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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 1/13/19

Guardian Reports More "Good News", Kids are Dying in Venezuela

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[First published by The Greanville Post.]

The Guardian's Tom Phillips' article Venezuela Crisis Takes Deadly Toll on Buckling Health System (January 06, 2019) is more good news for US psychopaths, such as Trump, Bolton and Pompeo. Children are dying in Venezuela. Sanctions are working!

Tom is becoming the Luke Harding of Venezuela. Luke---err, Tom blames all of Venezuela's problems on president Nicolas Maduro. Tom has piled on, repeating the Washington Consensus vilifying Maduro"---that is what "repeaters" do.

If Maduro is illegally and violently removed from office, what will come after? Probably chaos, since there is no united opposition. Chaos is what the US desires, because chaos gives the US an excuse for interventions. A dysfunctional opposition then gives the US the power to be the kingmaker. The US has a self-proclaimed "right" to intervene anywhere, anytime in Latin America, according to the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, and the 1904 "Big Stick" Roosevelt Corollary; followed in 1965 by the Johnson Doctrine, when LBJ invaded the Dominican Republic.

US doctrines do not become internationally laws, and instead usually violate international law. Doctrines are just a "wish-list" of US presidents. The main US foreign policy objective is to promote US corporate exploitation of foreign countries (e.g. the Carter Doctrine).

If the US gets its way in Venezuela, then Venezuela will be ruled by oligarchs, dictators or the military. The Venezuelan people overwhelmingly rejected the 40-years of oligarchy, when they elected Hugo Chavez in 1998. Chavez ran for election on a socialist platform. The US has been trying to overthrow Chavez's socialist movement from the first moment Chavez took office.

In 2002 Bush backed a failed coup. Obama imposed economic sanctions. Trump and his cronies have been planning another coup. This just in from Tom Phillips January 11th: Juan Guaido of the opposition is calling for an international intervention and a military coup. An illegal violent regime change is very likely soon.

After Chavez died of cancer at the age of 58 in 2013, his vice president Nicola's Maduro constitutionally assumed his office. Maduro has been struggling to continue Chavez's socialist programs for the poor. Maduro is no Chavez, but he is trying to carry on Chavez's legacy. Maduro was reelected to his second term in 2018.

Maduro faces many economic problems, much of them stem from the collapsing international oil price in 2015. There are good reasons to believe that the collapse in oil prices was a US-Saudi conspiracy, since the economic victims were Russia and Venezuela, two of the countries the US is trying to regime change. Oil is 95% of Venezuela's revenue from exports, and 25% of its GDP.

The other major problem for Maduro is that on top of collapsing oil prices the US imposed crushing economic sanctions. Tom's article unwittingly exposes the lie that the sanctions were targeted, and not intended as collective punishment of the people. Children are dying! Instead of using dead children as propaganda props, economic sanctions should be immediately suspended, and foreign aid sent to save the lives of these innocent victims. Tom did not mention that in the article. All he had for the dying children was crocodile tears.

The US is stomping on Venezuela's neck, trying to kill socialism. And vengefully killing Venezuelan kids. (Just a few weeks ago, Pompeo mocked Iran, saying---"if you want your people to eat---"). The US is stomping its boot on the neck of socialism throughout Latin America, after years of a "pink tide" of elected progressive governments. It is working, as progressive governments in Latin America are becoming extinct.

Critics of Chavez and Maduro claim that socialism never works. It worked just fine under Chavez, as people were lifted out of poverty. Inequality declined dramatically. Critics blame Chavez and now Maduro for "overspending" on the poor. The strongest economic and military spoiler on the planet declared economic and political war on Venezuela because it "overspent on the poor".

As the US rebounds from one economic crisis to another, one bank bailout to the next, it is obvious to those that can see. Capitalism does not work. The US with its hyper-neoliberalism is 25th on the UN Human Development Index, adjusted for inequality. The US has its own healthcare crisis of 45,000 people dying every year because they cannot afford healthcare. Many of them children, Tom!

Sad how the critics never blame a country's economic problems on over spending for US weapons, concentration of wealth in a few families, or austerity for the people because of crooked debt-imposed austerity by the IMF. Spending on weapons is never enough. The poor are expendable for oligarchs North and South. US healthcare and needed infrastructure suffer from overspending on the military and wars.

Socialism, even a democratic one is a dirty word to the US, because socialist governments use their country's natural resources, and state-owned enterprises for the benefit of the people. US corporations want those resources, privatized state-owned enterprises, and to have poor people as a source of cheap labor. The driver of US foreign policy is what corporations want.

US foreign policy and US corporate exploitation in Latin America increases poverty there. The poor and indigenous people have their land stolen out from under them, and paramilitary death squads enforce their removal. Large land owners, resource corporations and monocrop plantations for export move in, often they are US corporations.

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David is a columnist writing on foreign affairs, economic, and political and social issues. He is an honorary Associate Editor of The Greanville Post, and a former Senior Editor of OpEdNews.com. His articles have been published by OpEdNews, The (more...)
 

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