As part of the Great Western Expansion, the American Empire came smack
dab up against the Pacific Ocean. What to do. Not spoiling for
another pissing match with Jolly Old England, the Empire shied away
from grabbing chunks of Canada. So the natural thing to do was to
head South. After hacking off chunks of Mexico...probably because
those Mexicans were trying to get into the USA even back then, we
picked a fight with a down at the heels Spain. We came away with
Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines. And then we headed South to
Central America and on into South America. Even as the Empire plotted
on how to grab off exclusive trade rights with Japan and China, the
American Empire plunged headlong into exploiting all of Latin America.
Through their usual up front techniques of lies, deception, sneaky
back stabbing and pretense, the Empire managed to shove a whole lot of
money into their private accounts before any major protests arose.
It's a record of such horror and murder, that it would take far more
time and space than we share here. But if some of you recall a book
back in the 50's titled , The Ugly American, then you have a pretty
good picture of how the Proud Americans were seen in the eyes of not
only Latin America, but by the entire international community. Sure,
it's true that being the Town Bully is lonely, but it's worth a huge
fortune.
And now we've put a real estate profiteer turned Emperor, darting and
jabbing and cursing anything that moves. These next 3 plus years are
going to be one wild ride.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/31/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Trump's Tough New Sanctions Will Harm The People Of Venezuela
C Getty Images
By Mark Weisbrot, www.thehill.com
August 29th, 2017
Abvoe Photo: C Getty Images
Note: The new US sanctions against Venezuela are part of a US campaign for
regime change since Hugo Chavez was elected in 1999. The US-Venezuela
Oligarchs undermining of the economy is a tool the US has used in other
regime change operations. The economy of Venezuela was handling the
US-oligarch attack until the tremendous drop in the price of oil from $150
a
barrel to under $50 a barrel. But, do not think these sanctions are
anything
other than economic warfare with the goal of changing the government of
Venezuela to one that is friendly to the United States and its corporate
interests. KZ
The Trump administration announced new, unprecedented sanctionsagainst
Venezuela on Friday that are designed to cut off financing to Venezuela.
The
Trump team pretends that the sanctions are only directed at the government.
But as any economist knows, this is clearly false. By starving the economy
of foreign exchange, this action will harm the private sector, most
Venezuelans, the poor and the vulnerable.
These sanctions will deepen the severe depression that Venezuela's economy
has been in for more than three and a half years, which has already shrunk
income per person by more than a third. They will worsen the shortages of
food and essential medicines. They will exacerbate the country's balance of
payments crisis, and therefore feed the spiral of inflation (600 percent
over the past year) and depreciation of the currency (on the black market)
that has been accelerating since late 2012.
And they will further polarize an already divided country. Opposition
leaders who support the sanctions, or are associated with them because of
their longstanding ties to the United States, will be seen as treasonous -
much as Republicans in the Trump administration, including Trump himself,
are portrayed by those who believe they collaborated with the Russian
government to win the 2016 election.
Trump's sanctions are also illegal under both U.S. and international law.
They violate the charter of the Organization of American States (Chapter 4,
Article 19) and other international treaties that the U.S. has signed. To
comply with U.S. law, the president also has to lie and say that Americans
are suffering from a "national emergency" due to an "unusual and
extraordinary threat to national security" posed by Venezuela. This is
obviously ridiculous.
The sanctions do their damage primarily by prohibiting Venezuela from
borrowing or selling assets in the U.S. financial system. They also
prohibit
CITGO, the U.S.-based fuel industry company that is owned by the Venezuelan
government, from sending dividends or profits back to Venezuela. In
addition, if Venezuela wanted to do a debt restructuring, so as to reduce
debt service during the current crisis, it would be unable to do this
because it wouldn't be able to issue new bonds.
Basically, Trump's executive order will cut off most sources of potential
financing, other than from Russia or China. This would cause imports, which
have already fallen by more than 75 percent over the past five years, to
fall further. This means more shortages and further economic decline, since
much of Venezuela's domestic production is dependent on imports. The
executive order carries an exemption for oil imports from Venezuela.
Why would Trump do something that even his right-wing allies in Latin
America, and most of the Venezuelan opposition, did not support when Trump
threatened to do this last month? As with many apparently irrational
decisions by this president, it's not that easy to know for sure. But it
seems that the strategy is to further destroy the economy to the point
where
people will rise up and overthrow the government, or perhaps to provoke a
military coup.
In the last few weeks, the violent street protests have died down. Most of
the opposition leaders have agreed to participate in the long-delayed
October regional elections. This is a positive development for those who
would like to see a peaceful resolution of the conflict. But for
regime-change extremists like Marco Rubio, whom Trump seems to be listening
to on Venezuela, peace is bad news, especially for the media strategy of
"if
it bleeds, it leads." They may see exacerbating the economic crisis and
suffering to their advantage, hoping to bring people back into the streets
and away from the negotiations that will be necessary to settle the
conflict.
Finally, we cannot discount the possibility that Trump has also issued this
order as yet another distraction from his bad political fortunes at home.
Distraction has been his modus operandi since his presidential campaign
last
year. In this case it is particularly dangerous because he has also
threatened military action against Venezuela, and U.S. sanctions of this
magnitude have often been followed by military attacks.
As Trump's presidency continues to putrefy, the urge to rescue it with war
will certainly grow. Venezuela is not the best target for public relations
purposes because the "security threat" is a tough sell. But Trump and his
advisers may see it as less risky than some of the alternatives, such as
North Korea, Iran or Syria.