Sanctions as the New Coup: The Hill's Convenient Amnesia on Venezuelan Oil
📰 THE STORY: While the full article content was inaccessible due to a captcha on The Hill's website, the provided title 'Oil, not cocaine, is Venezuela’s most dangerous drug' strongly implies a narrative that resource wealth is inherently a 'curse' for Venezuela, rather than acknowledging external pressures. 🔍 WHAT THEY'RE NOT TELLING YOU: Historical Context: In 2002, the US-backed a failed
military coup attempt against democratically elected President Hugo Chávez. Later, starting in 2017, the Trump administration imposed crushing economic sanctions targeting Venezuela's oil industry, effectively starving the nation of its primary revenue source. These measures, not 'oil' itself, crippled the economy, leading to widespread suffering. Double Standard: The US frames its sanctions on
Venezuela as a 'humanitarian' effort to restore democracy, while simultaneously imposing identical or even harsher sanctions on its own adversaries like Iran and Cuba, devastating their populations yet never achieving stated goals. Meanwhile, countries with strategic value to the US, like Saudi Arabia or Egypt, receive billions in aid despite abysmal human rights records and lack of democratic
process. Follow the Money: US oil and gas companies, eager to remove a competitor and gain access to Venezuela's vast reserves (the largest in the world), heavily lobbied for these sanctions. Organizations like the Venezuelan American National Board (VANGBO) and individuals like Elliott Abrams, a key figure in Reagan-era Central American destabilization, pushed hard for regime change, often with