Category Archives: Venezuela

Trump Lawyer Christopher M. Kise, Registered Foreign Agent

19 Monday Sep 2022

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, United States of America, Venezuela

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On January 24, 2020, the Foreign Agents Registration Act unit of the National Security Division of the Department of Justice received from Christopher M. Kise, now the lawyer representing Donald John Trump in his defense in relation to the FBI’s investigation of Trump’s holding documents stamped as Top Secret/Secure Compartmented Information (TS/SCI), FARA registration #6787. In the form, Kise had listed as his principle Reinaldo Munoz Pedroza, the Attorney General of Venezuela appointed by the dictator Nicolas Maduro. At that time, Pedrozo had been sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury for undermining democracy in Venezuela and related election interference.

News of Kise’s registration as a foreign agent broke two days ago, and as interesting as that may be, the development of public and official interest in both the Conflict of Interest implied and the breathtaking scope of potential national security compromises–all those boxes of TS/SCI data!–appears slow. However, this by Ben Meiselas showed up on YouTube this morning:

Posted by MeidasTouch to YouTube, September 19, 2022.

For Trump’s base, the idea of achieving patriotic honor in association with his support appears belied and eroded by not only the former president’s authoritarian, belligerent, and obstreperous character but his connections–and one step removed is not far enough–to the tools, literally, so it would seem in the case of Mr. Kise, of at least one dictatorship. While it would seem fair for President (for Life) Maduro to have representation in the United States, the same would seem more than heinous for Trump to share with him the same lawyer.

Should the Kise-Trump story take down almost-candidate-(again) Trump, it would make a nice bookend for Trump’s first big yellow caution flag: Paul Manafort.

To make sense of the president’s pardon of Paul Manafort, it helps to understand the man Trump selected to run his 2016 campaign. On one hand, it seems inconceivable that an American presidential candidate would choose as his campaign manager someone whose last job was political strategist to a dictator in Ukraine who had recently been overthrown in a popular revolution. On the other hand, it makes perfect sense. Paul Manafort made a fortune helping tyrants and would-be tyrants appear legitimate. He was the ultimate symbol of the corruption of democratic political systems. His evolution from establishment wonderkid to handmaiden to dictators is a story of how corruption perverts democracies.

Hoffman, David. “Paul Manafort: Handmaiden to dictators.” The Hill, December 24, 2020.

With his latest hire in lawyers, Trump has only confirmed what all Americans, much including his base, must now see, i.e., the darkest of fallen real princes by contemporary business and class standards, a man who cannot keep himself separate from America’s enemies, Russian criminals, and assorted (other) dictators.

Related Online

Cohen, Marshall, Oliver Carcy, and Zachary Cohen. “How Team Trump used Fox News as a laundromat for unverified Russian information about top Democrats.” CNN Politics, October 12, 2020.

Davis, Wynne. “TS/SCI: What an abbreviation reveals about the files seized from Mar-a-Lago.” NPR, August 16, 2022.

Gans, Jared. “Save America PAC advances $3M to Trump lawyer to cover legal fees.” The Hill, September 16, 2022.

Hoffman, David. “Paul Manafort: Handmaiden to dictators.” The Hill, December 24, 2020.

Myers, Steven Lee and Andrew E. Kramer. “How Paul Manafort Wielded Power in Ukraine Before Advising Donald Trump.” The New York Times, July 31, 2016.

Nicol, Ryan. “Attorney Christ Kise to help Nicolas Maduro administration fight U.S. sanctions.” Florida Politics, January 28, 2020.

Oppenheim, James S. “Trump’s America in Retrospect: Russian Real Estate Entanglements.” BackChannels, October 9, 2021.

Smith, David. “‘The perfect target’: Russia cultivated Trump as asset for 40 years – ex-KGB spy.” The Guardian, January 29, 2021.

Unger, Craig. “Trump’s businesses are full of dirty Russian money. The scandal is that it’s legal.” The Washington Post, March 29, 2019.

Unger, Craig. “Trump’s Russian Laundromat”. The New Republic. July 13, 2017.

U.S. Department of the Treasury. “Treasury Sanctions Maduro Regime Officials for Undermining Democratic Order in Venezuela.” September 4, 2020.

Wikipedia. “Reinaldo Munoz Pedroza”.

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Venezuela: Lying to The People

30 Thursday May 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, South America, Venezuela

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Dickey, Christopher. “How Cuba Helped Make Venezuela a Mafia State.” Daily Beast, June 2, 2019.

InSight Crime. “Venezuela: A Mafia State?” Seven-part series, May 16, 2018 to May 25, 2018. Full report: InSight Crime. “Venezuela: A Mafia State?” Report (PDF): 1) “7 Reasons for Describing Venezuela as a ‘Mafia State’”, Mary 16, 2018; 2) “Drug Trafficking Within the Venezuelan Regime: The ‘Cartel of the Suns’”, May 17, 2018; 3) “The Devolution of State Power: The ‘Colectivos’”, May 18, 2018; 4) “The Devolution of State Power: ‘The Pranes’,” May 20, 2018; 5) “Colombia and Venezuela: Criminal Siamese Twins,” May 21, 2018; 6) “Honduras and Venezuela: Coup and Cocaine Air Bridge,” May 23, 2018; 7) “Dominican Republic and Venezuela: Cocaine Across the Caribbean,” May 24, 2018; 8) “Venezuela and El Salvador: Exporting Aid and Corruption,” May 25, 2018.

BackChannels readers should be more sophisticated than those who embroil themselves in arguing for or against capitalism, communism, and socialism.

For what Venezuela has come to experience, all of the “isms” are superfluous.

Venezuelan dictatorships have chosen repeatedly to ignore good advice. Credit the Chavez Regime for its contribution to this illuminating report from Foreign Policy: https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/07/16/how-venezuela-struck-it-poor-oil-energy-chavez/

Maduro?

Venezuela is rich in natural resources, and that far beyond oil!

And yet, the “socialist” dictator would not encourage the diversifying of the economy through even modest individual capitalization or devotion to good ideas.

Now people have gotten the message and they’re scraping gold off of the earth — and growing gardens with earnest interest in bare survival.

Migration: 4 million, according to the above Fox network video.

And yet Maduro and his cronies will attempt to assure Venezuelans of the government’s ability to recover (while demonizing The North).

Venezuela has failed.

The state needs valued cash supply, humanitarian aid, and a transition that puts the latent wealth of the nation into fair and just use.

Related on BackChannels for political meditation: https://conflict-backchannels.com/coins-and-other-terms/anthropolitical-psychology/malignant-narcissism/

YT Generated, King Radio (Norman Span) – Today’s Mathilda would be fleeing Venezuela.

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Venezuela: Background for the Liberal Perspective

03 Friday May 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, International Development, South America, transnational crime, Venezuela

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Dickey, Christopher. “How Cuba Helped Make Venezuela a Mafia State.” Daily Beast, June 2, 2019.

InSight Crime. “Venezuela: A Mafia State?” Seven-part series, May 16, 2018 to May 25, 2018. Full report: InSight Crime. “Venezuela: A Mafia State?” Report (PDF): 1) “7 Reasons for Describing Venezuela as a ‘Mafia State’”, Mary 16, 2018; 2) “Drug Trafficking Within the Venezuelan Regime: The ‘Cartel of the Suns’”, May 17, 2018; 3) “The Devolution of State Power: The ‘Colectivos’”, May 18, 2018; 4) “The Devolution of State Power: ‘The Pranes’,” May 20, 2018; 5) “Colombia and Venezuela: Criminal Siamese Twins,” May 21, 2018; 6) “Honduras and Venezuela: Coup and Cocaine Air Bridge,” May 23, 2018; 7) “Dominican Republic and Venezuela: Cocaine Across the Caribbean,” May 24, 2018; 8) “Venezuela and El Salvador: Exporting Aid and Corruption,” May 25, 2018.

Instead of abetting or encouraging the survival of President Nicolas Maduro’s now brutal regime in Venezuela, Representative Ilhan Omar may do better to review how starvation came to visit the South American state — wondrously rich with resources — in the first place.

Johnson, Keith. “How Venezuela Struck it Poor.” Foreign Policy, July 16, 2018.

Venezuela as petrostate had a fine run on high and rising oil prices, but as crude pricing fell, the state discovered discovered itself as yet . . . undeveloped — and foremost in its oil sector. From the above cited Foreign Policy piece:

The problem for Chávez was that many of the PDVSA’s then-managers wanted to increaseproduction, by continuing the development of Venezuela’s technically challenging heavy oil fields. To do so, they needed to reinvest more of the company’s earnings rather than hand them all over to the government. So the managers had to go.

It was only the beginning of the mismanagement of Venezuela’s oil reserves.

What about other sectors of the economy?

On agriculture, here’s an excerpt from The Washington Post (Mariana Zunig and Nick Miroff, “Venezuela’s paradox: People are hungry, but farmers can’t feed them”, May 22, 2017):

“Last year I had 200,000 hens,” said Saulo Escobar, who runs a poultry and hog farm here in the state of Aragua, an hour outside Caracas. “Now I have 70,000.”

Several of his cavernous hen houses sit empty because, Escobar said, he can’t afford to buy more chicks or feed. Government price controls have made his business unprofitable, and armed gangs have been squeezing him for extortion payments and stealing his eggs.

As well known to other communist and socialist bureaucracies, the government owns all, but to play the role of an enlightened hub for all that the state needs and needs to share equally, it has to have something to distribute. As the oil economy collapsed, much around it appears to have caved as well.

Add desperation to insolvency: what the government hasn’t discouraged, ordinary thieves — not to blame them too much for their response to starvation — have apparently stepped in to pick up the slack.

Alas, also, Venezuela’s program had some items it distributes all too well for cash:

The network used a string of heavily guarded nightclubs to generate profits from the forced prostitution, which where then laundered through at least eight companies the group owned.

Thirteen victims were rescued and more than 2 million euros (almost $2.4 million) worth of properties, cash, jewelry and vehicles, as well as weapons, were seized as part of the operation.

Albaladejo, Angelika. “Transnational Sex Trafficking Rings Cash In on Venezuela Crisis.” InSight Crime, June 28, 2018.

Basically, Maduro’s dictatorship and its military (and the state’s mafia) have had between narcotics — noted at the top of this blog — and sundry other criminal undertakings — some nefarious ways of raising cash for themselves.

In the global politics, the regime has also the support of other feudal and absolute powers: Beijing and Moscow have both made arrangements with the hard-struck “socialist” state, and Turkey, famously, has been buying up Venezuelan gold now scraped off the earth by others scrambling for useful cash.

The state of war has become a constant between Beijing, Moscow, and Washington, but the issues are worked either “by other means”i.e., “diplomacy” or through punitive measures that would be violent swipes — and they are that — without the gun play. What works and how far it goes may be indicated by Venezuela’s continuing decline into chaos, darkness, and despair.

The western-supported alternative President Juan Guaido has been able to inspire defections — and that is saying something about the state of the Venezuelan state — but not yet raise the army to compete with Maduro’s heavily leveraged forces.

Related on the Web

O’Connor, Tom. “Russia, China and Iran Defend Support for Venezuela, warn U.S. Cannot Tell Them or Latin America What to Do.” Newsweek, April 15, 2019.

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Venezuela and the Liberal Progressive Stance

03 Wednesday Apr 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Caribbean Basin, Central America, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Cuba, El Salvador, Epistemology, Extreme Brown vs Red-Green, Guatemala, Honduras, International Development, Mexico, North America, Political Psychology, Politics, South America, United States of America, Venezuela

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Dickey, Christopher. “How Cuba Helped Make Venezuela a Mafia State.” Daily Beast, June 2, 2019.

InSight Crime. “Venezuela: A Mafia State?” Seven-part series, May 16, 2018 to May 25, 2018. Full report: InSight Crime. “Venezuela: A Mafia State?” Report (PDF): 1) “7 Reasons for Describing Venezuela as a ‘Mafia State'”, Mary 16, 2018; 2) “Drug Trafficking Within the Venezuelan Regime: The ‘Cartel of the Suns'”, May 17, 2018; 3) “The Devolution of State Power: The ‘Colectivos'”, May 18, 2018; 4) “The Devolution of State Power: ‘The Pranes’,” May 20, 2018; 5) “Colombia and Venezuela: Criminal Siamese Twins,” May 21, 2018; 6) “Honduras and Venezuela: Coup and Cocaine Air Bridge,” May 23, 2018; 7) “Dominican Republic and Venezuela: Cocaine Across the Caribbean,” May 24, 2018; 8) “Venezuela and El Salvador: Exporting Aid and Corruption,” May 25, 2018.

North American Continental Appetite for Narcotics
–> Cash –> Central / South America
–> Cartel –> Gangs –> Related Violence
–> Corruption of Authorities
–> General Insecurity
–> Displacement of Population | Northern Mass Migration

If you’re on the Soviet / post-Soviet flavored Left / Far Left Progressive Movement, the same that might obtain its image of the world from, say, 927+ or Mint Press, at least consider reading Christopher Dickey’s report on the Cuba-Venezuelan connection and the InSight Crime series on narcotics trafficking and the accumulation of wealth by nominally “communist” and “socialist” so-called “leaders” in captive Central and South American states.

Related Online: https://www.thesun.co.uk/archives/news/369700/100million-diva-whitney-houston-blew-fortune-on-crack/
Related Online: https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/press/releases/2018/November/mexico-and-unodc-present-second-opium-poppy-cultivation-survey.html (November 2018). Other states have poppy fields, of course, but the expansion of cultivation in Mexico for the production of heroin in North America should be perhaps more widely acknowledged.

Breaking: Montoya-Galvez, Camilo. “Senators Introduce bill to send $400 million in aid to Venezuela, strengthen sanctions.” CBS News, April 3, 2019.

In familiar Orwellian fashion, the New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left simply ignores the sustained Soviet / post-Soviet investment in the underworld and what it does to societies everywhere it travels.

For decades Venezuela treated its oil reserves — as has Russia — as plunder for The People, which it was, while all the while failing to diversify its internal and trade economies. Who cared? There was money for everything — until oil prices fell.

And then there was nothing.

Or what was left were the sideshows: the selling off of gold reserves; the cocaine trade; sex-related human trafficking; and, nearer to this miserable late date, displacement and the bartering of everything.

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One, two, three + 1: Tired Phantoms of the Soviet

21 Thursday Feb 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Fast News Share, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela

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One, two, three — Ukraine, Venezuela, Sudan — each dictatorship associated with Soviet / post-Soviet political methods. Yesterday, it was the great talk of communism and socialism that yielded so much power to so despicable a kind of peacock thug among leaders — Yanukovych, Chavez and Maduro, al-Bashir, leading their states not to greatness but into dependence on themselves, at best, and state practices that may be regarded as rule of the strong by way of brutality.

Ukraine

Ukraine challenges Russia’s veto right at Security Council. February 20, 2019. Related: https://www.unian.info/politics/10454169-poroshenko-time-to-deprive-russia-of-its-veto-right-at-un.html

The next headline from UNIAN: “33 European states call on UN members to consider non-recognition measures against Russia for Crimea” (February 20, 2019).

Venezuela

Two days earlier the 29-year-old was running through his neighbourhood with a wide grin, draped in a Venezuelan flag.
“Maduro get out, you son of a bitch,” he cried in the empty road outside his home in a defiant a video uploaded to social media.
Then the feared Special Action Forces (FAES) police unit came knocking. “The people who killed him were wearing uniforms and had ski masks,” a family member who didn’t want to be identified out of fear of more violence told The Telegraph.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/02/20/nicolas-maduros-special-police-unit-keeping-working-class-neighbourhoods

Sudan


UC26E11 POETRY FOR SUDAN, Posted to YouTube February 20, 2019.

Sudan-Related Online

Africa News. “Sudan protest hub: Sit-in by top private telecom employees.” February 21, 2019.

AP. “Sudan Government Arrests Opposition Leaders Ahead of Protest.” VOA, February 21, 2019.

Posted to YouTube February 20, 2019.
Posted to YouTube February 21, 2019.

Bonus: Syria

If the world is able to look back on this period . . . it will be sick with its memories. Bashar al-Assad with the support of Vladimir Putin and Ali Khamenei managed to physically destroy half of his state while running about half of its population as well. Now that the he has regained some areas, the past has come knocking for the release of prisoners.

Posted to YouTube February 20, 2019.

Scanning for news, rejiggering it, “scraping” as bloggers may call it — all takes time. Of late, BackChannels has been wondering what one has gotten back — or just created — from each days sail out into the sea of web-borne news. In the spirit of philosophy, one might enjoy the consolation of having seen and relayed a very small shard of time in the world.

This post has featured web artifacts dated February 20 and 21, 2019 having to do with four conflict-hot states: Ukraine, Venezuela, Sudan, and Syria. Central to the historical narratives of each: autocratic and still medieval Russia, Imperial, Soviet, Post-Soviet. The bereft and hungry of the North established tribes in Kiev around the 9th Century and lived and ruled in the feudal manner by way of the standards of the age. Contracts, expansions, hardships exceeding in excessive suffering practically every possibility short of the Holocaust — I have in mind the Mongol Invasion — and here . . . at the end of two modern revolutions and three distinct experiments with government unable to escape a paternal (and these days criminal) paternalism, . . . well here comes perhaps a different end to empire: Moscow has invaded Ukraine and Kiev is fighting back, making the sacrifices every day it must for freedom through democracy.

Venezuela’s “mafia state” will never be able to return Moscow’s “investment” in post-Soviet support — another more responsible government is needed for that.

Sudan has only this day to lose an ageing despot whose control of his state has come down to “shadow brigades” and the muzzling of truth-telling journalists. He doesn’t like the way he looks in Sudan’s newspapers. I wonder how he’ll feel when he sees himself in history.

And al-Assad: behold his greatest near accomplishment across eight punishing years of the KGB theatrical, “Assad v The Terrorists”:

Posted to YouTube January 5, 2017

Similar: Aleppo; Damascus suburb; Raqqa.

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Venezuela: Putin’s Choice

19 Tuesday Feb 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, International Development, Political Psychology, Russia, South America, Venezuela

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Venezuela is of limited strategic importance to Russia, though it offers symbolic significance in demonstrating Putin’s reach into a region seen as Washington’s backyard. Russia doesn’t have the capacity to send forces there as it did to support Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, limiting itself to publicity stunts like a December visit by two nuclear-capable bombers.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-06/russia-starts-to-worry-maduro-s-grip-is-slipping-in-venezuela – 2/6/2019

Big Crayon BackChannels suggests that nominally socialist Venezuela indulged its leaders in breathtaking kleptocracy while failing to develop its oil industry with care and taking measures to free and diversify the licit potential of its national economy (for coverage of the illicit potential possessed by Venezuela’s present leadership, one may click over to InSight Crime‘s eight-part series, “Venezuela: A Mafia State?”).

Moscow reads the news too, and while perhaps absent of conscience but mindful of money, it’s confidence in the success of the political societies once aligned, captivated, or enthralled with their relationship to the Soviet may be dimming. While perhaps putting a “little” money in the under-the-table pockets of its own, it has also watched parts of Central and South American states churn into cesspool of competing cartels and gangs destroying communities, exporting the nasty — the full smorgasbord of contraband — and for hundreds of thousands producing flight en masse anywhere that hasn’t become a personal no-security hell. Now the chief Phantom of the Soviet appears to be having a look-see at the future of at least one portfolio of debt accumulated by a once ideologically favored son and the picture just isn’t so wonderful as it must have once appeared.

Related Online

Aris, Ben. “Russia’s National Wealth Fund can withstand one more crisis vows Kudrin.” bne Intellinews. August 22, 2018.

InSight Crime. “Venezuela: A Mafia State?” Eight-part series, May 16, 2018 to May 25, 2018.

Johnson, Keith. “How Venezuela Struck It Poor: The tragic — and totally avoidable — self-destruction of one of the world’s richest oil economies.” Foreign Policy, July 16, 2018.

Laya, Patricia. “Maduro’s Bid to Fly Gold Out of Venezuela is Blocked.” Bloomberg, February 1, 2019.

Meyer, Henry and Ilya Arkhipov. “Russia Starts to Worry Maduro’s Grip May Slip in Venezuela.” Bloomberg, February 6, 2019.

Paraskova, Tsvetana. “Russia Begins to Fear Maduro May Lose”. Oil Price, February 7, 2019.

Rapoza, Kenneth. “Could Russia Be Subject to Venezuela-Style Sanctions”” Forbes, February 19, 2019.

The Moscow Times. “Russia’s Reserve Fund Ceases to Exist: Budget deficits have exhausted the rainy day fund.” January 11, 2018.

Trading Economics. “Russia Cash Reserve Ratio”. Current.

Banning the trading of Russian bonds have been tossed around ever since Trump got elected. Anti-Russian politicians on both sides of the aisle have taken full advantage of Trump being caught in a Russian scandal to force the president to play super hardball with Vladimir Putin and anyone within a country mile of him.
Since taking office, Trump has already signed harsher sanctions against Russian individuals and Russian companies, making some of them extra-territorial. Extra-territorial means sanctions apply to non-U.S. citizens and entities transacting with the sanctioned firm subject to penalties.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2019/02/19/could-russian-bonds-be-subject-to-venezuela-style-sanctions/#9aa301d75664 – 2/19/2019

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Venezuela’s Turkish Connection and Other Notes on Dictatorships Surrounding EU / NATO

11 Monday Feb 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Extreme Brown vs Red-Green, International Development, Political Psychology, Politics, Regions, South America, Venezuela

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Let’s start with “East v West”, i.e., “Moscow v Washington” -> “Feudal Absolutism (and Totalitarianism) v Modern Democratic Liberalism” -> and on this blog, “Medieval v Modern”:

As Venezuela’s political crisis is unfolding, the unwavering support of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his allies for the embattled Nicolas Maduro has been a wide-discussed theme in international media.
For some, by standing by Maduro against the “U.S.-backed coup ”, Turkey is only paying its respects to the Venezuelan president, who expressed solidarity with Erdoğan during the failed coup attempt in Turkey in July 2016. Interestingly, Venezuela was among the first countries to back Turkey during the botched coup attempt in Turkey. Maduro’s immediate support to Erdoğan came at a time the Western allies of Ankara were slow to show their reaction over the coup attempt.

https://ahvalnews.com/venezuela-turkey/existential-threats-bringing-erdogan-and-maduro-together – 2/9/2019

What in the hell is Turkey doing in NATO (FB Presence in Part)?

You tell me.

Those dictatorships!

They know how to hang together.

God willing.

For the time being, some Venezuelans have figured out that money has meaning, and they have gone to ground, literally, to dig up gold that they sell to the Venezuelan state (who else?) and the state sells on to . . . Turkey!

Facilitating the transport of gold is Turkish Airlines, it said, noting, ”On New Year’s Day, 2018, Venezuela’s central bank began shipping gold to Turkey with a $36 million air shipment of the metal to Istanbul. It came just weeks after a visit by Maduro to Turkey. Shipments last year reached $900 million, according to Turkish government data and trade reports.” 

https://ahvalnews.com/venezuela-turkey/turkish-airlines-carrying-gold-not-many-people-caracas-reuters – 2/10/2019

How you like them apples?

Start with Putin.

Add Russia’s Vory. \

Now you know something that perhaps you did not know a moment ago?

Does it make a difference?

You (whoever you are) are one out of billions on the (now censored in former Communist states) Internet.

What do you think?

Venezuela’s mafia state —

https://www.insightcrime.org/investigations/venezuela-mafia-state/

https://www.businesslive.co.za/rdm/world/2019-01-17-venezuela-is-fast-becoming-a-mafia-state-heres-what-you-need-to-know/ – 1/17/2019

— appears to have decided to start over with the Treasure of the Sierra Madre — i.e., with some portion of the people digging up wealth — gold — from out of the ground.

Hey, it’s money.

Oh — it’s also capitalism.

From Business Live:

The scale of Venezuela’s current social, economic and political crisis is so severe it is difficult to comprehend. Hyper-inflation has decimated the national currency and crippled the economy. Oil production — which accounts for 95% of the country’s export revenues — has halved since Maduro took power in 2013 and the industry has been further weakened by the collapse of the price of oil in 2014.

In 2018, the economy contracted by 18% and by the end of the year inflation had soared to 1-million percent. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has predicted inflation will increase to 10-million percent by the latter half of 2019. These are dizzying figures but they only reflect one part of the complex situation Venezuela is facing.

https://www.businesslive.co.za/rdm/world/2019-01-17-venezuela-is-fast-becoming-a-mafia-state-heres-what-you-need-to-know/ – 1/17/2019

Power cuts. Shortages. Starvation.

Yada yada yada — fodder for dozens to hundreds to thousands of articles avoiding reference to the Soviet / Post-Soviet disaster now 26 years past the dissolving of Russia’s Communist passion play — and the world’s tragedy.

Off the cuff —

Zimbabwe tells the story of a dictatorship that personally reintroduced cholera to its people — and Mugabe made it possibly by denying a rival funds for sanitation chemicals (you may look that one up yourself unless the editor here goes all OCD on you).

Syria — with the help of Moscow and Tehran, Bashar al-Assad has succeeded in barrel bombing half of his state (or more) into deeply depopulated oblivion. While one may thank Mother Nature — oh, and ourselves — for the global warming damaging Syria’s agricultural economy, the necessity, eventual of mass migration may have been met with kindness and international cooperation.

BC guesses not.

Where else would you like to go in the still medieval worlds of “political absolutism”?

Yemen?

Posted by France 24 English, November 21, 2018

BC imagines power quite intoxicating if it can do to innocents what is depicted in the above video.

(BackChannels has another bitch with the Kingdom, i.e., the punishment of its best and brightest women).

MOSCOW/LONDON (Reuters) – Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro has sought OPEC support against U.S. sanctions imposed on his country’s oil industry, citing their impact on oil prices and potential risks for other members of the producer group.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-opec-exclusive/exclusive-venezuelas-maduro-seeks-opec-help-against-u-s-sanctions-letter-idUSKCN1Q01HD – 2/11/201

Not only has Venezuela sought OPEC’s support.


The Organisation for the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and top oil producer but non-member Russia will not create a formal combined body as originally planned, Reuters hasreported.
In a draft document, the countries said they aim to set up an alliance rather than a formal organisation when they meet on April 17-18 in Vienna.

https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/2019/2/11/opec-and-russia-alliance-will-not-be-formal-organisation – 2/11/2019

BC would add to the list of Moscow’s sphere-of-influence failures — well what is one to expect of criminal mercenaries and politicians!? — Crimea, Ukraine, which has been battle torn torn for five suffering years under Moscow’s false pretenses. From Michael MacKay via his Radio Lemberg:

Almost five years after the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine in Crimea, Putin’s army is still on the attack. The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation are bombarding and assaulting Ukrainian defenders in Donbas, as they have been doing continuously since April 2014. Yesterday, February 10, was typical in that the Russians violated the Minsk Agreement ceasefire in every sector of the battlefront.

http://radiolemberg.com/ua-articles/ua-allarticles/russia-attacks-europe-in-donbas-ukraine-defends-it-alone 2/11/2019

Altogether, Maduro’s regime has brought unprecedented misery to Venezuela, the depth of which would beggar imagination if any were needed or wanted.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/11/americas/venezuela-migrant-women-prostitution-intl/index.html

The above URL updates this kind of video —

To force on to leave one’s home for the vagaries of chance and fate — conditions are bad in Venezuela, but there is this one truth: the dictator — the malignant narcissist — is never wrong.

Vox, November 27, 2018

On more video that BC feels indicative of the true relationship between today’s feudal powers:

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Responding to Tulsi Gabbard’s Tweet ” . . . No to Nuclear War . . . No to Regime Change Wars”

07 Thursday Feb 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Extreme Brown vs Red-Green, Russia, Venezuela

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