The US has reimposed economic sanctions against a Venezuelan state-owned mining company and says it could go on to reimpose further sanctions on the country’s oil and gas sector after Venezuela’s Supreme Court barred main opposition candidate Maria Corina Machado from running for president last week.
The US Treasury on Monday revoked General License 43, which had authorized dealings with mining conglomerate CVG-Minerven. The Treasury said US companies have until February 13 to wind down transactions that were previously authorized by that license.
While US economic sanctions against the mining company are unlikely to cause significant damage to the Venezuelan economy, the US State Department has crucially signaled it intends to renew oil and gas sanctions from April 18, if there’s no progress between Venezuela’s authoritarian president Nicolas Maduro and the opposition “particularly on allowing all presidential candidates to compete in this year’s elections,” it said in a statement.
“Democracy is Bad, Actually” - Terminally Online ‘Leftists’
Allowing every single person to run in an election =/ democracy. Years later, when you eventually read an article buried in the back pages of the NYT, that this candidacy was funded and propped by the US government JUST like so many before it, maybe it’ll sink in. Probably not, but maybe this one instance among so many will do the trick.
Proof?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America
“The Congressional Research Service wrote in 2021 that “U.S. efforts to date have failed to dislodge Maduro and enable the convening of free and fair elections” and said that the Biden administration began to review the societal impact of sanctions against Venezuela.”
The extent to which the Biden administration is meddling likely won’t be known until the next president is in office. It always comes out later.
https://jacobin.com/2020/11/operation-condor-cia-latin-america-repression-torture
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/7/16/ameri-coup-a-brief-history-of-us-misdeeds
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jun/29/latin-america-us-allied-forces-reaction
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/18/silence-us-backed-coup-evo-morales-bolivia-american-states
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/us-easing-venezuela-oil-sanctions-response-election-deal-official-2023-10-18/ Also should be noted that these sanctions, left by Biden for three years, are the only mechanism for money to come into Venezuela. Oil is their only source of money. Maduro’s government is deeply despised by the US and western governments due to the nationalization of their oil and mining industries. Sanction oil sales, starve the people. Maduro’s government has ruled under genocidal sanctions and gets the blame for it. The US should let Venezuela breathe and eat.
Throwing this on your pile, too. DEA spying operation on Venezuela with people who might have also stolen hundreds of dollars from Venezuela.
https://apnews.com/article/venezuela-dea-drugs-cocaine-maduro-spying-law-e34d01bf3f4af828a96a06170aed27f2
I believe they’re referencing how Trump’s administration tried to do a coup in Venezuela, Operation Gideon. Terrible idea from a terrible administration.
Doesn’t change the fact that Maduro is an autocrat, imo, but they’re not wrong that the US consistently puts their thumb on the scale of a lot of elections, especially in the western hemisphere. I still think it’s insane to support this kind of election barring because it’s clearly an easy tool to unjustly benefit incumbents. It’s a totally different story with Trump because he violated his oath of office. With this woman, people just don’t like the policies she’s proposing, in plain day, to the voters. Let them pick who their leader is.
Obama did coups, Bush II did coups, Clinton did coups, Bush I did coups, Reagan did coups. This isn’t a Republican problem, it is a US problem.
I don’t think it’s fair to characterize Libya as a coup, the west just fanned the flames and Gaddafi was a terrible autocrat. I hope you don’t think Euromaidan was a coup. Clinton’s Haiti invasion certainly didn’t work out but it had popular support in Haiti at the time. Not all military intervention is created equal. None under this administration, either
I’m not going to compare coups, of which there are more than you star, because an incredible and dangerous power dynamic is at play. How is it democratic for the US to do these coups when their own citizens are told lies to justify them. Those statements often prove to be false justifications. The US does this shit not for democracy but often for their own hegemony and/or the desires of the capitalist class to extract resources from these nations. If everyone acted like the US, I think even you would see the forest for the trees.
I was just listing the ones democrats “own”. The egregious ones I can think of all belong to Republicans besides Bay of Pigs. I agree with you that much of the US media has manufactured consent when legitimate justification didn’t exist, but I disagree that this is unique to the US. You can watch Russian state media manufacture consent for the war in Ukraine on YouTube, and they’ve regularly tried to assassinate Zelenskyy. Iran props up the Houthis that are also attempting to overthrow Yemen’s government. The French have a long history of it, the British, I could go on. Don’t get me wrong, I find military intervention ineffective in doing anything other than benefiting Raytheon shareholders in most cases, but the only thing that differentiates the US from much of the rest of the world is the ability to project power much more significantly.
Do you believe someone who foments an insurrection like Trump should be allowed to participate in a good faith election? I don’t know the specifics of what’s happening in Venezuela but simply barring someone from an election isn’t the full context you need to properly evaluate the decision.
Maduro is deeply unpopular and the authoritarian regime in Venezuela has been trying to avoid having actual elections.
Sounds like it’s a similar charge for her. She was implicated in some kind of conspiracy against the government, including getting sanctions on them and possible assassinations, as well as corruption and fermenting violent protests. It could all be faked or trumped up, but it is interesting that everybody here is assuming it is while the US literally is going through the same thing right now, except we might end up with a fascist President if we don’t get him off the fucking ballot.
You can disagree with Maduro and his autocratic actions without supporting sanctions that mostly harm the civilian population.