If you run a company that buys oil from Venezuela, stop.
If you purchase fuel from a company getting its product from Venezuela, stop.
If you run a government that imposes lots of arbitrary restrictions on the exploration, development, and/or transport of oil, stop that also.
But don’t wait for the last to happen if you can do the first. Or second.
And the second means: Don’t buy gas from Citgo.
We have long had more than sufficient cause to refrain from financially empowering Venezuela’s autocratic regime, and to make it a lot easier for domestic buyers and sellers to shun dealings with dictators who happen to be sitting on a lot of oil. These reasons didn’t fade after the death last year of Hugo Chavez.
News from the communist country underscores the viciousness of the Venezuelan tyranny. Organizations like the Human Rights Foundation have called attention to the plight of all those detained and abused for peacefully protesting the regime by formally declaring opposition leader Leopoldo López, detained since February, to be a prisoner of conscience of the Maduro government; and by vocally condemning the government’s torture of student protestors Marco Aurelio Coello and Christian Holdack, also detained since February.
Communist governments steal everyone’s stuff; that is the pain that everybody who works for a living sees and feels. They also tend to resort to repression and torture of any who dare object to their repressive policies. Persons free to boycott such tyranny should boycott it. Now. In order to do so, we need not wait for a government or even have the support of our own government.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
8 replies on “Don’t Empower Venezuelan Government”
good luck but a commodity is fungible. it’s almost impossible to boycott a real commodity like oil, copper, aluminum, wheat, corn because it is a commodity. it loses it’s identity in the market place otherwise it wouldn’t be a “commodity”.
what’s truly depressing is how long it takes to overthrow oppressive regimes like communist russia, iraq, or anywhere else. i was really hopeful during the winter that venezuela was about to overthrow madura but it just hasn’t happened. it’s amazing how long people will endure. and given the seemingly approaching fascism of the US, it’s not very encouraging. i don’t really see the ground swell pushback that is capable of halting the gears of the bureaucracy that seem to be intent on total control.
from a non mainstream blogger: the real danger in NSA spying is that they come to own congress by spying on them and blackmailing them into submission.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/06/original-nsa-whistleblower-snowden-never-access-juicy-documents.html
Boycotting Citgo will only hurt the retailer. When gasoline comes out of the pipeline, ship or barge it’s RBOB ( Reformulated Blend for Oxygenate Blending) gasoline. It only becomes Citgo when it’s loaded on the truck for delivery and Citgo additives are mixed in. If the Citgo station doesn’t buy it, it goes down the street to the unbranded independent station or someone else’s additives are mixed in and it becomes their brand.
As much as I think shunning to be an effective pressure point on a small scale, I think the above comments are all too accurate and true. No easy way to really punish a dictator. Curses!
All indeed should make purchase selections with your mind and philosophy, which should include avoiding the product or commodities from repressive regimes and corrupt enterprises.
However, once out and on the market it is generally true that price will prevail, regardless of origin.
This leaves it for the people of the repressive organization to end the oppression, which is a long, costly, and if it is governmental, commonly bloody process.
No organization which ignores any of the mandatory prescriptions for successful human interaction (the Ten Commandments of Christianity and Judaism which are paralleled on all the great and lasting moral codes) will cause in the long run anything except Hell, here and now.
the governments of Venezuela, and increasingly the US and others, are habitual violators of the 1st, 5th, 7th and 10th of the Christian Commandments. The ultimate and inevitable result is clear. Hayak taught us that is your do not control and limit the powers of government you must become its serf.
I pray the US rediscovers the actual meaning and purpose of its Constitution, and its morality, before it is too late.
The young man in the photo is Leopoldo López, mentioned in the article.
Lynn Atherton Bloxham accurately observes there’s “no easy way to really punish a dictator. Curses!”
Guess that means the loathsome and fearsome one of those in our 1600 Pennsylvania Public Housing Projects, walks?
(Or, rather, struts?)
Citgo is a wholly owned subsidiary of PVSA; thus, is owned by the Venezuelan government.
You can boycott Citgo, and punish the Venezuelan government.
While several have commented that oil is fungible (and it is); thus, Venezuela will sell it or the gas refined from it, to other refiners or retailers if they can’t sell it at their Citgo stations. However, putting those stations out of business will result in losses to Venezuela’s government. They have to pay mortgages, property taxes and other expenses to have the stataions, and lacking purchasers of their gas, they will go out of business.
Yes, by all means, boycott Citgo as I have done for several years now.