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Venezuela Can Bring Putin to his Knees

by Greg Palast

"I’m sure Putin is laughing when he hears Biden list his new so-called “sanctions” which are as serious as canceling Putin‘s Walmart discount card.

It’s about the oil, Mr. Biden. The price of oil. The more Ukrainians Putin kills, the higher the price of oil.

Right now, Russian tanks have pushed the price of oil past $100 a barrel. That’s a windfall worth an additional half a billion dollars a day to Russia’s treasury. With 43% of Russia’s entire federal budget coming from oil and gas royalties, Putin doesn’t care if his oligarchs are barred from getting tickets to see Hamilton.

The doubling of energy prices over the next year would bring Putin a quarter trillion dollar windfall.

Want to stop Putin‘s tanks? Turn off his war windfall.

How? Unleash the largest reserve of oil on the planet: Lift the cruel, crazy, unjustified embargo of Venezuela.

Venezuela is capable of pumping 2 million barrels of oil a day for export. If Biden announces an end to the embargo, the price of oil will nosedive in 20 minutes. However, the US and Europe have laid siege to Venezuela, stopping everything from food to supplies of parts to get its oil industry back up and running.

Stop choking Venezuela’s economy and starving the Venezuelan people, who are no enemies of America, who invaded no one, and the price of oil will collapse.

The Biden administration continues to prosecute Donald Trump‘s mad embargo of Venezuela. The embargo was triggered by Venezuela‘s insistence on taking back control of its oil industry—and, Heaven forbid, taxing Exxon."

Full Article: [gregpalast.com]

nogod4me 8 Feb 25
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Very helpful article, thank you. Are you aware of any drawbacks to lifting the embargo on Venzuela?

Nickolas Maduro is a ruthless dictator which is why the embargo exists.

@racocn8 Has the embargo been effective?

The embargo has not been effective in terms of pressuring Maduro to step down. It may have worsened the poverty of Venezuelans, but Maduro is so crooked, it is unclear they would be any better off.

[csis.org]

@LovinLarge The US couldn't care less about dictators. The United States has used dictators to enforce their interests and when they have no use for them any longer, they get rid of them.

The US has a fascist, authoritarian, "Monopoly Capitalism" problem.

State Monopoly Capitalism:
“The main Marxist–Leninist thesis is that big business, having achieved a monopoly or cartel position in most markets of importance, fuses with the government apparatus. A kind of financial oligarchy or conglomerate therefore results, whereby government officials aim to provide the social and legal framework within which giant corporations can operate most effectively.” - Wikipedia

Basically this is favoring the rich and not holding them accountable, even for egregious crimes, while controlling the people using low wages, prison for non-violent crimes and small infractions, and while suppressing their vote and protests. Either wealth will be regulated for the benefit of the people or the people will be regulated to serve wealth.

"Monopoly Capital:
An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order is a 1966 book by the Marxian economists Paul Sweezy and Paul A. Baran. It was published by Monthly Review Press. It made a major contribution to Marxian theory by shifting attention from the assumption of a competitive economy to the monopolistic economy associated with the giant corporations that dominate the modern accumulation process. Their work played a leading role in the intellectual development of the New Left in the 1960s and 1970s. As a review in the American Economic Review stated, it represented "the first serious attempt to extend Marx’s model of competitive capitalism to the new conditions of monopoly capitalism." It attracted renewed attention following the Great Recession." - Wikipedia

Example:
“This is monopoly capitalism in action,” said Marion Nestle, author of Food Politics and professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University. “Whenever Amazon takes over more and more and more of any consumer area, that gives consumers less choice. And now it’s food.” - [truthout.org]

Political implication:
“Ever since monopoly capital took over the world, it has kept the greater part of humanity in poverty, dividing all the profits among the group of the most powerful countries. The standard of living in those countries is based on the extreme poverty of our countries.”
— Che Guevara, 1965 -Wikipedia

@nogod4me Yes, I am on board with this, thank you. If talks fail this week, strengthening sanctions against Russia and lifting the Venezuelan embargo seem justified to me. There should also be a ceasefire during talks but I have not heard that mentioned yet.

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