US rulers step up assault on Venezuela’s sovereignty
https://themilitant.com/2020/07/11/us-rulers-step-up-assault-on-venezuelas-sovereignty/
BY RÓGER CALERO
Vol. 84/No. 28
July 20, 2020
Gas line in Caracas June 1 after government cut back subsidy, ended
state monopoly on fuel sales. U.S. rulers’ stifling economic sanctions
are effort to bring down Maduro government.
REUTERS/MANAURE QUINTERO
Gas line in Caracas June 1 after government cut back subsidy, ended
state monopoly on fuel sales. U.S. rulers’ stifling economic sanctions
are effort to bring down Maduro government.
The imperialist rulers in Washington continue to step up their efforts
to choke off Venezuela’s oil trade, part of their relentless drive to
force the government of President Nicolás Maduro out of power and to
deal blows to the Cuban Revolution.
The U.S. Treasury Department is targeting for sanctions any
international shipping firm or oil tanker that transports Venezuelan
crude exports abroad or attempts to deliver direly needed gasoline for
domestic consumption.
U.S. federal prosecutors filed suit July 1 to allow Washington to seize
four tankers sailing toward Venezuela with gasoline supplied by Tehran.
Washington aims both to deter any oil trade with the government in
Caracas and to deprive Tehran of any revenue.
As pressure by Washington forces commercial traders to back down from
dealing with Venezuela, the Maduro government has increasingly turned to
the Iranian rulers for fuel and other supplies. In June — in defiance of
Washington’s punishing trade and financial sanctions against the two
governments — five Iranian tankers delivered fuel supplies expected to
temporarily alleviate shortages that have led to dayslong lines at gas
stations.
Since 2017 the U.S. rulers have ratcheted up crippling economic
sanctions against Caracas, including an oil embargo. They’ve also
imposed a broad ban on dealings by other governments with Venezuelan
state enterprises. These moves have aggravated shortages of food,
medicine, gasoline and equipment. Gasoline shortages got even worse
after Russian oil producer Rosneft suspended operations in Venezuela in
March.
Imperialist rulers in the United Kingdom, across Europe and in Canada —
as well as some of Washington’s allies in Latin America — have joined
Washington in declaring the Maduro government illegitimate. They claim
the pro-imperialist opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, who proclaimed
himself president in January 2019, is the real head of state.
The U.S. government seeks to capitalize on the economic and social
crisis facing working people in Venezuela, the result of the sanctions,
the COVID-19 outbreak, the worldwide capitalist crisis and collapse of
the country’s oil industry.
A major target of Washington’s oil embargo against the Maduro government
is blocking shipments to Cuba. Washington is tightening its over
60-year-long economic war against the Cuban people and their revolution.
The Cuban government has maintained its solidarity with the Venezuelan
people and defense of their sovereignty. Most recently, a special
contingent of doctors and nurses arrived in the state of Zulia to help
beat back a COVID-19 outbreak in the city of Maracaibo. Cuban medical
personnel are also deployed in towns along the border, treating
Venezuelans returning from neighboring Colombia and Brazil, two
countries where working people are being devastated by the disease.
The stepped-up pressure from Washington was buttressed when a British
high court ruled July 2 to deny the Maduro government access to $1
billion worth of gold the country had placed in the Bank of England’s
vaults.
The decision upholds the bank, which has refused to transfer 31 tons of
Venezuelan gold — part of the patrimony of that country — to the Maduro
government. Caracas filed suit after bank directors rejected a request
to transfer the funds to a U.N. Development Program to purchase medical
supplies and equipment to aid the fight against the coronavirus epidemic.
Oil industry in shambles
Alongside the punishing effects of U.S. sanctions, the state oil company
PDVSA is saddled with crippling debt and corruption. Venezuela’s oil
industry has been in shambles, with the lowest production levels in
decades. In the last couple of years the Venezuelan government has
increasingly opened the country’s nationalized oil fields to foreign
exploitation, including Russian and Chinese corporations. The Maduro
government has floated proposals to reduce taxes and royalties in an
effort to attract foreign investment.
“Even the possibility of opening up completely to private capital” by
the Maduro government, Dolores Dobarro, a Venezuelan oil law professor,
told investment service Standard & Poors Global, “is more aggressive
than the proposals from the political opposition.”
Presented by the Maduro government as a first step toward stabilizing
gasoline supplies, a new distribution and pricing regime went into
effect June 1 that puts an end to a long-standing policy to heavily
subsidize fuel to the country’s population. The goal, said Maduro, is to
bring prices more in line with those internationally. Venezuelans will
now have to buy either a fixed quota of gas per month, at a price that
is 75 percent subsidized, or have access to an unlimited amount at a
price of 50 cents per liter, payable in U.S. dollars.
The “dollarized” stations run by private companies will also be
permitted to import fuel, effectively ending a 50-year-long state
monopoly on gasoline supply.
“There is no doubt the new scheme widens the gap between those who have
access to dollars and those who don’t,” Luis Salas, a former vice
president in Maduro’s government who opposes the measure, told
Venezuelanalysis. This means greater difficulties for workers and farmers.
“Internationalizing” prices in a country where the minimum wage is
around $5 per month and most public employees make around $10, “is not
the way to go,” Salas argued. Cooking gas distribution, previously
handled by PDVSA, is already in private hands in parts of the country,
and the same thing is happening with electricity, he said.
“We still have to see what impact the price hike will have on prices of
other goods and services,” he added.
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Richard Dawkins
“The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all
decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this
sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running
for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from
within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation,
thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this
very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the
natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons
and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people
are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find
any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has
precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no
purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”
― Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life
