US regime change in Venezuela

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TheBigShort

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The Truth is Easy if you Follow the Money.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-re...n-is-pro-washington-not-pro-democracy/5601933

Alternative take on the economic crisis in Venezuela which aligns somewhat with my own view that this capitalist system as it is currently engineered, is a centralised command 'trickle-up' economy run by a cartel of bankers, aided and abetted by compliant governments and protected by the US Military Industrial complex.

"The crisis in Venezuela is not one of socialism versus capitalism or dictatorship versus democracy – it is one of hegemony versus national sovereignty, of centralized unipolar power versus an increasingly multipolar world."
 
I believe globalresearch.ca is run by a nutcase, an extreme left wing conspiracy theorist. About as useful as the link to that Marxist economist you referenced on Russia Today on another thread. Just my opinion, of course, but people can do their own research and check other people's opinions online.
 
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...-existential-crisis-as-venezuela-payday-nears

"While Venezuela’s finances have been teetering ever since oil fell below $100 a barrel three years ago, President Nicolas Maduro and his late predecessor, Hugo Chavez, have always made sure foreign bondholders got paid. But the government has struggled to make payments on time in the past year after disruptions in the chain of banks, trustees and other agents that gets cash to creditors, as well as increasing scrutiny of the nation’s financial transactions amid sanctions imposed by the Trump administration."
 
On March 9, 2015, the United States president, Barack Obama, signed and issued a presidential order declaring Venezuela a threat to its national security and ordered sanctions against seven Venezuelan officials.

The move was widely denounced by other Latin American countries. The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States issued a statement criticizing Washington’s “unilateral coercive measures against International Law.”[69] The Secretary-General of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), Ernesto Samper, said that the body rejects “any attempt at internal or external interference that attempts to disrupt the democratic process in Venezuela.”[70]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States–Venezuela_relations
 
dub_nerd said:
I believe globalresearch.ca is run by a nutcase, an extreme left wing conspiracy theorist. About as useful as the link to that Marxist economist you referenced on Russia Today on another thread. Just my opinion, of course, but people can do their own research and check other people's opinions online.
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Of course, that's the whole point, research.
The common narrative is that Venezuela is caught up in a socialist nightmare.
The reality is, the people have expressed a democratic will to live in a socialist economy and the US, not accepting that freedom of expression, is attempting to overthrow the democratic will of the people.
The US will not tolerate democratic outcomes in countries where there are large oil reserves, where the outcome is not to the advantage of corporate America.
It's the same the world over. Saudi Arabia is ok for its repressive regime, but democracy cannot be tolerated in Venezuela.

Nothing to do with socialism or capitalism or authoritarianism or democracies or theocracies.
It is to do with a centralised command trickle-up banking cartel economy.
 
Hi BS

Having travelled in that part of the world, I think what has happened in Venezuela since 1999 is desperately sad.

Given its massive oil resources and proximity to major markets, Venezuela should have a standard of living in line with Norway. Instead, it is teetering on the brink of total economic collapse with the majority of its population living in desperate, grinding poverty.

Posting links to the rantings of your fellow conspiracy theorists and ideologues won't change that reality.
 
Sarenco said:
Hi BS

Having travelled in that part of the world, I think what has happened in Venezuela since 1999 is desperately sad.

Given its massive oil resources and proximity to major markets, Venezuela should have a standard of living in line with Norway. Instead, it is teetering on the brink of total economic collapse with the majority of its population living in desperate, grinding poverty.

Posting links to the rantings of your fellow conspiracy theorists and ideologues won't change that reality.
Click to expand...

Thanks Sacrenco I appreciate the viewpoint. It is tragic what is happening now in Venezuela, but if economic sanctions were lifted, then the people there could benefit from its oil resources.
It's nothing to do with conspiracy. It is to do with control of economic resources. If you have a resource like oil, you need to play to the US tune, plain and simple, or face the consequences.
That is the purpose of the military industrial complex, and not some fairy idea about bringing democracy to the world.
 
Sarenco said:
Having travelled in that part of the world, I think what has happened in Venezuela since 1999 is desperately sad.

Given its massive oil resources and proximity to major markets, Venezuela should have a standard of living in line with Norway. Instead, it is teetering on the brink of total economic collapse with the majority of its population living in desperate, grinding poverty.
Click to expand...

While what is happening in Venezuela in recent years is a terrible tragedy, it is also true that Chavez was popularly and freely elected in 1998 because the majority of the population were then living in grinding poverty with atrocious health and educational services. This was under a succession of corrupt (non-socialist) governments. At least Chavez did try to use the oil finances to try to improve both services and living conditions for those in poverty. Unfortunately his economic policies were built on sand.

I wouldn't have much confidence that if and when Maduro is ousted that the country will become another Norway. More likely that the old corrupt elites will go back to living off the hog again and the impoverished will remain impoverished. The ongoing tragedy will continue.

Oh , except that someone there will blame the impoverished for their impoverishment. Some things are the same the world over.
 
Is the US the only outlet for oil in the world???

France, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Singapore, Norway, Australia... these are all very different socieities and all are allies of the US. If the US is trying to impose its way on the world it is not doing a good job. If Venezuela thinks it has it bad tell them to phone some Ukrainians.
 
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TheBigShort said:
Of course, that's the whole point, research.
The common narrative is that Venezuela is caught up in a socialist nightmare.
The reality is, the people have expressed a democratic will to live in a socialist economy and the US, not accepting that freedom of expression, is attempting to overthrow the democratic will of the people.
The US will not tolerate democratic outcomes in countries where there are large oil reserves, where the outcome is not to the advantage of corporate America.
It's the same the world over. Saudi Arabia is ok for its repressive regime, but democracy cannot be tolerated in Venezuela.

Nothing to do with socialism or capitalism or authoritarianism or democracies or theocracies.
It is to do with a centralised command trickle-up banking cartel economy.
Click to expand...

i think you might very well be right when it comes to venezeula , from what ive read , prior to chavez coming to power , the majority of the wealth was not only held by a tiny elite but that same elite appared to have little if any loyalty to their country , when a country has such deep structural inequality , i do think the power of the state needs to be harnessed in order to bring about deep change , only my opinion but chavez was not the monster washington portrayed him as , they regularly called him a dictator when he was elected democratically several times over , the usa has always meddled in latin america despite no religous based terrorism existing there
 
odyssey06 said:
Is the US the only outlet for oil in the world???

France, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Singapore, Australia... these are all very different socieities and all are allies of the US. If the US is trying to impose its way on the world it is not doing a good job. If Venezuela thinks it has it bad tell them to phone some Ukrainians.
Click to expand...

Oil is only bought and sold in US dollars. Iraq under Saddam tried to start trading in euros in 2001.
He was subsequently blamed for funding Al'Qaeda and accused of WMD. We know the outcome of that.
Gaddaffi was chair of an African Union Congress that sought to bring about a new currency (like the Euro) backed by gold and used to trade oil. We know what happened to him.
Iran is also an oil provider and is consistently on the radar of the US because it doesn't play to the US tune. But Iran has allies with China and Russia. Russia is, you will hardly believe this, also in diplomatic dispute with the US.
Ukraine has a US friendly government in place and has been making moves for EU membership. In doing so, the possibility of NATO bases in Crimea was a real possibility on the border of Russia.
Crimea has an overwhelming Russian population and also a strategic naval base. That's why Russia made its move after the referendum.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century
 
TheBigShort said:
Iran is also an oil provider and is consistently on the radar of the US because it doesn't play to the US tune. But Iran has allies with China and Russia. Russia is, you will hardly believe this, also in diplomatic dispute with the US.
Ukraine has a US friendly government in place and has been making moves for EU membership. In doing so, the possibility of NATO bases in Crimea was a real possibility on the border of Russia.
Crimea has an overwhelming Russian population and also a strategic naval base. That's why Russia made its move after the referendum.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century
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You would hardly believe it when Russia invades another sovereign state to annex a portion of it, and in the process violates a treaty it signed with the US less than 25 years ago that the US would be in diplomatic dispute with it.

Norway is an oil provider. Canada is an oil provider. Saudi Arabia is an oil provider. Iran is an oil provider. Russia is an oil provider.

So what??? It's almost as if you can be an oil provider and be an ally of the US, a friend of the US, neutral to the US, an antagonist to the US, or an enemy of the US.

Venezuela's problems are of its own making.
 
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odyssey06 said:
You would hardly believe it when Russia invades another sovereign state to annex a portion of it, and in the process violates a treaty it signed with the US less than 25 years ago that the US would be in diplomatic dispute with it.
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True, but it is not as simple as that. The 2014 revolution that deposed the existing government and installed a new government is under dispute as to its legitimacy (I'm not taking sides here). That revolution, under dispute, subsequently led to moves of Russia annexing Crimea.
We can go into the rights and wrongs of all this but it has to be considered, why is the US and NATO pushing to have military bases in key strategic regions that would antagonize Russia?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/01/russia-china-us-mlitary-national-security

Is it because Russia and China may move away from trading oil in the US dollar? I think it is.
North Korea is a pawn. As despicable as that regime is, the US is not interested in bringing democracy to that country. It is interested in establishing a US friendly regime, regardless of what ideology it has.

odyssey06 said:
So what??? It's almost as if you can be an oil provider and be an ally of the US, a friend of the US, neutral to the US, an antagonist to t
Click to expand...

Only if you try to to trade oil in anything but US dollars, and / or you try to anything as radical as using the proceeds of oil for the benefit of your own citizens and not allow the giant US banking and corporate elite control of the resources.
Then you antagonize the US, then you attract the attention of its military industrial complex.
 
The US response to Russia would be exactly the same regardless of whether it had oil or not.

The US wouldn't give a damn about N Korea if it wasn't being run by nut jobs who assassinate their own relatives and are building nuclear weapons. I am sure the US would prefer another S Korea but they would settle with any kind of sane Chinese puppet that didn't rock the boat. Regime change in N Korea will happen when the Chinese say so. I think it would be much better for the region and all Koreans if China did that sooner rather than later rather than allow this luanatic to start a region wide war.
 
Lest there be any doubt. I'm not advocating the measures now being taken by the Maduro regime which amount to totalitarianism, not socialism.
It was mentioned by another poster that;

Sarenco said:
Given its massive oil resources and proximity to major markets, Venezuela should have a standard of living in line with Norway.
Click to expand...

Prior to the assent of Chavez through democratic means, an excerpt from Wiki

"Once back in the presidential palace, Caldera confronted the Venezuelan banking crisis of 1994. He re-imposed exchange controls, which Pérez's administration had lifted as part of a general financial liberalization (unaccompanied by effective regulation, which contributed to the banking crisis). The economy had suffered under the falling oil price, which led to a collapse in government revenues. The steel corporation Sidor was privatized, and the economy continued to plummet. Fulfilling an election promise, Caldera released Chávez and pardoned all the military and civilian conspirators during the Pérez regime. The economic crisis continued, and by the 1998 elections the traditional political parties had become extremely unpopular[citation needed]; an initial front-runner for the presidency in late 1997 was Irene Saez. Ultimately, Hugo Chávez Frías was elected President."

In other words, Venezuela, despite its vast oil resources was a basket case, with or without socialism.
So the people, through democratic means, voted to try socialism through the election of Chavez. This in turn led to US interference, sanctions, attempted coup etc.
Venezuela is a mess not because of socialism, but because of an economic war over the control of its resources between the sovereignty of the people expressed through democratic means versus the corporate interests backed by US government.
 
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TheBigShort said:
Oil is only bought and sold in US dollars. Iraq under Saddam tried to start trading in euros in 2001.
He was subsequently blamed for funding Al'Qaeda and accused of WMD. We know the outcome of that.
Gaddaffi was chair of an African Union Congress that sought to bring about a new currency (like the Euro) backed by gold and used to trade oil. We know what happened to him.
Iran is also an oil provider and is consistently on the radar of the US because it doesn't play to the US tune. But Iran has allies with China and Russia. Russia is, you will hardly believe this, also in diplomatic dispute with the US.
Ukraine has a US friendly government in place and has been making moves for EU membership. In doing so, the possibility of NATO bases in Crimea was a real possibility on the border of Russia.
Crimea has an overwhelming Russian population and also a strategic naval base. That's why Russia made its move after the referendum.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century
Click to expand...

Russia has been shown incredible disrespect this past few decades, would the USA allow Canada or Mexico join a pact with the former Soviet union back in the day ?, pat Buchanan ( a conservative) has written extensively on this
 
Firstly a word of thanks to the OP for this tread. It goes a long way to re-affirming my belief that socialism and socialist thinkers offer an inherently dangerous philosophy and ideology.

We have the usual excuses and there's probably more:

Straight out the bat we have a reference to a known conspiracy theorist. The opening line is hilarious "Alternative take on the economic crisis in Venezuela" - you got that right at least OP, it's alternative alright! When it's pointed out that globalresearch.ca is run by a nutjob and extreme left wing conspiracy theorist, the OP defends by saying "Of course, that's the whole point, research." Nice "research"!

We have revisionism :
All this is Maduro's fault...Saint Chavez, the great leader did only good.

We have revisionism :
Things were dandy until the big, bad USA came along.

We have more justification:
Sure, wasn't Saint Chavez freely elected? Course he was, he was promising his people the sun, moon and stars and for a while we have able to give it to them. But as happens all socialists, he eventually run out of other people's money!

We have more conspiracy:
If only those pesky Venezualan's traded their oil in dollars, the big, bad US would leave them alone!

We have denial:
This time it's Maduro who is a totalitarian. Other times / countries, it's Central Planning, a dictator or maybe even something else. The key point here is that it's not and never is the fault socialism!


I would have though that the country with the largest oil reserves in the world would have enough leverage with the largest consumer in the world. In fact, I would have thought they would be bestest mates.

If socialism was any good someone somewhere would have implemented it and others seeing how good it was would have implemented it. Guess what? It's a scam and nowhere has it worked and any countries that have tried it have failed.

So there you have it people, Socialism....the road to serfdom indeed!
 
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