“Yankees, Go Home!” by Cindy Sheehan + Zelaya Returns to Honduras http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/yankees-go-home-by-cindy-sheehan-zelaya-returns-to-honduras/

Another reason the sanctions appear now is because as the US wanes in the region, China ascends—according to an editorial in the right-wing Miami Herald: The share of U.S. exports to the region has dropped from 55 percent of Latin America’s total imports in 2000 to 32 percent of the region’s imports in 2009, says a new report from the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).Meanwhile, China’s trade with the region has soared, the study shows.

In my opinion, the announcement of the new sanctions against Venezuela, while no doubt a very hostile act, is nothing but the US flexing its increasingly weak and flabby muscles. The over-extension of the US military combined with its plunging credibility over such continuing programs as torture and illegal regime change, has turned us into a big international laughingstock—still feared, because the US is nothing but a big imperial bully—but a joke, nonetheless.

Venezuelan protest US oil sanctions http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D51guWhcDw&feature=player_embedded