Comment by StanislavPetrov | Hacker News Reader

Comment by StanislavPetrov | Hacker News Reader

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StanislavPetrov

Regime change has been underway for years. It always starts with sanctions to choke off and destabilize a country. Then the instability is used as a (poor) excuse to invade. The same playbook is invariably used against every country that opposes US/NATO global hegemony.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/12/amid-violence-...

When one of our client states uses violence against protesters (Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, ect) we supply them with Apache attack helicopters and billions of dollars in subsidies. When the same behavior is exhibited by a state that isn't under our control, sanctions and war are always soon to follow.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-egypt-apaches/u-s-to-...

In this case I can assure you the US had little to do with the economic collapse. The reason why the economy went down the drain was because of an extreme currency control. Just months after Maduro got ahold of power, he got rid of the only mechanism that existed to buy foreign currency legally. So what happened is that people had to resort to buy US dollars at black market rates. That caused shortages, inflation, etc.

Then they had the brilliant idea to enforce price controls on a lot of goods, which only served to ensure that nobody wanted to produce or trade said good.

US/EU sanctions only came recently and are targeted at individuals, so no, this mess is caused by the Venezuelan government itself.

Sorry this is false. Certainly their poor economic policies helped lead to the mess they are in but its not accurate to say that US/EU policies and sanctions didn't play a significant role. Nor is it accurate to say that these sanctions "came recently" or were targeted only at individuals. We have been sanctioned the entire country of Venezuela for well over a decade.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-usa-sanctions/u-s-sa...

the second paragrph of this article says that the sanctions are largely symbolic? If so, how does that lead to economic collapse?

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