Tracking data from Venezuela’s PDVSA has shown the means by which Venezuela continues to trade oil despite US sanctions forbidding them from doing so. It involves a lot of oil tankers, nearly 10% of all the tankers on the planet.
There is a great deal of risk in being caught violating US sanctions, which is why despite the vast number of ships involved, very few are directly interacting with Venezuela. Most are trying to get involved only indirectly, using ship-to-ship transfers to mask their involvement.
It’s not a one-off deal either. In the coming weeks, at least 18 oil tankers are expected to load oil from Venezuela directly. When they head off, they’ll be likely using the same kinds of transfers to make it hard to track where the oil is.
US sanctions and threats have brought Venezuelan exports down to the level of 1942. The US envisioned imposing regime change, and while that never happened, they’ve maintained the sanctions and threatened anyone who does business with Venezuela against America’s will. Clearly this is changing tactics, but not stopping trade.
Venezuela has a more advanced form of government. Be very clear on this. Hugo Chavez was a poor boy from the country. He did well on army tests and was for this reason given the opportunity to go to college. He went on to invent a new form of advanced democracy designed to focus the distributed intelligence of the entire population. The US US upper class depends on milking the people of the US with austerity and has struggled to destroy the advanced democracy there. We do not know what Venezuela would be like without the pressure of US attempts to destroy its government. Hugo designed in six facets instead of three branches, He underestimated the disdain and tenacity of totalitarian oligarchs and tried to live with them as we do in the US. Greed for more by the rich is a mental illness I call insatiable want. It is incurable and the rich will turn police power loose on the civilian population in order to get more money. Hugo died before he could finish his new government design. I am sure he would have liked the seventh facet posted at https://www.constituentassembly.org The US upperclass will stop at nothing to thwart cultural evolution toward a more perfect union.
There are many different systems in existence today — some due to varying traditions, others due to deliberate innovations, and many more due to modifications of hastily adopted Western models,
Example of a very innovative system is China. Examples of major modifications to a Western model is Russia.
Chavez has indebted future generations by instituting voting mechanisms and identification across once completely disenfranchised native Venezuelan countryside. Once empowered, things could not go back to the old days where mostly coastal urban elite — proud descendants of European colonizers — could not win through elections. Especially not once they have proven that they are not loyal to the population.
The attempt at taking control over from natives was reversed in Bolivia. In Colombia the ling revolt by natives was coopted into a peace process — just to be exposed to death squads. That is a crisis waiting to erupt. Latin America is still a continent in political evolution.
One more aspect is 65% uptic of LatinX vote this November, 2020, USA
https://truthout.org/articles/70-percent-of-latinx-voters-chose-biden-with-record-shattering-turnout/
I agree. And the evolution in Latin America is a bright beacon of hope. We need to keep in mind the US Democratic party is as much a servant of oligarchy as the Republican. The job of the Democrats is to short circuit social evolution while pretending to oppose their Republican partners in a business called Presidential Debates, Inc.