The Nixon Doctrine: Make them Scream

As it was declassified, Nixon and Kissinger backed the 1973 Chile Coup, but that’s a legacy that has come back these days to apply it once again – specially against Venezuela. This is what is called the “economic war.” This implies driving the local population to desperation by cutting the lines of supply of many elements of their daily livelihoods. Now, the US, once again is tactics of “economic warfare” and “financial weapons” against a sovereign country to advance its geo political agenda [MPN].

Let’s focus on the country on the crosshairs of this economic war,  Venezuela. There are 47 companies in Venezuela in control of products owned by 31 families where 35 of those companies openly conspire against the government [Aporrea Feb 13-2013]. One specific case is Herrera CA, a company which has close links to the political party of Lepoldo lopez (the politician that called to violence in 2014 provoking the death of at least 43 people). Now, keep in mind Herrera CA provides needed supplies to 8.5 M Venezuelans – and that is just one company [Cayendo y Corriendo Jan 20-2015].

As planned in advance, the media has taken care of framing this situation as a case of extreme hunger, chaos and desperation, but by the most of the part that is inaccurate [TeleSur Feb 10-2015]. The problem is difficult, the government itself recognizes that, but it has implemented emergency measures at all levels to counter attack this economic sabotage. The economic sabotage extends to energy sabotage and the currency sabotage,

What is happening in Venezuela, is the same formula applied against Allende in Chile. It’s not by chance that the Venezuelan opposition has found good allies from the Pinochet circle such as Patricio Melero, Jovino Novoa and Patricio Aylwin. In the same way that the Edwards, Matte Alessandri conspired against Allende in Chile, this time around, Fedecámaras, Consecomercio y Venamcham are the company organizations that are attacking the Venezuelan government [Vive Oct 29-2013].

The “economic crisis” of basic products started in Nov 2013. This is basically a psychological war to push the public to self-sabotage. The idea of “shortage” is implanted through the media and the consumer rushes to buy fast and to buy more than what they need. Makro, a private food distributor company has collected information that revealed that only 25% of its costumers actually buy what they need – the other 75% are simply buying out of desperation for what they see in the media, or to take advantage of the situation to speculate in the black market [Hojilla Apr 4-2015].

The objective of the economic war is to create a case like the “Caracazo”massacre of 1989 where thousands of desperate people were killed in Caracas after braking into supply businesses. Back on those days that situation came out of the IMF economic measures. The goal of the economic war is to overthrow of the leftist government. In case that the government is not overthrown, then the situation could imply pushing the government to quit its social projects and adopt the neoliberal model [Hojilla Apr 4-2015]. One particular perverse plan implies moving violent protesters to the places where people wait in lines to purchase products. These lines are strategically induced because of the stockpiling, media manipulation and intended shortage of cashiers. The idea is to have the violent protesters and the people confront each other, and then get the police involved [A un Click Jan 25-2015].

The incredible part of the shortage is that products such as beer and other alcoholic beverages are always available. One of the counter attacks from the government is price control on basic products, but not all items have a controlled price. For example, rice is controlled but flavored rice is not, so the companies do their best to flavor rice to evade the price control and be able to speculate. We must point out in the specific case of Venezuela, that as bad as we are pushed to think of the situation of that country, Venezuela has about 1oM Colombians who prefer to be in Venezuela and enjoy its social benefits than staying in Colombia – a country that the media promotes as an excellent economic model [Iguana May 15-2015].

 

Original article May 16 2015

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