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    Bad leadership has destroyed Venezuela but one wonders who benefits from the policy of economic sanctions practiced by the US and other countries, which are hurting the common people even more?

    The Empire Files’ Abby Martin says that Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis has been manufactured by the local elite colluding with the US. Until recently, Martin was on the payroll of the Venezuelan government’s satellite TV network, teleSUR but her show’s budget was cut, due to the impact of US economic sanctions. She joins Lee Camp to tell the “Bolivarian Revolution’s” side of the story. I am running this video not because I agree with her but because I don’t. This is not to say that everything she says is false. I think it’s important to listen to all sides of a story.

    Given the long history of US meddling in all of of Latin America and the likely involvement of the CIA in the 2002 failed coup against Hugo Chávez, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that what’s occurring in Venezuela is a massive asset-stripping event and a scramble by powerful interests to control the world’s largest underground oil reserves through economic warfare.

    Venezuela’s recession is the largest in the history of the Western Hemisphere, almost twice as large as the US’ Great Depression, with inflation hitting 61,000% as of last week and the economy shrinking by more than 30% over the previous 2 years.

    How did Latin America’s richest country go bust?

    Pressed by a subscriber, I spent all day researching the past 17 years of Venezuela’s history to answer that question and if there was ever a case where the truth of a situation depends on who’s telling it, this is it.

    While it can be agreed that the current chaos is being exploited and that the opposition party might be sabotaging the ruling Socialist regime in every way possible (if what Abby Martin says is true, and who could blame them, after their businesses had been stolen and nationalized by the ruling party and commerce has been incapacitated by reams of bureaucratic red tape), nobody can say that the string of bad decisions that have culminated in this chaos weren’t made by Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro. Attempts to assign blame elsewhere are just not true.

    Hugo Chávez was a charismatic Robin Hood-type figure who seized the opportunity caused by high oil prices in the mid aughts and early teens to embark on a disorganized program to redistribute the wealth of Venezuela, taking on billions of dollars of foreign debt to finance many social programs.

    The vast income from increased petroleum revenues was totally mismanaged, with no “rainy day” funds set aside. While other oil-producing nations, like Kazakhstan, took advantage of this market boom to create robust financial buffers for themselves, Chávez spent all of the money, like it was going out of style.

    Venezuela’s economy had been wracked by an oil glut in the mid-1990s. Rather than creating incentives to diversify the economy so that it could be more resilient to oil busts, Chávez nationalized the major industries and infrastructure and he ballooned the government bureaucracy with redundant agencies, which were expensive and unproductive. He also did nothing to stem corruption.

    Because oil prices were very high for a decade, it was easy for Venezuela to pay their bills – and for Chávez to look like a hero. Everything seemed to be working – if you can call stealing people’s businesses “working” – but as soon as oil prices went back down, the non-diversified economy, now further crippled by being nationalized began to falter, the imports became unaffordable and the foreign debts became unpayable. And then Chávez got cancer.

    Chávez’ hand-picked successor, Nicolás Maduro has ruled by decree since shortly after his contested election in 2013. In May of 2017, Venezuela’s opposition-majority congress was dissolved with legislative powers assigned to a supreme court staffed by judges controlled by Maduro. The Organization of American States (OAS) called this a “self-coup”. Abby Martin might tell you that it was necessary to dissolve congress because it was totally obstructionist but there is absolutely no way to justify his dissolution of the legislative branch of government! Sorry, Abby!

    Venezuela’s non-compliance with its own constitution led to the final nail in its coffin: US economic sanctions, starting in July 2017, followed by similar sanctions from Canada and Panama. With Venezuela’s ability to finance debt restricted to only 30 days, this has destroyed its financial system. Venezuela has mainly been servicing its $150 billion debt with $21 billion in gold reserves, which are expected to be gone by early 2018. Earlier hopes of opposition leaders, of restructuring their debts through the IMF, in a deal similar to that of Greece have gone out the window with the sanctions.

    The hyperinflation, combined with the inability to create credit has led to a humanitarian crisis, with over 2 million people fleeing the country so far and an ecological crisis caused by oil wells that are not being maintained and leaking masses of toxic crude into South America’s largest lake, Maracaibo.

    Is it right and is it fair for powerful governments to add to the affliction of millions of innocent people? No. This is war. How will a people who have on average lost 24lbs (11kg) over the past year from lack of food ever turn this situation around?

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    20 comments

    • In modern Euro Socialist economic models, the banks’ CIA cult has worked in a cooperative manner with the Queen of England’s closest allies, while a subersive manner against America’s neighbors. Curious thing that.

      When planning subersive and colonil growth events, isn’t the end game always about controlling the distribution (theft) of those natural resources?

    • I could not believe the comments about Port Arthur. Obviously no research was done on the actual shooting. How could a man with an IQ 66 or anybody else for that matter possibly head shoot 19 people in 90 seconds from the right hip, especially as Martin Bryant used to shoot LEFT HANDED.

    • The USA “IS” the Most EVIL empire EVER created by SATANTANIC /VATICAN power…the SSP included.
      They YET to “Awaken” to the FACT that OIL is a “Obsolete” form of Energy, yet They are using it in their “SECRET Space Program” working like the one portraid it the Movie: “Elysium”.
      The whole country (USA) was STOLEN from the “Native American’s” over 200+ years ago…and they are STILL “Stealing” from anything of value fro Nations all over the Planet.
      THE USA IS A “NAZI” EMPIRE TRYING TO “ACT” LIKE THEY ARE “FREEDOM FIGHTERS”!
      They are also helping bring in the so-called “New World Order” too.

    • check out florida maquis ‘s youtube about how this disaster called venezuela, has
      happened, clue it has to do with oil. re: doesn’t it always ?

    • Mighty thin grounds blaming Chavez for mis-management if one is forced to account for the scope of his problem, that of overcoming seven or eight decades of extreme corruption and black gold company greed, backed by extreme poverty and strong arm ernforced general fear among Vz’s millions.

      I’d also venture that his ‘advisors’ probably have a large degree of responsibility…bet there was heavy US Ivy League influence.

      Face it AB, your values here relfect a degree of blue blood disdain which cuts no quarter for these attempts to right a ship that was/is under constant undermine by $$$$$$$$’s and greed and power lust.

      One thing can be stated and that is that Chavez/Maduro did not channel the ‘loans’ to thier own accounts…that we know of publicly anyway.

      • FU with your “blue blood disdain”. My Brazilian grandmother went to jail for being a Communist, did yours? I grew up inculcated as a Socialist, as an Atheist. That world is not something I picked up in my twenties and that transformed my parochial worldview. It was the worldview that I was raised with.

        I acknowledge that what is happening in Venezuela is horrible, that these Globalist predators are not to be messed with and that unfortunately, Chávez and Maduro were not up to the task. I looked at the situation because you asked me to as fairly as I could, having spent time in Latin America all my life and lived there for over 5 years, during a period of hyperinflation, something you know nothing about. Try making a living, as I did with hyperinflation.

        I don’t think Chávez was corrupt but Maduro is. One example was a $35 million bribe he took from the Brazilian mega infrastructure company Odebrecht.

    • I really like Abby, she is intelligent, courageous and articulate. I believe her heart is right, but her head is where the sun don’t shine and it makes my heart ache that she is so bereft of a solid classic education that she is doomed to a lifetime of useless socialist twit.

      Latin America was founded on top down authoritarian governments and has always been vulnerable to either fascist or communist collectivist romances – as is poor Abby and many of her generation because of centralized government day care centers which did not exist in the US until about 1960 or so when the federal courts and teachers colleges waged war on local school boards – and won!

      Oil and central banking is fundamental to 21st century economies and only foolish people tilt at that windmill, expecting to wrest control from them with angry mobs of disgruntled fools wearing red shirts or black ski masks. Whoever they succeed in “electing” will have to make peace with the oil and banking oligarchs if they expect to live out their days and everyone gets back to where they started. Orgasmic mobocracy accomplishes nothing useful and wastes everyones time and wealth on economic nonsense.

      Abby is reporting on the obvious and I hope she is permitted to continue doing it as much as I disagree with her socialist leanings.

      • Lol! So you are both from the “extreme left” and the “extreme right” at the same time? Lol! Marvel needs to invent a new superhero who can do that since these must be truly remarkable powers!

    • You are destroying your credibility with this bs about what happened in Venezuela. The US of A created the problem and you know it. Seems your extreme right wing side is showing more & more.

      • Disagree. Reading is something many acquire, reading comprehension is something only few master. The article clearly identifies the culprit, the zio-usa-cia deep swamp, which fully exploited Venezuela to the max. As the Economic Hitman would say, ‘we were in’. When one claw presses the jugular, and the other starts squeezing the balls too much, discontent ensues. And revolutionaries are not born, they are always created, (yes, by the same zio-usa-cia evil) to justify the brutal suppression of the discontent. Allowing those who desperately try to liberate the country from the deadly grips, to bring in false hope, to max the suffering, because the claw on the jugular remaines. The sickness of IMF involvement in financial setup and subsequent destruction of ‘disobedient’ countries is part of this planetary cancer.
        So as I read the article, the author quite clearly pointed the situation out, knowledgeably, being quite well informed about South America’s happenings, about the unspeakable corruption with which the same zio-hydra is destroying all the countries there.

      • Lets stop attacking the messenger and instead make a meaningful contribution. We all know the US has meddled in Latin America ever since the early days of the Rockefeller’s. It would be naive to think the US lost interest since then, but it is also irresponsible to right across the board blame the US for the chaos. That is, unless one is a communist, then it makes perfect sense to blame the US for everything wrong.

        • There were a lot of clips I could have run but I went with Abby’s, to have that side of the story told.

          Being half-Brazilian, where a US-backed military dictatorship was installed in 1964 and having lived there during the dictatorship and spending lots of time, as well during the Socialist oil boom years under Lula, I understand the position of Chavistas, that a sovereign Venezuela would not be tolerated by the Powers-that-Be.

          Chávez might not have understood who the actual PTB was, which might have been a part of the problem. He might have thought that his battle was with the US, especially as the US under Dubya on a raging Neocon tear, embarking on a 20-year juggernaut through the Middle East. He might not have understood that the US had been successively hijacked since the late 1940s by Globalists and Neocons.

          I don’t think that this distinction between the Globalists and of the US as a longtime tool of the Globalists is clearly understood by Latin Americans, let alone by Americans. I know that I didn’t understand this until recently.

          The article wasn’t dealing in hypotheticals; “If the PTB would only leave poor Venezuela alone and let it have self-determination”. I guess I’m too jaded to waste my time even going there – that’s just not how the world works! I was trying to find out what happened. If Chávez and Maduro can’t be held responsible for the failures of their policies and of their actions (and of Maduro’s corruption), there is no way that country can move forward.

          The Globalists are a formidable criminal cabal that Trump is scarcely winning the battle against – and he actually DOES have the support of the military and part of the intelligence establishment, which is a LOT more than the Bolivarianos ever had – and he still might lose.

          • So, I had written the above to a subscriber in Venezuela who had replied to the newsletter. She was born in Puerto Rica but has lived in Caracas for the past 45 years and is pro-Maduro. This is what she said:

            “Dear Alexandra, thanks you for writing. Chavez was very well inform of world situation and world powers. But NATO and USA are it’s face. It’s a pity “they” distort so much his image. He was brilliant but not a Robin Hood. I hope Lula can get out of jail and be next president in Brazil. See what happened in Nicaragua. Too similar to ”guarimbas ” in Venezuela. With many of the same actors burning, killing and doing disasters all over. Why? Can it be the future canal? Or the bad example being socialist or trying to be? And Paraguay? And Honduras? And what happen with Dilma? And now Lula in jail? See what happen with Correa. I pray AMLO will have better luck in Mexico. But it’s going to be very difficult. And Colombia, my God, they are Israel in South America. Check it, the military USA bases surrounding Venezuela and a lot of much more dirty things. It seems the movement Chavez start , the progressive movement it’s a real threat to the Globalist.

            “Believe me, there is not a humanitarian crisis in Venezuela. It’s an excuse for invasion. There are problems but not a humanitarian crisis. They, whatever “they” are, know that they cannot overthrow Maduro with votes nor with economic punishments. After Maduro announced the new Bolivar was going to be based on the Petro(digital currency) they tried to kill him and all his ministers and the military. They fail. What is next? Invasion? This is more complicated than one could think.

            “Thank you for your wonderful work, God bless you.”

    • According to DHS we currently have 650,000 visa overstays from Venezuela. These people, malcontents, fled their homeland instead of squaring away the mess in their own country. Like the Cubans before them they all want something for nothing that the Communists lure their votes with. Even now Manduro has widespread support. The masses got exactly what they voted for. Same thing happened to the US with the sheep voting in a homosexual marxist for 8 years.
      Weston has been overrun as their money flowed into Broward real estate. So we have a slug of these illegals loading up our school and draining our local government services. Like the Cubans they refuse to learn english or respect our culture.
      SE Florida is the honey pot all these invaders flee to. Few if ever leave because they can sponge off what we have built.

      • John – there are many reasons why, but they are trying to implement their
        agenda 21 / 2030 measures. They must collapse the u.s. first, like they have
        done in the u.k. they are burning down the areas where they know they can
        get away with it, and selling the water rights to nestle’ and fiji and others who
        have all their people in all the right places to implement the policies to further
        the takeover. next we will be paying for the air we breathe. check out stopthecrime.net
        for more information about these essentially corporate takeovers of all
        aspects of our existence… wake up wake up

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