The new CEPR (Center for Economic and Policy Research) report, written by Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs was little more than a desperate attempt to whitewash the crimes of the Venezuelan government and deflect blame for the humanitarian catastrophe. It failed. Even though the report, entitled “Economic Sanctions as Collective Punishment: The Case of Venezuela,”…
Consider this an intermission between parts one and two of “We have Met the Enemy”. In part two I’ll be looking at the multiple failures and bad moves that undermined Operation Libertad April 30th 2019. But that story is unfolding, mostly in Spanish language media, so I’m having to do a bit of translation to…
The recent blitz of lies and manipulation in the Left media during the April 30th uprising in Venezuela was overwhelming, making it nearly impossible to address in detail. From the center all the way over to the far left people decried a “coup” that some extremists went so far as to claim was “plotted so…
With oil production in freefall the failed government (mafia) of Nicolas Maduro has evidently decided to put more energy into the drug trade. No doubt he’s simply following the lead of the Cuban government which, according to a US intelligence report, has found the business to be a lucrative source of funds since the late…
This piece was published today at Caracas Chronicles. The U.S. State Department, even under such a venal executive as is currently in power, still manages to put out some very decent briefs, like this paper on Nicolás Maduro, released on April 15th, 2019. It’s an exceptionally detailed list of the crimes of what it calls “Venezuela’s…
Juan Carlos Gabaldón has a great piece posted at Caracas Chronicles on the secondary effects of the electrical blackout. He points out that water systems need electricity to pump into homes so that many parts of Caracas have been out of water for nearly a month now. And the sewer systems require water to drain…
I’ve felt obliged by the current polarized politics to engage in polemics recently, taking on Noam Chomsky and the solidarity Left in two recent articles. My new tack has caused one acquaintance to criticize me and unsubscribe from my mailing list (yes, you CAN subscribe by sending me an email to clifross [at]gmail.com or scrolling…
“President” Nicolás Maduro has never been good at taking responsibility for anything at all but he, like his US homologue, Donald Trump, is very good at deflecting blame and lying to cover up his irresponsibility, incompetence and crimes. And so as the blackout dragged into its third day in Venezuela Maduro claimed on Twitter that…
I wrote about the blackouts in Venezuela three years ago in a post I put up at Dissident Voice. It gives some background on the possible reasons for the nation-wide blackout over the past couple of days (March 7-8). I’ve been out of the country for the past month and without a computer so I…
The transcript of my interview with Bob Zadek is now up at the Medium.com website along with a link to the interview itself. You can read it or listen to it here. I’m now in Argentina en route to Uruguay where my co-director Arturo Albarrán and I will be showing our movie and working on…