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.