There is an example of inflation that people see reported on the oligarchs’ news media that most people may not associate with what goes on in a country like Venezuela.

The example I am thinking of is what happens to prices when a natural weather incident disrupts normal life for a brief period of time. In New England we see this happen when a blizzard strikes. When the warnings of a blizzard are broadcast, people rush out to stock up on groceries and on snow fighting equipment. Some grocery stores run out of milk and bread. Hardware stores run out of salt to melt the ice, shovels to clear the snow, and flashlights in case the power goes out.

Some stores take advantage of the scarcity by raising the prices. This is a mini-example of inflation. Let us examine what has happened to allow inflation to start up. The government did not suddenly start printing money and pumping it in just to the locations that were threatened by a storm. These locations suddenly faced a shortage of goods that were needed in the storm. The amount of money stayed the same, but the supply of goods fell short of the demand. Parts of the country that were not threatened by the storm saw no rise in prices.

Now think what happens to a country that is sanctioned, embargoed, and otherwise laid siege to by the USA and its allies. Those countries don’t need to increase the supply of currency one bit to experience inflation. The goods that would have been bought at normal prices are suddenly removed from the economy. The price of the remaining goods increases because the existing money is chasing fewer goods than it used to.

A simple definition of inflation is “too much money chasing too few goods”. There are two factors here, the amount of money, and the amount of goods. A sudden change in either factor will have a serious impact on the relation between the two factors.

YouTube has the video Max Blumenthal: Report From the Real Venezuela.

Here’s some useful reporting from the ground in Venezuela — notably lacking in the mainstream press! — from Max Blumenthal, interviewed by the redoubtable R.J. Eskow:

This may be the most profoundly educational video you can see today. This is the kind of thing you used to see on USA public broadcasting.

Here is a lesson that I seem to relearn every 5 years or so. Windows Search Service is a resource hog, and needs to be turned off. My Thunderbird email reader was getting to the point of being almost unusable. It was going into periods of non-response for reasons I could not fathom. I could not imagine what it was doing in the periods where it would not respond. The Windows resource monitor did not display any significant usage of any computer resources, yet Thunderbird was too busy to respond to me.

Since I turned off Windows Search on two computers that I believe were both indexing files on my Network Attached Storage, the performance of my computers has taken a giant leap forward.

The reason why I have to keep learning this lesson might be the time lapse between when I buy new computers. By the time I buy a new computer, I forget that I had shut off Windows Search Service on the old computers. It takes a few years of suffering poor performance before I am reminded of the cause.

YouTube has the video The “Permanent War State” Aims to Plunder Venezuela – Wilkerson and Jay.

Trump promises “democracy and freedom” to Venezuela, delivered by Elliott Abrams who brought you illegal wars, coups, and support for dictatorships; and Mike Pompeo and VP Pence, both with deep ties to the Koch brothers who need Venezuelan heavy crude to feed their Texas refinery – Col. Larry Wilkerson joins TRNN’s Paul Jay

If you don’t have sleepless nights yet, this video ought to do it for you.

YouTube has this Jimmy Dore video BBC Reporter Corrects US Media on Venezuela W/Greg Palast.

This is way more than I knew about Venezuela. Admittedly, I have not been visiting Greg Palasts’s web site lately. Try to keep control of your eyelids when they slam open. This is Palast appearing on the Jimmy Dore show. Stop making excuses for Bernie Sanders.

Here is the second part of the Jimmy Dore Show.

Wasserman Schultz Threatens Kicking Bernie Out Of Party Over Venezuela

Telesur has the article and video Hugo Chavez’s Memory Lives on in the Hearts of Latin Americans.

Over the last few months, the U.S. has increased its efforts to dislodge Chavez’s democratically elected successor, Nicolas Maduro. In its most recent attempt, the U.S. sent “humanitarian aid” to Colombia in a show of solidarity with the Venezuelan opposition and the “suffering boys and girls.” However, violence- perpetrated by opposition forces- broke out along the border and resulted in the injury of numerous state police officials.

This “philanthropic” ploy was denounced by Venezuelan government officials before an international delegation at the United Nations last week, when Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza revealed that the trucks of “food” were carrying equipment for barricades and anti-government movements lodged by the opposition.

Despite these hardships, Maduro’s government continues Chavez’s mission, founding new social programs to boost the economy and employment opportunities, while still ensuring the heart and spirit of “Chavismo” is reflected in modern-day Venezuela.

This is a slight antidote to the lies our oligarchs’ news media and all of our politicians are foisting on the USA public. Even Bernie Sanders seems unable to let you know this.

The Real News Network has the video Sanders on Venezuela – Does His Critique of US Policy Go Far Enough?

At the CNN town hall, Sanders opposed U.S. intervention in Venezuela, refused to call Maduro a dictator, or recognize Guaido, but he didn’t call for an end to sanctions

One of the panelists, Norman Solomon, was so horrible, that I am not going to embed the video in this post. The Real News Network article has a transcript of the question and answer in the CNN Town Hall. I will quote the question along with the answer that I wish Bernie Sanders had given.

SPEAKER: Good evening. In light of the recent events in Venezuela, you came out against U.S. intervention–a contentious stance, as many in Venezuela are currently suffering at the hands of Maduro through starvation and violence, and it is clear that he will not let humanitarian aid in. Under these circumstances and moving forward, do you have a clear position on U.S. intervention overseas, both economically and militarily, for nations that are under the regimes of these oppressive dictators?

IMAGINARY SANDERS: Maduro won an election that international observers saw as more honest than many elections in the USA. That does not sound like a dictator to me. The USA is the cause of whatever starvation and violence there is in Venezuela because of our 20 year economic war against that country. There is a large volume of humantiarian aid flowing into Venezuels from internatinoal sources that do not put weapons in the humanitarian aid they are sending in. Venezuela wouldn’t need humanitarian aid if the USA weren’t blocking access to $30 billion that rightfully belong to Venezuelans. Given those facts, would you like to rephrase your question?

Why would Bernie Sanders lie about the situation in Venezuela? Here is part of what Bernie Sanders really said.

BERNIE SANDERS: Thank you. Good question. There are a lot of awful things happening in the world. And what’s going on in Venezuela is terrible. Their economy is a disaster. People are living in hunger and in fear. I strongly believe there has to be an international humanitarian effort to improve lives for the people. I think the evidence is pretty clear that the last election in Venezuela was not a free and fair election, and under international supervision I want to see a free and fair election.

If Bernie Sanders would lie about this, how can we be so sure he is being honest about the rest of what he says? As they said to Michael Cohen when he testified before Congress, were you lying then, or are you lying now? Once you lie, you cannot regain your credibility.

The credibility is gone forever, but we supporters of Bernie Sanders need to make every effort to get him to correct the record. Otherwise, we make it clear that we will accept some lies from Bernie Sanders. There goes our own credibility.

The Black Alliance for Peace has the video U.S. Peace Movement to Send Delegation to Venezuela.

Peace activists including BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka announced Wednesday at the United Nations that a U.S. delegation comprised of peace organization representatives would head to Venezuela in March. The delegation intends to investigate U.S. crimes in Venezuela. Speakers included Samuel Moncada, Permanent Representative of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to the United Nations; Bahman Azad of the U.S. Peace Council; Sara Flounders of the International Action Center; and Joe Lombardo of the United National Antiwar Coalition.

You can start at the post by The Black Alliance for Peace before you go to the video.

We need many powerful USA politicians get behind this effort to go to Venezuela and bring back the information of what is really going on there. We need Bernie and Tulsi to get behind stopping the USA’s economic war against Venezuela which could easily morph into a military war.

If theoretically we are fighting in the Middle East to prevent terrorists from fighting in the USA, why on earth would we want to bring the war to Latin America, where they wouln’t even have to cross an ocean to bring the war to us? Can we really be that stupid?

I have been confused by what Michael Hudson wrote in J is For Junk Economics: A Guide to Reality in an Age of Deception about Socialism and Marx in . Marx wrote Das Kapital. Marx and Engels wrote the Manifesto of the Communist Party. I may tackle reading Das Kapital someday to read for myself what it has to say. However, I figured that reading the Manifesto of the Communist Party pamphlet would be a much less daunting task.

At first, I read the 1888 English translation itself. When I read the following section (with emphasis added by me):

The significance of Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism bears an inverse relation to historical development. In proportion as the modern class struggle develops and takes definite shape, this fantastic standing apart from the contest, these fantastic attacks on it, lose all practical value and all theoretical justification. Therefore, although the originators of these systems were, in many respects, revolutionary, their disciples have, in every case, formed mere reactionary sects. They hold fast by the original views of their masters, in opposition to the progressive historical development of the proletariat. They, therefore, endeavour, and that consistently, to deaden the class struggle and to reconcile the class antagonisms. They still dream of experimental realisation of their social Utopias, of founding isolated “phalansteres”, of establishing “Home Colonies”, or setting up a “Little Icaria”(4) — duodecimo editions of the New Jerusalem — and to realise all these castles in the air, they are compelled to appeal to the feelings and purses of the bourgeois. By degrees, they sink into the category of the reactionary [or] conservative Socialists depicted above, differing from these only by more systematic pedantry, and by their fanatical and superstitious belief in the miraculous effects of their social science.

They, therefore, violently oppose all political action on the part of the working class; such action, according to them, can only result from blind unbelief in the new Gospel.

The Owenites in England, and the Fourierists in France, respectively, oppose the Chartists and the Réformistes.

It struck me how the emboldened section could apply to this manifesto itself. After completing my reading of the manifesto, originally written in 1847, I went back to read the introductions to the various editions from 1872 to 1893. I see that Marx and Engels already did think about applying the emboldened phrase to the manifesto. There is also a lot useful historical information in these introductions.

that consequently the whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding land in common ownership) has been a history of class struggles,

Tribal society was the example of holding land in common ownership that I had not thought of.