Fernando Blasi, the new envoy for Venezuela’s US-backed opposition, is calling on the Biden administration to ease crippling sanctions on Venezuela, saying not doing so could turn the country into another Cuba, which has been under a US trade embargo since 1962.
“If we continue down this path, Venezuela is destined to be another Cuba,” Blasi said. “It will become an issue for politicians in Florida to win elections … That would be an extremely sad destiny for a country.”
Blasi said sanctions relief could provide much-needed relief for ordinary Venezuelans and incentivize President Nicolas Maduro to make concessions to the opposition related to the upcoming 2024 election. “We have to begin now with a coherent plan whereby we give something and the government reciprocates,” he said.
Blasi’s position is a departure from what the opposition wanted when it was led by Juan Guaido, who declared himself the “interim president” of Venezuela in January 2019. Guaido was backed by the US and favored foreign intervention and crippling sanctions on his country, losing him what little support he had.
At the end of 2022, the US-backed opposition voted to remove Guaido as the interim president and dissolved the “interim government,” which never had any real power besides access to some of Venezuela’s offshore assets and foreign embassies.
The current sanctions on Venezuela were implemented by the Trump administration as part of its failed regime change effort. So far, the Biden administration has granted Chevron a limited license to start pumping oil in Venezuela but hasn’t removed any other sanctions.
What a racket the US has going, it’s despicable…
We go to great lengths to mess up these economies and then we bitch about the flood of refugees our actions create. It is crazy. I am issuing a call to inaction. If Venezuela wants to be communist well good luck it is a stupid system. Our providing an external enemy only serves to prop up the regime.
I think that the fear is that they will succeed with that “stupid system” which would expose us as frauds. It is not confidence in capitalism that drives us, but rather doubts about our own system.
I think you might be correct, certainly if you look at our actions through that lens it does kinda focus
I have read that many Russians would like that “stupid system” back.
Russians seem pretty stupid at the moment, a few of them are good at chess but the rest of them?
It’s you pro-USA zombies who are the stupid and ignorant ones, john.
Couldn’t possibly be more stupid than Americans, not a single American alive has been in a nation at peace, at any time during their lifetimes. Most don’t even know that, so who is more stupid than our American neighbors, friends, and families.
During Cold War I and when it was dying out, there were Russians that said “Stalin Stamps wouldn’t stick because they’d spit on the other end”.
Now, there are Russians that want communism back because of Cold War II.
I recall as early as the mid-1990s, when Russia was opening up after the Soviet Union collapsed, very vocal groups reminiscing about Stalin’s reign as “the good old days.”
A certain percentage of every population values stability, and most of the people who value it remember — correctly or not — bygone eras as being more stable, and therefore preferable to the seeming chaos of the now. That’s not just a Russian thing, it seems pretty universal. And from Stalin’s last years until Gorbachev, one thing the Soviet Union offered to its people was stability.
If communism was as stupid a system as we have been told, how is China doing so well ?
China went state capitalist decades ago.
Communism is capitalism’s twin whereas capitalism is used by and for the wealthy to continue to collect rent from their holdings and suppress wages, while acquiring raw material for the absolute lowest costs, regardless of morality. Seems quite Christianly charitable if you ask me. Chinese communism is the overall economic direction of the nation, directed by the state, at the behest of the people, who happen to own the means of production. To the benefit of the share holders. The Chinese state, or in other words the entire Chinese Nation. In other words, Imperialist style Western capitalism has met it’s final crisis, and it will not survive intact.
” Chinese communism is the overall economic direction of the nation, directed by and for the benefit of the state, at the behest of the Communist Party, which happens to control the means of production.”
Fixed, no charge.
Right, Chinese billionaires? You think it is still communist? If I told you I was a unicorn would you believe me?
Well the US government and right wing radio swears up and down on a daily basis that the CCP is communist and evil, and that Nicolas Maduro is some sort of deranged socialist only interested in stealing the wealth of the conquistadors, and nationalizing oil, also evil. I think you might actually be a unicorn.
Here’s another example of intervention in a country south of the border where the US says it has some noble purpose while the true reason is to give some kind of commercial advantage to someone who carries a lot of political influence in the US.
Take away Venezuela’s oil, and nobody at State will care about anything that happens there.
What ever valuable resources a country has, we consider those resources our “interests”.
That is the point. That country has mucho aceite.
Even the pro-American opposition is calling for sanctions relief. These unilateral sanctions wars are inhumane and ineffective; only the poorest suffer, and they suffer grieviously.
Biden will keep/increase the sanctions and the neoliberals will claim it’s for “democracy”.
“We have to begin now with a coherent plan whereby we give something and the government reciprocates,” he said.
Wow, what a concept. Let me guess, the US don’t like this guy.
You made me laugh out loud! Thanks wars. 🙂
Give us your oil, then we’ll discuss easing sanctions.