Most of the countries in Europe back the U.S., a country that illegally removed hundreds of thousands of African Americans and Hispanics from the voting registers in swing states. A country that cheated Bennie Sanders out of running for president.
As crisis engulfs Venezuela, Aaron Bastani looks at the political and economic history of the country since Hugo Chavez won power in 1998. His conclusion? That sanctions and oil prices are to blame for the country's economic plight, while it boasts a far greater tradition of democracy than critics often realise let alone dare to admit.
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Almost everything that Western governments and media outlets (and bloggers) claim about Venezuela is a lie.
And the masses eat it up.
For example, U.S. secretary of State Mike Pompeo, plus the corporate media outlets, claim that the USA has sent “humanitarian aid” to Venezuela, and that the Maduro government has blocked this “humanitarian aid” by sealing off roads and bridges.
Pompeo specified the Tienditas Bridge on the border between Colombia and Venezuela.
In reality, the bridge was constructed in early 2016, but it was never officially opened, because of political disputes between Colombia and Venezuela dating from 2015. Columbia itself sealed off the bridge 300 feet inside the Colombian border, three years ago.
When the USA announced its intention to oust Venezuela’s democratically elected President Maduro, and to steal Venezuela’s oil, the Maduro government figured that U.S. “humanitarian aid” would consist of weapons shipped into Venezuela to start a civil war. So Maduro ordered large shipping containers placed on the bridge near the fence that Columbia had constructed, to further block the bridge.
You can locate the spot yourself on Google Maps by entering “Puente Binacional Tienditas.”
Learn more…
https://medium.com/@justin.emery/the-tienditas-bridge-blockade-f240728fe5f7
I just scanned the headlines of about 40 “news” outlets. The media blitz against Venezuela is so total that I haven’t seen anything like this since the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
Back in 2003 there were marches worldwide against the imminent US invasion. Today the masses cheer for regime change in Venezuela. That’s how lobotomized they have become.
Also, Western governments and media outlets are using the Venezuela campaign to attack “socialism” and Universal Health Care, even though Venezuela is not socialist (73% of all businesses and corporations are privately owned.)
Western aggression, led by the USA, has caused the opponents of MMT to cry “Venezuela!” instead of “Zimbabwe!”
SPEAKING OF ZIMBABWE...
Many people know that the cause of Venezuela’s economic problems is not “socialism,” but US-led sanctions, embargos, and blockades.
And yet, those same people insist on believing the lie that Zimbabwe’s hyper-inflation of 2008 was caused by African stupidity.
In reality, the hyper-inflation resulted from a coordinated financial attack by the US and UK, which was launched because then-president Robert Mugabe would not submit to IMF dictates.
In some ways, Zimbabwe was the Venezuela of Africa. Robert Mugabe was ousted by a US-backed coup in late 2017, after which the new president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, plunged Zimbabwe into neoliberalism, as will happen with Venezuela.
Because of Mnangagwa, fuel prices in Zimbabwe are now the highest in the world, and there are constant riots throughout Zimbabwe.
Meanwhile the rich are doing fine, and foreign mining companies have moved in to steal Zimbabwe’s resources.
Venezuela will be the same.
The video is incomplete.
It notes that 95% of Venezuela’s exports are petroleum. “And the price of oil on the world market determines whether or not the Venezuelan economy goes up.”
That’s true, but why? The video doesn’t explain.
The answer is that Venezuela has what economists call the “Dutch disease,” in which a nation’s economy becomes overly reliant on one commodity.
When the Groningen natural gas field was discovered in 1959, it caused the Dutch economy to become so reliant on gas exports that Dutch manufacturing almost died.
Likewise, Venezuela was once the agricultural bread-basket of northern South America. But when oil was discovered in the early 1900s, Venezuela gained so much foreign currency from oil sales that Venezuela could afford to buy all the imports it needed, without growing or manufacturing anything itself. As a result, most non-petroleum Venezuelan industries died, and workers displaced in rural areas migrated to cities, creating vast slums.
Thus, Venezuela’s near-total reliance on imports, plus its near-total reliance on oil sales to pay for those imports, made Venezuela vulnerable to oil prices.
Why did Venezuela never diversify? That subject is too lengthy to discuss here.
Oil prices bottomed out on 16 Jan 2016, and they have been rising ever since, except for one period from 1 Oct 2018 to 24 Dec 2018.
Therefore the time to strike in Venezuela is now before oil prices climb back to $120.00 per barrel like they were in 2014.
Once the Venezuela coup is complete, there will be a near-doubling of retail fuel prices in the UK and USA. It will cost almost twice as much to fill your tank.
The masses will not blame this on the coup, but on “white privilege,” “homophobia,” and “lack of diversity.”
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