Trump White House was warned sanctions on Venezuela could fuel migration
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Washington(CNN)
President Donald Trump on Monday urged Venezuelan military officials to back the country's self-declared interim president Juan Guaido and allow humanitarian aid to flow into Venezuela.
Speaking in Miami as humanitarian aid remained stalled at the Venezuelan border, Trump decried President Nicolas Maduro as a "Cuban puppet" and warned officials who have helped keep him in power that "the eyes of the entire world are upon you." The speech was Trump's latest effort to ramp up the public pressure on the Venezuelan autocrat following a series of US-led sanctions and diplomatic maneuvers aimed at ousting Maduro.
Venezuela was probably where Bolton had the most influence on Trump.
Remember that weird A-Team outtake coup attempt?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-40426642.amp
It was Harris as Border Czar that let them scurry across the border.
US reimposes oil sanctions on Venezuela as hopes for a fair presidential election fades
The Biden administration reimposed crushing oil sanctions on Venezuela in a rebuke to President Nicolas Maduro.
apnews.com
I’m not familiar with him but I doubt he has 406 separate accounts on a single platform
Opposition leader
Google translate
Venezuela and the entire world know that violence is the last resort of the Maduro regime.Now, after the resounding and unappealable electoral victory that we Venezuelans achieved on July 28, the regime's response is murder, kidnapping and persecution.I alert the world about the cruel and repressive escalation of the regime, which to date has more than 177 arbitrary arrests, 11 forced disappearances and at least 16 murders in the last 48 hours.That is Maduro's criminal response to the Venezuelan people who took to the streets as a family, as a community, to defend their sovereign decision to be free. These crimes will not go unpunished.To the relatives of those murdered, to the prisoners, to those persecuted, to those injured for defending the electoral victory of July 28, I send you my word of solidarity and my conviction that we are going to consolidate the victory we have obtained.I have told you that we are going to the end and we are going to the end! Now we have a new reason: the sacrifice that you make and have made. I love them.
Google translate
Venezuela and the entire world know that violence is the last resort of the Maduro regime.Now, after the resounding and unappealable electoral victory that we Venezuelans achieved on July 28, the regime's response is murder, kidnapping and persecution.I alert the world about the cruel and repressive escalation of the regime, which to date has more than 177 arbitrary arrests, 11 forced disappearances and at least 16 murders in the last 48 hours.That is Maduro's criminal response to the Venezuelan people who took to the streets as a family, as a community, to defend their sovereign decision to be free. These crimes will not go unpunished.To the relatives of those murdered, to the prisoners, to those persecuted, to those injured for defending the electoral victory of July 28, I send you my word of solidarity and my conviction that we are going to consolidate the victory we have obtained.I have told you that we are going to the end and we are going to the end! Now we have a new reason: the sacrifice that you make and have made. I love them.
Henchmen of the narco-communist regime remain outside the residence of the Argentine embassy in Caracas and surround it.Right now, after cutting off the power supply, they are looking to take over this diplomatic headquarters.
Trump put sanctions on a corrupt state. Democrats would have given them pallets of cash.
Democrats knock down the border wall and pay room and board for any and every illegal. But blame Trump.
Democrats are a zero accountability party backed by non stop media propaganda.
Democrats knock down the border wall and pay room and board for any and every illegal. But blame Trump.
Democrats are a zero accountability party backed by non stop media propaganda.
Well after all the US has never sanctioned anyone else, right? 🙄🙄🙄
Venezuela USED to be a wealthy country. Huge oil reserves assured it a source of revenue and prosperity.
It’s estimated that nearly 7 million Venezuelans have fled the country. Probably tired of all that prosperity…
Venezuela has long been a disaster, and those sanctions were just a last straw. We haven’t been friendly with them for many moons, seeing as we hate communist countries that don’t have the world’s largest manufacturing labor force.
This is telling in the article where they pretend Trump is to blame for something decades in the making, and then the last paragraph explains Biden lifted the sanctions in exchange m for a fair election, and then re-imposed them when Maduro rigged the election.
When Venezuelans knew they had their liberties stolen from them they..... lit candles....
Thank god every day for that 2nd amendment fellas.
Thank god every day for that 2nd amendment fellas.
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lol. The Cuban special forces in sweat pants patrolling the streets of Venezuela!
Sad story in Venezuela. Painted it Red and the 10 ton gorilla hates red, especially in his back yard. Cuba and Venezuela cannot exist in a modern sense without access to the US economy. Lucky for the Venezuelan population, they can leave quite easily. Cubans are on an island and there aren’t a lot of boats.
In 2012, Venezuela banned private sales of firearms and ammunition with the intention of lowering crime rates. The army, police, and certain groups trusted by the government (colectivos) are exempt from the ban and can buy firearms from state-owned manufacturers.[3] In 2013 Venezuela stopped issuing new firearm licenses,[4] and in 2017, the government banned the carrying of firearms in public places.[5] The government declared that more than 15,000 firearms were confiscated in 2018. Sixty disarmament centres were created in the country and the penalty for illegal firearm possession was raised to twenty years imprisonment.[6]
According to the government, the only people who should carry guns are government agents.[7]
Caracas, Venezuela – Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido arrived at a rally of several hundred waiting supporters last month in San Bernardino, a middle-class Caracas neighbourhood.
The stage where Guaido was set to speak was at the bottom of a long narrow street, where men, women and children had gathered.
Not long after Guaido arrived, tear gas engulfed the area, thrown by masked and heavily armed civilians on motorcycles.
From the stage, an organiser appealed to the crowd to crouch down, stay calm and not run, especially given the large number of elderly people and children there.
As soon as the gas dissipated, Guaido got on the stage just as more motorcycled men began firing live rounds, presumably to frighten off the opposition leader. He refused to budge. On this occasion, no one was killed or injured.
Venezuelans call these irregular armed gangs colectivos or collectives, while the UN Human Rights Commission describes them as para-police, or paramilitary forces loyal to President Nicolas Maduro.
Government opponents and protesters fear them far more than the police or the National Guard.
For years, they have served as an unofficial, parallel force to confront demonstrators with impunity. Often, they do not bother to cover their faces or hide their identities, as they move in to “keep social order” on behalf of Hugo Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution.
But for embattled President Maduro and his supporters, the collectivos are likened to “angels of socialism”.
So, starting under the Obama administration, the U.S. began imposing sanctions on Venezuela. But at first they were very limited. They were really just focused on a few members of the Maduro regime that were responsible for carrying out violent reprisals against protesters in Venezuela.
But, really, under Trump, and as we exclusively reported in this story, despite the warnings of DHS officials and classified reports about the potential outmigration effects of these sanctions, the Trump administration really choked off the main source of export revenue. Ninety-six percent of Venezuela’s export revenue comes from oil sales. And what the U.S. effectively did over the course of three to four years was to block those sales from occurring in international markets. And that really strangled the joint ventures that were sort of the lifeblood of the Venezuelan economy. This means sort of the oil deals that were worked out with U.S. producers with the Venezuelans that were providing them with the revenue that they needed to buy sort of imports from other countries.
And when that happened, you saw — the numbers are just staggering — 71% economic contraction in Venezuela, as you mentioned, three times as great as the U.S. Great Depression and greater than any other peacetime economic collapse recorded in modern history, greater than many other economic collapses of countries at war, including Ukraine after the Russian invasion or Iraq after the U.S. invasion in 2003. So this is a cataclysmic event.
more here
But, really, under Trump, and as we exclusively reported in this story, despite the warnings of DHS officials and classified reports about the potential outmigration effects of these sanctions, the Trump administration really choked off the main source of export revenue. Ninety-six percent of Venezuela’s export revenue comes from oil sales. And what the U.S. effectively did over the course of three to four years was to block those sales from occurring in international markets. And that really strangled the joint ventures that were sort of the lifeblood of the Venezuelan economy. This means sort of the oil deals that were worked out with U.S. producers with the Venezuelans that were providing them with the revenue that they needed to buy sort of imports from other countries.
And when that happened, you saw — the numbers are just staggering — 71% economic contraction in Venezuela, as you mentioned, three times as great as the U.S. Great Depression and greater than any other peacetime economic collapse recorded in modern history, greater than many other economic collapses of countries at war, including Ukraine after the Russian invasion or Iraq after the U.S. invasion in 2003. So this is a cataclysmic event.
more here
Today, the United States imposes three times as many sanctions as any other country or international body, targeting a third of all nations with some kind of financial penalty on people, properties or organizations. They have become an almost reflexive weapon in perpetual economic warfare, and their overuse is recognized at the highest levels of government. But American presidents find the tool increasingly irresistible.
By cutting their targets off from the Western financial system, sanctions can crush national industries, erase personal fortunes and upset the balance of political power in troublesome regimes — all without putting a single American soldier in harm’s way.
But even as sanctions have proliferated, concern about their impact has grown.
In Washington, the swell of sanctions has spawned a multibillion-dollar industry. Foreign governments and multinational corporations spend exorbitant sums to influence the system, while white-shoe law firms and K Street lobbying shops have built booming sanctions practices — in part by luring government officials to cash in on their expertise.
Elsewhere, sanctions have pushed autocratic regimes into black market trade, empowering criminal networks and gangs of smugglers. U.S. adversaries are ramping up their efforts to work together to circumvent the financial penalties. And like military action, economic warfare can leave collateral damage: Sanctions on Venezuela, for instance, contributed to an economic contraction roughly three times as large as that caused by the Great Depression in the United States.
more here
By cutting their targets off from the Western financial system, sanctions can crush national industries, erase personal fortunes and upset the balance of political power in troublesome regimes — all without putting a single American soldier in harm’s way.
But even as sanctions have proliferated, concern about their impact has grown.
In Washington, the swell of sanctions has spawned a multibillion-dollar industry. Foreign governments and multinational corporations spend exorbitant sums to influence the system, while white-shoe law firms and K Street lobbying shops have built booming sanctions practices — in part by luring government officials to cash in on their expertise.
Elsewhere, sanctions have pushed autocratic regimes into black market trade, empowering criminal networks and gangs of smugglers. U.S. adversaries are ramping up their efforts to work together to circumvent the financial penalties. And like military action, economic warfare can leave collateral damage: Sanctions on Venezuela, for instance, contributed to an economic contraction roughly three times as large as that caused by the Great Depression in the United States.
more here
