I wrote this photo essay from here in Venezuela, where hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Caracas to condemn the suffocating US embargo of their country, using the slogans #NoMoreTrump and #TrumpUnblockVenezuela
These photos are just from the rally at the end, after 5 hours of marching
@GrayzoneProject These Venezuelans are entirely ignored by the corporate media, which has repeatedly helped to sell the right-wing US coup attempts
The Trump administration is collectively suffocating the entire Venezuelan population with a criminal embargo that is devastating the economy and trying to starve them. And people know who their enemy is
"Trump sanciona a tu madre" = Trump sanction your mom!
Ex-CIA agent explains US regime-change strategy:
"The point is to put pressure on the targeted gov by ripping apart the social and economic fabric of the country… That means making the people suffer as much as you can until the country plunges into chaos" thegrayzone.com/2019/08/12/tru…
At the huge march against the US embargo here in Venezuela, protesters handed out this flyer:
“How terrorist attacks by Guaidó and US imperialism affect you:
1. They try to paralyze the strategic economic-productive apparatus of the country.
Biden is banning TikTok (one of the most popular apps in the country), while Republican governors send state troopers to brutalize and arrest anti-genocide student protesters, saying they "belong in jail".
The US is an authoritarian regime. There is nothing democratic about it.
The economics of imperialism: A new study shows how "the US’ exorbitant privilege has become a rich world privilege".
The world system has persistent capital income transfers from the poorest to the richest, equal to 1% of GDP of top 20% countries, and 2% of GDP for the top 10%.
The perpetual debt trap of imperialism: "Foreign capital income flows result in a net transfer from poor to rich countries of around 1.2% of the rich’s GDP. This big net transfer of resources allows the richest countries to incur in bigger trade deficits without the need to in-debt themselves to finance them.
"Moreover, it forces the bottom 80% of the world to record trade surpluses to be able to finance such a transfer. If they fail to do so, then they would need to compensate by acquiring more debt, which reinforces the dynamics".
As this study puts it, "The richest countries have become the bankers of the world, attracting the excess savings [of poorer countries] by providing low-yield safe assets and investing these inflows in more profitable ventures".
This imperial "privilege allows these [rich] countries to accumulate net foreign assets, even in cases where they run trade deficits. It signifies their ability to attract foreign investment at low rates and generate income from their external assets".
"This privilege has been translated in positive foreign capital income of 1%-4% of their GDP".
🚨 The president of the UN's International Court of Justice (ICJ) has said there is sufficient evidence for the genocide case against Israel.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has said some allegations against Israel fall within the provisions of the Genocide Convention, and it applies to Palestinians.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has officially recognized the Palestinian people's right to be protected from acts of genocide under the Genocide Convention.
Western economists love to selectively quote Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, but conveniently ignore the lengthy chapter he wrote on how colonialism was central in the creation of capitalism.
Smith discussed the "injustice" of the "plundering of the defenceless natives". 🧵
Adam Smith wrote how colonialism enriched Western colonial powers:
"To the natives however... all the commercial benefits which can have resulted from those events have been sunk and lost in the dreadful misfortunes"
Europeans "commit[ed] with impunity every sort of injustice"
Adam Smith acknowledged how colonialism raised "the mercantile system to a degree of splendour and glory which it could never otherwise have attained to".
For Europe, "new worlds have been opened to their industry", with big markets in the colonies in "Asia, Africa, and America"
"In Guyana, it’s become hard to distinguish where the oil company ends and the government begins. Exxon executives join the Guyanese president in his suite at cricket matches, and the vice president regularly hosts press conferences to defend the oil company".
Far-right extremist Javier Milei won Argentina's presidential election.
Milei wants to:
-legalize the sale of children and human organs
-abolish public healthcare, education, and transportation
-abandon monetary sovereignty and adopt the US dollar
He says his dead dog Conan speaks to him from the afterlife and advises him on economic policy.
Argentina was invited to join BRICS, but far-right president-elect Javier Milei has pledged to withdraw.
The extremist boasted: "Our geopolitical alignment is with the U.S. and Israel. We are not going to align with communists" perfil.com/noticias/polit…
Argentina's extreme-right president-elect Javier Milei pledged to cut ties with China and Brazil (Argentina's two biggest trading partners, with 35% of trade)
Instead Milei wants Argentina to be totally subordinated to the USA, which he basically worships ambito.com/economia/milei…