The Maduro government called the legislation “a violation of economic freedoms and a serious offense to the Venezuelan people.”
President Nicolás Maduro, 2016. (Cancillería del Ecuador via Flickr)
The Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has strongly condemned the approval by the U.S. Senate of a bill known as the “BOLIVAR Act,” for constituting “a violation of economic freedoms and a serious offense to the Venezuelan people.”
“Banning Operations and Leases with the Illegitimate Venezuelan Authoritarian Regime,” was approved by the Senate on Dec. 16. It prohibits U.S. state agencies from doing business and entering into contracts with anyone who has commercial dealings with the government of President Nicolás Maduro. The bill has yet to receive the green light in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, in a statement a day later, described the bill as “unfortunate” both in its name and its content, and criticized it as a tool contrary to international law and engineered by the extremist sectors of U.S. politics.
The ministry denounced it for “[violating] the integrity of the sovereign people of Venezuela as well as that of the U.S. companies themselves, by placing them at risk of being penalized, arbitrarily, unfairly and illegally, when exercising their right to free trade through contracts with the Bolivarian Government.”
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The Venezuelan government also said that the “abusive” bill once again “[demonstrated] the cruelty of ultra-conservative and coup-mongering sectors in U.S. politics that are relentless in their attempt to overthrow the legitimate government and blow up any possible route to dialogue and constructive relations between the two countries.”
The statement slammed the U.S. for disgracing the name of Liberator Simón Bolívar. It noted that the name given to the bill “offends the Venezuelan people, their history and their Liberator, whose republican values and commitment to the principles of freedom and peace are way above those of a handful of legislators ignorant of his glory.”
The Venezuelan government went on to say that “in the face of the Monroeist threat and its war-builder heirs, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela will continue to cultivate and defend the legacy of Liberator Simón Bolívar, carving out its own path of political and social stability, economic recovery and peace diplomacy, for a world free of hegemonism, colonialism, and imperialism.”
U.S. Senator Rick Scott, one of the promoters of the bill, stressed that the approval of the bill would be a “big step to weaken” the Maduro government.
U.S. Sen. Rick Scott addressing a student group in Tampa, Florida, in 2021. (Gage Skidmore/Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)
Weakening Sanctions
Last month, the U.S. Treasury Department, which maintain sanctions against Venezuela, authorized the U.S. oil giant Chevron to begin extracting and commercializing Venezuelan crude for four years. The U.S. government indicated that this was done as a gesture of support for the negotiations between the Venezuelan government and the platform of far-right opposition sectors.
The U.S. authorities avoided acknowledging that the step was taken amid fuel crises in the U.S. and Europe due to sanctions that have been placed on Russia and Russian-exported fuel.
After years backing a failed coup attempt, France’s Macron, US envoy John Kerry, and Portugal’s PM met with Venezuela’s elected President Nicolás Maduro.
Desperate to lower oil prices, they dropped the pretense that puppet Juan Guaidó controls anything:https://t.co/KMsh9OkO6r
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) November 10, 2022
The bill passed by the Senate provides for exceptions, such as humanitarian aid, disaster relief and when the Office of Foreign Assets Control issues a valid license to do business in Venezuela. It also allows the secretary of state to remove the restriction when it is in the U.S. national interest.
Additionally, the bill establishes that the prohibition will not affect “any business with the legitimately elected government of the National Assembly and its elected successors,” an indirect reference to the self-proclaimed President Juan Guaidó and his allies, who are neither elected nor in the government.
This article is from Peoples Dispatch.
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It’s the incessant meddlers in the arrogant Biden regime that need to be weakened, not the sovereign people of Venezuela for trying to mind their own business and run their own country in the constant shadow of American aggression. Our paramount founding father and first president, George Washington, warned our own future leaders not to become entangled with any foreign power when he said, “it is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world…” Our second president John Adams flat out stated, “America goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.”
Neither even hinted that we should attempt to rule the entire world. Our founders would weep at what the vainglorious, war-mongering power-seekers of our recent generations have tried to foist upon this planet. I wish they would give the world and our own people a break. Stop trying to emulate Hitler with the unimaginably expensive weapons you create at the expense of the tax-paying citizens you deprive of needed infrastructure, social programs, education, health care and a sustainable retirement plan to pay for your mad pursuit. Stop recruiting unbelievable masses of uneducated poverty-stricken foreign migrants who enter this country illegally and will be a burden on tax-payers for generations to come merely to pad the voting roles of one of the two deluded political parties that exist only to prop up a select cadre of oligarchs, as though their welfare was the very purpose for the founding of this country.
Venezuela may be an imperfect democracy, damaged mostly by acts of theft and piracy directed at their economy by essentially all Western countries under the instigation of our Washington regime, but the United States has been corrupted beyond all recognition as such a professed egalitarian entity. To call this North American polity a liberal Jeffersonian democracy is the very definition of an “oxymoron.”
When China sanctions America for human rights violations, they should call it “The Washington Act” just to rub salt into the wound. If Joe Biden were to actually meet Simon Bolivar, Joe would order Simon into solitary confinement with daily enhanced interrogation. Simon would recognize Joe as one of the same jerks he rebelled against the first time.
The US idiocrasy at work, bullying, harassing and threatening smaller weaker countries that can’t fight back. Typical cowardly behaviour.
Don’t sell a single drop of oil to the US…not a single one. A cowardly nation always trampling on smaller ones while pretending to stand for ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’. America should pack up and move away to the furthest galaxy…fight your wars there and leave us Earthlings alone. GO HOME YANKEE!!! AND STAY HOME.
Not only do the rulers of the USA keep interfering with so many other countries and ignore their own nation , but they use really stupid initials like PATRIOT ACT and BOLIVAR to pretend their invasion have some sort of meaning and significance.
I suppose it’s safer to threatn a small country like Venezuela than a big, well-armed, country like China or Russia. Not that an outright invasion would be any more successful than invading Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc.
“Nothing fundamental is going to change” J. Biden POTUS candidate 2020. Why is anyone surprised?
No one alert is surprised to usa’s imperialism and usa’s cultural ignorance.
Usurping the name of a liberator on an oppressive bill is stupid (viz. strutting Scott above) and such ignorance should be thrown out of congress.
Once again the stupidity of the United States shines through. Conservatives hate the immigrants at the border and their attempts to cross into the United States but they continually interfere in the governments of central and South America and make those countries unbearable places to live. It is time to allow the people of those countries to choose their own governments and ways of living without the interference of the United States.
tl;dr Maybe Venezuela has only itself to blame?
So maybe Venezuela shouldn’t have been so quick to undermine Russia’s energy battle with the West by cutting an oil deal with the perfidious USA?
Since confiscating their US dollar reserves wasn’t enough to make it clear to them that the US is not agreement capable, it’s unlikely this latest attempt at economic terrorism will either.
For those who still don’t understand that the United States is most responsible for the plight of the Venezuelan people but who have open minds, this article might prove eye opening.
Only people who are blind, dumb and deaf aren’t aware that associating with the US is deadly. Presently the best ‘example’ is the European Union…
Like they say America doesn’t do irony. They call the elected government of Venezuela an authoritarian regime … and they’ll sanction anybody anywhere who deals with it.
America has fallen to the playground politics of children with big guns. The neo-cons endanger the whole planet and everything on it.
It’s the incessant meddlers in the arrogant Biden regime that need to be weakened, not the sovereign people of Venezuela for trying to mind their own business and run their own country in the constant shadow of American aggression. Our paramount founding father and first president, George Washington, warned our own future leaders not to become entangled with any foreign power when he said, “it is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world…” Our second president John Adams flat out stated, “America goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.”
Neither even hinted that we should attempt to rule the entire world. Our founders would weep at what the vainglorious, war-mongering power-seekers of our recent generations have tried to foist upon this planet. I wish they would give the world and our own people a break. Stop trying to emulate Hitler with the unimaginably expensive weapons you create at the expense of the tax-paying citizens you deprive of needed infrastructure, social programs, education, health care and a sustainable retirement plan to pay for your mad pursuit. Stop recruiting unbelievable masses of uneducated poverty-stricken foreign migrants who enter this country illegally and will be a burden on tax-payers for generations to come merely to pad the voting roles of one of the two deluded political parties that exist only to prop up a select cadre of oligarchs, as though their welfare was the very purpose for the founding of this country.
Venezuela may be an imperfect democracy, damaged mostly by acts of theft and piracy directed at their economy by essentially all Western countries under the instigation of our Washington regime, but the United States has been corrupted beyond all recognition as such a professed egalitarian entity. To call this North American polity a liberal Jeffersonian democracy is the very definition of an “oxymoron.”
Washington continues to make a fool of itself on the world stage. That’s what happens when you allow yourself to be controlled by greedy psychopaths.
Washington continues to make a fool of itself on the world stage. That’s what happens when you allow yourself to be controlled by greedy psychopaths.
True, but the US doesn’t care how it appears on the world stage. As long as there is an unending supply of threats that can be manufactured for US voters, the defense budget will keep increasing, and Raytheon, Lockheed et al will prosper.
1Couldn’t be more perfectly stated!
As if the Yanx could give a hoot about what the world thinks of them. But every beginning has an end…