There's one other important factor in Venezuela's decline, which is the fact that their oil is mostly heavy oil and/or shale oil, which is relatively expensive and inefficient to produce and refine. In the US and Canada, similar heavy shale oil has been a crucial factor in reversing the decline of total oil production caused by "peak oil" and exhaustion of conventional oil reserves. But, the production of this shale oil has been enabled by availability of enormous amounts of financing which has been made possible by the Federal Reserve and their imperial printing press. It's not clear whether there has ever been any profit, or even positive cash flow, from production of shale oil.
Venezuela's oil has always been relatively expensive, but nevertheless it has been very profitable at times of high oil prices. With historically depressed oil prices in recent years, the amount of surplus revenue available from Venezuelan oil production has been much less. Without oil revenues, the Venezuelan government has been unable to subsidize the well-being of the average Venezuelan citizen. Thus impoverished, the people become more receptive to the message of the pro-American, pro-Capitalist mass media and opposition figures like Guaido.
US sanctions and threats of military intervention are, at this point, the primary driving factors of Venezuelan economic collapse. Low oil prices and high production costs are secondary factors, but they contributed to creating fertile grounds for US intervention.
All of this is explained in an article by Nafeez Ahmed, which nevertheless I am hesitant to recommend, because Ahmed systematically understates the importance of US interventions in Venezuela. And, furthermore, John Bolton and the Neocons are correct when they regard Venezuelan oil as a prize to be treasured for the future. Oil prices will rise to cover the cost of production soon enough. Depending on how things play out here, the profits might wind up being used to help the average citizens of Venezuela. Or, perhaps Trump and his friends will be able to buy more of those solid gold toilet bowls.
https://medium.com/insurge-intellig...nto-how-the-oil-age-will-unravel-f80aadff7786
As an aside about Ahmed, here's an article in which he explains his position about 911. He's written very prolifically on the topic, and he sees many problems with the official story. I would basically consider him an important part of the 911 truth camp. But at the same time, he's very critical of "inside job" theories, based on the following logic:
https://www.nafeezahmed.com/thecuttingedge//2015/08/911-conspiracy-theory-and-bullshit.html
perhaps jones is incorrect in his explanation about explosives. even if he was correct in suggesting explosives were used, establishing the chain of guilt to particular individuals in the US government is another thing entirely.
there are several logical possibilities, and narrowing down which is more likely would itself be a complex task involving a criminal investigation. one might argue, for example, that al-qaeda planted the explosives (assuming jones is completely correct). one might argue further that al-qaeda did so with the help of corrupt elements with access to the wtc, who were bought off (al-qaeda after all has access to funding, and fbi whistleblowers like sibel edmonds have talked about the corrupt relationship between terrorists, mafia and intelligence operatives in certain cases).
This is just wrong on so many levels. For one thing, Ahmed has just finished explaining why there will never be hard forensic proof of explosives at 9/11: because the evidence was criminally destroyed as quickly as possible. He doesn't come to terms with the fact that what we do know, points to the conclusion that explosives almost certainly were involved, at least at WTC 7. (That is, unless the publicly available evidence is all fake.)
If the authorities had any belief that Al Qaeda had planted explosives in the buildings, they would not have acted in such a guilty manner to destroy the evidence. On the contrary, there would have been a serious investigation to find out how Al Qaeda carried off such a stunt. Indeed, Ahmed acknowledges that Al Qaeda couldn't possibly have done it without the cooperation of intelligence operatives.
But if US intelligence operatives or other persons in the WTC cooperated with Arab terrorists to plant bombs in the WTC, who is ultimately and primarily responsible? Wouldn't it be safe to say in this circumstance, that the Arab terrorists were essentially in the role of patsies, being set up to take the blame?
And furthermore, we know who actually was in charge of WTC security at the time (it was Bush-linked corporations) and we know who had access to the buildings and the specific levels where explosives would have been most badly needed (a team of artists.) So why is Ahmed being so obtuse here?
