Latin America
Related: About this forumUS To Venezuela “Resistance is Futile”
US To Venezuela Resistance is Futile
By: jbade Saturday March 14, 2015 9:18 am
US To Venezuela Resistance is Futile
~ snip ~
From the Intercept:
by Glenn Greenwald
The White House on Monday announced the imposition of new sanctions on various Venezuelan officials, pronouncing itself deeply concerned by the Venezuelan governments efforts to escalate intimidation of its political opponents: deeply concerned. President Obama also, reportedly with a straight face, officially declared that Venezuela poses an extraordinary threat to the national security of the U.S. a declaration necessary to legally justify the sanctions.
Today, one of the Obama administrations closest allies on the planet, Saudi Arabia, sentenced one of that countrys few independent human rights activists, Mohammed al-Bajad, to 10 years in prison on terrorism charges. That is completely consistent with that regimes systematic and extreme repression, which includes gruesome state beheadings at a record-setting rate, floggings and long prison terms for anti-regime bloggers,executions of those with minority religious views, and exploitation of terror laws to imprison even the mildest regime critics.
Absolutely nobody expects the deeply concerned President Obama to impose sanctions on the Saudis nor on any of the other loyal U.S. allies from Egypt to the UAE whose repression is far worse than Venezuelas. Perhaps those who actually believe U.S. proclamations about imposing sanctions on Venezuela in objection to suppression of political opposition might spend some time thinking about what accounts for that disparity.
and further:
As for Obamas decree that Venezuela now poses an extraordinary threat to the national security of the United States, is there anyone, anywhere, that wants to defend the reasonability of that claim? Think about what it says about our discourse that Obama officials know they can issue such insultingly false tripe with no consequences.
More:
http://my.firedoglake.com/blog/2015/03/14/us-to-venezuela-resistance-is-futile/
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The boogie man of the Supreme Court appointments, don't you know....and Hillary will be worse, because foreign policy experience, and Bill!
Too bad there isn't a decent Republican left in the world...as a reasonable alternative to this.
newfie11
(8,159 posts)I don't have an answer. The wealthy run the repugs and seem to be infiltering the Democratic Party. Money talks
forest444
(5,902 posts)so who knows how many taxpayer dollars they'll (illegally) squander on the Venezuelan coup this time.
I don't much care for Maduro, and believe the Venezuelan people may be better off without him; the scorched earth campaign his opponents have waged on Venezuela has obviously cancelled out any benefits the Chávez/Maduro policies brought them, and the country will no doubt benefit from having the screws taken off them (at first anyway).
But as the Latin American dictators we helped install in the '70s proved, the cost to U.S. interests and reputation can be severe. Nixon and the Air America crowd at the CIA thought they were doing "U.S. interests" a great service putting these thugs in power at the time, and corporate America thought so too - until these dictatorships nearly bankrupted several U.S. banks (BofA, Chemical, Manny-Hanny, etc) in the 1980s under $300 billion in bad debts.
That was the direct cost to U.S. interests; the cost these thugs and cocaine republics have had on America's international standing have been simply immeasurable.