Financial Times Discovers Blockades Cause Economic Pain, Years Later
Suddenly, the economic woes of Venezuela, long portrayed in mainstream media as solely the fault of 'socialist mismanagement' and 'corruption' (which, conveniently, never affects US-aligned governments), are tied to external pressures. The FT's recent piece, 'Venezuela’s currency plunges as economy choked by US blockade,' manages to utter the quiet part out loud—that economic sanctions,
euphemistically called a 'blockade,' actually have an impact. One might wonder what changed. Did gravity suddenly start working on embargoed economies? For years, the official line from Washington and its media proxies was that Venezuela's hyperinflation and suffering were self-inflicted wounds, despite a litany of US sanctions—from oil embargoes to freezing state assets—designed to choke off the
economy and, frankly, starve the population into regime change (as per former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's own admission). The sudden shift to acknowledging the 'blockade' is less a journalistic breakthrough and more an admission of previously undeniable reality. How many more 'regimes' will have to collapse under the weight of externally imposed economic hardship before this becomes a
standard part of the narrative, not a grudging addendum?