While he offered very little detail on what exactly was discussed, John Bolton reported he had a “very productive meeting” with the executive team of Citgo, a major US-based refinery company. Citgo is majority-owned by the Venezuelan government’s state-owned oil group PDVSA, and is a main way for Venezuela to monetize oil exports historically.
The talks came just days after the US hit the Citgo’s owner, the state-run PDVSA, with sanctions, and put restrictions on Citgo’s accounts to ensure that the Maduro government cannot access any money paid for oil imported to the US.
Bolton said he wants to ensure the money only benefits the “people of Venezuela,” and not the Maduro government. PDVSA is demanding pre-payment for all future oil shipments bound for the US.
Bolton also issued a statement on Twitter warning traders not to deal in “gold, oil, or other commodities” that in his view are being stolen from the Venezuelan people. Bolton said earlier in the week that the goal is to route all this money to the US-backed interim President Guaido, though he admitted this was a difficult process and the plans weren’t totally worked out.
Sanctions seem to say the USA rules the world . We bought the products but we will only give the money to another government that we chose for you . Mean while all your assets are frozen in the bank of England and your people are starving .
It has been pushed too far. Now the EU is organizing alternative payment systems that bypass the US. Others will too.
It used to be that the extra expense and trouble did not justify going around the existing US system, which was cheap and easy to use.
Well, now it’s not.
I think that pretty much sums it up except that Elliott Abrams is back on the scene, the butcher enabler of Central America.
Just an aside, it is remarkable how the exterior face of someone reflects what is in his soul and heart: abrams is truly evil and his face reflects that-he has no soul, he has no heart, he is even more evil than he looks!
If this coup goes thru, God save the poor people of Venezuela:
https://theintercept.com/2019/01/30/elliott-abrams-venezuela-coup/
“Bolton said he wants to ensure the money only benefits the “people of Venezuela,” and not the Maduro government.”
Yeah, right! Bolton has such a large heart for the people of Venezuela…
Anyone else notice that Elliot Abrams face looks like a Halloween mask?
Much uglier. It would be hard to find a more evil person, even among the neocons.
I’m pretty sure Bolton, in his concern for the Venezuelan people, would never even consider a kickback from Citgo for his support. If we’re going to run Venezuela, why not simply declare it a protectorate like Guam or Puerto Rico and voila! problem solved.
Except that this is John Bolton, this would seem incredible. Remember how Chavez committed the terrible crimes of using the oil money for the people (the 90%, not the 200 families already taking most of it) and providing food, education, housing, local groups deciding priorities….. and the USA spent the years until his death doing all they could to prevent this practice. Once Maduro was elected (even Forbes magazine had to concede the elections were free and fair and transparent in 2013) and the oil price and other factors made life difficult, the USA responded with vicious sanctions which have continued ever since. Bolton is not suggesting lifting them to help the Venezuelan people he claims to want to help-just the opposite.
I couldn’t agree more, Rosemerry. Bonkers doesn’t give a hoot about the Venezuelan people; every word he issued was a lie. He’s a pathological liar. It was the Obama regime that put all those vicious sanctions on Venezuela, and they haven’t been rescinded.
Of course, Bonkers Bolton isn’t suggesting lifting these sanctions to help the Venezuelan people, he doesn’t care a bit about them .. they can starve, as far as he’s concerned. He should’ve been fired last month over Syria .. and since that didn’t happen, President Trump should fire him now. He’s not only a pathological liar, he’s also a war criminal and a traitor.
So now our sanctions are done by tweet from Bolton? It seems so.
Just another aside (or BTW), I am gradually recovering from the revulsion of the selection of abrams, and the details of pence, trump, pompeo, bolton, abrams orchestrating this coup-one can only hope that the coup falls flat on its face.
The point I wanted to make is that I have spent a fair amount of time perusing the sites and the details mentioned above are in general met with the same revulsion that I experienced. This seems like good news but the jury is still out as the ziocons (and deep state) still have the money, the presstitutes, and the trump admin (congress has not found their cajones yet).
One description from saker seems to me to be completely on point:
The Neocons never cease to amaze me and their latest stunt with Venezuela falls into this bizarre category of events which are both absolutely unthinkable and simultaneously absolutely predictable. This apparent logical contradiction is the direct result of a worldview and mindset which is, I believe, unique to the Neocons: a mix of imperial hubris and infinite arrogance, a complete lack of decency, a total contempt for the rest of mankind, crass ignorance, a narcissist/sociopath’s inability to have any kind of empathy or imagine another guy’s reaction and, finally, last but most certainly not least, crass stupidity. There is so much which can be said about the latest US aggression on Venezuela that entire books could be (and will be) written about this, but I want to begin by look at a few specific but nonetheless very symptomatic aspects: