Yeah, unfortunately the "poor" who voted for him didn't realize what a tyrant he is. He was smart though - have ta give 'em that. Make sure those who are uninformed are given the power to vote so they'll vote for him because he gave them the power. Now they're living a nightmare. He may not be a dictator (per Grumpy) but he is a tyrant which to me is exactly the same thing.
Really? Mind if I verify that you are on the same planet?
Libya was socialism under a Military Dictator and their lifestyle was better than it is in almost any nation around. Today it is being run the way the US prefers things, more like Haiti than Wall St. Iran under the Shaw from 1953-1979 are the tyrant years, Cuba under the US were the 'tyrant years'. Central America under Dictators that favored United Fruit over the welfare of the locals are the 'tyrant years'.
Repeat a lie often enough only works on 'the collective' and they already appear to be under a spell cast by Walnut and Pete. You must also be a fan of Albright, the wicked witch from the west.
https://venezuelablog.org/more-on-the-effects-of-targeted-sanctions/
December 12, 2014
David Smilde
Yesterday analyst
James “Boz” Bosworth argued that the success of targeted sanctions on Venezuela should not be assessed by whether they strengthen or weaken President Nicolas Maduro’s government. Rather they should be judged on their effects.
The Obama administration and Congress should talk about how they will measure the effectiveness of these Venezuela sanctions. The effect that we should want to see is
1) a reduction in politically-motivated violence and
2) a reduction in political persecution against peaceful protesters and political opponents.
We should look at these metrics at the end of 2015 and judge the sanctions’ potential renewal or revision in 2016 based on whether these sanctions have had a positive or negative effect on those two specific issues and the human rights situation in Venezuela in general.
Boz’s comment is helpful in pushing the US government to define the actual goals that sanctions are intended to achieve and just how they will be measured.
However, I would take issue with two elements of Boz’s argument.
First, the argument that we should focus on the effectiveness of sanctions rather than on whether they strengthen or weaken the Maduro government, suggests that that these two factors are independent from each other. That is clearly not the case. Those of us who think targeted sanctions will be counter-productive argue precisely that they will strengthen the Maduro government in a way that will in fact worsen human rights. This is why PROVEA, Venezuela’s leading human rights group and a strong government critic
has spoken out against the bill.
The issue is not so much the strength of the Maduro government per se but what kind of strength. I would be happy with a popular and strong Maduro government if that strength derived from good economic, social and political policies.
But these kind of targeted sanctions will strengthen the Maduro government in the wrong direction. They will allow it to distract attention from its poor performance. They will undermine what little diversity exists within Chavismo. They will solidify the allegiance of those officials targeted by the sanctions. They will put the opposition on the defense. And they will make regional allies even more uncritical in their support of Maduro.
All of these effects will produce a net reduction of democratic space.
Secondly, Boz’s emphasis on political violence and persecution unduly
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-...ctions-on-venezuela-1521486225-htmlstory.html
Mar. 19, 2018, 1:21 p.m.
By
Tracy Wilkinson
U.S. imposes more sanctions on Venezuela, but no oil ban
(AFP/Getty Images)
The Trump administration imposed fresh economic sanctions on the leftist government of Venezuela on Monday in a move aimed in part at stopping its use of a digital currency. However, it did not impose a long-threatened ban on the country’s oil exports.
U.S. officials say Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s cash-strapped government has introduced a digital currency called the petro to circumvent sanctions and to conceal how much it has bankrupted the once-thriving economy.
https://www.upi.com/US-impact-of-Venezuelan-sanctions-muted/2881521541323/
U.S. impact of Venezuelan sanctions muted
For the week ending March 9, Venezuela was the third-largest exporter of oil to the United States, behind Saudi Arabia.
March 20 (UPI) -- New U.S. sanctions on Venezuelan individuals and digital currency transactions are a largely symbolic move from the White House, a risk consultant group said.
The U.S. Treasury Department followed through on an executive order signed by President
Donald Trump by targeting a digital currency designed to maneuver around
existing sanctions on President
Nicolas Maduro's Venezuela.
"President Maduro decimated the Venezuelan economy and spurred a humanitarian crisis," U.S. Treasury Secretary
Steven Mnuchin said in
a statement. "Instead of correcting course to avoid further catastrophe, the Maduro regime is attempting to circumvent sanctions through the petro digital currency -- a ploy that Venezuela's democratically-elected National Assembly has denounced and Treasury has cautioned U.S. persons to avoid."
The executive action prohibits transactions made with the digital currency on behalf of a Venezuelan government facing increased isolation. Four current and former Venezuelan officials were also targeted for corruption.
https://venezuelanalysis.com/ANALYSIS/13529
1. Funds were frozen for the import of insulin
Ever since President Donald Trump's imposition of US financial sanctions against Venezuela in August, the Venezuelan state has confronted various difficulties trying to import medicines and foodstuffs not produced domestically. The financial blockade directly affects routine international payments for goods and services.
The Venezuelan government has repeatedly condemned this. On Sept. 7, President Nicolas Maduro denounced in the National Constituent Assembly the hold up in an international port of a cargo of over 300,000 doses of insulin, thanks to the "Donald Trump-Julio Borges pact."
2. Colombia's blockade of malaria medicine
On Nov. 3, Vice President Tareck El Aissami,
denounced that Venezuela had purchased in Colombia a shipment of Primaquine, an anti-malaria medicine, but, "Once the laboratory (BSN Medical) knew the final destination was the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela's Health Ministry, it arbitrarily blocked the dispatch of this medicine on the orders of Colombia’s president.”
President Maduro confirmed this saying, "When we already had the money to buy the medicines and went to pay for them, the Colombian government forbade the sale of these anti-malaria medicines to the Venezuelan people. We will purchase them elsewhere, people in Venezuela will not lack the medicines to combat these diseases."
3. Suspension of funds for buying food
One year ago, Freddy Bernal, secretary general of the Local Production and Supply Committees (CLAPs),
denounced that, already back then, Venezuela was suffering an intense blockade of food imports.
He noted that, as part of the financial war against Venezuela, international banks suspended payments to foreign suppliers for three months holding up the arrival of 29 container ships carrying supplies needed to process and produce food products in Venezuela.
4. Blocking of payments for travel by Venezuelan sports teams
But medicines and foods are not the only major expressions of the de facto blockade imposed on Venezuela's people. Sports are also affected.
President Maduro
also denounced in the National Constituent Assembly that, on Sept. 6, an international bank informed the Bolivarian government that it was "impossible" to carry out payments by Venezuela to a U.S. financial institution refusing to process the transfer of US$1.5 million from the Sports Ministry to pay suppliers of airline tickets, accommodation and other needs of leading athletes in various Venezuelan sports delegations.
https://fair.org/extra/we-think-the-price-is-worth-it/
Then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s quote, calmly asserting that U.S. policy objectives were worth the sacrifice of half a million Arab children, has been much quoted in the Arabic press. It’s also been cited in the United States in alternative commentary on the September 11 attacks (e.g., Alexander Cockburn, New York Press, 9/26/01).
But a Dow Jones search of mainstream news sources since September 11 turns up only one reference to the quote–in an op-ed in the Orange Country Register (9/16/01). This omission is striking, given the major role that Iraq sanctions play in the ideology of archenemy Osama bin Laden; his recruitment video features pictures of Iraqi babies wasting away from malnutrition and lack of medicine (New York Daily News, 9/28/01). The inference that Albright and the terrorists may have shared a common rationale–a belief that the deaths of thousands of innocents are a price worth paying to achieve one’s political ends–does not seem to be one that can be made in U.S. mass media.
It’s worth noting that on 60 Minutes, Albright made no attempt to deny the figure given by Stahl–a rough rendering of the preliminary estimate in a 1995 U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report that 567,000 Iraqi children under the age of five had died as a result of the sanctions. In general, the response from government officials about the sanctions’ toll has been rather different: a barrage of equivocations, denigration of U.N. sources and implications that questioners have some ideological axe to grind (Extra!, 3-4/00).
There has also been an attempt to seize on the lowest possible numbers. In early 1998, Columbia University’s Richard Garfield published a dramatically lower estimate of 106,000 to 227,000 children under five dead due to sanctions, which was reported in many papers (e.g. New Orleans Times-Picayune, 2/15/98). Later, UNICEF came out with the first authoritative report (8/99), based on a survey of 24,000 households, suggesting that the total “excess” deaths of children under 5 was about 500,000.
I would warn you about the swamp but you seem to have settled in and look to also be quite comfortable.
‘We Think the Price Is Worth It’
Media uncurious about Iraq policy's effects--there or here
Rahul Mahajan