En español I have rarely responded to trolls because ? well, what’s the point? It’s not like they care about facts or logic.For example, Francisco Toro, a blogger who fulminates about Venezuela and appears in the Washington Post, has been trolling me for
Alexander MainNACLA, May 17, 2018
US News & World Report: The Trump administration, influenced by Senator Marco Rubio, is actively pursuing regime-change efforts in Venezuela—including sanctions, economic pressure, and election interference—to weaken Maduro’s government, while disregarding opposition leaders who could win fairly and undermining the democratic process.
AlterNet: The Trump administration, backed by allies like Senator Rubio, has escalated sanctions and economic pressure on Venezuela to block debt restructuring and undermine the government, deliberately worsening shortages and suffering to provoke regime change rather than promote democracy.
Two weeks ago, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) released a report on food insecurity and nutrition in Latin America and the Caribbean. The report highlighted a regional increase in food insecurity, a first since the agency started collecting annual data for the Millennium Development Goals in 2000. The authors noted that the food crisis in Venezuela was central to this increase. While the percentage of the population in Venezuela experiencing undernourishment was lower than several other countries in the region ? such as Bolivia, Guatemala, Haiti, and Honduras ? in the last three years, Venezuela contributed an estimated 1.3 million newly food-insecure people to Latin America’s total.
The FAO study confirms that the Bolivarian Republic is facing a growing hunger crisis that requires action. For the past year and a half, the media have decried the Venezuelan government for its management of the crisis, but the figures they have cited do not match the FAO’s. Over the past 18 months, it has become accepted fact that the crisis is even worse than the FAO describes: the New York Times writes that “93 percent of the [Venezuelan] population cannot afford food,” and CNN reports Venezuelans “in the past year dropp[ed] an average of 19 pounds.” (In addition, a Jacobin article states: “Almost 90 percent of the population cannot buy enough food,” while The Independent laments that “75 per cent of the country’s population has lost an average of 19 pounds.”) This is because media coverage on hunger in Venezuela has relied primarily on anecdotal evidence and an inconclusive report authored in part by a member of the political coalition trying to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from office.
US newspapers and journals often attribute their Venezuelan hunger figures to “a recent survey … by the country’s leading universities.” The survey in question was published on February 27, 2016 by Simón Bolívar University, the Central University of Venezuela, and the Bengoa Foundation. The report, which focuses on Venezuelan nutrition, is part of an annual review covering the state of living conditions in the country. Maritza Landaeta-Jiménez, who as recently as 2013 was a member of the Venezuelan opposition’s Nutrition Commission, headed the 2016 research. The document, based on a survey of 6,413 Venezuelans, reported that 93 percent of Venezuelans felt that they did not have enough money to purchase food, and that 72.7 percent of Venezuelans had lost an average of 8.7 kilograms (19 pounds) in the past year. However, the same survey revealed that 67.5 percent of Venezuelans were eating three meals a day, and only 25 percent of the country felt that their nutrition could be categorized as “deficient.”
In 2015, the Obama administration announced that Venezuela had thrown the United States into a “national emergency” because Venezuela constituted “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.” On August 25, the Trump administration cited this ongoing emergency to justify financial sanctions against Venezuela that are likely to deepen the economic crisis there and generate greater human suffering.
How does a country with a fraction of the US’s military budget and a government with no history of international aggression cause a national emergency in the most powerful state in the world? Sure, the short answer is always “politics.” But in this case, there’s a forty-year history of presidential overreach and unaccountability that calls for a closer look.
In 1976, the House and Senate, with Democratic supermajorities in both, were looking to curb executive power in the wake of the Vietnam War. On trial was the concept of the “national emergency,” a term derived from an amendment to the 1917 Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA). This World War I law gave the president authority to impose unilateral sanctions and restrict trade with warring enemy countries. Initially, it said nothing about national emergencies. But in 1933, President Roosevelt amended Trading with the Enemy to include executive authority over “any transactions in foreign exchange, transfers of credit between or payments by banking institutions as defined by the President” during a time of national emergency. Roosevelt declared the first of the US’s newly defined national emergencies, and promptly froze a majority of bank assets to prevent bank runs during the heart of the Great Depression.
The Nation: The Trump administration’s sanctions on Venezuela block borrowing, investment, and debt restructuring, worsening shortages and making economic recovery nearly impossible, while international support—particularly from China—offers a potential path for stabilization, negotiation, and Venezuelan-led solutions free from US interference.
The Hill: The Trump administration announced new, unprecedented sanctions against Venezuela on Friday that are designed to cut off financing to Venezuela. The Trump team pretends that the sanctions are only directed at the government.
A letter from the prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, an island nation located in the Southern Caribbean, provides a stellar example of the wide gulf between the way the US government and allied media present many issues of international imp
