Doesn't it remind you of the time George H. W. Bush's company, Bechtel bought up water rights in Bolivia through one of its subsidiaries, Aguas del Tunari, raised to price of WATER so high the poor majority were devastated, then started discussing taxing them for any water they could collect in their own rain barrels, and cisterns?

That brought on riots, naturally, and the President Hugo Banzer sent in Army snipers, and they ended up killing people who were there to protest. Blinded a young man, also, if I'm not mistaken.

There are even photos of a sniper crouched, waiting for a good shot at the people paying his salary.

[center]











The guy in the stripes is the sniper. [/center]
The President, Hugo Banzer was a U.S.-supported monster, just like all the others who harmed the people of their countries in the Americas.

"Food as a weapon" is a good description for what has been happening. Couldn't be more correct. They plan to coerce the people into allowing them to steal the government so they can reinstate the filthy way it was run before, with no one being able to survive without ferocious daily struggle outside the tiny racist European-descended elite.

I do remember a bit of how Bechtel caused misery in Bolivia, but I had no idea how much. Just completely horrible and evil. My heart breaks for these people every time I learn a bit more of what they've had to fight.

how is that the fault of anyone other than the government?

But it bears emphasizing in this respect that at least two of the protesters’ main grievances have been deliberately escalated by the oligarchic elite itself: through extensive hoarding and smuggling of consumer products (giving rise to shortages and fueling price inflation) and massive speculation on the foreign currency market (pushing down the Bolívar and feeding into further inflation). This is precisely the type of economic warfare that the US-backed Chilean opposition drew upon prior to the overthrow of Salvador Allende in 1973.

3. Venezuela’s opposition receives active support from the United States. While there is no evidence that the ongoing protests have been directly machinated by the White House or the CIA, it is publicly known that leading Venezuelan opposition groups receive millions of dollars in financial support from the US government and US-based NGOs and think tanks. In 2008, a leader of Venezuela’s student movement — which organized similar anti-Chávez protests back in 2007 — won the $500.000 Milton Friedman Award from the right-libertarian CATO Institute, which is funded by major corporate sponsors like the Koch Brothers and the Ford Foundation, headed by an “ardent devotee” of Ayn Rand, and driven by a zealous mission to defend “the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace.”

All in all, it is estimated that various “youth outreach” programs in Venezuela received at least $45 million from US sponsors. Furthermore, the Obama administration has earmarked at least $5 million to directly support Venezuela’s opposition parties through 2014 — not to mention the secret ties that undoubtedly exists between the opposition and the US intelligence community. This comes on top of the dozens of millions of dollars that have been donated to the opposition over the years. Not surprising, perhaps, given that Venezuela is sitting on top of the largest known oil reserves in the world, just around the corner from the US.

http://roarmag.org/2014/02/venezuela-protests-opposition-coup/

Monetary warfare. This started with run on the currency, the manipulation of the black market dollar, obtaining dollars at preferential price from the government under false reasons. Maduro did not hesitate: he regulated prices and changed the monetary exchange rules and 70% approved of his response.[ii]

False scarcity: A double blow of outrageous overpricing of goods plus artificial food scarcity started just as people were beginning their Christmas shopping. Wealthy merchants proceeded to hoard essential goods: corn flour, sugar, salt, cooking oil, toilet paper, etc. placing them in hidden warehouses or spirited off to Colombia through a well-planned smuggling operation. The military discovered an illegal bridge built for motorcycles that carried the smuggled goods. Thousands of bags of foodstuffs were discovered simply left rotting on Colombian byways: this was not smuggling for economic reasons, but for political reasons. The Colombian government cooperated with the Venezuelan government to stop this smuggling.

Venezuela represents the rejection of neo-liberal economics and corporate capitalism. The corrupt elite- governed Venezuela, darling of corporate capitalism, that had impoverished its own population during 40 years, is no more.

These violent tactics have no hope of succeeding because, unlike 1999, the Venezuelan people are now organized into many groups: the communal councils, the communes, the thousands of health, security, militia, sports, educational, cultural committees. The Bolivarian Revolution has fostered, not a mass of people, but an organized organic population that makes decisions about its living conditions along with its government because Venezuela is now a fully functioning participatory democracy.

https://www.popularresistance.org/is-us-supporting-oligarch-coup-attempt-in-venezuela/

because importers are complaining that there are not enough dollars. And this proves me wrong how?

The fact that there is a thriving black market in dollars is a sign of how unrealistic the official exchange rate is.

The simple fact of the matter is that there are not enough dollars and the dollars they do have are not being allocated in an efficient manner. Your article is over a year old and things have not gotten better. You can blame hoarding if you want but at some point that argument runs out of gas - the government has had over a year to fix that problem. Logic dictates that hoarding should not be an issue anymore simply because business cannot get the dollars they need to import food (which they would then hoard for some reason). Why would they go through the trouble of importing goods if they don't plan to sell them - not only do they lose money because they have to pay for storage but every day they lose money due to inflation.

It's still going on, go you really think these attempts to bring down the democratically elected gov't have stopped? That's hilarious.

care to answer that simple question?

demonstrating that you are not capable of independent thought but having to rely on someone else's posts (which you seem incapable of actually explaining in your own words) does not reflect well on you.

remedial reading in most of those articles.

Consider this educational.

wouldn't they simply not buy them in the first place?

Simple question - now try to answer it without linking to someone else's thoughts.

you are truly incapable of independent thought, aren't you?

Your attempt to insult DU'ers here are completely transparent.

You have nothing real to support your right-wing comments in a Democratic zone, so you try to degrade democrats themselves.

"Does not reflect well" upon you.

These guys think that even when Maduro falls off his bicycle it's because the CIA deflated his wheels. Just let them live in their fantasy.

with anyone but the other right-wing trolls.

As you and another appear to believe, someone pointing to conspicuous examples which have already happened is using a "time machine."

That pretty much covers an attempted ban on every bit of information based upon already completed operations cannot be used, since it's in the past already. How intelligent is that?

your logic is basically that because we did something bad decades ago we are doing something bad right now.

You are the one inferring that a Democratic president is continuing to carry out the same policies as Nixon and Bush. And you see nothing wrong with that.

Everyone knows illegal, immoral operations being carried out COVERTLY in the present remain covert. It has always been that way.

If they weren't things the world would not tolerate, if it had a choice, they would not be done COVERTLY.

Your claim a Democratic President would not do these things is hilarious. You appear unaware of what just happened on his watch in 2009 in Honduras. Even his own ambassador sent it in one of his messages which has been made public property that the coup was a military coup, and illegal.

The real "we" at DU read this long ago and have discussed it repeatedly.

To the real "we" at DU, if you have any doubts whatsoever regarding what you see in any of these posts, please do yourself a favor and start looking through the available information, online, and in books, magazines, etc. You will be able to get to the answers with effort.

You can't prove anything because it is covert so we have to believe you because .... why exactly?

Because "IT'S HAPPENED BEFORE UNDER A TOTALLY DIFFERENT PRESIDENT DURING THE COLD WAR" There, that's it, nothing else needed to support the claims. I win

not backing away from that statement are you?

Don't worry, many of us here know just how valid they are.