring back: a sharing of oil rents that is difficult to imagine being more unequal," he added.
Critics have accused the US of waging war for oil for nearly a century. US administrations have explicitly asserted the right to use military force to safeguard control of access to petroleum resources since the presidency of Jimmy Carter. The George W. Bush administration even initially called its impending invasion and occupation of Iraq "Operation Iraqi Liberation," before changing it so the abbreviation did not spell "OIL."
While Trump campaigned on the promise of no new wars and claims to avoid giving world leaders "lectures on how to live," he has now ordered the bombing of more nations than any US president in history. All 10 countries attacked by Trump since 2017—Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen—are oil producers or possess significant fossil fuel resources.
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Meet Paul Singer, the Billionaire Trump Megadonor Set to Make a Killing on Venezuela Oil
"Paul Singer's shady purchase of Citgo has everything to do with this coup."
Jan 05, 2026
One of President Donald Trump's top billionaire donors, who has spent the past several months backing a push for regime change in Venezuela, is about to cash in after the president's kidnapping of the nation's president, Nicolas Maduro, this weekend.
While he declined to tell members of Congress, Trump has said he tipped off oil executives before the illegal attack. At a press conference following the attack, he said the US would have "our very large United States oil companies" go into Venezuela, which he said the US will "run" indefinitely, and "start making money" for the United States.
As Judd Legum reported on Monday for Popular Information, among the biggest beneficiaries will be the billionaire investor Paul Singer:
In 2024, Singer, an 81-year-old with a net worth of $6.7 billion, donated $5 million to Make America Great Again Inc., Trump’s Super PAC. Singer donated tens of millions more in the 2024 cycle to support Trump’s allies, including $37 million to support the election of Republicans to Congress. He also donated an undisclosed amount to fund Trump’s second transition.
Singer is also a major pro-Israel donor, with his foundation having donated more than $3.3 million to groups like the Birthright Israel Foundation, the Israel America Academic Exchange, Boundless Israel, and others in 2021, according to tax filings.
In November 2025, less than two months before Trump's operation to take over Venezuela, Singer's investment firm, Elliott Investment Management, inked a highly fortuitous deal.
It purchased Citgo, the US-based subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company, for $5.9 billion—a sale that was forced by a Delaware court after Venezuela defaulted on its bond payments.
The court-appointed special master who forced the sale, Robert Pincus, is a member of the board of directors for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Elliott Management hailed the court order requiring the sale in a press release, saying it was "backed by a group of strategic US energy investors."
Singer acquired the Citgo's three massive coastal refineries, 43 oil terminals, and more than 4,000 gas stations at a "major discount" because of its distressed status. Advisers to the court overseeing the sale estimated its value at $11-13 billion, while the Venezuelan government estimated it at $18 billion.
As Legum explained, the Trump administration's embargo on Venezuelan oil imports to the United States bore the primary responsibility for the company's plummeting value:
Citgo’s refiners are purpose-built to process heavy-grade Venezuelan “sour” crude. As a result, Citgo was forced to source oil from more expensive sources in Canada and Colombia. (Oil produced in the United States is generally light-grade.) This made Citgo’s operations far less profitable.
It is the preferred modus operandi for Singer, whose hedge fund is often described as a "vulture" capital group. As Francesca Fiorentini, a commentator at Zeteo, explained, Singer "is famous for doing things like buying the debt of struggling countries like Argentina for pennies on the dollar and then forcing that country to repay him with interest plus legal fees."
Venezuelan Vice President and Minister of Petroleum Delcy Rodríguez called the sale of Citgo to Singer "fraudulent" and "forced" in December.
After the US abducted Maduro this week, Trump named Rodriguez as Venezuela's interim president—and she was formally sworn in Monday—but he warned that she'll pay a "very big price" if she refuses to do "what we want."
That is good news for Singer, who is expected to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of an oil industry controlled by US corporations, which will likely not be subject to crippling sanctions.
Singer has reportedly met with Trump directly at least four times since he was first elected in 2016, most recently in 2024. While it is unknown whether the two discussed Venezuela during those meetings, groups funded by Singer have pushed aggressively for Trump to take maximal action to decapitate the country's leadership.
Since 2011, Singer has donated over $10 million and continues to sit on the board of directors for the right-wing Manhattan Institute think tank, which in recent months has consistently advocated for Maduro to be removed from power. In October, it published an article praising Trump for his "consistent policies against Venezuela’s Maduro."
He has also been a major donor to the neoconservative think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), serving as its second-largest contributor from 2008-2011, with more than $3.6 million.
In late November, shortly before Trump announced that the US had closed Venezuelan airspace and began to impound Venezuelan oil tankers, FDD published a policy brief stating that the US has "capabilities to launch an overwhelming air and missile campaign against the Maduro regime" that it could use to remove him from power.
Singer himself has acted as a financial attack dog for Trump during his first year back in office. In June, he contributed $1 million to fund a super PAC aiming to oust Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who'd become Trump's leading Republican critic over his Department of Justice's refusal to release its files pertaining to the billionaire sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
A super PAC tied to Miriam Adelson, another top pro-Israel donor who recently said she'd give Trump $250 million if he ran for a third term, also reportedly helped to fund the campaign against Massie.
Massie has since gone on to be one of the most vocal opponents in Congress to Trump's regime change push in Venezuela, joining Democrats to co-sponsor multiple failed war powers resolutions that would have reined in the president's ability to launch military strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and launch an attack on mainland Venezuela.
As the Trump administration has asserted that American corporations are entitled to the oil controlled by Venezuela's state firm, Massie rebutted this weekend that: "It’s not American oil. It’s Venezuelan oil."
"Oil companies entered into risky deals to develop oil, and the deals were canceled by a prior Venezuelan government," he said. "What’s happening: Lives of US soldiers are being risked to make those oil companies (not Americans) more profitable."
Massie said that Singer, "who’s already spent $1,000,000 to defeat me in the next election, stands to make billions of dollars on his distressed Citgo investment, now that this administration has taken over Venezuela."
Fiorentini added that "Paul Singer's shady purchase of Citgo has everything to do with this coup."
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Victory for Corporate Tax Dodgers as OECD Approves Watered-Down Global Minimum Tax
“The Trump administration has chosen to prioritize maintaining rock-bottom taxes for big corporations to the detriment of ordinary Americans and our allies across the globe," said one critic.
Jan 05, 2026
The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development is facing criticism for buckling under US demands when finalizing an update to the global minimum corporate tax agreement.
As reported by Reuters on Monday, the OECD agreed to amend a 2021 deal to enforce a 15% global minimum corporate tax to include "simplifications and carve-outs to align US minimum tax laws with global standards, accommodating earlier objections raised by the Trump administration."
Under the original framework, OECD members agreed to apply a 15% corporate tax on multinational corporations that book profits in jurisdictions that have lower tax rates.
President Donald Trump objected to this, however, and insisted that some US corporations be given exemptions that have subsequently been granted by OECD states.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the revised deal "represents a historic victory in preserving US sovereignty and protecting American workers and businesses from extraterritorial overreach," while noting that it allowed for US-headquartered firms to be subject only to US global minimum taxes.
Some critics, though, accused the OECD of letting the US get away with robbery.
Zorka Milin, policy director at the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency Coalition, warned that the deal "risks nearly a decade of global progress on corporate taxation" by allowing "the largest, most profitable American companies to keep parking profits in tax havens."
“The Trump administration has chosen to prioritize maintaining rock-bottom taxes for big corporations to the detriment of ordinary Americans and our allies across the globe," Milin added.
Alex Cobham, chief executive at Tax Justice Network, said other OECD members were only hurting themselves by caving to Trump's demands.
"By the Tax Justice Network’s assessment, France for example is already losing $14 billion a year to tax cheating US firms, Germany is losing $16 billion, and the UK is losing $9 billion," Cobham explained. "Today’s bending of the knee to Trump will cost countries billions more. But how much more? Tellingly, the OECD, which has delivered this shameful result, and OECD members have not put a number on the scale of tax losses that will result."
An analysis published last month by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) made the case that global minimum corporate taxes were needed to prevent US companies from sheltering vast profits by reporting them in nations that serve as offshore tax havens.
As an example, ITEP pointed to data showing that the profits US companies reported in notorious tax havens such as Barbados and the British Virgin Islands were more than 100% of those territories' gross domestic product, which the report noted "is obviously impossible."
ITEP went on to state that full implementation of this global minimum tax is "the best hope for blocking the types of tax avoidance that have weakened corporate income taxes all over the world" by making it "difficult for any single government (even one as powerful as the US) to ignore or weaken it."
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