Trump regime wants Venezuela’s food distribution program undermined

Initiated in early 2016, Venezuela’s Local Provision and Production Committees (CLAPs) program distributes subsidized food to around six million Venezuelan families in need, around two-thirds of the population, part of the nation’s participatory social democracy.

The Obama regime falsely called the vital to life and welfare program an anti-opposition political weapon. It’s nothing of the sort.

It’s administered by neighborhood committees connected to communal councils, social organizations operating nationwide, including community, environmental and feminist groups, others involved in cultural, education and various other activities.

Falsely claiming the program is a money-laundering operation, diverting billions of dollars to Venezuelan officials and private contractors, a bald-faced Big Lie, Trump regime hardliners are targeting it for elimination.

They want Venezuelans starved into submission, part of their war on the country by other means.

On Thursday, Trump’s Treasury Department imposed illegal sanctions on 10 individuals and 13 entities connected to the CLAP program, falsely accusing them of receiving overvalued government contracts in exchange for kickbacks to Bolivarian officials.

Wanting Venezuela’s economy brought to its knees, its people immiserated, the Trump regime aims to disrupt and undermine the CLAP food distribution program and other essential social services.

A typical food box Venezuelan families receive monthly includes six pounds of rice, six pounds of black beans, two pounds of lentils, two liter bottles of oil, two bags of milk, 2.2 pounds of sugar, 10 pounds of corn flour, the essential ingredients of arepas, mayonnaise, catsup, two cans of tuna fish.

CLAP also supplies chicken, meat, and 36 eggs per month, local community coordinators administering it.

Trump regime claims about Venezuelan officials siphoning off funds earmarked for the program are refuted by its recipients.

Nourishing food reaches millions of Venezuelans on a regular basis. False Trump regime accusations about the program, along with sanctions and other toughness are all about wanting to sabotage what’s vital for millions of Venezuelans.

Calling its hardliners “desperate,” Maduro said “not even a million sanctions” will undermine the vital CLAP program.

A Foreign Ministry statement denounced the Trump regime’s “repeated aggression…against the people…aim[ing] to “depriv[e] Venezuelans of their right to food,” adding:

Its hardliners “blocked bank transactions, food and medicine purchases, as well as an endless number of actions meant to achieve regime change by non-constitutional means.”

Like earlier actions, the latest ones are “coercive, unilateral and illegal… economic terrorism… rejected by the international community, given that it violates the principles and purposes of the United Nations Charter.”

Venezuelans “will [continue] fac[ing] them with courage, dignity and democratic conviction.”

The Trump regime initiated coup attempt in January and what followed failed. Its hardliners are desperate to find new ways of brutalizing ordinary Venezuelans.

The harder they try, the more greatly they’re reviled by most people in the country, blaming the US for what’s going on, not their ruling authorities in Caracas.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.