More on the US sanctions against Venezuela, which amount to an economic blockade:
https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/us-sanctions-are-killing-venezuelans Sanctions are political, not legal instruments. Their goal is to cause pain and suffering in order to force populations to overthrow their own governments and surrender their sovereignty.... The first war-like measure was Executive Order 13692, signed by President Barack Obama on March 8, 2015, which declared Venezuela an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States”.... In 2017, President Donald Trump announced a “maximum pressure” campaign to block any chance of economic recovery and accelerate Venezuela’s social collapse. Trump likewise began to threaten that “all options were on the table”. The siege especially targeted the country’s main source of revenue: the oil industry. In August 2017, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control imposed financial sanctions against state oil company PDVSA followed by an export embargo in January 2019.... Food purchases became an obstacle course as Venezuela’s public and private sectors lost access to the international system of payments and banks discontinued services out of fear of running afoul of US sanctions. For example, in November 2017, Puerto Rico’s Italbank closed an account with Venezuela’s Central Bank because of “concerns about reputational risk”. The small bank was used by Caracas to process food and medicine payments. In July 2019, Washington fully established starvation as a main foreign policy goal by targeting a host of individuals and companies allegedly connected to Venezuela’s Local Food Supply and Production Committees (CLAPs), created by the Maduro government in 2016 to distribute low-cost food boxes to working-class families. One notorious case was Colombian-born businessman Alex Saab, who was targeted for allegedly profiting from overvalued state contracts. In September 2019 and January 2021, the US Treasury announced more sanctions against three individuals and almost 30 companies for supplying the CLAP program. The starvation tactics were exacerbated in June 2020, when Trump nixed oil-for-food swap deals. As a result, an estimated 6-7 million working-class families suffered the consequences of fewer and lower quality CLAP products while food insecurity became widespread amidst shortages and soaring prices. Hunger came alongside diminished access to healthcare and other basic human rights as the Venezuelan people were hit by these invisible bombs called sanctions.... -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#29448): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/29448 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/104937530/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
