When a country elects a government that US policy makers don't prefer the response often involves things like sanctions and embargoes. Our government collectively punishes people for voting the wrong way in a free election.
The goal is to cause collective suffering. This in turn can lead to a change in government if the people either blame the government for the suffering or simply give up and elect the government preferred by US investors to stop the pain.
Sanctions can approach genocidal levels. In fact in Iraq two consecutive directors of the UN Oil for Food Program resigned because they regarded it as genocidal. Madeline Albright was confronted with the magnitude of the collective suffering. At the time of this question it was thought to be 500 thousand children starved. She said it was worth it.
In Venezuela it's been extremely harsh. Blocking insulin and malaria medication? Now we're implementing additional measures to prevent their efforts to feed their own poor? This is atrocious. Jeffrey Sachs estimates 40K dead Venezuelans already.
US propagandists want people to blame the Maduro government for this suffering. But nobody would fall for that, right? I mean, maybe you might fall for that the first time it's tried, maybe the second. Or third. But again and again and again? Humans can't be that naive. Can they?
Of course they can. Here's my friend HP. He's so upset to see suffering Venezuelans and ANGRY that people don't finally come to realize how terrible socialism is. Even though Venezuela is not a socialist country. I'm baffled. And so is Jeffrey Sachs as he reveals in this interview. Remember, the sanctions are designed to produce this outcome. We see the outcome. We don't recognize sanctions as the cause?
Meanwhile in Bolivia the president and candidate who won the most votes is pressured to leave the country. His VP is arrested. A right wing politician who's party won very few votes has assumed the presidency and has signed a measure permitting the military to put down protesters by lethal force. Which they are now doing. And in Venezuela Juan Guaido, who recently attempted an overthrow of the elected Maduro government with the support of the US, the country imposing collective suffering on Venezuelans, is still campaigning for insurrection across Venezuela. Guess which country is described as a dictatorship?
