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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element" dir="ltr"> <font
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<h1 class="reader-title">US Media Ignore – and Applaud –
Economic War on Venezuela</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">By Gregory Shupak - February
19, 2019</div>
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<p>The US media chorus supporting a US overthrow of the
Venezuelan government has for years pointed to the
country’s economic crisis as a justification for
regime change, while whitewashing the ways in which
the US has strangled the Venezuelan economy (<strong>FAIR.org</strong>, <a
href="https://fair.org/home/exonerating-the-empire-in-venezuela/">3/22/18</a>).</p>
<p><em>A UN rapporteur declares that “sanctions kill” (<strong>Independent</strong>, <a
href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/venezuela-us-sanctions-united-nations-oil-pdvsa-a8748201.html">1/26/19</a>)—but
few in Western media are listening to his message.</em></p>
<p>Sister Eugenia Russian, president of <a
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11424">Fundalatin</a>,
a Venezuelan human rights NGO that was established in
1978 and has special consultative status at the UN,
told the <strong>Independent</strong> (<a
href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/venezuela-us-sanctions-united-nations-oil-pdvsa-a8748201.html">1/26/19</a>):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In contact with the popular communities, we
consider that one of the fundamental causes of the
economic crisis in the country is the effect [of]
the unilateral coercive sanctions that are applied
in the economy, especially by the government of the
United States.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While internal errors also contributed to the
nation’s problems, Russian said it’s likely that few
countries in the world have ever suffered an “economic
siege” like the one Venezuelans are living under.</p>
<p>While the <strong>New York Times</strong> and the <strong>Washington
Post</strong> have lately professed profound (and
definitely 100 percent sincere) concern for the
welfare of Venezuelans, neither publication has ever
referred to Fundalatin.</p>
<p>Alfred de Zayas, the first UN special rapporteur to
visit Venezuela in 21 years, told the <strong>Independent</strong>(<a
href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/venezuela-us-sanctions-united-nations-oil-pdvsa-a8748201.html">1/26/19</a>)
that US, Canadian and European Union “economic
warfare” has killed Venezuelans, noting that the
sanctions fall most heavily on the poorest people and
demonstrably cause death through food and medicine
shortages, lead to violations of human rights and are
aimed at coercing economic change in a “sister
democracy.”</p>
<p>De Zayas’ UN <a
href="https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G18/239/31/pdf/G1823931.pdf?OpenElement">report</a> noted
that sanctions “hind[er] the imports necessary to
produce generic medicines and seeds to increase
agricultural production.” De Zayas also cited
Venezuelan economist Pasqualina Curcio, who reports
that “the most effective strategy to disrupt the
Venezuelan economy” has been the manipulation of the
exchange rate. The rapporteur went on to suggest that
the International Criminal Court investigate economic
sanctions against Venezuela as possible crimes against
humanity.</p>
<p>Given that de Zayas is the first UN special
rapporteur to report on Venezuela in more than two
decades, one might expect the media to regard his
findings as an important part of the Venezuela
narrative, but his name does not appear in a single
article ever published in the <strong>Post; </strong>the <strong>Times</strong> has
mentioned him once, but not in relation to Venezuela.</p>
<p><em>Economist Francisco Rodríguez (WOLA, <a
href="https://venezuelablog.org/crude-realities-understanding-venezuelas-economic-collapse/">9/20/18</a>)
points out that oil production in both Venezuela and
Colombia dropped when oil prices fell in 2016–but
Venezuelan production plummeted when the US imposed
financial sanctions in 2017.</em></p>
<p>The economist Francisco Rodríguez <a
href="https://venezuelablog.org/crude-realities-understanding-venezuelas-economic-collapse/">points
out</a> that the sanctions the Trump administration
issued in August 2017 prohibited US banks from
providing new financing to the Venezuelan government,
a key part of the “toxification” of financial dealings
with Venezuela. Rodríguez notes that, in August 2017,
the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network warned
financial institutions that “all Venezuelan government
agencies and bodies…appear vulnerable to public
corruption and money laundering,” and recommended that
some transactions originating from Venezuela be
flagged as potentially criminal. Many financial
institutions then closed Venezuelan accounts,
concerned about the risk of being accused of
participating in money laundering.</p>
<p>Rodríguez says that this handcuffed Venezuela’s oil
industry, the sector most crucial to its economy, with
lost access to credit preventing the country from
obtaining financial resources that could have been
devoted to investment or maintenance. And whereas
previously the Venezuelan government would raise
production by signing joint venture agreements with
foreign partners who would finance investment, Trump’s
sanctions “effectively put an end to these loans.”</p>
<p><em>Mark Weisbrot (<strong>The Nation</strong>, <a
href="https://www.thenation.com/article/trumps-sanctions-make-economic-recovery-in-venezuela-nearly-impossible/">9/7/17</a>):
“The Trump administration has made an open and firm
commitment to regime change through the destruction
of an already debilitated Venezuelan economy.”</em></p>
<p>Mark Weisbrot (<strong>The Nation</strong>, <a
href="https://www.thenation.com/article/trumps-sanctions-make-economic-recovery-in-venezuela-nearly-impossible/">9/7/17</a>)
, also an economist, raised a related issue:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If we step back and look at Venezuela from a
bird’s-eye view, how does a country with 500 billion
barrels of oil and hundreds of billions of dollars’
worth of minerals in the ground go broke? The only
way that can happen is if the country is cut off
from the international financial system. Otherwise,
Venezuela could sell or even collateralize some of
its resources in order to get the necessary dollars.
The $7.7 billion in<a
href="https://www.bloombergquint.com/markets/2017/04/18/venezuela-lawmakers-ask-wall-street-to-stop-aiding-maduro"> gold</a> held
in Central Bank reserves could be quickly
collateralized for a loan; in past years, the US
Treasury department used its clout to make sure that
banks who wanted to finance a swap, such as JPMorgan
Chase and Bank of America, did not do so.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sanctions have kept the Venezuelan government from
accessing financing and dealing with its debt while
hamstringing its most important industry. Given that
US media are writing for a principally US audience,
the damage done by Washington and its partners’
sanctions should be front and center in their
coverage. Exactly the opposite is the case.</p>
<p>Virginia Lopez-Glass of the <strong>New York</strong> <strong>Times</strong> (<a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/25/opinion/venezuela-interim-president-juan-guaido-maduro.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article">1/25/19</a>)
uses 920 words to describe the challenges facing
Venezuelans, but “sanctions” isn’t one of them, even
as she writes about matters to which, as I’ve shown
above, sanctions are directly relevant: “Food and
medicine shortages are widespread. Hundreds have died
from malnutrition and illnesses that are easily
curable with the appropriate treatment.”</p>
<p>Weaponizing hunger in Venezuela in this manner is
dishonest and misleading. Christina M. Schiavoni, a
doctoral researcher at the International Institute of
Social Studies in The Hague, and Ana Felicien and
Liccia Romero, both of whom are Venezuelan scholars,
wrote in <strong>Monthly Review</strong>(<a
href="https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/">6/1/18</a>)
on “overt US aggression toward Venezuela” in the form
of</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the intensifying economic sanctions imposed by the
Obama and Trump administrations, as well as an
all-out economic blockade that has made it extremely
difficult for the government to make payments on
food imports and manage its debt.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><em><a
href="https://fair.org/home/three-reasons-bret-stephens-should-not-be-a-nyt-columnist-and-the-real-reason-he-is-one/">Torture
advocate</a> Bret Stephens (<strong>New York Times</strong>, <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/25/opinion/venezuela-maduro-socialism-government.html">1/25/19</a>)
mocks the idea that sanctions, and not “socialism,”
are responsible for Venezuela’s economic crisis.</em></p>
<p>Bret Stephens’ column in the <strong>Times</strong> (<a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/25/opinion/venezuela-maduro-socialism-government.html">1/28/19</a>)
only mentions the word “sanctions” to complain that
the media supposedly isn’t blaming “socialism” for the
crisis in Venezuela, alleging that</p>
<blockquote>
<p>what you’re likelier to read is that the crisis is
the product of corruption, cronyism, populism,
authoritarianism, resource-dependency, US sanctions
and trickery, even the residues of capitalism
itself.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>After dismissing the idea that the sanctions are a
key part of the problems in Venezuela, Stephens went
on to advocate using them to bring about regime change
in the country, writing that the Trump administration</p>
<blockquote>
<p>should enhance [Guaidó]’s political standing by
providing access to funds that can help him
establish an alternative government and entice
wavering figures in the Maduro camp to switch sides.
It can put Venezuela on the list of state sponsors
of terrorism.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These “funds” presumably refer the money that the US
has seized from Venezuela, and adding the country to
list of “state sponsors of terrorism” automatically
entails hitting it with further sanctions.</p>
<p>The editorial board of the <strong>Washington</strong> <strong>Post</strong> (<a
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/is-the-end-to-venezuelas-nightmare-in-sight/2019/01/24/f8526b66-1ff1-11e9-8e21-59a09ff1e2a1_story.html?utm_term=.fdbbac2e645c">1/24/19</a>)
alleged that Venezuela’s government has “subject[ed]
the country’s 32 million people to a humanitarian
catastrophe,” without referring to what scholars whose
research and writing focuses on Latin America—such as
Laura Carlsen, Sujatha Fernandes, Greg Grandin,
Francisco Dominguez, Noam Chomsky, Aviva Chomsky,
Gabriel Hetland and Venezuelan-born historian Miguel
Tinker Salas—describe (<strong>Common Dreams</strong>, <a
href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/01/24/open-letter-over-70-scholars-and-experts-condemns-us-backed-coup-attempt-venezuela">1/24/19</a>)
as sanctions</p>
<blockquote>
<p>cut[ting] off the means by which the Venezuelan
government could escape from its economic recession,
while causing a dramatic falloff in oil production
and worsening the economic crisis, and causing many
people to die because they can’t get access to
life-saving medicines.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Later, the editorial said that “a US boycott of
Venezuelan oil could endanger ordinary Venezuelans
already coping with critical shortages of food, power
and medicine,” an absurd remark given that the
sanctions they are occluding have had precisely these
effects.</p>
<p><em>A <strong>Washington Post</strong> op-ed (<a
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/24/trumps-america-first-policy-could-work-venezuela/?utm_term=.62bda02b991e">1/24/19</a>)
urges Trump to “ratchet up pressure” on Venezuela,
while insisting that the country “has been driven
into the ground by the repressive socialist policies
pursued by Nicolás Maduro.”</em></p>
<p>Henry Olsen in the <strong>Post</strong> (<a
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/24/trumps-america-first-policy-could-work-venezuela/?utm_term=.ad1223754c66">1/24/19</a>)
wrote as if sanctions are a benign tool that can be
used to usher in a brighter future for Venezuelans,
rather than a key reason that so many of them find
themselves in such a grim condition:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Trump has many levers to pull short of military
intervention to topple Maduro. He could use US
pressure on the global financial system to cut off
regime access to international banks, freezing
access to any secret accounts that the regime — and,
probably, its highest-ranking leaders — established
offshore. He can, as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has
suggested, work with American oil companies that
purchase Venezuelan oil to provide the profits from
those purchases to accounts controlled by Guaidó’s
National Assembly. He can also pressure China, which
has a far more valuable relationship with the United
States than it does with Venezuela, to withdraw its
support. Any or all of these measures would ratchet
up pressure directly on the regime, decreasing its
ability to finance itself and buy support from
security and military figures….</p>
<p>Odds are that increasing financial pressure on the
regime will finally bring about its collapse.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Even if one momentarily sets aside that the sanctions
are <a href="http://www.un-documents.net/a25r2625.htm">illegal
under international law</a> and <a
href="http://www.oas.org/en/sla/dil/inter_american_treaties_A-41_charter_OAS.asp">violate</a>the
charter of the Organization of American States, and
that the US has no right whatsoever to decide who
governs Venezuela, these measures don’t just “ratchet
up pressure” on “<a
href="https://fair.org/home/a-regime-is-a-government-at-odds-with-the-us-empire/">the
regime</a>,” they also kill and immiserate ordinary
Venezuelans.A</p>
<p>The <strong>Post</strong>’s Charles Lane (<a
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-made-the-right-call-on-venezuela-so-what-if-hes-a-hypocrite/2019/01/28/65e26268-231b-11e9-ad53-824486280311_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.5ca5e6a37f26">1/28/19</a>)
wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Apologists for the regime blame US sanctions and
destabilization for Venezuela’s problems. The truth
is that, with the exception of the George W. Bush
administration’s brief, halfhearted support for a <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/apr/21/usa.venezuela">coup
attempt</a> in 2002, Washington—learning the
lessons of ill-fated Cold War interventions—has
shown restraint in dealing with the Caracas regime.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He went on to write that, until the Trump
administration announced limitations on imports of
Venezuelan oil that day, “the United States had traded
with Venezuela and focused economic pressure on regime
leaders and key institutions,” which suggests that the
sanctions exclusively harm the “regime”—again, even if
that were true, it would still be illegal—and amounts
to a lie, given the evidence that the sanctions are
crushing the Venezuelan masses.</p>
<p>Unlike Lane and the rest of the media’s regime change
choir, the US government has acknowledged what it’s
doing to Venezuela. Schiavoni, Felicien and Romero
point to a telling <a
href="https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2018/01/277739.htm">remark</a> that
a senior State Department official made last year:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The financial sanctions we have placed on the
Venezuelan Government has forced it to begin
becoming in default, both on sovereign and PDVSA,
its oil company’s debt. And what we are seeing
because of the bad choices of the Maduro regime is a
total economic collapse in Venezuela. So our policy
is working, our strategy is working and we’re going
to keep it on the Venezuelans.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Thus, the US government acknowledges that it is
knowingly, consciously driving the Venezuelan economy
into the ground, but US media make no such
acknowledgment, which sends the message that the
problems in Venezuela are entirely the fault of the
government, and that the US is a neutral arbiter that
wants to help Venezuelans.</p>
<p>Call this elision what it is: war propaganda.</p>
<p><em>The views expressed in this article are the
author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of
the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.</em></p>
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