Source: Sputnik Foto: Unsplash
We are satisfied to present this analysis of the most recent developments in Venezuela. Within it is however implicit that the Venezuelan Government abides to the exchange duality with Colombia. In reality the root of this parity is a resolution Art 8 of the Colombian Government about which not only official delegations but also different sectors of the Venezuelan society have reacted. Here one of them.
Comunidad Saker Latinamerica
By Vicky Peláez
The US State Department is not wasting time coordinating a global attack on Venezuela. All local and external reactionary forces have come together in a frontal, economic, financial, psychological, ideological offensive against the Bolivarian revolution and all that it means.
“Any nation that decides that the only way to achieve peace is through peaceful methods, will soon be part of another nation.” (Richard Nixon, 1913-1994)
Its purpose is to punish the country with the greatest force, precisely on the eve of Christmas and the New Year, so as not to give people a respite by increasing the shortage of food, hygiene products, remedies and encouraging looting. Washington’s ‘enlightened globalizers’ have been using the same strategy against Venezuela as Henry Kissinger’s sinister Richard Nixon advised to end Salvador Allende’s socialist government in Chile in 1973: ‘let the economy scream.’ To encourage sabotage, boycott and aggression against the Venezuelan economy, Washington, with the authorization of Congress, sends the opposition no less than $ 10 million a year through numerous Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) operating in the country .
Coup failed in Venezuela despite massive support from the USA (Photo: Reuters)
Despite the 15 years of the Bolivarian revolution, the country’s economy remains highly dependent on the US, which is the main economic partner in key sectors such as hydrocarbons, and its main supplier for US currency. The State Department recently stated that “diplomatic tensions between the Venezuelan government and the current US administration do not affect or have anything to do with the fruitful relations and trade between the two countries”. The economic sanctions imposed by Washington on Caracas, the permanent political pressures to which the Bolivarian Government is subjected, the globalized media war, all of these assessed from the extremely cynical point of view of the White House has nothing to do with the business. As USAmericans say ‘business is business’, as if business were not a substantial part of politics.
Precisely from Washington come orders and coordinates to attack the Bolivarian national currency in order to put in trouble the country’s financial system. The financial corporation J.P. Morgan Chase declared state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA)to be in default, ignoring money transfers, made as agreed, to pay each debt of international character and thus disseminating distorted information about the critical financial situation of the Bolivarian Republic. To further damage Venezuela, Citibank leaves the country, hurting transactions and payments for food and medicines.
Risk rating agencies, Moody’s Investors, Standard and Poor’s (both USAmerican) and Fitch Ratings (USAmerican-British), are part of the financial attack ordered by Washington. They have recently granted the country a risk rating corresponding to a country at war: Caa3 and CCC, with the purpose of closing access to credit and in turn to increase Venezuela’s debt. It was not even take into account that in 2016 between October 11 and November 2, the Venezuelan Government paid $ 3 billion in international obligations.
Please also read: The solution to the Venezuelan crisis cannot be imposed from outside
All these agencies constitute an oligopoly and there is no other one to evaluate these rating agencies. Rating agencies have always been working directly for the speculative economy. And it should not be forgotten that on the eve of the outbreak of the financial bubble in 2008, these agencies awarded the highest risk rating to products that suddenly became garbage. For this reason, German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, recently warned that the valuation of the agencies should not be given too much importance.
https://twitter.com/SputnikMundo/status/746563600018341888/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfwp://
Obviously, the power of the German leader makes it easier for her to ignore the recommendations of these agencies, but in the case of Venezuela the situation is more difficult because the whole world, with the exception of a handful of Countries, is under American rule and participates actively or passively in this macabre game of Washington against Caracas. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro recently denounced a cyber attack on the national bank from the US Treasury Department to generate chaos and discomfort for the Venezuelan population. The CrediCard consortium with the ATMs and points of sale was inoperative, forming soon kilometers kilometers of queues outside the banking agencies.
Social networks and local media at the service of the opposition engaged in competition to spread rumors and ‘street news’, announcing an “apocalypse in the center of Caracas. Queues to withdraw money from the ATMs are longer than those made when there is cornmeal in the corner hold”. (Cornmeal is the main venezuelan dish and very scarce lately. NoT)
The collapse of the CrediCard system affected more than 20 banks, including public banks. At the same time, a Venezuelan-US company, Dollar Today, formed by Venezuelan opponents who, from Miami (where the company is directed from, NoT), has been manipulating the real value of the dollar, used its portal and social networks to create panic in the country. The Dollar Today website was created in Miami especially as part of a plan drawn up in Washington to destabilize the Venezuelan economy. This portal arbitrarily calculates the price of the bolivar against the dollar. According to Fedecámaras (an organization that groups all chambers that take part in the business arena in Venezuela, NoT) ex-president, Jorge Roig, “Dollar Today sets its price when this group is drinking whiskey.” Another Venezuelan businessman, Carlos Dorado, said indignantly: “I am horrified by the damage that Dollar Today is doing to our country by presenting an unrealistic dollar rate that is not based on supply and demand and which only responds to private interests; But unfortunately positioned itself as a marker of the exchange rate. ”
President of Venezuela denounces campaign to destroy PDVSA (Photo: Reuters)
The Dollar Today website was created in Miami especially as part of a plan drawn up in Washington to destabilize the Venezuelan economy. This portal arbitrarily calculates the price of the bolivar against the dollar. According to Fedecámaras ex-president, Jorge Roig, “Dollar Today sets its price when this group is drinking whiskey.” Another Venezuelan businessman, Carlos Dorado, said indignantly: “I am horrified by the damage that Dollar Today is doing to our country by presenting an unrealistic dollar rate that is not based on supply and demand and which only responds to private interests; But unfortunately positioned itself as a marker of the exchange rate. ”
Dollar Today, in its daily operation of artificially inflating an illegal dollar, uses a Venezuelan-Colombian agreement that allows the Bank of Colombia to admit two exchange rates for peso-bolívar, one dictated by the Central Bank and the one established by the exchange houses in the Colombian city of Cúcuta, at the border with Venezuela. It has been known for a long time that behind these exchange houses there are mafias directed by former president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, according to the journalist Marco Teruggi, and that “his former paramilitaries turned into smugglers of food, gasoline, drugs. These exchange houses are controlled from the United States by traitor Venezuelans and imperialist networks. ”
Bolivarian Senator warns from USA coup against Venezuelan Government (Photo: Reuters)
The Dollar Today website has achieved such taxing power, that the price it establishes is used daily by Venezuelan merchants despite being completely distorted. The business consists of buying state dollars at 10 bolívares, then introducing it into the market as a overpaid parallel-dollar at a price of 4,500 bolivars for a dollar pressing small and medium businesses to follow this game.
It is not understood until now how the Bolivarian Government does not dare to rescind that agreement with Colombia regarding the parallel dollar that allows a blatant theft of billions in paper currency by the exchange houses creating a current shortage in the national currency. In this way, it is also possible to distort the real inflation index in Venezuela, behind which are not only the correlation of economic forces, but also the political interests that frequently prevail over the former.
More: Condemn US Financial Attacks on Venezuela and Nicaragua
The tragedy for the country has also been that the Round Table established by the Government and the opposition is reaching a dead end due to the division within the opposition, the Bureau of Democratic Unity (MUD) and an unexpected Adherence of the Vatican to the cause of the Venezuelan political opposition. This was transcended through the release of a letter sent by the Vatican Secretary of State, Monsignor Pietro Parolin, to the Bolivarian Government and the subsequent statement by Vatican representatives to “understand and respect” the opposition coalition’s decision not to attend The Table of Dialogue with the Executive.
According to the first vice-president of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), Diosdado Cabello, the Vatican has no right to veto or protect Venezuela, since “the Vatican is no intermediary, the Vatican is no mediator but a facilitator.He has no right to veto, or make proposals, or try to tilt his position to the ‘a’ or ‘b’ sector.It should be total and absolutely objective … We ask The Vatican to respect venezuelan sovereign decisions as we also do not mix up with internal affairs in The Vatican, regarding pedophilia and treatment to clergy involved in such scandals “We do not need you to get involved in the internal affairs of Venezuelans, because we solve our internal affairs,” Cabello said.
Taking into account all the attacks promoted from Washington against Venezuela and its people, any impartial observer would conclude that this is too much already, especially on the eve of Christmas and New Year. However, for globalizers it is simply the continuation of a plan to end chavismo in the Bolivarian country through chaos and desperation to gain control over the 600 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil.
Venezuela will refuse any attempt of tutelage by the Vatican (Photo: Reuters)
The enlightened ones of Washington, seeing that neither the OAS at Latin American level could bend the Venezuelans will, turned then to their puppets in the Common Market of the South (Mercosur), and formed a Triple Alliance (Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay) to try to expel Venezuela from the organization. Uruguay, always ‘cautious’ abstained to vote to suspend Venezuela as a member state in the economic bloc. The main pretext was the non-compliance with the deadline for the adoption of rules on human rights and separation of powers.
In fact, this Triple Alliance with implicit support from Uruguay following Washington’s instructions justified the unjustifiable by suspending Venezuela on the basis of false arguments. Brazil’s president Dilma Rousseff called this decision “a dangerous and irresponsible act and precedent” committed under the external pressure and threats of an imperial country. Rousseff stressed that of the 41 agreements required for Venezuela to sign, Brazil itself has not ratified at least five of them and other countries have not adopted all these regulations. In fact, “they have been pressing Venezuela to fulfill in four years what the other members have not fully fulfilled in 25 years,” denounced the Venezuelan ambassador to the Mercosur, José Félix Rivas. There is no doubt that the leaders of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay are not interested in this fact, because the one who commands is Washington, and the only thing they must do is to obey submissively in order to enjoy a chair at Harvard after finishing their duty or maybe receive an invitation to give a well rewarded speech in the USA. For example, ex-president of Colombia and unconditional of the USA, Álvaro Uribe, was invited to give class of “economic policies” in Harvard and Georgetown University. It has then been worth obeying to always hold an the American visa.
Partido Socialista de #Venezuela convoca movilización contra #EEUU #PSUV https://t.co/xm8rVw1Inn
— Sputnik Mundo (@SputnikMundo) September 24, 2016
This is a reality for some and a tragedy for people like the inhabitants of the Bolivarian country, who do not know where they draw strength to resist the world crusade against the Bolivarian revolution and the legacy of Hugo Chavez. The history of other Latin American countries shows that coexistence and dialogues with class enemies are all temporary and short-lived. A less reformist and more radical program is needed for Venezuela not to take the path of Argentina or Brazil, languishing before Washington and returning submissively to the American ‘backyard’.
In order to survive and to continue the course of a free and sovereign country, Nicolás Maduro and his Government have to dare to challenge the international opposition with an alternative economic program taking into account the specific national conditions. They could achieve this through popular support, activating all social networks in the country to spread the truth, something the Local Supply and Supply Committees (CLAP) are currently doing.
“History,” as Edward Said said, “is written by the victors,” which in the case of Venezuela could be realized through a merger of the Bolivarian Government with the popular forces in the name of the future of the country.
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